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Study finds that police body cameras may increase assaults — if used improperly
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Devin Coldewey
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Putting body cameras on police seems like a net good for everyone involved, but to deploy them and what the subtler effects will be are questions that would be better answered sooner than later. Otherwise, as a new large-scale study shows, we risk making things worse — body cameras could actually incidents of violence. Part of the problem, it is important to note at the outset, is that there aren’t a lot of data — or rather, the data that’s out there isn’t organized or collected in a coherent way. “At present, there is a worldwide uncontrolled social experiment taking place — underpinned by feverish public debate and billions of dollars of government expenditure,” the researchers write in the paper. “Robust evidence is only just keeping pace with the adoption of new technology.” , from researchers at Cambridge and RAND Europe, controlled and tracked camera use on 2,122 officers in 8 departments across the U.S. and U.K. — totaling about 2.2 million work hours. On average, assaults against officers increased by about 15 percent when they were wearing cameras; some sites showed this effect more than others, it should be said, and the data are inadequate to dive into why. The general reason for the increase is equally unclear, and the authors warn against drawing conclusions not clearly supported by the data. Perhaps having the camera on makes officers less assertive, or perhaps suspects disliked being recorded and that escalated the situation. Or maybe nothing changed, and the officers are just more likely to report assaults when they know they have the support of video evidence. Until studies are conducted investigating those options, it would be premature to say. A was published simultaneously as a follow-up analysis of the data collected; at first, there appeared to be no reliable effect of cameras on police use of force, with some trials showing decreases and others increases. This the researchers described in the introduction as “puzzling and disturbing.” Why would officers, knowing that their actions were being filmed by their own equipment, choose to apply force more often when cameras were on in some instances? Similarly, why would suspects’ demeanor become more aggressive or noncompliant under these circumstances? This runs contrary to both common sense and a good deal of research across disciplines… The way the experiment worked was this: Officers were randomly assigned to carry or not carry cameras, and were instructed to keep their cameras on at all times during their shift. They were also to announce as soon as possible to any members of the public they met that recording was taking place. When this plan was adhered to, use of force declined 37 percent on average compared with shifts where cameras were not worn. However, as you might imagine, not every officer stuck to the script; some chose to activate the camera using their own discretion, sometimes in the middle of an interaction. On shifts where this was the case, use of force actually increased by 71 percent on average. In this case, the researchers do propose a likely reason: “If an officer decides to announce mid-interaction they are beginning to film, for example, that could provoke a reaction that results in use-of-force,” principal investigator Barak Ariel said . It makes sense. If an encounter has grown tense and the officer suddenly says “I’m turning on this camera to record this,” that could be considered an escalation — which is precisely the reason why the camera was to be running from the first. Although this is the largest and most diverse set of data on the topic of how body cameras affect police encounters, it is still a relatively small sample and there are many unquantifiable factors involved: How is force defined by a district, a city, a country? How does the way police are viewed, their roles in the community, affect how the cameras are considered? Perhaps most pressing is the increase in assaults against officers. The finding, while weak and subject to numerous caveats, may be used as an argument against deploying body cameras at all; and who can blame a commissioner for opting out of a program that, arguably, puts his people at risk? “The question about the reason for the increased assaults is not something that can be left to debate and must be scrutinised empirically,” concludes the paper. A number of other studies are in progress around the world, and more fine-grained data from other countries and cultures should help identify best practices and things to avoid. Body cameras seem almost inevitable, but that only increases the urgency of research like this.
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Katamari Damacy creator is making an augmented reality game called Woorld for Project Tango phones
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Devin Coldewey
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Keita Takahashi, creator of the famously bizarre ball-rolling game Katamari Damacy, has a new title, but it’s not for the PS4 or Xbox One — you’ll need a Project Tango-compatible device to play this one. The announcement was made , a small developer Takahashi has been working with. The game is called , and it’s an augmented reality world that “mixes digital and physical play.” Project Tango devices track position with great accuracy, allowing you to place digital objects in the real world and interact with them. Multiple devices can work together and share the same digital world. Don’t expect an epic story mode where you roll up continents, though, or a seemingly insurmountable goal like crossing the solar system with your enormously long body (that would be Noby Noby boy, and it ). This looks to be more of a fun sandbox for all ages that demonstrates the possibilities of augmented reality. Of course, you’ll need a Project Tango phone, and they aren’t exactly thick on the ground right now. But we do expect to hear more on that soon: Google is rumored to be presenting a consumer version of the sensor-packed handset . We’ll know more soon. Tune in tomorrow morning at 10 AM for our live coverage of the keynote.
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For online lenders, it’s suddenly touch-and-go
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Connie Loizos
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A year ago, privately held online lenders like , and looked all but certain to go public at the same unicorn valuations their venture investors had assigned them — if not higher. They were seemingly reshaping the student, consumer and small business lending business. The market they’re chasing is enormous: The U.S. consumer lending market is a , and 22 of the largest online marketplace platforms originated just more than $5 billion of unsecured consumer credit in 2014 and more than $10 billion in 2015. They also talked a big game. When SoFi raised a whopping $1 billion from Softbank last year, CEO Michael Cagney : “I’m looking at over $1 trillion of market cap from the banks, and I think it’s all vulnerable.” Fast forward to today, and it’s online lenders that suddenly look like sitting ducks. In an SEC filing yesterday, , which announced the surprise departure of its founder and CEO last Monday, revealed that investors who “contributed a significant amount of funding” for loans are now examining that performance “or are .” That’s a huge problem. Lending Club can’t originate a loan until it has sold it to another party. It’s not just Lending Club that’s grown overly reliant on institutional sources of capital to keep its business afloat, though the problem is just becoming widely understood now. For many casual observers in Silicon Valley, the first signs of trouble in the online lending category emerged in late April, when the that Avant made $514 million worth of new loans in the U.S. in the first quarter, a 27 percent drop from the fourth quarter of 2015. Then, two weeks ago, Prosper confirmed that it planned to cut roughly in response to falling loan volume. And Prosper’s news came just a day after OnDeck Capital said its own first-quarter losses had more than doubled as demand for its loans began to nosedive. Of course, the kicker came last week, when Lending Club CEO Renaud LaPlanche following an internal audit that turned up $22 million in loans that were sold to Jefferies yet didn’t meet the investment bank’s criteria. If the shift in the companies’ fortunes seemed abrupt to Silicon Valley, it wasn’t a surprise to many in the financial industry. They’ll tell you they’ve seen this movie before. Online lending “grew incredibly quickly from loan volumes of almost nothing eight years ago to many billions of dollars a year,” says Max Wolff, chief economist at Manhattan Venture Partners, a merchant banking firm in New York. “But what started out as a disruptive movement known as peer-to-peer was far more novel than what it became, which, in many cases, is a front for whoever is providing [some of these startups with] capital to lend.” Think banks like Goldman Sachs and Jefferies. Think hedge funds and insurance companies. The obvious benefit of taking capital from larger institutions is that they allow online lending companies to grow, and quickly. While companies operating in this space come with inherent advantages — they use automated loan applications; they have no retail branches; they use electronic data sources and tech-enabled underwriting models that help them to quickly identify a borrower’s credit risk — having deep-pocketed friends has made other things easier. Among them is being able to provide funding decisions within 48 to 72 hours, and to offer small loans with short-term maturities. Until recently, Wall Street has happily obliged. And why wouldn’t it? With interest rates , these new lending products have been an attractive place to generate revenue. Some online lenders have charged more than in annual interest on their loans, including origination fees. In fact, the rates provided these institutions were sometimes so steep that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the State of California began looking into these businesses last year out of concern over whether online lenders are treating consumers fairly. Judging by a lengthy published by Treasury last week, slightly more regulation is coming, including additional safeguards to protect small borrowers, as well as standardized and clearer terms and disclosures to borrowers. The government also seems interested in ensuring that online marketplace lenders expand beyond serving prime and near-prime consumer borrowers to those who are “creditworthy, but may not be scoreable under traditional credit scoring models.” While online lenders might be relieved that Treasury doesn’t appear intent on aggressive changes (for now), a much bigger concern for them is a “market that now realizes how fragile online lenders’ business models really are,” notes Todd Baker of Broadmoor Consulting, a consulting firm to the financial services industry. As he notes, it just took one “blip” in the capital markets last summer for this to become clear, when the banks, hedge funds and other institutions grew nervous about risk. Online lenders couldn’t give them better rates on loan sales while staying profitable, so these investors “started looking for greener pastures,” notes Baker — and they’re continuing to pull back. “Wall Street walks when it gets nervous,” says Baker. That’s not just bad news for publicly traded companies. So-called unicorn lenders — including Prosper, which has raised $355 million from investors and was valued at as of April 2015; SoFi, which has raised roughly $1.4 billion altogether at an implied valuation of between ; and Avant, which has raised $654 million at a valuation — suddenly look like long shots as upcoming IPO candidates. In fact, consolidation in the industry, where other still-private players include , , , and (among dozens of others), now seems all but inevitable. Smartly, some players are already looking to reimagine themselves as broader financial outfits. For example, SoFi, which began as a way for students from top universities to refinance their debt, has since branched into personal loans, wealth management and mortgages. It also said last month that it’s hoping to drum up more investor demand for the debt it originates by that will buy its own loans. Baker expects that to survive and thrive, more online lenders may need to remodel themselves into the institutions they vowed to replace, either by becoming banks, buying or selling to banks, or else striking up partnerships with banks. OnDeck and JPMorgan made one such pact. Last month, JPMorgan quietly began offering online loans to its existing small-business customers . Indeed, there is a silver lining, and it’s that huge market opportunity. The trick for online lenders will be finding new ways to pursue it while remaining viable businesses. As notes Wolff, the economist, online lenders are “a part of the future. But the Web 2.0 model has been to ask for forgiveness, not permission, and the financial space is way too heavily regulated for that to a be a strategy.” “Dangerous is cool when you’re in high school,” he says of online lenders’ dependence on fickle institutional investors. When you’re in the money business? Not so much.
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EyeSight demos VR gesture control using standard phone hardware
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Brian Heater
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Over the past few years has been establishing a name for itself by bringing gesture control to a series of computing platforms, from mobile devices to smart eyeglasses. Today’s announcement brings the company’s technology to the format where it arguably makes the most sense: virtual reality. The company isn’t letting out much info on the project. I reached out to a spokesperson who told me that due to the proprietary nature of the technology, won’t disclose specifics. What we do know, however, is that the new VR offering is a software solution that utilizes existing smartphone cameras to bring motion control to phone-based virtual reality systems along the lines of Google Cardboard. The offering does so without the need for any additional hardware, utilizing the phone’s CMOS sensors. The Israeli startup has detailed some simple functionality in a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/70Cnd2WdAMU This is all still in the early stages, but EyeSight did reveal plans to open up the SDK to developers in “the near future.” I asked the company’s CEO Gideon Shmuel to explain what his company is offering, apart from other recent attempts to bring motion controls to the virtual reality landscape. “[We] designed our computer vision to provide more engaging interactions with VR using finger movements that are natural and intuitive to the user,” Shmuel told me. “By delivering gesture control solutions that are embedded, we enable touch-free interactions for VR without any hardware additions or modifications needed, while we are further working to deliver immersive touch-free control with 3D sensors that are both embedded or computer powered.” Hopefully we’ll get a more immersive demo in the near future. Stay tuned.
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Sarah Perez
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In Oracle’s world, Android is a crime against open source
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Kate Conger
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Oracle and Google are — the same court they started in , when Oracle first sued Google over the company’s use of 37 Java APIs in its Android operating system. The case, , bounced up to an appeals court and was reversed, then appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. Now Oracle’s lawsuit, which could net the company $9 billion, is back where it started in U.S. District Court. But this time, instead of debating whether Google infringed on Oracle’s copyright when it used the Java APIs in Android, the two companies are arguing over whether Google’s coding falls under fair use. And while Oracle is hitting hard on the for fair use, its lawyers and witnesses are also working to portray Oracle as a defender of free and open source software. It’s an image that will be tough to square with the reputation Oracle has developed during this case as a corporate fist clamping down on open source. A have opposed Oracle, saying that the company’s position will cause far-reaching harm to the open source community. But Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz testified Monday and Tuesday this week that it was Google, not Oracle, that locked its software away within a walled garden. Google says the open source nature of Java is what led the Android team to embrace its APIs. But Catz claimed that the only way to preserve Java’s longstanding “write once, run anywhere” philosophy was to protect the language from interlopers like Google, which, in Oracle’s view, warped it into non-compatible form with Android. Oracle began telling its side of the story yesterday when Catz took the stand. Catz, who shares Oracle’s chief executive role with Mark Hurd, said that Oracle’s decision to purchase Sun Microsystems in 2009 was largely motivated by a desire to protect Java and preserve the programming language for fair and open use. Catz testified that, when Sun’s stock slid in the mid-2000s, she began to fret about the fate of Java. Oracle was already using Java to build software and Catz was concerned that, if Sun tanked, Oracle’s go-to programming language would falter. “We were concerned [Sun] wouldn’t invest enough, and Java was critical for our product,” Catz said. So, in order to avoid losing Java to decay or to a competitor, Oracle started trying to buy it. Catz explained that Oracle started small, offering to purchase only Java and some other pieces of Sun’s software business, only to be rebuffed. When it became clear that IBM might buy Sun, hardware and all, Oracle came back to the table with and beat to buy the entire company. At the time of the purchase, Oracle’s then-CEO Larry Ellison the “single most important software asset we have ever acquired.” (Ellison is now Oracle’s chairman.) Catz echoed his remark in court on Monday, adding that she recommended the acquisition to Ellison and planned to grow Java once it was brought in-house. “We intended to invest in Java and bring the Java community together and come out with new versions of Java going forward,” Catz said. Catz testified that Google’s use of Java in Android became a topic of conversation at Oracle soon after the acquisition. She said Sun’s former CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, told Oracle that he had been in negotiations with Google to get the company to purchase a license for its use of Java. ( .) But, by the time Oracle’s deal with Sun closed in early 2010, Catz said Android’s effect on the openness of Java was too large to reverse. She claimed today that the entire community of Java programmers had been split in two, with some of the programmers switching to the Android platform and thereby limiting the universality of Java. With Java, Catz said, “They could write it once and run it anywhere. Once you write it in Android, you can’t run it on anything but Android.” It’s a bit of a rhetorical leap to characterize Android, a free and open platform, as one that’s restrictive of development. Google’s attorneys pushed back on this assertion during their questioning of Catz, suggesting that Oracle didn’t fully understand the open nature of Java and that executives were either unprepared to manage an open source platform, or had every intention of restricting use of Java. Google’s lawyers also questioned Catz about Oracle’s own efforts to develop a smartphone, a plan that Oracle considered soon after the acquisition of Sun but ultimately abandoned. At one point, attorneys displayed a slide from an internal Oracle presentation on phone development that read in part, “Oracle has very limited internal expertise to make smart decisions.” Google made some headway in suggesting that Oracle only chose to sue after its efforts to make a smartphone failed, showing emails between Ellison and Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt that indicated the pair were meeting just months before Oracle filed its suit. Google also referenced Ellison’s now-infamous remarks at a JavaOne developers’ conference, when he indicated he was happy with Google’s implementation of Java. “I think we can see lots and lots of Java devices, some coming from our friends at Google,” . Whatever friendship existed between Oracle and Google executives has long since withered. Catz testified that Google’s general counsel Kent Walker approached her at a bat mitzvah in March 2012 to discuss the lawsuit. According to Catz, Walker said, “Google is a very special company and the old rules don’t apply to us.” Catz fired back with one old rule: “Thou shalt not steal.” She testified that Google’s alleged infringement has cost Oracle hundreds of millions of dollars, including in a for use of Java in the development of Paperwhite. Testimony in the case is scheduled to continue this week, with closing arguments expected to begin next week.
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SocialRank, the startup that analyzes your followers, adds premium features and pricing
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Anthony Ha
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is a startup that — not just in aggregate, like most social analytics services, but on an individual level. Today as part of a new SocialRank Premium plan. As a refresher: SocialRank helps customers find things like their “most valuable” followers on Twitter or Instagram, or followers who live in a certain city, or followers who tweet about a certain topic. Co-founder Alex Taub told me his goal with the premium features is to allow you to actually act on that data. The most interesting addition is support for DM Campaigns. The idea is that once you’ve found valuable users, you can offer them a special deal or promotion — and since they follow you, you can do it right in their direct messages. SocialRank Premium allows you to send multiple DMs at once and automatically fill in things like the username. Taub said the aim isn’t to support spammy, annoying campaigns that prompt people to unfollow you, but rather to allow businesses to send personalized messages to followers with whom they really want to build a relationship. So he said SocialRank is going to be careful in how it rolls out these campaigns and will initially cap the number of people you can message in a single campaign. In addition to DM Campaigns, the new features include an account summary that allows you to take a closer look at your follower data, for example looking at the geographic breakdown of all your followers who have the word “engineer” in their bio. You can then export that data to a PDF. To be clear, while the core SocialRank product is free, this isn’t the first time the startup is charging for its products. It also offers a pricier Market Intelligence option, where large customers can see follower data for their competitors. SocialRank Premium, on the other hand, costs $49 a month. “Market intel is the enterprise product that brands pay a lot for,” Taub said. “With Premium, I think an individual social manager can pay fifty bucks a month.”
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Apple is opening an app design and development accelerator in India
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Jon Russell
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Apple is increasing its focus on India after plans to open its first developer center in the country. The new ‘iOS App Design and Development Accelerator’ will be located in Bangalore (known also as Bengaluru) and it is scheduled to open in early 2017. The center is designed to provide support for app developers in the country. Apple said it will “work to inspire and instruct developers on best practices, help them hone their skills and transform the design, quality and performance of their apps on the iOS platform.” The company works closely with iOS app developers that it hand selects, but the centers is designed to expand its reach to more in the community and, in this case, more in India. Building an ecosystem of top apps is one way that Apple can appeal to consumers who are in the market for a smartphone. “India is home to one of the most vibrant and entrepreneurial iOS development communities in the world. With the opening of this new facility in Bengaluru, we’re giving developers access to tools which will help them create innovative apps for customers around the world,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. The U.S. company has steadily put more attention on India in recent years, in part because India’s smartphone market is showing signs of serious growth potential and also to offset some of the company’s reliance on China for revenue. to become the world’s second largest smartphone market with an estimated base of 220 million smartphone users. That’s just a fraction of the country’s 1.2 billion population, and there’s much potential for growth. While sales are slowing in markets like the U.S., Europe and China, India to see double-digit growth for at least the next two years. Yet, Apple’s share of the market remains small. that in urban areas, where more consumers have the spending power to buy Apple devices which are higher than the average spend, Apple has around 5.8 percent marketshare. That’s far behind China, where Apple currently enjoys around 22 percent of sales, . Apple’s success on China has presented issues. The company is seen by many as under pressure from the government — appeasing the state, which is cracking down on overseas tech firms, may be behind — while the Chinese smartphone market’s slowdown is a key reason . Growing both the market in India and its share of smartphone sales in the country is a key objective for Apple, and this new developer center fits squarely into that strategy.
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Facebook blocked in Vietnam over the weekend due to citizen protests
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Sarah Perez
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Facebook appears to have been blocked in Vietnam as a part of a government-imposed crackdown on social media, amid public protests over built by Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics. Dissidents are blaming wastewater from the steel plant for a mass fish death at aquatic farms and in waters off the country’s central provinces. Citizens have been using Facebook to organize rallies, which is likely the cause of the shutdown. Instagram also appears to have been affected, according to reports. In addition to helping protesters organize, social media has been used , holding up handwritten signs that read “I choose fish.” "I Choose Fish" — Dan Vineberg (@danvineberg) – A lonely man? – No, a strong man! — Anh Chí (@AnhChiVN) for environment on — Quoc Binh (@quocbinh8x) Citizens are angry both at the steel company and their government’s inaction. Formosa had denied wrongdoing in the matter, and the Deputy Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources . He also denied that Formosa was to blame. Police arrested up to 300 protesters in Ho Chi Minh City’s Paris Square, and many injuries were sustained during that process. The UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights recently referenced these protests in a , saying: “We are concerned about the increasing levels of violence perpetrated against Vietnamese protesters expressing their anger over the mysterious mass deaths of fish along the country’s central coast.” Protesters tried to rally for the third time on Sunday, but security in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City prevented major rallies taking place, The fish kill began in April, and a government investigation is still underway. According to whose software would be used to route around internet censorship like this (and which is capitalizing on this situation by way of press releases), both Facebook and the photo-sharing app Instagram were blocked on Sunday. The company says it experienced a significant surge in downloads following the Facebook blockade. “Though security forces have been preventing protesters from gathering in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, many citizens have been using Facebook to exchange information and organize rallies, thus the government is presumed to have shut the website down,” the company wrote . We’ve confirmed via app store optimization firm that mobile VPN applications in the country also saw a huge boost as users there are trying to circumvent the block. (See above chart). This pattern is similar to when and is a fairly good indication that a Facebook blockage was, indeed, in effect. As another source of confirmation of sorts, the Head of PR & Comms for Opera & Asia on Twitter that their company saw a surge of VPN users from Vietnam, and suspected a Facebook block was to blame. There a of of a blockage as well. https://twitter.com/lotusr00t/status/732361201703755777 Both Instagram and Facebook were blocked in Vietnam now. Tell me why? — Panpan (@panpan143) Meanwhile in , Facebook has been blocked to curb protests. They didn’t learn from Arab Spring… — Raj Taneja (@tinhead) Hello Vietnam, so until when will you block facebook and instagram? 🙄 — Anton Altamirano (@blazerboy11) The country of Vietnam shut down Facebook and Instagram the day I arrive 😤 — Brett Conti (@Brettconti92) Hello world! Anybody there? No access now here in Vietnam. Friends in PH, you don't want this to happen to you. No fun! — Hello Saigon (@lyraliza) Having issues with facebook and instagram. I am in Saigon Vietnam. Anyone know the reason please! — Nikki (@brat_girl6684) Vietnam’s government has blocked social media off and on over the years, though more recently leaders appeared to be embracing Facebook. In October, that Vietnam’s Communist government even set up its own page on the network dubbed “Government Information,” in an effort to reach the 30 million citizens who used the service. Facebook has not yet responded to a request for comment. It’s unclear at this time if the ban, implemented to crack down on the Sunday protests, is still in effect. It appears it may have been lifted, however, according to websites that track outages like and . It’s also unclear if it extended outside of Hanoi and Saigon, where the demonstrations were planned.
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What will be announced at Google I/O 2016? Here’s what we expect
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Greg Kumparak
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One day a year, Google gathers all sides of the industry to show off everything the company has been cooking up for the past twelve months. From all new Android to automated automobiles, it’s the day they unveil everything they’ve worked so hard (with varying degrees of success) to keep secret. Tomorrow is that day — Google’s I/O Keynote. So what will we see? We don’t know for certain, of course — that’s kind of the point. But the rumor mill has spit out of stuff this year, and some of these fires have a bit more smoke around them than others. We’ll be there at 10 AM Pacific tomorrow to bring the news back live as it breaks. Until then, here’s what we expect to hear about: This one is basically a given. Google has been talking about Android N — the next major release of its Android platform — for months now, having already released a couple of preview builds for developers to work with. I/O tends to be where the company starts to cement their plans. When will it ship? What’s the new stuff? We already know plenty of said new stuff: things like a built-in splitscreen mode (some LG/Samsung devices can already pull off splitscreen apps, but it’s not officially supported), a redesigned/cleaner notifications pulldown with inline replies, and more automated power saving logic to keep your gadgets from dying when you’re not actually using them. Less concrete, but seemingly likely, is built-in platform-level support within Android for virtual reality headsets like Google Cardboard and Samsung GearVR. It’s been a few months since Android Wear has seen much in the way of an update. It’s about time for some new schtuff in the world of Wear. And, hey, look at that: Google has an entire panel on Day 2 of I/O called “What’s new in Android Wear?”, where they’ll “share [their] vision for the Android Wear platform”. All signs are pointing toward Chromebooks picking up the ability to run Android apps. Not just a handful of Android apps, mind you — millions, if not all of them. Less than a month ago, caught a fleeting glimpse of a checkbox that said “Enable Android Apps to run on your Chromebook”. A few hours later, someone else almost, got the Google Play store to fire up on their Chromebook — but it didn’t quite work just yet. So yeah — it’s coming, sooner or later. We’ve all been thinking it for a while: Google’s ultra-cheap “Cardboard” VR headset project to be leading to something bigger and less… made-of-cardboard. But what will said something look like? Some say it’ll just be a polished, less-cheapo version of the Cardboard headsets — something in the just-stick-your-phone-in-it mindset first established by Samsung’s GearVR, without guts/brains of its own. Others say it’s something more. According , Google is working on a fully independent VR headset that has everything it needs built right in, no smartphone or PC or gnarly cables trying ever so hard to make you fall on your face. Why not both? And what’s a standalone VR headset without a platform to run on it? Last week, Google’s own Developer Console ever-so-briefly showed a listing for “Android VR” alongside the already debuted “Android Wear”, “Android TV”, and “Android Auto”. Whoops! This fits hand-in-hand with everything else we’ve heard so far: Google’s plans to tie VR support into Android at a platform level, the various headset hardware they’re dabbling with, etc. Project Tango, itself, isn’t new. It’s the codename for Google’s effort to build computer vision solutions that allow devices like smartphones (AND VR HEADSETS!) to understand their position in the real world, map out the environments around them, and do all sorts of wild augmented reality stuff without the need for marker images or big ol’ external sensors. What be new, however, is Google dropping news about a for-the-masses device with Tango smarts built-in. Everything seems to suggest that if Tango a notable part of I/O, something went wrong. People seem to really like Amazon’s Echo — the company’s always-on voice powered home assistant. It can order you an Uber! It can tell you the weather, or about traffic, or the news! It can turn off your lights! “The voice recognition is just so good!”, people say. You know who else is good at voice recognition? Google. You know who else has all sorts of data about the weather, or traffic, or news? Google. You know who else would be perfectly able of calling you an Uber, or controlling your lights (by way of? Google. Google made it absolutely, 100% clear with their acquisition of Nest and later Dropcam: they want to be in your home. While the idea might terrify some, a Google-powered Alexa-competitor would be the physical culmination of pretty much that Google does well. All signs and reports suggest that Google is working on it internally, by way of a project called “Chirp” — and I/O seems like the perfect stage for its debut. Tune in tomorrow to find out. We’ll be at the venue* bright and early (me and Tito are taking over , which should be… interesting), but our liveblog should fire up right before 10 AM Pacific. See you tomorrow! (* )
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New version of iTunes addresses the music deletion issue
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Sarah Perez
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Apple rolled out a new version of iTunes this week which introduced an updated design, including modified navigation and the return of the left sidebar. However, under the hood, the new software also includes a fix which aims to address the troubling issue of iTunes deleting some users’ music files from their computer. Complaints about iTunes and its poor integration with Apple Music had surfaced in the past – but these had to do with iTunes Match issues. In one case, an influential Apple blogger Jim Dalrymple lost around 4,7000 songs. He , and Apple directly intervened, . The company then addressed this issue with a bug fix. More recently, another story of music disappearing began making the rounds. This time, a blogger and musician James Pinkstone wrote that , including original tracks he created himself. At the time, he suspected that his Apple Music subscription was to blame. That post went viral, and theories abounded. Some claimed that there was a software bug at hand, while others put forth In the end, Apple acknowledged the issue with a statement provided to TechCrunch and other news outlets, which said: In an extremely small number of cases users have reported that music files saved on their computer were removed without their permission. We’re taking these reports seriously as we know how important music is to our customers and our teams are focused on identifying the cause. We have not been able to reproduce this issue, however, we’re releasing an update to iTunes early next week which includes additional safeguards. If a user experiences this issue they should contact AppleCare. The iTunes update that aims to correct this problem is version 12.4, released just yesterday, TechCrunch has confirmed with sources familiar with the matter. What’s odd is that Apple has not been able to cause music deletions to happen in internal testing. Without being able to reproduce the problem, it’s unclear at this time if the fix being shipped will actually solve this issue for good. It’s also unclear whether the issue is tied to Apple Music’s subscription service, as suspected, or if it could affect regular iTunes users as well. Apple has not released documentation detailing the fix at hand, though it does offer to those who lose files in between iTunes upgrades. But the lack of documentation also hints that Apple believes this is a very minor issue affecting very few users, as its statement indicates. One of those users is James Pinkstone, who received personal attention from Apple engineers over the weekend related to his music deletion problem, we understand. Apple knows of very few live cases that are like James’, as most music deletion issues are things that can be attributed to other causes and resolved with help from Apple’s tech support. My theory is that this dialog box is causing a fundamental misunderstanding of what happens next. — Jason Snell (@jsnell) It’s also important to note the language at hand in Apple’s statement. “Additional safeguards” implies some sort of protection from deletions – perhaps accidental deletions, which supports the that it was a confusing dialog box that’s to blame here. That means there may not be a bug fix, exactly, but rather a change to how iTunes interacts with users before deleting music tracks permanently. However, in testing, we found that the “Delete Song” box is still the default in the new version of iTunes, and the “Remove Download” button still sends files to your Trash. So it’s unclear what these “safeguards” entail. (James tells us that Apple sent two engineers to his house, but they couldn’t replicate the problem. He says Apple didn’t offer any explanation or detail the fix. He’s also ) In the meantime, the is responding to some ‘ that their and disappeared after installing iTunes 12.4, but these could be run-of-the-mill upgrade issues unrelated to this specific music deletion bug.
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Oracle CEO claims it discounted Java by 97.5% to beat out Android on Amazon’s Paperwhite
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Kate Conger
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and continue to fight it out in a that Oracle claims Google owes it for using its Java code in its popular Android mobile platform. And in the process, we’re also hearing details about other companies that may not have been known before. Today it was the turn of Amazon, which Oracle today said ran Java in its Kindle Paperwhite, but only after Oracle agreed to license it to Amazon at a 97.5% discount to beat out Android. The details were laid out by Oracle’s co-CEO Safra Catz, who gave testimony today to illustrate what kind of competition Google had injected into the market with Android: a race to zero, it seems. The testimony predates the release of Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite e-reader in 2012. “Amazon… had used Java to create [the Kindle] reader for many years,” she said. “Then they had another product called the Kindle Fire and that one they used Android. They didn’t license Java at that time. “The way we look at different discounts and handle them with customers comes through an approval process that comes through me. I was made aware through that process that Amazon was going to [develop] the Kindle Fire with Android. “They were now considering a new product called the Paperwhite and they were considering whether to use Java for that or Android. “In order to compete with [Google], we ended up giving a 97.5 percent discount for the Paperwhite. Instead of what we would have historically offered them, because our competition was free, we had to offer them a cents on the dollar price.” What doesn’t really get explained here is what role Google actively played in whatever negotiations Oracle was having with Amazon (if any); or whether we should be questioning if Catz’s testimony implies that there was a Java stranglehold on the Kindle before the Kindle Fire tablet came along, or even if what she says is correct. But if accurate, the testimony also underscores one of the bigger issues about Android for rivals: its “free” price tag. Amazon has not returned a request for comment, and Google declined to comment. In court, Google also didn’t counter-question Catz about the details of her Amazon-related testimony. Yesterday, Catz also gave in response to the oft-repeated claim that Oracle only (where Java was first created) in order to use it to sue Google. Not true, she said in answer to a question put by her side’s lawyers: it was in order to keep Sun out of the hands of a competitor like IBM, since Oracle itself had already built a considerable part of its own business on Sun’s technology.
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Why you should bet big on privacy
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Rand Hindi
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Ever felt like you were being watched online? You know, like when you read something about New York, and the next site you visit shows you ads for New York hotels? As it turns out, on my computer, there were more than 130 companies tracking my every move (check yours , then ). These companies are basically engaging in mass surveillance. Just as governments justify tracking us to prevent terrorist attacks, these companies are tracking us online, without our consent, because a marginal of the population clicks on their ads. And it’s not just online advertisers. From e-commerce websites to physical retail stores, everyone is now racing to capture more data about us. Don’t be surprised if your insurance company starts charging you more because of how it thinks you should live your life! Don’t get me wrong, I use Facebook, Google and all those other services. I use them because I find them useful, fun or because I don’t have an alternative. But I do it knowing very well that I am partly giving away my right to privacy. The nature of the game in the past years has been that a free service has the right to collect your personal data and sell it to other companies, such as advertisers. This data party (to which you were not invited) will soon be over though, because It turns out that you could have the exact same service, with the exact same quality, while not giving away your personal data. This is called “Privacy by Design,” and is about adding privacy safeguards directly at the product design, algorithm and business model level, so no one can abuse the users’ data. Not only is this the right thing to do ethically, it is also the right thing to do as a business if you want to exist in the long run. A has shown that more than half of Internet users are concerned with privacy, but feel it’s already too late. In , U.S. citizens ranked “corporate tracking of personal data” as the third biggest fear they have, just behind government corruption and cyberterrorism. It is even the why people aren’t purchasing new connected objects. All these surveys are pointing at the same conclusion: Privacy is now a mainstream concern. It might have gotten in the spotlight recently, but privacy is not a new idea. It has been around at least since ancient Greece, when instated the medical secret. It goes: “I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know.” It really became a big deal in Europe, though, after the Second World War. Back then, the governments would compile files with specific personal information, such as name, address, political party, ethnicity or religion. When the Nazi regime occupied France, they , first to arrest them, and eventually to murder them. The scar this left was so profound that the right to privacy got a dedicated article in the . Article 12 states: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. This was followed by a number of new laws, such as the , called “Secret Statistique” (i.e. “Statistical Secret”). In a nutshell, the law made it illegal for the government and corporations to collect and store sensitive personal data without user consent. It did allow, though, for the collection of aggregated data, as long as individuals could not be re-identified by cross-referencing these aggregated datasets. This is still how we legally define “anonymous data.” My point here is that privacy is not a “nice to have” or a fancy marketing argument. Rather, it’s a fundamental cornerstone of our society, without which we are putting ourselves at great existential risk. “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” — Edward Snowden Fortunately, companies like Apple are doing the right thing and protecting their customers’ privacy. Asking for a backdoor will only make it , weakening our cybersecurity even further and essentially dismissing decades of security best-practices. And trying to forbid crypto altogether is plain stupid, since everything is already in the public domain (you even have open source ). It’s about time we just accept that everything is going dark, and concentrate on finding solutions to fight crime that way! Backdoors are not just an issue for surveillance, they also enable hackers to steal the data that a company has about you. This past decade alone, nearly have been stolen, with 600 million in 2014 alone. Some of those hacks had terrible consequences. For example, when Ashley Madison got hacked, more than 32 million people were exposed for adultery, resulting in countless divorces and even . “What all these data breaches are teaching us is that data is a toxic asset and saving it is dangerous.” — The more sensitive data you store, the more you become a target for hackers and surveillance. Given that everybody eventually gets hacked, the only safe thing to do is to not have the data in the first place. Given what was just stated above, you might be tempted to think we shouldn’t use any of these services in the first place. But through good engineering, design and technology, we could have all of them without any risk to our privacy. At Snips, we believe that privacy is an integral part of building an AI product. If you are collecting sensitive user data, it is your duty to protect your users from potential abuses. Whether you are building a bot, AI assistant or smart IoT, you should therefore ask yourself three questions: For example, if you want to protect against corporate abuse, your systems should be built such that no one can take advantage of your users’ data, whether it’s you internally, hackers, governments or a new evil CEO. Assessing information leakage is much harder, since not having data on users doesn’t prevent insights from being . Even if you don’t store this data, a corrupted employee could still add an internal proxy that captures the traffic and stores it somewhere else. Furthermore, to offer full privacy, all third-party services involved need to be private, as well. Because this is not usually the case, you need to accept trade-offs, and do the best you can in the short term to still exist in the long term. The idea is that by building a huge company with privacy as a core value, you will lead by example and force the market to move in the same direction. A good example of a common trade-off is privacy versus anonymity. Privacy is about hiding what you are doing, while anonymity is about hiding your identity. Ideally you want both, but in practice this is not always possible. Here are some things you can already do. The most straightforward thing you can do is process as much of the data directly on the device that produced it. For example, on a smartphone, you can process the geolocation traces locally, so that it is never sent to your servers. Everything from cleaning up trajectories to inferring transportation modes and places visited can be done on-device. Even machine learning and natural language processing can now be done that way. There are, of course, major challenges in doing this, from hardware limitations (CPU, RAM, battery… ) to software limitations (the OS can kill you anytime, right in the middle of a computation). This means the algorithms need to be adapted to be lightweight, fault-tolerant and fast. There is a cool side-effect of computing on-device though: it greatly reduces infrastructure and network costs, because less data is sent and processed in the cloud! And it turns out to also be a major advantage for IoT. Some features, though, cannot run on a single device. Examples include social features, cross-device handoff, accessing huge databases or performing heavy computations. In these cases, you can use modern cryptography techniques to guarantee some level of privacy. For example, you can use techniques to privately query a database. The device can send a request to a server, but without the latter knowing what it is being asked. The server then returns a result that only the device making the query can understand. Another type of crypto that gets me really excited these days is called . In a nutshell, you can compute directly on encrypted data, meaning the servers never sees what it’s manipulating! The device encrypts the data and sends it to the server, which then runs some algorithms on it and returns a result it cannot understand. Only the user device can then decrypt it. With fully homomorphic encryption, you could do machine learning on encrypted data, or distribute computing on devices that are inherently insecure. Although that’s still a few years away, you can already do practical things, like , or recommending a place that multiple users would like without sending the history of where they have been. On-device computing and cryptography are great ways to prevent your company from accessing users’ personal data. But you will most likely still need to use third-party providers for some parts of your product. A general pattern to apply here is to never centralize all the user data in one place. Rather, try to use as many different providers as possible, so that each of them only has a tiny piece of the puzzle. What you want to avoid is creating a single point of failure by putting all the data in the same place, therefore making that place the only thing that needs to be hacked to get access to someone’s entire life. This is important because hacking into multiple systems to retrieve all the data is much harder than hacking into just one (don’t forget every system eventually gets hacked). So by using three or more independent providers, you are making it several orders of magnitude harder to steal all the data! For the things where you really have no choice and need to collect user data, such as app analytics, just do it via opt-in. This involves a lot of transparency on what you do with this data, which you should explain simply and clearly, with an easy way to opt-out later. The whole idea behind privacy by design is to provide protection now and in the future, regardless of governance, corruption and security breaches. When done right, privacy can vastly reduce the impact of attacks on your business and reputation, since there would be no sensitive data to leak. Ideally though, we shouldn’t care about privacy. Not because it’s unimportant, but rather because it would be by default in everything, offering an ethical baseline that makes us feel safe. We shouldn’t have to worry about our privacy, just as we shouldn’t have to worry about war, discrimination, hunger, disease or money. If you are a CEO, you have two choices: be in denial, ignore privacy and risk your company disappearing if the market turns; or, be a forward-thinking leader who embraces it as a strategic advantage, thereby building a future-proof organization that is both ethical and beneficial to society.
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Artella brings collaboration to VFX and animation
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Haje Jan Kamps
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Being a freelance animator is a pretty crappy existence — it usually means living out of a suitcase, jetting from country to country as the major studios are chasing tax incentives around the world. Launched this week, is attempting to change that by creating a full suite of software to foster collaboration between creative artists, and enabling freelancers to form ad-hoc animation studios for projects. The new company is the brainchild of the folks behind , a well-respected online animation school. Founded by animation veterans (ex-Pixar), (ex-Pixar) and (ex-Industrial Light & Magic), the platform is built with animators and post-production artists in mind. “The world is full of talented, creative people who have the tools in their home to make great content, but lack the professional network,” said Bobby Beck, co-founder of Artella. “We wanted to find a way to bring them together from anywhere in the world and to give way to a new form of collaborative production studio.” Browsing and applying to be part of projects has never been this pretty. In a classic example of “scratch your own itch,” Artella’s online production platform helps artists find each other to congregate around and collaborate on projects of any size and scope — all through a web browser. “Artella will unlock a multitude of untapped talent,” said Maxwell Planck, technical founder at . “I’m excited for what Artella brings to the future of remote collaboration in the creative space.” The platform includes communication tools, file management and review tools aimed at creating all sorts of content, including feature-length and short films, video games and VR content. As you might expect, it integrates with most commonly used production software packages, including Maya, Premiere, Photoshop, Nuke and many others. The platform enables artists to work online or offline. It’s free to join the platform to connect and communicate with other artists, and to attach yourself to projects. For project creators, the platform will cost $10-30 per team member per month, depending on each team member’s role on the project. The video below shows Artella in use.
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Dedrone raises $10 million to detect aerial intruders
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Lora Kolodny
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As civilian drones become more affordable, sophisticated and common around the world, a company called has raised $10 million in venture funding for systems that monitor the skies and tell people when drones have entered their airspace. led the Series A investment in Dedrone bringing the company’s total capital raised to date to $12.9 million. According to Dedrone co-founder and CEO Joerg Lamprecht, the company’s flagship , is installed on the ground around a venue and employs a wide array of sensors to detect drones that are either unwanted intruders or welcome to operate overhead. Manufactured in Germany today, each DroneTracker includes cameras, acoustic and radio frequency sensors that can detect the presence of a drone and ascertain what type of drone it is. Smaller venues require just one or two DroneTrackers, while stadiums and other large venues could require upwards of ten. Dedrone does not sell data it gathers to any third party, but sends early warnings and daily reports of drone activity to customers. Dedrone sells its systems through partnerships with physical security providers such as Booz Allen Hamilton or Bosch Security Systems. Lamprecht noted that unmanned aerial vehicles have been used in the private sector for noble purposes, like , to clinics in remote locations, or helping farmers grow more food with less water. Yet, civilian drones are also increasingly used in nefarious ways, like dropping drugs into prisons, hacking corporate systems or spying on private citizens. And as drone sales spike, civilian drone accidents could too. We’ve already seen drones accidentally crash into the White House lawn, and power lines in California. Lamprecht said, “Drones have the potential to be used for the greater good, but only if we move past this anarchy we have today in the sky.” The company will eventually add features to its DroneTracker system that can allow users to monitor drones’ uptime for the aerial robotics they actually want to put to work above their properties. Menlo Ventures’ Managing Director said his firm backed Dedrone because it’s abundantly clear that drone-related problems will increase given the worldwide pace of drone sales. “Drones make physical fences meaningless, in terms of security. You cannot build a fence high enough to keep drones out. So Dedrone brings cybersecurity together with physical security,” Ganesan said. With about 40 full-time employees today, Dedrone recently moved its headquarters from Kassel, Germany to San Francisco. Lambrecth said that the company would use its new funding for ongoing research and development, hiring and to ramp up sales and manufacturing of its flagship, DroneTracker systems. The DroneTracker is already being used at stadiums, airports, data centers, high-end hotels and private homes, Lambrecth said, but citing security concerns, he did not disclose the names of those specific venues. Although, the company has announced its systems are being used at the New York Mets’ Citi Field stadium. Dedrone is one of the latest startups to draw VC funding to make civilian drone use safer. Others that raised venture funding include: , and to name a few. Earlier seed investors in Dedrone included former Internet Security Systems’ CEO Tom Noonan, and Target Partners.
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Tesloop offers city-to-city autonomous travel in a Tesla
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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Travelers in the Southwest have a new all-electric option: long-distance car sharing in a Tesla with Autopilot. The service is called , and it currently serves 15 cities in southern California, plus Henderson and Las Vegas in Nevada and Phoenix, Arizona. The idea came to founder Haydn (one name only; probably because he’s still a minor) in May 2015, when he turned 16 and got his drivers license. He figured he could get a and drive people back and forth from Los Angeles to Las Vegas a couple times a week to cover the cost of insurance and the lease payment. Haydn presented the idea to Elon Musk at a Tesla shareholders meeting, and soon after he had a team of cofounders and seed money from Clearstone Ventures, plus angel investors from the likes of Tesla and Facebook. Tesloop was born. Almost. It turns out it’s challenging if not impossible to get commercial insurance when you’re 16 years old and a new license holder yourself. The cofounders, who are all long out of high school, took on Pilot duties (that’s what Tesloop calls its drivers), and the company was then able to begin offering rides in July 2015. When he’s not in school, Haydn is now in charge of PR and fleet maintenance. So far, that fleet is still just two Teslas strong, running regular trips between Las Vegas and the LA-Orange County area, usually for less than $100 one way. Tesloop is doing one trip per car, so four people per car per day, according to CEO Rahul Sonnad. This adds up to about 18,000 miles a month, and Sonnad says Tesloop is aiming for about 30,000 miles per month as trips increase and the fleet grows. “We have demonstrated to our own satisfaction that the cost per mile to run electric vehicles is disruptive when you start to drive them continually,” Sonnad said in an email interview. “Your car cost and fuel cost really start to transform the overall economics.” In order to keep those cars driving continually, Tesloop makes heavy use of the Model S system. “Driving with Autopilot on makes the task nearly effortless and much safer,” Sonnad said. “I drive almost every weekend, and I find that I can go to Las Vegas and back and still be mentally sharp. By contrast, when I drive four or five hours in traffic without Autopilot, I am super tired and just want to chill out and watch TV afterwards. I also feel that there are many times where, had I not had Autopilot, the chance of an accident would have been much higher. You really don’t drift across lane lines or risk rear-ending the car in front of you when it’s on.” Even though Autopilot is there to help, Tesloop’s drivers are still screened and interviewed, and they go through background and driving checks. They’re also trained on all the tech aspects of driving a Tesla; besides Autopilot, they learn about suspension and driving mode settings, for example. Tesloop also makes sure the Pilots have good customer service sensibilities. Besides being an efficient and zero-emissions way to travel, Tesloop also wants it to be pleasant. It provides water, snacks, in-car WiFi, and even travel pillows. Because if you’re going to share a ride from LA to Las Vegas with strangers, it had better be comfy.
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Apply now! The TC Meetup + Pitch-off is coming to Austin and Seattle
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Jordan Crook
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Fresh on the heels of Disrupt NY, we’re packing up and heading to Austin and Seattle for the TC Meetup + Pitch-off. Ten companies will have exactly sixty seconds to pitch to a panel of expert judges, including local VCs and TC editors, as well as our lovely audience. Judges will conduct a quick Q&A on stage, and at the end of all the presentations, they will determine our winners. First place gets a table in Startup Alley at TC Disrupt San Francisco. Second place gets two tickets to the conference, and the Audience Choice winner gets one ticket to the big show. It all goes down on June 14 (Austin) and June 16 (Seattle), at 6pm. You can get details on event location and tickets and . (21+ only, please.) If you want to apply to the pitch-off, hit up the . Applications close June 3. We look forward to seeing you at the event!
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Uber debuts Trip Tracker so you can view a family member’s ride in real-time
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Sarah Perez
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Uber today a new tool that will allow family members and other loved ones to track each others’ trips using its service. Called simply “Trip Tracker,” the addition is a feature connected to Uber’s , a program which allows customers to pay for rides for their family and friends. With Family Profiles, users can add other Uber riders to a group and can then bill all the group members’ trips to the same payment card. Technically speaking, you can add anyone you choose to a Family Profile. However, as its name implies, it’s really meant to be used among those who are a part of a small, trusted group. For example, a parent may pay for rides for their kid in college. They could offer rides to another member of an extended family who was financially struggling, or to one who was unable to get around on their own, like an aging parent. With Trip Tracker, those in charge of their Family Profile will now receive details about the trip being taken. With the launch of this feature, whenever someone takes a ride under your Family Profile, you’ll be provided with automatic notifications and you’ll be able to watch the trip in progress on the map. You’ll be able to see when the family member left, the route they took, and when they arrived, Uber explains. This information is available already in Uber’s emailed receipts, but Trip Tracker brings it to you in real-time as trips are happening live, saving you the text or phone call. As before, trips are automatically billed to the payment card you have on file with your Family Profile. Family Profiles initially launched in a handful of markets, including Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix, before rolling out more broadly. They’re now a fairly popular feature, says Uber, telling us that profiles have been created in over 60 countries worldwide, with over half of those being outside the U.S. The U.S., Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and Columbia are the countries with the most Family Profiles, and the city of L.A. has the Family Profile with the most people on it. Uber has also shared some early data about how these profiles are being used. More than 50 percent of Family Profile rides occur on weekends (between Friday and Sunday), indicating they’re used more for social outings than workday commutes. And while the ability to pay for an older child’s ride is a use case, it’s not the most common one. Instead, the majority of Family Profiles involve significant others sharing the same card. In some markets, that’s not true, though. For example, in Latin America the feature is popular with families with children over 18 because most households only have one credit card. Uber says Trip Tracker is now live to riders around the world in the latest version of the Uber app.
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HP’s 3D printers pave the way for an interesting future
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John Biggs
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In the since HP announced it was entering the 3D printing space speculation arose regarding what exactly the PC giant would launch? Home 3D printers for the masses? All-in-one manufacturing machines? Amazing teleportation devices? Nope. They launched a big printer for industrial users that prints in full color in a way that is unique in the industry. The bottom line? for solid objects. The company had to start somewhere. This new printer has some impressive specs, even at $130,000. It currently prints black nylon at “340 million 3D pixels or voxels per second” by laying down a layer of nylon powder, coloring it using HP’s inkjet-like technology, and then fusing it with energy. This means you can print things 25% faster than standard printers and in a wider array of colors than is currently available. As notes, “We know that better quality, lead times of 1 or 2 days and lower prices are exactly what the market needs.” This is just the beginning. I suspect HP is trying to build the office copy machine for small manufacturing businesses. By allowing you to create parts quickly for pennies a print they are adding true mini-manufacturing capabilities to small businesses and improving lead times for designers in larger shops. They : In other words they want these parts to go into finished products and not just act as easy-to-print prototypes. This isn’t exactly what the world was expecting. I think the original expectations from HP for a far more egalitarian system that would provide a 3D printer on every school desk. However, given the current 3D-printing climate, something like this priced at well below competing printers is a good choice as a pioneering solution. The inkjet feature – essentially a system for painting nylon before its fused – is clever and the products it produces are sufficiently unique that I could see this as part of a 3D printing lab’s customer offerings along with other solutions. To be clear this isn’t “full” color – yet. The prints are still limited to swathes of color and I suspect the coloring process slows things down slightly. However a speedy single color product is still better than the current industrial offerings. Now we just have to see if the 3D printer ink will end up costing more than the printers. I’ll admit that I originally thought I would scoff at HP’s 3D printers. The company hasn’t innovated in a meaningful, visible way for nearly two decades. While I’m sure there was plenty of exciting stuff behind the scenes the fact that this (and their ) is the only sign of life coming out of a company that once defined disruption is pretty sad. But all is not lost. The new HP Multi Jet Fusion technology is definitely interesting and it puts HP in the running. As it stands the only way to print a colored 3D object right now is either with an – it essentially paints the edges of a piece of sliced paper – or via a lengthy combination of automatic and manual dying. This solution is far more efficient than I expected to see.
In the end HP’s foray into 3D printing is first a way to escape the trap of falling commodity 2D printing profits and, second, a way to show the world it still exists. When the company split into enterprise and consumer companies for the consumer business. While HPE beat expectations, HPQ, the company’s consumer arm, was volatile at best. Currently the story is that . Instead I’d say 3D printing will push HP into an entirely new era, allowing them to abandon the commodity PC and printer hardware that has thus far been an albatross around their necks.
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WhatsApp launches desktop apps for Mac and Windows
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Catherine Shu
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, the Facebook-owned messaging service that , has . The release comes about 15 months after . People who have already been using WhatsApp in their web browsers will find that the software isn’t significantly different. The company “our desktop app is simply an extension of your phone,” with all messages synced between devices. WhatsApp’s is of course driven by the high penetration of smartphones in those markets, but giving power users–especially people who rely on WhatsApp for work communications–desktop options helps it competes against other messaging services, like iMessenger, WeChat, and Skype. The launch of new desktop clients, as well as , comes as WhatsApp , which would give it a after dropping its 99 cent annual subscription fee.
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Software piracy claims can ruin your business and reward those responsible
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Robert J. Scott
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There is a highly divisive and costly practice that software companies have inflicted on their customers for nearly a decade. This practice brings with it significant emotional duress, time investment and financial penalties — all of which divert meaningful resources from revenue-driving activities. And to add insult to injury, this practice very often rewards with financial gains the very perpetrators of bad behavior. The practice to which I refer is the ever-common software audit, conducted by trade associations to uncover the business use of unlicensed software. Prominent software trade groups include the , whose members include Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle, Autodesk and other global heavy-hitters; and the (SIIA), which has hundreds of members in the software, media and publishing industries. For the last decade I have provided legal defense for hundreds of clients in software-compliance audits, including the companies cited in this article that are brave enough to speak out. I feel it is no coincidence that an overwhelming majority of the companies targeted by these associations are small businesses, with limited technology and legal resources. With the proliferation of devices and ease of downloads, not to mention the unnecessary complexity of software-license agreements, you can imagine how simple it can be for companies to have unlicensed software in use by employees, without their knowledge. Now please let me be clear; I fully appreciate that the use of unlicensed or counterfeit software has a negative impact on the revenue and subsequent earnings of software providers. And I am certainly not defending the deliberate use of software for which companies have not paid. At the same time, I feel I must also help bring to light many of the aggressive, shakedown practices that these associations use at the expense of hardworking companies, many of which have no idea that unlicensed software is being used and would be happy to purchase it, had they known. Here are three of the most egregious practices that I have seen software trade associations use consistently, at the expense of businesses across the country. Software trade associations very often pay a portion of the settlement money they receive to those who report infractions. Seems reasonable, right? Not really… First, in our experience, these whistleblowers are almost always former employees of the companies they are accusing and, indeed, the very person in IT who was responsible for ensuring software-license compliance at the recently departed company. Furthermore, individuals who report non-compliance are granted anonymity, providing any disgruntled employee a platform for taking down their former company with complete impunity. In fact, currently in practice is a campaign called in which the BSA advertises on popular social channels the ability for whistleblowers to receive a cash reward and take a “dream vacation” for reporting unlicensed business software. In one instance, a Texas automotive repair company, , was accused by the BSA of using unlicensed copies of Microsoft products and a received a letter stating the company could owe millions of dollars for the alleged infringement. The BSA notice came soon after Fuzzy’s Radiator’s in-house IT person left the company. Trinda Lopez, a human resources executive at the company, stated the initial penalty demand was sufficient to put Fuzzy Radiator out of business if not disputed. Employee salaries were frozen, bonuses were canceled and purchase of new equipment was abandoned for one year. “I think the disgruntled former employee was trying to bring down the company,” said Lopez. The company sought our legal counsel and settled for a small fraction of what the BSA originally sought. Lucky Roberto, comptroller at a New Jersey-based engineering consulting firm specializing in accident reconstruction and traffic flow management, was contacted by the BSA in 2010, after three employees left the company — one of whom was responsible for Information Technology. Soon after, the company received a certified notification from the BSA. “We started to learn the hard way about the BSA,” said Roberto, adding that the letter received was “pretty damn intimidating.” It turns out the person who had installed the software on the computers in question was the one who reported the company. Although JDA settled with the BSA for a mere fraction of what the association sought (financial terms cannot be disclosed because of the settlement agreement), the emotional damage according to Roberto was extremely significant. I think it is important to note that of the 250-plus cases we have handled against the BSA and SIIA, only one company had more than 1,000 computers. I believe these associations are intentionally pursuing smaller companies that do not have the resources to understand proper audit response protocols, and use fear as their weapon. The owner of a U.S.-based software development company with fewer than 100 employees reported a similar experience and came forward on condition of anonymity. “The BSA is really sly, I just don’t trust them at all. I think if I got my name out there, they would target us,” he said, then added, “The way they use local lawyers to go after you is almost unconscionable.” About four years ago, soon after employees left the company, his company received an official notice from a lawyer representing Microsoft. The notice claimed they were pirating software, namely Microsoft Office applications and operating systems. When informed of the audit, this company ran the audit software provided by BSA, which checked all the software in use for member companies. The BSA issued a demand that included a penalty in excess of $200,000. The company offered to remove the offending software but were told that it did not matter, as they were liable for all software instances recorded in the audit. “They just kept hounding us, retaining four different lawyers in the space of two years,” said the owner of the small software company. In that case, the BSA audit also led to a visit from Oracle, which requested an audit and a $220,000 penalty for upgraded software. “Luckily we had documented proof that their people had told us we could upgrade our software. Oracle said ‘too bad just pay up,’” said the owner, adding that, “after about six months of haggling, I told them I would see them in court and they backed down.” In most cases, software-license agreements are long, complex and burdensome. Further, the BSA and many publishers themselves often force customers to pay 3X the software value per license in penalties and then require them to purchase the necessary seats . Trinda Lopez of Fuzzy’s Radiator adds that it is unfair that allowances are not made for machines with multiple versions of Office and that the Microsoft Office suite is split into its component parts to increase the penalty amount. None of the three companies mentioned here are software pirates. They do not own duplication nor printing equipment to mass produce illegal software and, in all cases, were likely the victims of poor software-auditing practices and opportunistic former employees. All three companies have learned from their experience and are more diligent in tracking software and related licensing. JDA’s Roberto is trying to move on, but the company is still subject to possible future audits, as are the others mentioned. However, JDA is now prepared for it — administrative rights have been removed on all systems and internal audits take place on a regular basis. “The hardest part to deal with is that these employees left with malice and the BSA offered them the perfect opportunity to take down the company that had trained them. In short, their evil intent was perfectly suited to the BSA,” said Roberto. However, she also adds that she is confident that the whistleblowers are subject to karmic justice in the end.
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Hyperloop Technologies becomes Hyperloop One, pulls in $80 million and announces global partners
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Sarah Buhr
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Technologies is now Hyperloop One and $80 million richer from a close of its Series B round of financing today. The news comes just days after rival hyperloop builder Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced a to power its own prototype with magnetic levitation technology. Both Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) and HTT are based in L.A. and both are working on models of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop – a vacuum tube-based transportation technology promising to shoot riders from San Francisco to the City of Angels in 30 minutes or less. The moniker was too much like its rival hyperloop builder and the change comes just in time for a propulsion open-air test (POAT) Hyperloop One will be conducting in North Las Vegas tomorrow. The new cash is from existing investors Sherpa Ventures, 8VC, ZhenFund and Caspian Venture Partners and a few new investors, including 137 Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Fast Digital, Western Technology Investment (WTI), SNCF, the French National Rail Company (interestingly) and GE Ventures, which has in various parts of the world such as Europe and China. The total now raised is at $100 million. “The overwhelming response we’ve had already confirms what we’ve always known, that Hyperloop One is at the forefront of a movement to solve one of the planet’s most pressing problems,” Hyperloop One co-founder and venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar said in a company statement. “The brightest minds are coming together at the right time to eliminate the distances and borders that separate economies and cultures.” Pishevar and Brogan BamBrogan founded the company shortly after Musk publicly put forth his plans to build such a transportation system in 2013. Hyperloop One brought in a new CEO, Rob Lloyd , moving BamBrogan to a CTO role. Along with the name change and new financing, the company added some hefty global partnerships. AECOM, AMBERG Group, ARCTURAN SUSTAINABLE CARGO, ARUP, Bjarke Ingels Group, Cargo Sous Terrain, Deutsche Bahn Engineering & Consulting, FS LINKS, GRID, KPMG and SYSTRA will join Hyperloop One to build the future of transportation. Los Angeles has many traffic woes and it is nice to think of going hundreds of miles at lightning speed, but I was told on a recent trip to Hyperloop One’s main headquarters the company will be focused on shipping cargo across the States and around the world in the nearer future – a move that could greatly reduce trucking emissions and travel time for goods. Hyperloop One also announced it is participating in privately funded feasibility studies to examine the economic and social benefits of Hyperloop routes in Finland and Sweden.
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The TC Disrupt NY Battlefield Finalists are Bark, Beam, BitPagos, Ritual, SeaDrone, and WaterO
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Matthew Panzarino
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Thus far at TC Disrupt NY, we’ve seen a between IAB’s Randall Rothenberger and AdBlocker’s Till Faida. We’ve seen the Siri founders debut the next-generation of voice powered AI with And we’ve seen . . Tomorrow, we have a star-studded lineup that includes the likes of Jessica Alba, Carmelo Anthony and Soledad O’Brien. But no matter how shining the stars of our speaker list are, nothing compares to the bright lights of the Battlefield Stage. Twenty companies have launched in the Battlefield and now it’s time to announce the finalists. Without any further ado, here are the six companies who will present tomorrow in front of John Borthwick (Betaworks), Charles Hudson (Precursor Capital), Alfred Lin (Sequoia Capital), Susan Lyne (BBG Ventures), Matthew Panzarino (TechCrunch) and Alan Patricof (Greycroft Ventures): is a service focused on striking the right balance between respecting a child’s privacy and keeping them safe from the many dangers of an online profile. Bark ties together many of the main social networking services to look for signals of bullying, predators, mental health issues and sexting, without sharing every single message sent between a child and their friends. is a platform that ties in with the growing world of e-sports to offer a low-latency chat platform for live streamed games. But beyond that, Beam lets viewers actually interact with the games by measuring the general intent of all of the comments to play along with the live streaming gamer. You can think of it as a Twitch WePlay that actually works. uses the blockchain to enable credit for online payments in emerging markets, which often have unstable currency. Folks in these markets don’t have access to credit cards, and thus, can’t make online purchases. Through BitPagos blockchain-based alternative, people can make online purchases and pay through their bank account or at numerous physical locations. Startup Battlefield: BitPagos at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) is reinventing your daily vitamin. Most vitamins have tons of ingredients that most people don’t actually need, based on outdated nutritional data. Alongside updated ingredients to help today’s consumer, they have a unique capsule that bypasses your stomach and directly enters the blood stream. Startup Battlefield: Ritual at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) has created an ultra-affordable underwater drone to monitor fishing nets and other submerged commercial equipment, a job normally done by professional divers that have to record their findings to paper, which are then translated to digital. Moreover, the SeaDrone has multi-directional propulsion to stand its ground in strong currents. Startup Battlefield: SeaDrone at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) uses reverse osmosis, the gold standard in water filtration, to bring clean water to families. This normally costs an exorbitant amount, forces users to tear out their plumbing, and wastes around 80 percent of water. Plus, renters can’t use it. But with WaterO, only around 20 percent of water is wasted with no re-tooling of the plumbing at a $399 price point for the hardware.
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Shaving for the Red Hook Initiative
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Matt Burns
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We’re here in Red Hook, Brooklyn for TechCrunch Disrupt NY and Jon Shieber’s beard is getting out of control. It’s getting shaved for the . Use to contribute to the cause or to the Red Hook Initiative. Jon is a gentle soul and a fine writer. As a Senior Editor he is tasked with organizing and managing Crunch Network. It’s a large job, clearly consuming so much of Jon’s life that he doesn’t have time to shave. For Disrupt NY we partnered with the Red Hook Initiative, a community center whose mission is to empower Red Hook youth to be “inspired, resilient and healthy, and to envision themselves as co-creators of their lives, community and society.” Participants in RHI’s Digital Stewards program, which prepares young people for jobs in the IT industry, are volunteering at the show and participating in the Hackathon. RHI is a worthwhile cause and we would like to help some more. If $1,000 is raised, it would allow the program to cover the cost of a job training session. And if we raise $1,000, we’ll shave Jon’s beard live on Disrupt TV this Wednesday.
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Please don’t learn to code
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Basel Farag
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There’s an idea that’s been gaining ground in the tech community lately: Everyone should learn to code. But here’s the problem with that idea: Coding is not the new literacy. If you regularly pay attention to the cultural shenanigans of Silicon Valley, you’ve no doubt heard of the “Learn to Code” movement. Politicians, nonprofit organizations like and even former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City have evangelized what they view as a necessary skill for tomorrow’s workforce. There may be some truth to that, especially since the United States’ need for engineers shows no sign of slowing down. But the picture is more complicated. We live in an ultra-competitive world, with people turning to all sorts of methods to make ends meet. Selling coding as a ticket to economic salvation for the masses is dishonest. Take coding bootcamps. Since the mainstream learned of the success of Silicon Valley software engineers, everyone wants to own a startup or become an engineer. HBO’s Silicon Valley paints a picture of late twenty-somethings spending their nights coding and smoking weed, all whilst making millions of dollars. The American public is amazed by figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who make millions seemingly overnight. Coding fever has even reached the steps of the White House, with to include computer science in every public-school curriculum. Inexplicably, it is not just bootcamps and politicians encouraging people to learn to code. Individuals are actively encouraged to do so from all sides of society, from Hollywood to current tech luminaries. Despite this growing buzz, I view bootcamps with intense skepticism. While our culture tends to make Silicon Valley sexy, and glossy bootcamp brochures promise well-paying jobs, the truth is that many of these institutions are not accredited, do not post job statistics and do a poor job of ensuring their students’ post-bootcamp success. While many coding bootcamps are legitimate and care for their pupils, an even greater number are run by modern snake-oil salespeople tapping into the average American’s desperation. Don’t get me wrong; I do believe that engineering and programming are important skills. But only in the right context, and only for the type of person willing to put in the necessary blood, sweat and tears to succeed. The same could be said of many other skills. I would no more urge everyone to learn to program than I would urge everyone to learn to plumb. Before we start working on a solution to a coding problem we must decide what the problem is — and if it’s truly a problem. If we let ourselves become fixated on how to solve a problem via code, regardless of if it is a programming problem or not, and lose sight of we gain nothing. I have a close friend who is a former Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest champion from Stanford. The greatest thing he taught me about his ACM championship days was the importance of understanding what problem you’re trying to solve. You must ask yourself, “Do you even have one?” and “Can you apply the and explain it in a way that others can understand you?” This friend told me that even in the elite schools, students read the prompt to the coding problem only once then immediately code. The year my friend won the championship he learned something: even those from elite schools dove headfirst into complicated problems, with code as their only weapon. Meanwhile, my friend wrote his code only after thoroughly understanding the problem. He used almost all the allotted time to think about the problem. He did not write code until minutes before the deadline. He became a champion. He knew that banging out code would not solve the problem, but cool, collected problem solving would. Technology changes at a rapid pace in this industry. Just a few years ago I was using Objective-C; now I code almost entirely in Swift. There are iOS developers applying for jobs right now who have never written a line of Objective-C. Swift is easier to learn, safer, uses modern development paradigms and is elegant in a way that Objective-C never was. The fact that new developers will never deal with Objective-C’s deficiencies is great, but it ignores the reality of the profession. Developers are expected to learn fast, with little guidance and little more incentive than the faint rattling of the pink-slip guillotine. One could argue that this is simply one of the costs of the trade. But if current developers are frustrated or falling behind — and there is evidence that shows this is the case — why encourage individuals to enter such an uncertain realm? What happens to the person who spent night and day studying Objective-C only to be horrified by the Swift announcement at WWDC 2014? Do they keep coding in what is quickly becoming the language of lesser choice, or do they start again? If you’re a young twenty-something, this may pose little difficulty, but if you’re taking care of a family — with bills to pay and mouths to feed — the task becomes Herculean. People in these situations confront all of this without a solid grasp of actual programming or engineering. Really. It took me more than a year of self-taught study before I got a freelance gig. Even then, the pay was poor. There were countless times I was refused even an interview because I didn’t have a computer science degree. There were times when I could not afford a place to stay and had to rely on the kindness of friends to keep me going. There were many nights when I wanted to give up. But I found the strength to keep going. It was — and is — persistence that allows me to stay in this field. The truth is, it simply isn’t easy to slide into a development gig, even if it’s an apprenticeship. You need connections, people to vouch for you, a GitHub account maintained over time and more. Despite advances in equal opportunity, if you’re an underrepresented minority, you’re going to have to be twice as good as everyone else. And that’s simply to demonstrate competence. The gatekeepers are anywhere. They are Ivy League graduates who believe asking questions like, “How do you invert a binary tree?” is the best way to gauge someone’s technical ability. They are the whiteboard test-obsessed project managers (confession: I own multiple whiteboards) and the clueless HR managers who list requirements like, “5 years of Swift Programming Language Experience needed” in job postings (hint: Swift release = 2014). These people, for better or for worse, stand between you and a decent job. As far as I know, there’s no other way to get past these people than to play their game, even if it is unfair. If becoming an engineer is what you want, don’t let me — or anyone, for that matter — get in the way of your goal. And don’t let traditional confinements like the educational system slow you down. There are no correct or incorrect ways to go about achieving your goals. But don’t lose sight of reality while being charmed by our culture’s Silicon Valley romance. This field is not a get-out-of-debt-free card. You have to take the time to build your understanding of the field. You have to become comfortable with the fact that you are a problem-solver and not simply a “fill-in-framework-here” developer. You also must get used to the idea that at any moment you might need to learn a new framework or language, and that you will have to fight for a job if you don’t have formalized credentials. Software engineering is a lucrative field, but the transformation from “coder” to “engineer” is challenging. If you stick to it, you can not only change your life, but change your entire way of thinking.
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3Dprintler lets you order a 3D print via chatbot
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Natasha Lomas
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Who do you call if you want to 3D print something? Step forward , a startup that has made a search engine for locating 3D printing services in your area. The team was chosen as the wildcard company from Startup Alley to present onstage in the 2016 Battlefield here at TechCrunch Disrupt New York. , which launched last year, lets users upload a 3D file for printing, select the materials they want their file to be printed in and get a list of quotes to compare. They can then order the print directly, with 3Dprintler monetizing by taking a cut of any sales its search engine generates. But — and here’s the topical twist — the team has also created an integrated chatbot for accessing their platform that’s aimed at simplifying the process by providing a concierge service for ordering 3D prints. Their 3D print quote bot currently supports messaging platforms including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, Kik and Skype. [gallery ids="1320729,1320730,1320736,1320740,1320739,1320738,1320737,1320728,1320726,1320727"] While early messaging platform chatbots can seem , 3Dprintler’s chatbot feels like a far more practical application of this sort of tech, given that 3D printing can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. So a bot being there to walk you through the different steps seems like it’s going to provide some useful reassurance. The bot, which launched about a month ago, has already generated an uptick in orders, according to 3Dprintler co-founder . “We’ve seen over one hundred order already just in that period of time, which is I think like 56 percent more conversion rate than we see from using the website. So we see that people actually enjoy using the bots way more, somehow it’s more natural than using the website,” he tells TechCrunch. “Almost it becomes outdated to use a website.” The team is running a pilot of their quote bot with a few companies, with the ultimate aim of creating what they dub a “factory as a service” platform — aka a software-as-a-service-style business model with the sales pitch to businesses being that a search and order bot for 3D printing simplifies the order process to the point where it’s easier for businesses to pay to use a bot, rather than own a 3D printer themselves (and need to train staff how to use it). Startup Battlefield: 3D Printler at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) “We’re more focused on prosumer users, so somebody who wants a professional service done,” says Golubev. “The consumer market is just not there yet, once we’re able to scan things it will be but for now it’s the Fortune 500 companies that hold the biggest potential for the growth. “From talking to those companies the biggest pain that they have, they all have the same thing: they get the expensive printers because they hear about the hype, they invest $300,000 in the machine and then it just sits there idling because there has to be a special person trained to use it.” 3Dprintler processes the 3D files uploaded by users to get them ready for printing and can also fix problems with files. It sees the latter as another potential revenue stream down the line — talking up the potential for a future market powered by consumers scanning objects with their smartphone cameras and then chatting via messaging app to 3Dprintler’s bot to order their 3D prints. “Chatbots is the solution we were looking for because we get access to millions of people, and… we’re betting that eventually every phone will have a 3D scanner built in it. It will be super easy to use… and once we have all those millions of people using it, adoption rate is going to skyrocket and you’re going to have all those billions of files that people want to create — 3D selfie, for example, is going to be a new craze.” The startup has been working in the 3D print space since 2013, initially minting money by selling drone parts for DJI phantom drones before too many copycat sellers flooded the market. They also made a customizer tool for 3D print files, and also previously set up an open-source initiative for . In their search for a sustainable business model in the space they’ve now settled on simplifying access to 3D printing services as the core problem to fix — having had to go through similar steps themselves, over the years. “We realized not everyone has access to a 3D printer,” says Golubev. “That’s how the 3Dprintler search engine was born. How do we tap into all the 3D printing services out there and allow a person to find the best price, based by location, based by quality, based by material?” As well as seeking to tap into large, engaged user bases on messaging platforms with a chatbot interface, Golubev says they are also talking to 3D marketplaces, such as , with the hope of integrating their search and order service into those larger platforms, too. They do also have an API — launched back in January — to enable others, such as designers, to embed their search engine elsewhere. “Everybody can tap into this API. Let’s say you’re a designer… and you have some files you want to sell — put our button on your website and this button will allow whoever is visiting your website to find the best printer, the best price. You as the designer get a cut, we get a cut, so we kind of split the revenue with you,” he notes. At this point 3Dprintler has some 20,000 3D print service providers globally in their database, and have done test prints to verify the quality of the providers they are listing. Their search engine supports more than 60 file formats for 3D printing. The team has also raised $750,000 in seed funding from an undisclosed European business angel. I have to ask the obvious question — why does it have to be a bot?
A bot is really easy to use interface that everybody is using these days, you see people on their phone, the young generation barely calls anyone any more. It’s a really easy platform, doesn’t require additional installations, you can just have this AI in your pocket the whole time. In 3D printing industry we’re waiting for a killer app. We believe the killer app will be a 3D scanner built in every phone — so you can take a 3D selfie. B2B 3D printing does not feel like an impromptu action…
Imagine Slack — all the people are using Slack right now. Somebody throws in the file, it gets you the results, everyone’s working together, collaborating together. Do you also have an app?
Yes we have a mobile app and a web app, that’s how we started. For about a year we’ve been building things secretly. Bots became this meaningful way to access people. How have you been acquiring the long tail of people who have machines in their offices?
We built a bot that crawls the web for 3D printing service providers. We have about 20,000. We’ve been reaching out to them. People have been jumping on board joining our system. If I was to compare what you do to 3D hubs, how does that go?
We are working with 3D hubs to add them. If I want to compare 3D printing prices I have to go to every website to spend time to compare quotes, this bot creates tremendous time savings. A lot of large companies have invested a lot of money in 3D printing… they do that because they want to use the machines whenever they want to. How do you navigate the organizational complexities here?
As an engineer you wouldn’t even feel there was a change — you would use the bot and get the results. And we can get you the results as soon as the same day or the next day turnaround time so as an engineer you wouldn’t even feel the difference. You would feel it is advantageous to use the bots instead of going downstairs to John and asking him to print something on the machine and John is sick and the machine doesn’t work. Every company shares the same pain point and in a way this is the simple solution. The future of conversational commerce means 3D printing. Is there a risk in terms of quality?
We’re working on ways to protect the users… so we hold the money in an escrow account until the order comes through. So as a user you will receive the file and you will verify it is great, there will be a review and then the money is released to the 3D printing provider so they are encouraged to produce good results. In the end everybody is using pretty much the same equipment so it’s a matter of printing, pressing a button and being trained how to do that. As long as you can do this and you do the right thing I think there should be no problems. Of course we verify the providers, we allow them to send a first print and check out how it is done. If there were other applications for this would you be open to them?
I think we invented this niche, 3D printing chatbots, and we just want to dominate it and we want to continue moving this forward — adding IBM Watson for intelligence, pairing up with Viv for AI, connecting different APIs, the sky’s the limit.
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Birch gets your credit card rewards in order
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Matthew Lynley
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Credit card reward programs can be confusing, and each can be totally different from the next. So managing all your points and rewards can quickly become a headache. Enter , a service that helps users manage their rewards programs and points across multiple credit cards and accounts. Birch plugs into a bank account, looks at a user’s spending habits and recommends what kinds of cards they should sign up for, or how they should spend their money in order to maximize their point returns. For example, Birch might recommend that a user buys products with a specific card at a store like Macy’s in order to get the most points. Birch launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. “I started reading through a bunch of blogs and forums when I was doing credit card research and was thinking, holy crap this takes forever,” co-founder Alex Cohen said. “Others were complaining about how not really knowing how rewards programs work and applying for the first cards that look good, and when they had them they didn’t know how to redeem points properly. That’s when I had that a-ha moment, we need to talk to some people and see if people will actually use this thing.” [gallery ids="1318325,1320717,1320716,1320715,1320714,1320713,1320703,1320704,1320705"] The theory is that if users are efficient enough, they can easily rack up enough points for free flights and other rewards that they can take advantage of by slightly tweaking their spending habits. The information that’s ported in is just spending history, and Birch doesn’t touch other parts of a user’s bank account, Cohen said. The goal isn’t to make users go crazy signing up for credit cards and spending money, Cohen said. Instead the service is designed to look more like a money management system than a place to sign up for a ton of credit cards and accrue a lot of debt in the process for the sake of getting points. Down the road, the company’s goal is to essentially bake things like flight booking right into the system, so they don’t have to leave Birch to redeem their points for flights or other rewards. For now, users can just set a goal in order to hit those targets. There will certainly be some competition. There are other money management applications, like Mint, which could easily get into the space. Those management applications are fragmented, however — Mint only does personal finance, for example — and there’s no one that’s creating a full service that manages all aspects of credit card rewards, Cohen said. Birch also has to go after the blogs and online forums that have lots of people who are experts when it comes to credit card rewards, Cohen said. But Cohen’s bet is that they can do a better job of organizing all the information and making recommendations. “We have to prove we’re doing something beyond just recommending cards, and on the money management side we offer a lot more sort of ingenuity into how your money’s actually working and what you’re getting out,” Cohen said. “Everyone else is sort of passive, they show your accounts, we want to show you how to turn that into rewards.” Startup Battlefield: Birch at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch)
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Uber says that 20% of its rides globally are now on UberPool
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Ingrid Lunden
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, the world’s biggest unicorn, as a limo service that typically cost more than traditional taxi services. But as Uber looks to add an ever more mainstream audience globally, it has added more lower-cost options, and those are now coming into their own. Uber today said that 20 percent of all of its rides globally are now on UberPool services. , Uber’s strategy head, revealed the stat onstage today at TC’s Disrupt conference in New York. UberPool is the option that lets individuals order rides in cars carrying other passengers going in the same direction. Launched in 2014, Uber said in that it had passed 100 million Pool rides. The rise of services like UberPool — and comparable services at companies at Uber’s competitors like Lyft, Via (which is based only on group ridesharing), Ola and others — is notable because it shows that Uber might be sacrificing margin on individual rides, but it’s potentially growing the overall number of rides, giving it a larger economy of scale. [gallery ids="1320420,1320419,1320418,1320417,1320416,1320415,1320414,1320413,1320412,1320411"] It’s hard to say whether UberPool is proving to be a better or worse financial bet for the company, as it does not talk financials, but the fact that Uber is continuing to promote it could be a sign of it being a useful service for the company irrespective of that: It means users are left feeling they are being given options that are more economical, and it’s a good message to the regulatory authorities and other organizations that Uber needs to recognize. UberPool, the argument goes, is better for the environment by putting more people into fewer cars. (That’s putting aside whether drivers are happy taking UberPool passengers, one of the many driver grievances you can read about on forums .) Still, there is no denying how impressive this company is, and how they have solved what are actually crazy hard problems (all you have to do is use a number of other car-hailing apps to see that the problem does not always beget an easy and seamless solution). As a wave of startups have jumped into the smartphone space to capitalize on the rise of the “on-demand” economy, Uber has perhaps been one of the most impressive of them all. The company has raised more than $1 billion in private backing and its valuation is above $60 billion. And yet things are not all rosy. The company has for some of the aggressive tactics that it’s used to attract drivers and users, and for how it has played it fast and loose with existing transportation and employment regulations, among other things. Today on stage, David Plouffe showed off his extensive expertise in controlling the conversation by holding forth his own position — skills gained through for the likes of Barack Obama, whose 2008 presidential campaign was managed by Plouffe. Topics he was presented with were not without thorns: they included the ; the ; background checks and how the company copes with crisis management. As for the answers Plouffe provided? How Uber is making transportation more affordable, and trying to change its default reaction to controversies and navigating other tricky areas are among the topics he covered. Watch the video below to see the interview in full.
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PlaceAVote wants to give voters a say in Congress
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Kate Conger
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PlaceAVote wants you. The soon-to-launch startup brings together politically minded users to debate the bills currently before Congress. , which is competing in Battlefield at Disrupt NY 2016, allows its users to discuss issues, write explanations of bills and even vote on them — and it aims to sell that data to Congressional leaders so they can see how voters in their district feel about particular issues. “We have a social good element to our business,” explains CEO , who says his startup helps people engage with government. “But the most exciting part is that we make money in an industry that’s ripe for revolution.” Davis and his co-founder Ben Colman want to challenge the polling industry, replacing landline polls with digital ones. PlaceAVote is solely focused on Congressional bills for now, but Davis and Colman hope to add bills from state and local legislatures soon. Davis and Colman certainly aren’t the first founders to apply a technical solution to politics. Sean Parker has dabbled in the area with , an app that also aims to facilitate policy debates. Other apps have made similar efforts ( , for instance, hosts discussions of political headlines). But none have engaged Congress as much as they have civilians, and none have attracted the kind of user base necessary to challenge polling powerhouses like Gallup. Of course, that’s exactly what PlaceAVote intends to do. Gallup relies on landlines to contact potential voters, which means it often neglects to poll young voters who exclusively use cell phones. PlaceAVote could bridge that gap — if it attracts enough young voters to its debate. Startup Battlefield: Place a Vote at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) But Davis doesn’t want to woo only the millennial crowd. He says that, in beta, PlaceAVote has been popular with older users too. “The thing that I was apprehensive about was that I was going to have only 20-somethings on the site,” Davis says. “I don’t think that’s democracy; it’s not a representative model. Millennials are our biggest demographic, but our most vocal demographic is 55 and older. We stumbled into a product both ages like.” On the government side, Davis says PlaceAVote has attracted interest from Rep. Seth Moulton (D – Mass.) and others. Getting government on board is where other political apps have faltered, Davis thinks. “The [tech] industry is so busy trying to reinvent the political wheel that it’s neglecting the users who have the most clout — members of Congress,” he says. To get confirmed data that politicians will pay for, PlaceAVote says it will by asking them to upload a copy of their ID or by mailing them a postcard with a verification code. Votes are published anonymously via blockchain, but comments and discussion are posted under users’ real names. However, when I tested PlaceAVote, I was able to sign up and start voting with no verification at all — not even of my email address. (PlaceAVote says they are still finalizing verification methods and hope to someday be able to match each user to their voter registration.) Before my test drive, I asked Davis if he was concerned about trolling or spam votes. What if an advocacy group swarmed PlaceAVote to sway a vote on a particularly divisive issue? Davis responded that he places trust in Reddit’s system of up-votes and down-votes — PlaceAVote uses a similar system for content moderation. “I’ve seen Reddit, for the last 10 years, function really well. They send everything that’s crap down to the bottom,” Davis says. But Reddit’s self-moderation well, and it’s imaginable that trolls would take advantage of PlaceAVote’s open platform to sink a controversial bill — especially if members of Congress are paying for its data. So far though, PlaceAVote users appear to be keeping it civil. Davis says he’s worked hard to make sure the platform is a nonpartisan space where voters from any party can feel comfortable. When users log in to PlaceAVote, they’re greeted with A quick scan of Davis’ own votes reveals the man behind the platform — he’s in favor of marijuana legalization, which he calls a “no-brainer” in PlaceAVote comments, and opposed to broadening the government’s surveillance powers. He says he came up with the idea for PlaceAVote after becoming frustrated with the high tax rates he faced at his previous startup, Ventata (he sold that company last year). He studied math at Columbia University and has an obvious passion for data: he’s quick to rattle of the latest statistics on polling, elections and political donations. “We have a system where most people don’t get a say; they think their vote doesn’t count. Why don’t we build an app that gives people what they’re hoping for, which is a say in politics?” Davis asks. “I want to build a tool where I can say I did everything possible to make it easy.” [gallery ids="1320695,1320693,1320677,1320676,1320675,1320674"]
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Ritual wants to reinvent the vitamin
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Sarah Buhr
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has developed a beaded oil capsule vitamin for sustained release from what it says are the best ingredients found throughout the world to nourish your body. The company launched today onstage at Disrupt NY. Vitamins, even the sustainable release kind, sit within a crowded space. They come in pill, pack and powder form, are not hard to get online or off and are sometimes even handed out as samples whether you wanted them or not. It’s tough to know what’s best to go with for your body, and information on the source ingredients in those pills and powders is often murky. But new brands pop up hopeful all the time. Even Donald Trump was for a while. Vitamins are an $80 billion industry and about half of America takes a multi-vitamin every day, according to . But Ritual CEO Katerina Schneider tells me most vitamin brands formulated their nutrients based on data from 1968 and it’s dangerous to get the wrong amount for your diet. “Sometimes those nutrients accumulate in the cells and can cause harm,” she says. We should note that Trump’s vitamins were pulled for using Schneider came up with the idea to build a better vitamin when she was pregnant with her first child. She did some of her own research and became alarmed at the high levels of ingredients in several off-the-shelf vitamin bottles she didn’t want to give to her unborn baby. So Schneider now sources the world for good ingredients and makes that research and data available online for others curious about what is the best nutrition for their body. [gallery ids="1320636,1320632,1320641,1320635,1320642"] For instance, Ritual’s folate comes from Italy because it’s “the most optimal,” and there’s no Vitamin C in the formula because we get enough in our diet, says Schneider. Nor does it include calcium, because it’s formulated with Vitamin K, magnesium and boron — all ingredients needed to help you absorb the right amount of calcium from what you eat. The startup plans to sell each 30-day supply of its vitamins online, direct-to-consumer, for $30 per month. Compare that to Alive Whole Food Energizer — ranked No. 3 in the top 10 best multivitamins on ; a 30-day supply can be purchased for $6.99 on . However, Ritual maintains its ingredients are superior to the competitors. The startup is new, so it has not been evaluated against other vitamin makers yet. It also says the direct-to-consumer model will help it provide the best ingredients worldwide at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost. Is it the best stuff for the price? And do we really need the “best” versus something that might work as well? That’s tough to say. The vitamin industry is a loopy one without a lot of regulation, so it’s hard to know what is in most of the products out there. But Ritual does add some value in open-sourced research on the ingredients used. So far Ritual has pulled in $1.3 million in angel funding from , , and , and plans to branch out from vitamins to include other products with natural, research-based ingredients, such as deodorant, toothpaste and other household items. Startup Battlefield: Ritual at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch)
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Mozilla relaunches Firefox Test Pilot to experiment with new features like side tabs
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Frederic Lardinois
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is bringing back its for Firefox. The idea behind Test Pilot is to allow users — and Mozilla’s engineers — to test experimental browser features long before they arrive in the browser. A first version of Test Pilot first launched all the way back in 2009, but its focus was on studying how users interacted with their browser and not on testing new features. Mozilla, which is now working in a very different competitive landscape compared to a few years ago, is relaunching it to test what the organization “rough concepts.” With Test Pilot, Mozilla is combining prototyping and user research to quickly evaluate these concepts — something that the organization surely hopes will allow it to better compete with Google Chrome and Microsoft’s Edge browser. The relaunch currently features three experiments: a new take on putting instead of the top of the window; an activity stream with a and recently bookmarked sites; and an (Firefox’s universal search/URL bar). Some of these, like putting tabs on the side, already exist as third-party plug-ins, but none of these give Mozilla any telemetrics for how they are being used. The team is already working on bringing more experiments to Test Pilot, too. Mozilla believes that its Test Pilot guinea pigs will be the kind of users who “consciously choose to use Firefox,” aren’t afraid to try something new and want to be part of a unique community. Given that it’s hard for a browser developer with millions of users — even on its early release channels — to try experimental features, this project allows Mozilla to try new things without upsetting its users, and it gives its hardcore fans an opportunity to have a voice in building these new features, too.
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Bark helps parents keep kids safe online without invading their privacy
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Sarah Perez
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Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 is a new service called , aimed at parents who want to keep their kids safe online. Unlike traditional “parental control” software or net nanny-type watchdog applications, Bark’s goal is to strike the correct balance between respecting a child’s right to privacy and protecting them from online predators and cyberbullying, while also looking out for issues like sexting or mental health concerns. The idea for Bark comes from a founding team of parents themselves. CEO previously served as a founding employee at YouCast (sold to SocialChorus), co-founder at Crowdstream (sold to RadioIO) and, most recently, was CTO at Niche, acquired by Twitter. Bason, whose kids are now 8 and 11, left Twitter last July to begin working on Bark. “So much socialization happens through connected devices. As a parent, that raises the question of how you keep them safe in that environment, but still let them explore and harness the power of technology,” Bason explains. The problem is that there’s not a great solution for this today. Either parents have to install spyware-type applications that record everything the kid does online, or they have to regularly grab their kids’ phones and read their texts, log in to kids’ accounts using their passwords and basically make a huge manual effort to stay on top of their kids’ online activity and communications. This process isn’t ideal for kids, either. “The child feels like they have no privacy or ability to socialize independently of their parents,” notes Bason. “And it sucks for the parents because it’s so time-consuming,” he adds. Bark makes the process much easier. To use the service, parents , add their kids, then work with the children to connect their social accounts. This is done via OAuth — meaning you’re giving the software access to read and view information from those accounts, but you’re not giving Bark permission to store that social data on its own servers indefinitely. At launch, Bark supports the top social networks and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, Flickr, Tumblr, Google+, YouTube and GroupMe, as well as email accounts hosted on Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo. Plus, unlike many parental control-type applications, it also supports SMS and MMS messages on both iOS and Android. This is part of Bark’s “secret sauce,” explains Bason, but says that it’s done by way of an app installed on the child’s Android phone and through an OAuth connection with iCloud on iOS. Once set up and configured, Bark uses machine learning techniques to look for incidents of dangerous activity, whether that’s cyberbullying, sexting, a child interacting with an older stranger who could be grooming them (as online predators do) or even signals that the child could be experiencing a mental health concern like depression or suicidal thoughts. Parents can be choosy about which alerts they want to receive and how — both email and text alerts are available. When Bark finds something questionable, it sends an alert to the parent that not only contains the relevant conversation, when and where it took place, but also recommended ways of handling the issue appropriately. Bark’s advisory board includes leading researchers and child psychologists, as well as law enforcement professionals who handle online cases involving children. Combined with research pulled from the NIH and other resources, Bark makes an effort to guide parents in the right direction when it comes to handling these concerns. [gallery ids="1320651,1320652,1320653,1320654"] The system is smart, too — because it’s able to look at the context around a conversation and not just flagged keywords, it knows when someone is jokingly saying “ugh, I hate you” (for example, because the child just got a new, cool game) versus when someone actually means it. Since its soft launch in February, Bark has analyzed more than a million messages, and found that 52 percent of its user base had at least one problem identified via its software. What’s great, too, is that Bark is actually affordable. It’s priced at $9 per month regardless of the number of children you have, or $99 per year. Bark competes with a handful of other solutions, including , and cyberbullying-specific solutions like or . The company, also co-founded by Brandon Hilkert (CTO), has raised just over half a million dollars in seed funding from and .
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Cujo is a firewall for the connected smart home network
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Brian Heater
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“Cujo protects everything on your network,” the company’s CEO, Einaras Gravrock says, describing his product in the simplest terms ahead of its Disrupt NY launch this week. “Think of it as an immunity system for your network.” The is surprisingly unassuming, a small plastic stump with light-up eyes that stands in adorable contrast to its mad dog name and home security mission statement. The product is designed to bring enterprise-level security to the home network, helping protect against attacks to the increasingly vulnerable world of networked devices, from laptops to smart lightbulbs. “Cujo is, for all intents and purposes, a smart firewall,” explains Gravrock. “It’s very seamless. It’s made for an average user to understand easily. You see every single thing on your network through your app. If you got to bad places or bad things come to you, we will block bad behavior and we will send you a friendly notification that someone tried to access your camera.” [gallery ids="1318910,1318911,1318912,1318913,1318914,1318915"] The company demoed the product at Disrupt today by hacking a baby camera. On a page displaying all of the devices connected to the network, a warning popped up: “We blocked an unauthorized attempt to access device ‘IP camera’ from [IP number].” From there, access to the feed can be cut off — or not, if there is no actual threat. The $99 device (plus an $8.99 monthly service fee for unlimited devices) serves as a peer to a home router, monitoring all network connected devices for malicious activity and sending notifications when something happens, like suspicious file transfers or communications with faraway IP addresses. It’s a bit like the Nest app, only for networked security, rather than fire alarms. Gravrock stresses that exploits are less about individual devices than they are about opening up the entire network through a small and seemingly harmless smart gadget. “You may think, ‘so what, my lightbulb is going to get hacked,’ ” he explains. “The challenge is what happens next. Once they’re in the network, they can get to the other devices. They can get to your camera, they can get to your PC and extract files, they can film you. The FBI director is on record as taping over his webcam when he goes home. That tells you that we’re very exposed.” [gallery ids="1320607,1320609,1320605,1320604,1320623,1320622,1320621"] Part of the company’s current mission is highlighting those exploits for consumers who are likely versed in the threat of PC malware but may be unaware of the growing threat posed by the vulnerability of the Internet of Things. Though Gravrock adds that in the beta testing the company has been conducting since August, consumer interest/concern had increased notably. “We’ve sold about 5,000 units directly already,” he explains. “The biggest surprise for me has been that it’s your average user who no longer feels private at home, may put the duct tape over his webcam and just wants something that works — doesn’t want to spend days and months changing things.” Cujo is available now through Amazon. It’ll be rolling out to “all major retailers” by year’s end. According to Gravrock, the company anticipates breaking even with the device, eventually monetizing the product with the security subscription. Startup Battlefield: Cujo at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch)
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Semi-driving the semi-autonomous 2016 Volvo XC90
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
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The T6 R-Design has an all-new look and a powerful 2-liter supercharged engine with 316 horsepower. But this is TechCrunch, where we’re all about that tablet-like center console and pushing all the buttons to see how well the vehicle can drive on its own. Volvo’s goal is to eliminate injuries or fatalities in crashes in its vehicles by 2020, which means removing as much human error as they can. The semi-autonomous driving features in the 2016 XC90 take a pretty big step in that direction. Whenever the SUV’s sensors can detect lanes and a car in front of it, it will handle driving tasks all on its own. I tested this out several times during the week I had the XC90. When I was creeping along the highway under 30 mph, I could press a button in the steering wheel to let the system know I wanted it use Adaptive Cruise Control with Pilot Assist. If conditions were in place – lanes and a car to follow – the system would take over. I could do all my dance moves while Beyoncé sang about Becky with the good hair. If the XC90 lost track of the lanes, it would ask me to handle steering duties with a ping and a message in the dashboard. This is called the “human-machine interface,” and some systems handle it better than others. I thought did well to alert me without scaring me that something was wrong. Vehicles are not yet capable of letting humans zone out completely; you still have to be alert to traffic and ready to resume control even while dancing to Beyoncé in the driver’s seat. Even without using Pilot Assist, the Lane Keeping Aid used lane markers to keep me from drifting. On roads that were very familiar to me, and where I do have a tendency to drift as I take a corner, the wheel would tug a bit to put the vehicle back where it belonged. Fair enough. But it was interesting to encounter the ethical dilemma aspect of autonomous driving while using that feature. There’s a hilly stretch of road near my house that’s popular with hardcore cyclists in training. There is no shoulder, so drivers just have to keep an eye out and pass when it’s safe. There is, however, a bright yellow double line in the middle of the road. So when I deliberately straddled the line to pass a biker making his way up the hill, the steering wheel of the XC90 tugged a bit toward the cyclist. Its programming told it that straddling the double yellow line is a terrible idea–which it usually is–without taking into account the human driver deciding not to knock over a bicyclist. Nearly all of the technology is in place to make autonomous cars happen very soon, but it’s these tricky human decisions that algorithms can’t yet process. And Volvo’s system is gentle–it didn’t completely take over and run the cyclist off the road. It deferred to my human judgement without a fight. We worked together to parallel park; I worked the brake and gas while it did the steering. I let it drive me partway home in heavy traffic after a half marathon that turned my legs to jelly. So even using semi-autonomous features only about 10 percent of the time I had this Volvo was welcome. The idea is to let these features take over more often and for longer as the technology evolves. Volvo is further testing semi-autonomous vehicles beginning next year in the program, with data analysis assistance from Thatcham Research. By 2018, the program will be testing about 100 fully autonomous vehicles on the streets of the United Kingdom.
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Peter Thiel to back Trump as GOP presidential candidate
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Sarah Buhr
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Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has agreed to back Trump as a in Cleveland this summer. Thiel’s level of support for the Donald is unclear, but Thiel will be one of 172 selected Golden State delegates headed to the Republican National Convention, and a source tells us he has committed to back Trump as the GOP’s presidential nominee while there. It seems odd, on the surface, for anyone in Silicon Valley to side with someone like Trump. Other prominent leaders like A16z’s have been vocal about their distaste for a man they see as unworthy of the office of president. https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/629838480722391040 But the Donald might be the perfect outsider for Thiel, who is not one for choosing the conventional, to back. And Thiel, a libertarian, has supported other Republican causes in the past, including donating $2.6 million to Ron Paul in 2012 and adding $2 million to a Super PAC backing Ted Cruz’s former running mate and ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina. Thiel also gave a quarter of a million to Ted Cruz’s bid for Texas attorney general in 2009. We’ve reached out to Thiel to ask just how much support he intends to lend beyond backing Trump in Cleveland this summer and will let you know if and when he responds.
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SeaDrone simplifies underwater exploration and inspection
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Devin Coldewey
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Startup Battlefield: SeaDrone at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) It’s the year, or perhaps the decade, of the drone, and the popular craft are only getting cheaper, better and easier to control. But why should drones be limited to the air? , demonstrated onstage at Disrupt NY today, brings the benefits and simplicity of multi-rotor airborne drones to underwater applications. “You could consider it an underwater quadcopter,” Eduardo Moreno, co-founder of O-Robotix, told TechCrunch. “It’s not made like a missile, like other underwater drones. It’s designed to stabilize itself. We focused on innovating on how a robot could capture very stable footage.” The craft may borrow its overall style from popular aerial drones, but the turbines are the company’s own bespoke design. They’re smaller, lighter, simpler, cheaper more durable than off-the-shelf models, dropping the cost of the device immensely while also improving its maneuverability. It also means the whole thing fits in a case you can put in the passenger seat. That’s a plus. The SeaDrone is controlled with a tablet app, and the craft itself runs a custom Linux install — eschewing the “very analog” control schemes of most remote-operated underwater vehicles. The onboard OS also allows for programmable motions — for instance, automated inspection of nets or thorough, 360-degree video captures of the surroundings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5fz7odsXxc Although it does sound like it would be fun to pilot, the SeaDrone is made with work in mind — specifically, maritime and sea-based farming applications. “Currently we’re focusing on aquaculture, because they’re the ones that require the most frequent dives,” Moreno said. Inspecting boats, docks, nets, pipelines — many of these tasks require large, expensive ROVs or trained divers. The SeaDrone can do many of these tasks for a fraction of the cost, and can be operated by non-specialists. On top of the drone itself, O-Robotix will be selling a platform for storing and organizing the data it collects. Management of fish and hatcheries and other things involves lots of reports and note-taking — regulatory agencies want to know all kinds of things, and the process is tedious. “Instead of writing notes and doing things on paper, and collecting photos and videos as they go along, we automatically grab all that information and format it for the manager to submit,” Moreno said. This would provide income on top of the usual sales, parts and repairs of the SeaDrone fleet. Until now the company has been largely bootstrapped, but is entering the manufacturing phase, which requires a bit more capital. Hardware companies are notoriously difficult to get off the ground, but O-Robotix looks poised to take a pretty big slice of an under-attended global industry. [gallery ids="1320563,1320559,1320558,1320556,1320557,1320571,1320569,1320581"]
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BitPagos uses the blockchain to enable credit for online payments in emerging markets
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Jon Russell
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The world is familiar with bitcoin being used for many things. Online payments, long-distance remittance, even a substitute for gold. But what about credit? Not so much — and that’s where , a startup competing in the Battlefield pitch competition at , wants to make its mark. The Buenos Aires-based company, which has raised funding from , and others, started out offering a bitcoin wallet which, like others, enabled consumers to turn currency into bitcoin and vice versa, while also paying for goods online using bitcoin. Bitcoin has proven popular in Argentina and other parts of Latin America where local currencies are subject to crazy depreciation, to the point that bitcoin provides a more stable and viable option for storing and moving their money. However, the BitPagos team sensed a new opportunity that does — and doesn’t tap — into bitcoin. Using the blockchain, the digital ledger that underscores the cryptocurrency, it created a payment system that enables users to buy goods online without the need for a credit card, or credit check. But no actual bitcoin is involved for either merchant or buyer. That’s hugely important in emerging markets because credit cards, the most obvious way to buy online, are not universally owned, and alternatives like paying cash on delivery are inefficient and subject to high cancellation rates. In Latin America, for example, credit card ownership is below 20 percent, while many millions are unbanked altogether — i.e. no do not even possess a bank account. that “most” people in the region stash their money under their bed, and, on the credit card front, even getting the requisite data to apply for a card is difficult. Ripio Credit is BitPagos’ system that allows those who are unbanked or without a credit card to buy online. Customers first provide a few pieces of information — including their national ID, social media presence and address — and the company said its system can check them for credit within the day if not sooner. (Those that use the BitPagos’ bitcoin wallet can be approved instantly because they have a payment history.) [gallery ids="1320533,1320536,1320535,1320534"] Once approved, a customer is offered a number of payment options, which could include delayed payment — e.g. end of the month — or a staggered plan, such as installments each month for six months. BitPagos makes money by offering slight premiums on these payment plans, but since the transaction is handled within its system and not the usual clearing and credit houses, which adds cost to a transaction, it can offer far cheaper interest rates to customers. The startup doesn’t share that revenue with merchants, but they win in other ways. With online estimated to account for less than two percent of all commerce in Latin America, these types of solutions are hugely important for any company selling online because it helps remove a major barrier that limits their revenue and can grow their pie. Ripio is initially available in Argentina, but the company plans to expand to Brazil next, before reaching other parts of Latin America. CEO , a serial entrepreneur who once worked for Argentina’s ministry of finance, said that emerging markets like Africa and Asia, where banking and credit card adoption is also low, could be potential options further down the line. Startup Battlefield: BitPagos at — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch)
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HomeMe looks to help pre-approve apartment hunters for rentals
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Matthew Lynley
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Mark Douglas’s daughter was shopping around for an apartment. But the person showing apartments just assumed that because she was young she didn’t have the buying power to afford an expensive apartment — and they didn’t have any data to back that up. That’s where , an application that helps people get pre-approved for apartment rentals, comes in. With such a huge market, Douglas and his co-founder Lindsey Holland decided that they wanted to help streamline the process of finding an apartment rental, and built a service that looks to replace the way people hunt for apartments. HomeMe launched at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. “People would rather do their taxes than rent an apartment, or go to the DMV,” Douglas said. “it’s something consumers don’t like, and property management companies don’t like either — it’s super inefficient, showing apartments to people you don’t know and don’t know if they can even afford to rent it.” The experience is pretty simple. Users download the app and give it some basic income data, and then eventually their social security number. Then the app shows them which apartments are in their price range for which they are pre-approved. Users can start the lease directly from the app after looking at the apartment, Douglas said. On the back end, the app is basically crawling through its database of apartments to match up the right ones with the user. When users want to book a lease, that’s when HomeMe asks for more information to verify their income. Users can pay security deposits through the app, as well with a credit card, Douglas said. The app launched in Houston two months ago in a beta. Users view 21 apartments per session, and 15 percent of them are booking tours during those sessions, Douglas said. HomeMe is free to consumers — who don’t actually have to pay an application fee any more — and the company charges property management companies a fee when they rent. [gallery ids="1320484,1320486,1320488,1320482,1320483,1320487"] HomeMe works with property management companies to connect pre-approved customers to the right apartments, so it isn’t a waste of time showing an apartment to a prospective buyer who couldn’t afford it or doesn’t have a good enough credit score. It’s a problem that most people can relate to: Hunting for apartments can be a huge pain, especially after looking at an apartment only to find out you’re not qualified to rent it. HomeMe is starting off in Houston (though the team is in Los Angeles) primarily because it’s a huge apartment rental market. About 40 percent of the apartments in that market are signed on to the app, Douglas said. The company has already been looking outside the U.S., in places like the U.K. and China, where the problems are similar, Douglas said. Scaling, to be sure, will be a big challenge. HomeMe has to basically connect with property management companies in order to add inventory to the application and streamline the pre-approval process. But a smaller number of property management companies manage the bulk of the apartments in the United States, making it easier to sign partnerships. This is Douglas’s second go-round, and he spends other parts of his time as CEO of SteelHouse, a marketing platform that’s raised more than $60 million in venture financing. “I think the core — getting pre-approved from the next apartment — that one sense encapsulates the value for all sides,” Douglas said. “It takes all the anxiety out and empowers the consumer and the property managers as well, them seeing renters they know meet their qualifications.”
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Vrse CEO Chris Milk talks VR storytelling and the road to virtual reality’s Citizen Kane
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Lucas Matney
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“Citizen Kane does not come in year two of VR.” Esteemed VR filmmaker/documentarian/founder/CEO took to the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in NY to discuss the limitations and massive items of potential for the proliferation of VR content, still in its early early early stages. Some of the most difficult challenges in the VR filmmaking space are incredibly basic features often taken for granted in modern cinema, Milk told the audience. Underlying structures like the concept of a feature film don’t operate the same way for VR as they do on the silver screen, and those are some of the things that the creatives in the space are desperately searching for. Right now, the best template in terms of VR film is a bit messy at the moment and involves what the CEO calls “a series of spheres that you’re sitting inside and looking around.” The technical challenges are significant, but they don’t detract from the power of the platform to impact humanity, Milk says. “The promise that VR can hold is that it’s the democratization of human experience,” Milk said onstage. “Much like the Internet was the democratization of data.” A stumbling block for early VR adopters is really the lack of content. Good or bad, there’s just not a lot of stuff to download on your Gear VR or Oculus Rift. Milk said that this was a major point of strain on consumers that are hyped on VR potential and are willing to drop a lot of cash. “It’s hard to sell 50 million televisions if there’s only a week’s worth of television to watch,” said Milk. With the pretty notable dearth of VR content, conversations surrounding VR’s lack of a “killer app” can seem a bit fruitless, but Milk says that the killer app already exists — it’s VR storytelling. That being said, Milk stresses that “the killer app for your aunt is going to be different from the killer app for your niece.” Getting VR in the hands of your aunt and niece might be the first issue to tackle, though. Like many in the space, Milk sees mobile VR as the platform with the most potential and hopes that handsets a few generations from now will be on par with current tethered systems like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. “The more great experiences you’re having, the more interested you’re going to be in upgrading to the next level of immersion,” Milk told interviewer Josh Constine. With all the buzzwords floating around virtual reality, sometimes it can grow difficult to see the importance of the medium in terms of isolating human experiences and replicating it for secondary visitors. “Once you move past the spectacle and past the hype, [VR] is the medium of human experience,” Milk said. [gallery ids="1320373,1320372,1320374,1320368,1320369,1320375,1320370,1320371"]
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Brian Heater
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Samsung Pay strikes partnership with Chinese online payment giant Alipay
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Catherine Shu
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Samsung that will make Alipay, China’s largest online payments platform, available through Samsung Pay. The partnership, made between Samsung Electronics and Ant Financial, the Alibaba financial tech affiliate that owns Alipay, is important because Alipay is one of the most formidable rivals mobile payments like Samsung Pay and Apple Pay face as they tackle the Chinese market. Alipay, which claims about 450 million active registered users, , which stores credit card and coupon information and can be used for offline payments, back in 2013. Samsung Pay , about . Apple has reportedly been since last year. The deal hasn’t been announced yet, but the popularity of iPhones in China—they , despite competition from Android rivals like Huawei and Xiaomi—means it would not be surprising if one was announced soon, too. Samsung Pay users can now link their Alipay accounts and make payments with the service’s NFC and MST technology to checkout at retail stores. They can also access Alipay’s QR codes through the Samsung Pay. The advantage of tying up with Alipay are obvious for Samsung Pay. Alipay also benefits, however, because Samsung Pay’s technology will allow it to expand into more offline businesses. In a press statement, Fan Zhiming, the president of Ant Financial’s payment business unit, said the partnership will allow Alipay to expand its reach beyond e-commerce: “Alipay covers the vast majority of online payment use cases. At the same time, it also developed a variety of offline use cases, including restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, taxis, hospitals, and public services. The technology integration facilitated by this partnership with Samsung Electronics will make the payment process faster and more convenient when users make payments at stores where Alipay is accepted.” Alipay claims to be accepted at about 600,000 brick and mortar retail stores in China, as well as in over one million taxis.
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Singapore’s Jungle Ventures brings on three new operating partners
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Jon Russell
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Jungle Ventures, the Singapore-based VC firm that last year, has recruited three new operating partners to its team. comes from streaming service HOOQ, where he was chief product officer, joining recent recruits , ex-Spotify, and , who led Evernote business development in Asia Pacific. The firm hasn’t formally announced the hires, but each one has updated his LinkedIn account to reflect a new role, while Smith his arrival at Jungle on his blog earlier this month. The trio are interesting additions for Jungle since, angel investing aside, each is a product specialist with no history of working on the VC side. Smith is well-known in Southeast Asia’s tech space for his previous role with Yahoo, where, as director of global tech initiatives, he presided over Yahoo’s ( ) and other media projects. Foo opened and helmed Evernote’s Singapore office, which was closed as part of last year, for over three years and was previously with Singtel-backed startup MoVend. Lundberg moved to Asia to help Spotify identify new market opportunities — although the Swedish music streaming firm has . Speaking to TechCrunch last year when Jungle announced its new fund, founder and managing partner Amit Anand stressed the efforts that the firm is making to build out its operational chops. That initiative, which Smith, Foo and Lundberg are part of, is spearheaded by former Yahoo head of international M&A David Gowdey and is designed to go beyond money to provide its portfolio with the expert counsel, experience and services needed to develop their businesses. “There aren’t too many teams with the number of years of experience in our sectors, and in Asia,” Anand told us last September.
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Houzz wins “Best App” at the inaugural Google Play Awards
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Sarah Perez
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Interior design and decorating resource is the overall best Android app of the year, according to Google, which this evening announced the results of the at its developer conference, Google I/O. While in previous years, the company had rounded up large numbers of apps for “ ” lists, the new Google Play Awards instead follows Apple’s model of selecting winners across a variety of categories. But where Apple chooses best apps for phone, tablet, and watch, along with selections like “most innovative,” Google took a somewhat different path. It selected 5 nominees across 10 categories, and didn’t differentiate between those built for tablet or phone. Google also nominated apps that reflected a group of developers who were taking the best advantage of Google’s services, like “Best Use of Google Play Game Services,” plus those who did the best job of implementing Google’s newer design language, Material Design. And Google didn’t limit itself to only one category focused on innovation, but chose several angles – including not only the “most innovative” app, but also “Standout Startup” and “Early Adopter. The move was likely meant to signal that not all of the best and most creative new apps are exclusive to iOS, or launched on iOS first. The company live-streamed the ceremony this evening from Google I/O, which was also a change from previous years. On stage, the company spoke of Google Play’s evolution and noted that the online storefront now reaches over a billion users daily. Apps are obviously a huge draw for this store – earlier this week, Google said that app in the past year. The winning apps were chosen by a panel of experts at Google, and rated on several factors, including app quality and innovation. To be considered, the apps either needed to have launched or had a major update over the last 12 months. Houzz ended up winning the “Best App” title, beating out BuzzFeed News, Colorfy, TuneIn Radio and Yummly. Meanwhile, the hugely popular Clash Royale walked away with the “Best Game” crown, topping Alphabear, Clash of Kings, MARVEL Future Fight, and Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. From the startup world, the smart airfare prediction engine Hopper won “Best Standout Startup” and millennial-focused investing app Robinhood grabbed the win for “Best Use of Material Design.” The full list of this year’s winners is below: Best App:
Best Early Adopter:
Best Families App:
Best Go Global:
Best Game:
Most Innovative:
Best Use of Material Design:
Best Standout Indie:
Best Use of Google Play Game Services:
Best Standout Startup:
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It’s time to remove “serial entrepreneur” from our vocabulary
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Shan Sinha
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In today’s tech-driven business world, the title “ ” is a coveted badge of honor. A quick look at Google, for example, yields no less than 830,000 mentions — with “how to become a ” topping the list of popular searches. And all the while, the phrase increasingly pops up in personal bios, job applications and everyday conversation. Of course, it’s easy to understand the appeal of the phrase. It suggests that someone is so full of groundbreaking ideas they can’t channel all of them into just one company. Instead, they choose to focus their genius on creating an array of world-changing, money-making businesses. Who wouldn’t want that to be in that club? But there’s a problem with glorifying entrepreneurs: It suggest that the number of companies someone has built and sold and the money they’ve made as a result are the ultimate metrics of success — not the actual impact on society. By exalting entrepreneurs for a series of financial wins, we attract the wrong kind of people, promote an income-first, outcome-second mindset and create serious potential to stall true innovation. America’s never exactly been known for its moderation. The thinking goes that if some is good, more is better, whether that’s referring to money, portion size or hours spent at work. So when tech started to shed its geeky image and and became household names, applying the same logic to entrepreneurs was a natural progression. And it wasn’t long before multi-venture mavericks like , and status. To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong about starting more than one company (and for the record, I’m a big fan of all the aforementioned founders). But somewhere along the way, the praise for entrepreneurs’ passion and innovation got distorted — as it so frequently does — the more it spread. As much as you hear about entrepreneurs’ business endeavors in and of themselves, you also hear about their and . So what exactly does this all lead to? For one, this results in an influx of entrepreneurial hopefuls who are eager, but not always prepared. College and MBA students in particular are quick to turn to the startup world, . There’s even been buzz about the pre-college crowd . Despite their best intentions and high aspirations, the reality is that most startups fail — and in order to beat those odds, you usually need a decent amount of experience under your belt first. But more worrisome is that the allure of entrepreneurship also brings in those who have less lofty ideals, their sights set on monetary gain or personal glory. The well-documented stands testament to that (as do the small but growing number of would-be entrepreneurs we all know who seem to spend most of their building their brand through social media, trade shows and networking events). If there’s anything we’ve learned from Wall Street, it’s that a deluge of incoming talent and a voracious appetite for profit leads to bad behavior and, potentially, crises. On a tactical level, the mindset often manifests in a focus on “successful exits” rather than meaningful change. In a society where we place value on the number of entrepreneurial notches on somebody’s belt, a series of acquisitions is seen as the ultimate goal. There’s a reason, after all, . And while evidence suggests that the frequency with which tech titans buy out relative newcomers is , you can still find a steady drumbeat of people asking and others how to successfully get acquired. There’s certainly nothing wrong with acquisition in itself, but making it your ultimate goal from the beginning is short-sighted. The world’s most innovative and world-changing companies — Google, Apple, Facebook — didn’t get to where they are today by hoping they would be sold to someone else. And, ironically, if acquisition alone is your strategy, you may be setting yourself up for failure. In an attempt to grab the attention of major players, ideas often get regurgitated. Startups developing an “Uber for X” or “Spotify for Y” are so common that it’s become — and these “recipes for success” . What’s worse, the myth of the with the Midas touch perpetuates a false notion that there will always be another opportunity waiting on the other side. I worry that if this thought process continues, temporary hurdles will start to become viewed as a signal to start searching for greener pastures, leaving more and more companies — along with any difference they could have made — left for dead. With that in mind, I think we need to stop using the phrase “ ” altogether. You might argue that words alone are harmless, but there’s no doubt that . My goal here isn’t to bash people who call themselves entrepreneurs, or criticize anyone who’s gotten in on the ground floor of more than one organization. Instead, I want to encourage others to reflect on how they define entrepreneurial success, and think critically before they move onto their next passion project or publicly applaud somebody for the number of companies they’ve built. There’s a big difference between founding a startup for the sake of founding a startup and using business ventures as a vehicle to achieve wide-scale impact, as the Elon Musks of the world have done. And if we want to communicate that to the world, we should first strive to build current startup to the point that it’s sustainable and successful enough to be the last one we ever work at. If we can do that, we might just move toward a culture that truly walks the walk when it comes to promoting innovation and change.
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Google engineer says he’ll push for default end-to-end encryption in Allo
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Kate Conger
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After Google’s decision by default in its , raised questions about the balance of security and effective artificial intelligence, one of the company’s top security engineers said he’d push for end-to-end encryption to become the default in future versions of Allo. Allo debuted with an option to turn on end-to-end encryption, dubbed “incognito mode.” Google obviously takes security seriously, but had to compromise on strong encryption in Allo in order for its AI to work. (Allo messages are encrypted in transit and at rest.) Thai Duong, an engineer who co-leads Google’s product security team, wrote in a today that he’d push for end-to-end encryption in Allo — then quietly deleted two key paragraphs from his post. In the version he originally published, Duong wrote: The burning question now is: if incognito mode with end-to-end encryption and disappearing messages is so useful, why isn’t it the default in Allo? I wish it’s the default (because it’s my feature haha :), but even if it is not default all is not lost. I can’t promise anything now, but I’m pushing for a setting where users can opt out of cleartext messaging. Basically with one touch you can tell Allo that you want to “Always chat in incognito mode going forward,” and from that moment on all your messages will be end-to-end encrypted and auto-deleted. You can still interact with the AI, but only if you specifically invoke it, so you don’t have to give up everything for your privacy gain. This is the best of both worlds, until someone figures out how to do homomorphic machine learning. These two paragraphs have been erased from the version of Duong’s post that is currently live. This edit probably doesn’t mean that Duong won’t continue to lobby internally for end-to-end encryption — his job is to make Google’s products as secure as possible. But Google, like most major companies, is pretty cagey about revealing its plans for future products and likely didn’t want Duong to reveal on his personal blog what’s next for Allo. Even without the paragraphs on end-to-end encryption, Duong’s post offers interesting insight into Google’s thinking as it planned to launch Allo. For users who care about the security of their messaging apps, Duong highlights that it’s not encryption that matters most to Allo, but rather the disappearing message feature. “Most people focus on end-to-end encryption, but I think the best privacy feature of Allo is disappearing messaging,” Duong wrote. “This is what users actually need when it comes to privacy. Snapchat is popular because they know exactly what users want.” Duong also confirmed the likely reason Google didn’t choose to enable end-to-end encryption in Allo by default: doing so would interfere with some of the cool AI features Allo offers. For users who don’t choose to enable end-to-end encryption, Allo will run AI that offers suggestions, books dinner reservations and buys movie tickets. But the AI won’t work if it can’t scan a user’s messages, and it gets locked out if the user enables end-to-end encryption. We reached out to Google to ask if the company asked Duong to edit to his blog post and will update if we hear back. Duong stressed that the post only reflected his personal beliefs, not those of Google — and we hope his advocacy for a default incognito mode comes to fruition.
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FireChat Alerts could help spread vital information in offline and disaster-stricken areas
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Devin Coldewey
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Decentralized chat app FireChat is that could help disseminate critical info like storm warnings, health advisories and so on when the normal communications grid is down. Truth be told, Alerts aren’t terribly different from the normal chat function, which passes data from phone to phone over an ad-hoc network that doesn’t rely on cellular signals. In the case of alerts, the info will be passed on automatically without the user’s involvement — of course, it would only be used for serious announcements, not sales or promotions. Think Amber Alert, not price alert. Phones that receive the alerts will store them and retransmit whenever they encounter a device that hasn’t received the information, giving the feature a large time window. Open Garden, the company behind FireChat and the peer-to-peer communication tech underlying it (and which, incidentally, ), will formally announce and demonstrate the Alerts feature at the UN’s World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul next week.
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UberMedia connects cross-channel ad impressions to actual store visits
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Anthony Ha
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Mobile ad company is expanding its measurement and attribution business in a big way. You may remember UberMedia as the company that owns social apps like Echofon and UberSocial. While that’s still the case, it has shifted its attention over the past few years to its mobile ad platform, which uses the apps as a source of data — and which can tell advertisers whether someone who saw their ad actually made it into their store. “We could tell advertisers, out of a campaign they ran, how many people who go to your location are incremental lift — it was not just sheer volume of visits,” said Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Revenue Officer Michael Hayes. “Then once we showed that we could do that well, we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that across an advertiser’s media plan?'” In other words, with its new Cross-Media Location Visit Measurement product, UberMedia is taking its location-based attribution approach and using it to assess the effectiveness of a company’s ads even if they’re not running through UberMedia — whether they’re desktop display ads, video ads, mobile, social or search. Hayes suggested that this represents a big step up from ad measurement based on things like impressions and clicks, which aren’t directly connected to actual business outcomes. The “holy grail,” he admitted, would be connecting ad impressions to sales data, but “it’s hard for advertisers to get sales data in the hands of agencies on a consistent, weekly basis.” So if you can’t get sales data, being able to say that your ads drove a certain number of people to a car dealership, or a hotel, or wherever, is pretty good. “This is not a panel, this is empirical data,” Hayes added, noting that UberMedia has access to billions of behavioral and location data points every day. “And it’s incredibly precise — precision and accuracy are important.” The goal here is less to offer new measurement tools to existing UberMedia advertisers and more to build an additional business for the company with a new set of customers. Hayes suggested advertisers could also use this data to spot trends and plan future campaigns. “Measuring our advertising investments to hotel visits is a compelling strategy to better understand how our media is impacting bookings,” said Elvin Kawasaki, vice president and director of digital investment at ad agency , in an emailed statement. “Cross Media Location Measurement is a major breakthrough for not only the travel category but for other retailers that want to measure foot traffic and make smarter advertising investments.”
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3D-printed bespoke wheelchair debuts at Design Week in London
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Devin Coldewey
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For all their being motion-enabling platforms, wheelchairs are themselves rather static. A frame of steel and aluminum supporting foam-filled leather or plastic, with a handful of settings that may or may not accommodate the user’s specific condition. A London design firm has worked for two years to create an alternative: a 3D-printed wheelchair made to fit exactly the shape and needs of its rider. (not to be confused with the , another 3D-printed wheelchair project) is the brainchild of Benjamin Hubert, director of London design agency Layer. “It seemed like a much overlooked sort of cottage industry,” Hubert told TechCrunch in an interview. “There’s a lot of opportunity to push things forward by using technology that’s just getting established or getting to a lower price point, to answer some of the issues of fitting many different injuries, disabilities, body shapes and sizes.” The GO isn’t just a catch-all design that happens to be 3D printable. Layer partnered with 3D design firm to create an end-to-end customization process. The user’s body is actually scanned and their needs assessed; that information is synthesized into a one-piece seat made to their specifications. For instance, someone with a spinal injury midway up the back might require more support and a taller seat-back, while someone who has lost a leg might want things to be adjusted to take her off-center balance into account. A seat that’s made to measure is likely a more comfortable experience over the many, many hours users spend in their chairs. “This turns out to be a very viable solution for something that needs a very finely tuned form, to respond to the needs of a very sensitive user base,” Hubert said. Only the seat (printed on a large-format device — it won’t come out of a desktop printer) and footrest (sintered aluminum for durability) are custom-designed; the rest is constructed of off-the-shelf parts, to keep the costs down and repairs simple. The company has been in dialogue with wheelchair users and designed things with their feedback; the GO isn’t quite ready for wheelchair basketball (“those chairs are tanks in their own right,” said Hubert), but players were consulted anyway. Heavy users suggested one other improvement: the push rim on the wheel is usually just a round of metal — simple and durable, but not the best for grip, and in fact the poor ergonomics can lead to stress injuries. Layer designed a sheath with an “almost BMX bike” grip texture and special gloves to use with it. The creation process, after biometrics are collected, is finished by the user in an app that lets them select optional elements and print colors. Layer claims to be able to manufacture and deliver a chair in two weeks, a considerably shorter wait than other custom solutions. Right now the GO is still in prototype form, and will be on display at Clerkenwell’s Design Week later this month. Hubert said that the design is mostly finalized, but now faces scrutiny from the National Health Services and the European counterparts to the FDA. But medical providers, wheelchair makers and sports companies are already interested in the design, he added. [gallery ids="1325231,1325232,1325233,1325234,1325235,1325236,1325237,1325238,1325239,1325240,1325241"]
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The Withings Go shows promise, but is mostly a non-starter
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Brian Heater
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Drop the price $20 and add a bit more functionality and you’ve got a compelling product on your hands. The way things stand now though, the is more of a curiosity than it is compelling — or, for that matter, tempting. It’s a shame, really. It’s the kind of device that you really want to like. is in the business of bringing interesting ideas to the health space. But for practically every idea that the little fitness tracker brings to the table, there’s an issue with execution. The result is not so much a bad product as it is a device that offers little signal to the overwhelming noise of fitness trackers. Sure, the French company (well, the ) turned some heads when it showed off the little disc back in January at CES. The e-ink display, the unspeakably long battery life, the promised budget price. But once you spend time with the device, things break down a bit. For starters, there’s that price. Once upon a time, $80 seemed like a bargain for a fitness tracker. But these days? Look at the Misfit Flash — the wearable retails for $50, and is currently listed as $30 on the company’s site. Xiaomi has a band that retails around $20 to $30. And the Jawbone Up Move is listed as $50, but you can pick it up for around $30 at Amazon if you act fast (and probably if you act slow, too). That $80 gets you a nice Withings box with a small fitness medallion (battery inside), belt clip, adjustable wristband and a little plastic guitar pick doohickey for opening up the case. Set up is pretty straightforward, except in my case, which involved a device that stubbornly refused to sync — second time was the charm. The device itself is small and round — roughly the size of a quarter with a rounded back that unscrews to reveal a single watch battery. On the front is a small e-ink display — a relatively rare thing in a fitness tracker, but one that actually makes a lot of sense for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the fact that it’s always on without being a significant drain to the battery. E-ink is also crisp, clear and easily read in direct sunlight. The major drawbacks to the technology are low refresh rates and a monochrome color palette, but neither really come into play with a simple activity tracker like the Go. The screen doesn’t have touch functionality. Instead it serves as a big, tactile button, that toggles between screens, helps with syncing and resets the device. As with other modular fitness products like the Shine, the Go can be worn a couple of ways — either clipped to a belt or around a wrist, smartwatch-style. I opted for the latter for reviewing purposes, but it’s certainly nice to have the option, particularly given the fact that the Go’s looks aren’t quite as versatile as the aforementioned Misfit’s device. The rubber wristband and plastic clip have a budget feel, and the display doesn’t do the product any favors in terms of fitting on one’s person undetected. The real problem with the display however, is that it’s criminally underused. If you��re going to put a display on a device, you might as well get some use out of it. As it stands, Withings doesn’t make much use of the thing. By default it’s a simple step tracker. It doesn’t show actual steps, mind, but rather progress toward the final goal. Click it once and you get a barebones watch face that’s a bit difficult to discern at first. Analog numbers would have done a better job here — or better yet, swappable faces. In either case, the inclusion of a display feels like a bit of a waste here, particularly if it’s contributed to driving the price up on what should be a budget device. There are a few net positives on the design side. The device has few moving parts, making it fairly rugged and water-resistant enough to take swimming. And then there’s the battery life, which Withings ranks at around eight months, which means no more plugging it in after you get home each night. The device uses Withings’ existing mobile app. It’s not an exceptional bit of software, but it certainly does the trick — and with a lot of bright colors, to boot. It also means integration with other products from the company, making the Go something of an entry point into the entire Withings smart health ecosystem. The format is pretty straightforward. The landing page is a timeline breaking down steps, activity type and sleep day to day. The current day’s count is listed at the top, along with the percentage of the goal currently completed. Clicking through that last bit offers a more complete break down of the numbers, including distance, duration and calories burned. It’s pretty basic info, but the sort you would anticipate with an entry level fitness device like this. As for the numbers themselves, the step count came in consistently lower than both the Moto 360 I was wearing on the other watch and the numbers tracked by my iPhone’s own pedometer. The app also oddly seemed to suggest that I was swimming on days when I am fairly sure I wasn’t (though who can say for sure, really?). Sleep tracking, too, is fairly basic, determining both when and how deeply you’re sleeping based on movement (or lack thereof). It’s pretty standard practice, but not as accurate as the tracking performance on devices with more sophisticated sensors. My own restless sleep habits likely have something to do with it, but as with the step count, the numbers seemed on the low side. The Go’s not a bad little fitness tracker, it’s just one that fails to live up to its promise. It’s not inexpensive enough to truly be budget and not fully featured enough to be too much of a compelling alternative to the myriad devices already flooding the market (nor, for that matter, the fact that our smartphones already have some of that functionality baked in). The price will most likely come down after the product has been on the market for a while, which will certainly help. But if Withings really wants to make a dent in the low-end fitness tracking market, it’s going to have to rethink things a bit before version 2.0. Maybe Nokia can put some of its hardware know how to good use.
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Chemists create an app that can tell if your beer is skunked
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John Biggs
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That’s what you say when you find out your whole keg of Heiney is totally skunked but it doesn’t matter because you’ll totally still drink it after you finish the pony keg of Sammo’s Irish Red. But what if I told you that folks in Spain have figured out a way to use an app to tell if your beer is a mess? Whoa, right? Whoa, indeed. Chemists at the Complutense University of Madrid have created a furfural-sensing polymer disk and app that can tell you when a beer has too much of a “stale” flavor. is a chemical related to the taste and smell of beer. It is present in most beers, but when the beer ages and begins to change chemically it can impart a stale or cardboard-like flavor to the brew and reduce the “fresh” aromas in a beer. While it’s not bad to drink old beer — just ask my college roommate, Lou — it’s not fun. From : The system developed by the researchers at the UCM consists of sensor discs that detect the presence of furfural in beer. These sensors, made from a polymer similar to the one used to manufacture contact lenses, have been designed to change colour (from yellow to pink) when they come into contact with a beer containing furfural. “We have incorporated an aniline derivative into the sensor material which reacts with the furfural and produces a pink cyanine derivative that allows us to identify the presence of the marker in the sample. The intensity of the colour increases as the concentration of furfural in the beer rises and, thus, as more time passes since the beer was produced,” explains chemist Elena Benito-Peña. The team has also created a mobile app for Android smartphones that, by taking a picture of the sensor disc, allows for the identification of the amount of furfural present in the beer. With this data, the degree of freshness can be determined. Sadly the beer/app interface isn’t quite as automated as, say, putting in a sensor stick and taking a readout. However, the process of dropping in a disk and measuring its color via smartphone could revolutionize the way we make and store beer. And, so far, things are working well when compared to traditional and complex chromatographic methods currently used to test for furfural. “The measurements have been taken using samples sent directly from the brewing company with different production dates and distinct degrees of aging. These same samples were also sent to a laboratory where they were analysed using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. The results we obtained were completely comparable,” said Benito-Peña. The process can be used to sense aging in honey and milk as well, although I like to think all new technologies should be used first and foremost as a way to tell if my case of Mickey’s Big Mouths shouldn’t have hung out in Will’s van all summer.
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Audio fingerprinting being used to track web users, study finds
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Natasha Lomas
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A wide-scale of online trackers carried out by researchers at Princeton University has identified a new technique being used to try to strip web users of their privacy, as well as quantifying the ongoing usage of some better-known tracking techniques. The new technique unearthed by the study is based on fingerprinting a machine’s audio stack via the AudioContext API. So it’s not collecting sound played or recorded on a machine but rather harvesting the audio signature of the individual machine and using that as an identifier to track a web user. They write: In the simplest case, a script from the company Liverail checks for the existence of an AudioContext and OscillatorNode to add a single bit of information to a broader fingerprint. More sophisticated scripts process an audio signal generated with an OscillatorNode to fingerprint the device. This technique appears conceptually similar to that of canvas fingerprinting. Audio signals processed on different machines or browsers may have slight differences due to hardware or software differences between the machines, while the same combination of machine and browser will produce the same output. The researchers have created a live demonstration page of the technique, which can be . They found the audio fingerprinting technique was not widespread. But nor was it being picked by some of the common tracker blocker/privacy tools they also looked at, such as Ghostery. To carry out measurements to track the trackers, the researchers used an open-source tool called OpenWP, which they say enabled a wider scale study — covering the top one million sites, as ranked by Alexa — that was also able to pick up more trackers because they used a fully featured consumer browser to harvest the necessary data versus a more stripped-down option. “Without full support for new web technologies we would not have been able to discover and measure the use of the AudioContext API for device fingerprinting,” they write. Tl;dr online tracking is an ever evolving arms race — and privacy-related research needs to reflect actual web browsing to get the fullest picture. Other tracking techniques they looked at include WebRTC IP, canvas fingerprinting, canvas font fingerprinting and battery API15. While privacy tools such as Ghostery and Firefox’s third-party cookie blocker were rated as effective by the researchers, they found “obscure trackers” pose more of a challenge, concluding that: “The long tail of fingerprinting scripts are largely unblocked by current privacy tools.” So even though audio fingerprinting might not be a very common tracking technique, it’s novel enough that it will probably fly under the radar of any privacy tools a user is running. One technology the researchers envisage being helpful in future to keep on top of proliferating and ever-changing tracking techniques — specifically by helping keep tabs on fingerprinting scripts — is machine learning, which they hope will be able to be used to automatically detect and classify trackers, potentially being able to replace the current necessity for developers to manually curate block lists. “If successful, this will greatly improve the effectiveness of browser privacy tools,” they write of machine learning. “Today such tools use tracking-protection lists that need to be created manually and laboriously, and suffer from significant false positives as well as false negatives. Our large-scale data provide the ideal source of ground truth for training classifiers to detect and categorize trackers.” The study can be .
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Now you can embed Reddit posts on other websites
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Anthony Ha
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Reddit posts are going to get the chance to live beyond Reddit itself, thanks to new embedding capabilities. If you’re an online writer or publisher, that means you can start including live Reddit content in your stories. If you’re a reader, that means you might start to see more Reddit posts on other sites, the same way you can see embedded tweets and YouTube videos. After all, Reddit’s head of journalism and media Mark Luckie pointed out that news stories come out of the site all the time — for example when participate in an Ask Me Anything session. And yes, TechCrunch certainly isn’t above . The difference now is that journalists won’t have to rely on links and screenshots — if they’re summarizing a noteworthy AMA, they can just drop the actual posts with the best quotes into their stories. (You might still want to save a screenshot, just in case the poster wants to revise a controversial statement, but Luckie said that’s not very common.) He also suggested that this could be a way for publishers to include commentary and reactions directly in their articles, rather than just relegating them to a comment thread below. “The great thing about Reddit content is that it’s usually longer, it’s more insightful, more in-depth than you’ll see on other social platforms,” Luckie said. “You’re going to get a more robust conversation.” If readers see a post they want to respond to, they can click on a link in the embed and jump straight into the conversation. Luckie suggested that when Redditors see their comments embedded on other sites, they might share those stories on Reddit itself. Plus, from a Reddit perspective, these embeds might create . While the company plans to make every post on the site embeddable anywhere on the web, it’s also working with a number of initial publisher partners — including AOL, which owns TechCrunch. (We’re working to bring the embeds to TechCrunch, but we’re still figuring out some of the technical kinks. In the meantime, you can .) “We’re thrilled to have partnered with amazing content providers, including: AOL, TIME Inc, and Advance Local,” said Reddit’s director of business development Alexandra Riccomini in an emailed statement. “We see the embeds as entrée to a series of publisher tools we’re hoping to roll out, in coordination with publishers.”
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Beyond the Valley
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Pat McCarthy
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As someone who has worked in technology his entire adult life, I can say the following with complete conviction: Somewhere at this moment a young entrepreneur is developing a product, service or business model that will transform the way our world thinks, works, plays, communicates, dates, sleeps or wakes up the day after. He or she doesn’t live in the Valley and probably has no intention of ever moving there. How do I know this? Growing up in Eugene, Oregon, I played on a high school basketball team with Brian O’Kelley, the inventor of programmatic digital advertising and co-founder of AppNexus. Not all great ideas are born in Northern California, and not all great companies are headquartered there, either. If technology is the driver of the twenty-first century economy, it is also the great, untapped resource for countless towns and cities. If you’re a municipal leader looking to diversify your city’s economy, or the chancellor of a university hoping to expand your school’s computer science program (and thereby raise its profile as a startup incubator), you need to find ways of attracting entrepreneurs to your city. Why? Because meaningful inventors create dynamic economies from scratch. Bringing a game-changing entrepreneur to your city can provide the anchor you need to turn your city into a self-sustaining tech hub. As things stand currently, the Valley has an outsized advantage in its talent pool and access to venture capital. But success in the Valley doesn’t come without its markups. You won’t be able to start up a new Apple computer in your Los Altos garage unless you can afford to pay $2.8 million for the house with which the garage is associated (the .) You’ll probably have to pay your — the average starting salary in tech — because they’ll need to earn enough to pay the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Menlo Park (where Facebook is headquartered). So how does Chicagoland, Cuyahoga County or Tulsa reinvent itself as a tech magnet capable of beating Silicon Valley at its own game? My recommendation might sound easy, though in practice it’s anything but: American cities need to find ways of developing a “full stack” of tools for power tech incubation. That means exceptional STEM educational programs at the K-12 level; a business climate and tax regime that incentivizes small businesses to bring their amenities (bars, restaurants, theaters) to town; and a recognition that the public sector is chiefly responsible for making the fundamental investment in infrastructure (good transportation, superior schools, environmental safeguards) that attracts tech entrepreneurs. Ask yourself one question: How can you attract and retain a of top-notch tech talent? Because what most tech professionals are searching for more than anything else: an intellectual community. Fortunately for tomorrow’s tech elite, it’s no longer a case of “Silicon Valley or bust.” Take a look at cities like New York, Austin, Boulder, Portland, Los Angeles, Philly and Baltimore and you’ll find a thriving tech scene in each of these places. The emergence of better video conferencing tools and collaboration software — and of professional training centers like , , and — has made it possible to build world-class tech companies in unlikely places. But in order to attract that talent, you ought to start planning now. According to a new study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an will be created by 2020 in the U.S. alone. By contrast, the same study shows only 400,000 American students will graduate with the STEM skills required to fill those vacancies. In other words, we’re now staring at a deficit of around one million unfilled tech jobs in four years’ time. It’s an incredible opportunity for STEM professionals seeking to enter a market. But we shouldn’t neglect the standpoint of the “sellers” — those cities looking to attract top tech talent. Tech professionals are monumentally picky . By showcasing some of the cities where tech talent actually being drawn beyond the confines of the Valley, and by showcasing cities that are on their way (if not, in fact, already there) toward going head to head with Silicon Valley and , my hope is that even more American cities will follow suit.
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Edyn debuts smart water valve to put home gardens on autopilot
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Lora Kolodny
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Oakland, Calif.-based started selling a new, smart gardening device this week: an Internet-connected water valve that lets users irrigate their gardens or lawns automatically. The Edyn Water Valve uses data from the company’s Edyn Garden Sensor, a soil sensor, along with local weather systems, to adjust the moisture levels in the soil. If a user wants, they can adjust their irrigation systems via the Edyn smartphone app. Sold for $69, the Edyn Water Valve weighs less than eight ounces, is solar-powered, Wi-Fi-enabled and fits a standard garden hose. The Edyn system was designed to be small enough for use with a hose that’s connected to a kitchen sink, and a window box garden if desired. Recently, Edyn CEO and founder Jason Arumburu showed TechCrunch how the new water valve works at the , maintained by urban agriculture, in San Francisco. Edyn previously raised seed funding from , , , , , and was a finalist. Other hardware makers, like Rachio Inc., Koubachi AG, iConservo Inc. and the drone-tech company Parrot, are offering competing products. But Edyn has gained traction in a crowded market for gardening tech. Its products are sold at Home Depot stores, and the company will soon be adding new brick-and-mortar retailers, Arumburu said.
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Tally raises $15 million for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage
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Lora Kolodny
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San Francisco-based raised $15 million in Series A venture funding to launch an app that promises to help people maintain good credit while avoiding fees, charges and other credit card affiliated pains. led the Series A and was joined by the company’s earlier backers — and . also invested. According to Tally CEO and co-founder Jason Brown, the company has been operating in stealth for longer than a year and has been testing its service with beta customers for about three months. Here’s how the Tally app works, Brown explained: Users can scan all of their personal credit cards into Tally, go through a brief credit score check, then authorize the startup to pay those bills from a Tally-issued line of credit. “Most adults in the U.S. have multiple personal credit cards,” Brown said, “with an average of 3.7 per person.” And at least 4 out of 10 of all U.S. households carry a balance on their credit cards, racking up late fees and paying interest. The eight-employee startup helps customers avoid all those late fees and other charges, and offers them an APR that’s lower than the average APR of all their cards. If customers do not pay off their entire Tally balance, the company makes money on that lower APR, but again, they promise that amount will be lower than what customers would have had to pay their other banks. Earlier, Cowboy Ventures led the company’s seed round of $2 million. Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee and Shasta Ventures’ Managing Director Sean Flynn sit on the board of Tally. Flynn said that he expects the startup to use its Series A funding to make its service widely known, and to bring users onto the app through a phased rollout. Tally will also need to raise institutional capital from which it can offer lines of credit, so it needs to prove its customers are a good credit risk and develop partnerships in the finance industry. As a firm, Shasta shied away from investing in alternative, or peer-to-peer lending platforms like Lending Club and Prosper, which are now . Flynn said Tally seemed different from other non-bank financial services firms because the startup’s service appeals to people consistently and broadly, not just when they need a loan around a big life event like going to college or buying a home. “Tally solves problems that customers have managing multiple credit cards, incurring charges or fees, and not knowing which one to pay first,” Flynn said. “Theirs is an elegant solution that can apply to a lot of people.” Brown said that Tally has benefitted from alternative lending startups’ earlier success, however. “The investment community has gotten comfortable with non-bank entities originating loan assets,” Brown said. “And financial institutions have become accustomed to startups working with them through API’s and other technologies and systems.”
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Uncovering and counseling domestic violence victims through the My Plan app
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Claudia Cahalane
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‘Has he threatened you with a gun?’ Is one of the questions a woman will be asked when she’s downloaded the domestic abuse counseling app . “This scenario is more common on college campuses than we’d like to believe,” said the app’s co-founder, Nancy Glass. Glass, who is a professor and associate dean for research at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in the U.S., founded the app after 20 years of witnessing women navigate complex, potentially fatal, safety decisions with minimal formal help. It was developed in partnership with the , an organization that aims to eradicate relationship violence. The group was founded by Sharon Love, whose daughter, Yeardley, was murdered by an ex-boyfriend in 2010. The tool, which has been piloted on U.S. college campuses, asks women a series of questions about their situation. Then with input from professionals via a live chat function, shows a woman how to consider possible choices for action, developing a tailored safety plan and linking her to local resources. “She could get help to move accommodation, and she may get a protection order, among other things. Often people just aren’t aware of the help out there and how to access it,” says Glass, who is a also professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. According to the United Nations, , mostly by an intimate partner. “The questions in My Plan start women thinking about what constitutes a healthy relationship; to look at jealousy and controlling behavior. Women tell us that by using it their concerns have been validated, they’ve understood how dangerous their situation is and that things could have ended very badly if they’d not found the app,” she says. Since launching at the start of 2014 in partnership with the One Love Foundation, My Plan has been downloaded nearly 15,000 times via iTunes and Android platforms – with nearly 6,000 of those happening in the first few months of 2016. A study, with a sample of 725 U.S.-based users over 12 months, to safely leave their abuser, reducing their exposure to sexual and psychological intimate partner violence. “It’s very different to just googling what’s out there,” says Glass. “In our pilot, we compared the difference for a woman using the app as opposed to searching online and using domestic violence and safety websites. Women using the app, of all ages, reported more clarity and understanding of their core values and priorities and felt more equipped to make decisions. Most importantly, those that left their partner, were able to do so safely, which isn’t always the case. My Plan has so far been launched in Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well as the US. But, knowing that gender-based violence is a monumental problem globally, undermining peace, equality and healthy lives, the app has been designed to be easily adapted for new populations and settings, as resource become available. As a , Glass and her colleagues are hoping to win the US$300,000 prize money, plus support from Womanity’s networks and knowledge-base, to branch out to new countries and communities. They are currently developing My Plan in Somalia and Kenya’s refugee communities, through a partnership with the International Committee for the Development of Peoples (known as CISP). The Italian NGO has deep experience in working with gender-based violence in East Africa. “We are interested in speaking to development organisations in diverse settings in low and middle income areas around the world to grow this,” says Glass. There are some barriers in Somalia, she explains. Certain terrorist groups have cut access to 3G. But there are other potential wifi options and the team is looking at using clinics to house wifi hotspots. Francesco Njagi Kaburu, regional program manager for protection at the CISP East Africa Office, says the app has promising potential as part of a drive to de-normalise gender-based violence in East Africa. “The first thing is to convince someone about the importance of such an app,” he explains. “Many times social workers tell us women are not aware of how bad a situation was or could become. “In Mogadishu, where we’re looking to first trial the app, the level of capacity for self assessment is very, very low. Domestic violence is taken for granted – women think that if their husband doesn’t beat them he doesn’t love them; that it’s a positive form of discipline.” To achieve scale, the two organisations are working with the Somalian government to ensure its early acceptance of the project. As time goes on, CISP staff will also work with the country’s Ministry of Health so that My Plan can be run through health clinics. The aim is then to take the app to as many difficult and low resourced settings as possible around Africa and around the world.
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Things to make your home office legit
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Contributor
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post was done in partnership with
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Watch Alchemist Accelerator’s Demo Day Right Here
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Samantha O'Keefe
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TechCrunch is pleased to bring you ‘s demo day live from PARC, a Xerox Company. Alchemist is one of those rare programs that focuses on enterprise startups. These aren’t your parents enterprise companies. Pitches today will span products that help businesses leverage drones for delivery, keep food fresher with RFIDs, personalize the cost of healthcare, increase crop yields and yes, manage their cloud infrastructure. Investors and press will hear pitches from 17 enterprise companies. The demos start at and are expected to last two hours. You can watch it live or below. [ustream id=20605262 live=1 hwaccel=0 width=480 height=270] To connect to any of the presenting companies, reach out here: . Meet The Startups (In order of appearance): : Cloud infrastructure optimization platform that reduces costs up to 50% and maintains performance levels. : Cloud software service for aggregating, unifying and interpreting air quality data for cities and device OEMs. : College and university wellness application to create a culture of health throughout the country. : Uses RFID-enabled refrigerators to offer the most affordable fresh food solution for workplaces. : End-to-end solutions that enable energy-aware mobile app development. : Outcomes focused nutrition program to lower enterprise healthcare cost. Employee engagement 5x higher than alternatives. : Deep learning platform for identifying threats on social media. : Fuels marketing campaigns by leveraging CRM & marketing automation data into laser-focused targeted advertising. Resulting in 300% more MQLs on average. : Personalizes the customer experience in-store, and help retailers make the creation of customer loyalty easy. : Helps farmers of trees and vines manage their yield by using Machine Learning and Computer Vision. : Delivers data-native self-learning applications that can “sense and learn” which empowers business users in medium-to-large enterprises to improve business outcomes via continuous deep learning.
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The average age for a child getting their first smartphone is now 10.3 years
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Jay Donovan
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This week I ended up with an advance copy of new report called . The report—which is a subsection from a larger, ongoing study of 500 women across the USA—details findings on the way that kids are using technology and reveals several interesting insights. The highlights include: Additionally, some of Influence Central’s research paints a picture of parents who are relaxing a little bit about their kids’ access to the internet which is enabled by so many devices. I had not heard of Influence Central prior to receiving this report, so I reached out with a few questions. Specifically, I asked company CEO/Founder Stacy DeBroff about the fact that when I Google the term “average age a child receives a cell phone” at least one report from 2015 pins the age at 6 or 7 years, not 10 (although originally conducted by someone called vouchercloud). In any event, DeBroff responded that while she can’t comment on other report findings, their own study was specifically focused on children’s smartphone ownership and not just feature phones or kid-specific phones. She continued by saying that she felt like, in the past, mobile phones were merely used by kids to have voice contact with their parents. These days, kids increasingly use them for a host of activities beyond simple contact with parents like games or productivity, enabled by smartphones. I also inquired why the study participants were only mothers and not also fathers? DeBroff replied that that was in order to maintain consistency with the 2012 report for which this was a follow up. It was not the same, exact 500 women in this new survey, but rather similar sample of women in the same life stage as the previous study. Some things that remain unclear are whether this new-found smartphone ownership is also tied to independent wireless accounts (e.g. kids have their own phone numbers and data plans) or whether they are just hand-me-down smartphones using Wi-Fi capabilities. The survey question did not go into this level of detail. Regardless, it makes sense to me that device usage would increase. With many adults getting new smartphones every year, there is surely an inventory of recent, capable smartphones going unused in households. I also should note that Influence Central is a marketing agency — and their interpretation of the data is that kids’ mobile savvy is an important behavior for brands to consider as they think about how to communicate with them both now and in the future. Mobility is a way of life to which they are easily accustomed. It is somewhat sad to me that my nostalgic memory of childhood—digging in the dirt, riding bikes or playing soccer, unattended, in the street—could be replaced by a portrait of kids who look just like their parents with their noses buried in a smartphone. At the same time, there is no denying that today’s kids are more capable than ever and are merely adapting to the tools available to them. To shun these tools also doesn’t make much sense. I suppose it always just comes down to life balance. But as a smartphone junkie myself (and parent of a ten-year-old with a smartphone and data account), I’m not trying to be your spiritual advisor here about parenting dos and don’ts. But the data speaks for itself and it’s not going to do any good to ignore it.
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YouTube shows off dedicated VR app for Daydream platform
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Lucas Matney
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Google has been slowly building virtual reality-focused functionality into the YouTube app over the past year with support for 360-degree video formats, stereoscopic video, 3D audio and general Google Cardboard support. Today, YouTube, the “world’s largest collection of VR videos,” teased a complete VR-centered design that will be coming to Daydream-enabled phones. The company also announced in the that they will be working with content partners like NBA, BuzzFeed and Tastemade to “explore new ways of storytelling in virtual environments that will provide valuable lessons about the way creators and viewers interact with VR video.” YouTube also announced that its bringing its Jump VR camera program to its YouTube Spaces in LA and NYC and plans to bring to all of its global locations soon to help content creators start working in virtual reality. Whereas Google Cardboard was mobile-first in that you selected and navigated Cardboard-compatible apps up to the point of viewing the content at which point you’d slot the phone into your headset and hold the viewer up to your face, Daydream is designed for navigation within VR and thus this version of YouTube had to be designed from the ground up. Details are mostly scant on the YouTube VR app itself, but it will apparently be full-featured and offer users access to playlists, voice search and discovery. It will be interesting to see how things like text-entry work on the app or whether the company will largely shift attention towards voice search across not just the YouTube app but the entire Daydream interface. The reference design controller that Google has shown off is capable of selecting items onscreen like a laser pointer so text entry could be relatively straightforward, albeit cumbersome. Based on the lone screenshot that YouTube generously showed off, it looks like the app allows interface navigation from within video playback on the pause screen which is quite interesting and offers suggestions of how user experience on Daydream may differ from the navigation frameworks of other mobile VR headsets like Gear VR.
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Apple is ‘working rapidly’ to launch Apple Pay in more countries in Asia and Europe
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Jon Russell
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Apple Pay may only be available in six countries right now, but the iPhone maker is keen to extend the footprint of the digital payment service worldwide. That’s according to Jennifer Bailey, VP of Apple Pay, who spoke to TechCrunch this week as the service expanded its presence in Singapore, where it now supports five major banks that cover over 80 percent of cards, following . Apple Pay is also live in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia and China, but there are plans to do a lot more. “We’re working rapidly in Asia and also in Europe, our goal is to have Apple Pay in every significant market Apple is in,” Bailey told us. Apple recently announced plans to expand the payment service to Hong Kong but, that aside, it is unclear which markets will be next. Back in February, that France, Hong Kong and Brazil are on Apple’s expansion list for this year, while is also in Apple’s thinking, but the company isn’t commenting on its plans. “We have announced Hong Kong [and], across the [Asia Pacific] region, we’re talking to many partners and banks and evaluating how quickly we can bring Apple Pay to new markets,” former Netscape exec Bailey said. Apple has focused on the most logical markets in Asia to date — China is the most populous country on the planet and a huge market for Apple, while Singapore and Hong Kong are small markets with many Western consumer traits — and Bailey shared some insight into what Apple seeks when assessing expansions. “First, we look at the size of the market for Apple products,” she said. “We also look at credit and debit card penetration, and [existing] contactless payment coverage. “[But] when we bring Apple Pay to market even when contactless is low it will grow — it was 4 percent in the U.S. but is now 20 percent. We also work with our network partners, where we can utilize integration with Amex and Visa, to go to market quickly.” That focus on existing Apple customers makes sense, since they are the only ones who can use the technology, but it might rule out any immediate entry into countries in regions like Southeast Asia, where cheaper Android devices dominate Apple and others on marketshare. Either way, Bailey said she is “really excited about the momentum” that Apple Pay has gathered in markets where it is live. that the service hit three million provisions inside its first three days in China, while, more generally, it is adding one million new users per week worldwide. Bailey didn’t offer new data for Apple Pay in China, but she did say that the service is “seeing incredible user and developer reception” with a number of prominent consumer tech companies integrating the service into their apps to enable digital payments. “From all indicators the launch [in China] has been really successful,” she added. Apple Pay now covers 2,500 bank locations in the U.S., up from an initial six, while in China the 12 it launched with in February is now 19. Even in existing markets where Apple Pay is live, there are more updates planned soon. Beyond adding support for more banks and cards, Apple is also focused on introducing loyalty programs for Apple Pay — having . Likewise, Apple Pay doesn’t support online/in-app payments in all markets, so that is also on the agenda. That might just be the tip of the iceberg. Earlier this year, as it aims to grab a larger slice of the payments pie.
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Facebook starts selling offsite ads targeting non-users too
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Jon Russell
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Facebook’s advertising network is already a colossal business — it helped in its most recent quarter alone — but it is about to take a step towards become the internet’s advertising exchange after announcing that it will start showing ads to non-users across the web.. Previously, if you were either not a Facebook user or not logged into the social network, then Facebook advertising on third party websites or mobile apps — powered by the Facebook Audience Network — would not be visible to you. That all changes today. With more than 1.6 billion active users who share a range of personal information through its service, Facebook has built a formidable advertising business that enables companies to drill down into granular detail when targeting the audience they want to reach. That’s changed the game for generating interest in websites, services, app downloads or really anything online. While Facebook’s Audience Network has enabled it to extend that reach outside of Facebook to let advertisers find Facebook users while they are not inside the social network, today’s subtle move could hand advertisers the power to reach even more people. , Facebook will use a mix of cookie tracking, its own buttons and plugins and other data to identify non-users on third-party websites. Added to that data, Facebook will use patterns within its massive userbase to make educated guesses about non-users to help target them with more relevant advertising. For example, why are they on this particular website, what interests and hobbies might they have, etc. These details are essential to replicating the very precise Facebook ad targeting with those who don’t have a Facebook account. If hundreds of thousands of Facebook users who also visited a site are interested in a particular type of clothing or app, or respond well to a specific kind of marketing, Facebook could use that insight to boost the relevance of ads pointed at non-users who visited that site — both immediately and later since the cookies follow them. “Because we have a core audience of over a billion people [on Facebook] who we do understand, we have a greater opportunity than other companies using the same type of mechanism,” Andrew Bosworth, VP of Facebook’s ads and business platform, told the Journal. Bosworth believes that, beyond offering more targeted outreach for advertisers, Facebook’s knowledge of internet users and advertising practices can benefit users by cutting down on poor quality advertising. “Advertising may be here to stay, but bad advertising… doesn’t have to. That’s why we’re working to provide a better online advertising experience for everyone: people, publishers, and advertisers,” . “While more than a hundred companies already serve interest-based advertising on websites and apps today, we offer a better experience because we care about the integrity of Facebook ads,” Bosworth added. That includes refusing to run ads that auto-play sound or use frustrating pop-ups. This move could be hugely pivotal for Facebook. Not only does it is further evidence that the company is keen to establish itself as the world’s premier video platform — which has some seriously money when it comes to advertising, not to mention tough competition from the likes of YouTube — by appealing beyond its social network, it also raises some tantalizing possibilities for the future. Back when Facebook began testing off-network advertising in 2012, about the potential for an ad-free experience on the social network. It would essentially use its main properties to collect data and provide a consistently enjoyable experience, instead of using the Facebook and Instagram apps as sources of page views. While it is up for debate whether Facebook would go so far as to remove its core ads altogether, a thriving internet business could allow it to impose a stricter filter on the kinds of ads it shows or avoid having to show more per organic News Feed post than it does already. That could help place more focus on video advertising, a play that Facebook has pursued for some time, while fewer ad spots would make those actually on the social network considerably more valuable. Scarcity would mean these spots are more valuable to advertisers and, potentially, more relevant and less intrusive. Facebook’s big competitor in the global ads market is Google. The search giant might arguably know more about people’s browsing habits. But since Google failed at social, it never got users voluntarily filling out profiles full of valuable, targetable personal information. One thing is for sure from today’s news though: if you’ve avoided getting a Facebook account so far or have quit the social network, there is no hiding — Facebook will find you on the internet.
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Crunch Report | Snapchat Raises $1.8 Billion
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
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Tito Hamze, Jason Kopek
Tito Hamze
Yashad Kulkarni
Joe Zolnoski
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Intel buys computer vision startup Itseez to improve navigation in self-driving cars
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Catherine Shu
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Intel has to develop better navigation for self-driving cars. The value of the deal was undisclosed. Founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, makes computer vision algorithms and software. The company’s it calls “advanced driver assistance systems,” which allows car hardware to recognize pedestrians and traffic signs and warn about potential collisions. The acquisition of Itseez comes one month Intel , another Internet of Things-related company. Based in Italy, Yogitech works on functional safety for semiconductors (which means its tech makes sure the chips powering autonomous vehicles are working properly). Last year it also bought Lantiq, which . Intel for self-driving cars. In Intel’s announcement, Doug Davis, Intel senior vice president and general manager of its Internet of Things Group (IOTG), said, “Itseez will become a key ingredient for Intel’s Internet of Things Group roadmap, and will help Intel’s customers create innovative deep-learning-based [computer vision] applications like autonomous driving, digital security and surveillance, and industrial application.” Itseez has also developed algorithms for robotics, surveillance, smartphones, and sports analytics. The acquisition is part of Intel’s strategic shift, which it , from PC chip maker to cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and analyzing data from those devices. Intel says its data center and Internet of Things businesses, which make up 40 percent of its total revenue, are already its “primary growth engines,” and have helped it weather a decline in the PC market by creating a total of $2.2 billion in revenue growth last year. But the restructuring has already come at a huge cost—Intel is , or 11 percent of its workforce. Intel CEO Brian Crzanich said the job cuts are part of Intel’s “restructuring to accelerate its transformation.”
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Quora loses its public face, Marc Bodnick
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Josh Constine
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Quora’s been at the Q&A game for 7 years now but still is only starting to monetize. It’s growing, but momentum could take a hit tonight as long-time head of business and community Marc Bodnick to return to the investing world or found his own startup. Bodnick tells me “I’m ready to be part of something that I start, or that I start with others.” He gave a positive projection of the business, saying “The company’s just getting bigger and delivering more audience for people who write. As big as the company’s gotten, it’s still a very safe and civil place to answer questions.” Bodnick notes he’ll remain loosely connected to the company, writing on Quora “I’ll be staying on as an advisor to the company on stuff like [BD and community]. And I might help — Quora’s Head of Outreach — keep bringing on more session hosts like and White House Press Secretary .” After original Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever left, Bodnick shouldered the responsibility for press and marketing while CEO Adam D’Angelo led. His recent work securing famous public figures like Sheryl Sandberg for Quora’s Ask Me Anything-style “Writing Sessions” has helped juice user growth. Clinton’s recent session delivered a record 12 million views. Bodnick was known for passionately extolling the importance of Quora for posterity, and the joys of spontaneous curiosity that the site fueled. The Harvard and Stanford grad formerly worked as an investor. was co-founder and managing director of Elevation Partners, a VC fund connected with Bono of U2. There he led a $100 million investment in Yelp and sat on its board until joining Quora. Quora’s “Promoted by” ads are finally starting to run The Q&A startup’s up-vote/down-vote interface is . D’Angelo tells me “We have a whole bunch of advertisers that are live now and we’re adding more every week. The early tests have gone very well.” Quora has seemed passive about monetizing, relying on its that its been slowly burning. Though it might be the clear leader in its subjective knowledge base market, investors have to be wondering when Quora’s business will actually get into gear.
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This algorithm could make DNA origami as simple as 3D printing
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Devin Coldewey
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If you want to print something a few inches tall, extruded plastic is a good medium. But when you need something at the nanometer scale, DNA is a better bet — but who has the time to design and assemble it base by base? New research lets would-be DNA origami masters design the shape — while an algorithm determines where to put our friends A, T, G, and C. DNA’s structure doesn’t have to be just a double helix: by fiddling with the order of bases or substituting other molecules, the strand can be cause to make a hard right turn, or curve around in one direction or another — and with enough foresight, a single strand can make enough twists and convolutions that it forms a useful geometric structure. These structures can be used to deliver drugs, encapsulate tools like CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing elements, or even store information. The problem has been that designing, say, a dodecahedron is a tremendously complicated task, and few have the expertise to assemble such a complex molecule, composed of thousands of base pairs, by hand. That’s what researchers at MIT, Arizona State University, and Baylor University aimed to change, and their success is . “The paper turns the problem around from one in which an expert designs the DNA needed to synthesize the object, to one in which the object itself is the starting point, with the DNA sequences that are needed automatically defined by the algorithm,” said MIT’s Mark Bathe . Basically, all the user needs to do is provide a 3D shape with a closed surface. It could be a polyhedron, something more round, like a torus, or less symmetrical, like a teardrop. As long as it is designed within certain specifications, once you hand it off to the computer, your work is done. The algorithm created by the researchers determines the exact order of bases needed to provide the “scaffold,” the single strand of DNA that will bend and twist around itself to produce the shape. It even has a cool name: DAEDALUS. (DNA Origami Sequence Design Algorithm for User-defined Structures — not an exact match, but we’ll forgive them.) It works like a charm for all kinds of shapes — they checked, of course, using 3D single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, obviously: The uses in medicine and gene editing are obvious, but the researchers hope that this sudden and drastic increase in the technology’s accessibility will lead to uses being pondered beyond those fields. DNA storage, for instance, is potentially made far more convenient by this. A unique structure could be created using the algorithm, with portions dedicated to encoded binary data — basically it would be a nanoscale ROM disk made of DNA. How cool is that? “Our hope is that this automation significantly broadens participation of others in the use of this powerful molecular design paradigm,” said Bathe.
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Gawker’s Nick Denton to billionaire Peter Thiel: Let’s take it outside (of court)
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Lora Kolodny
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Tech investor, billionaire and Donald Trump-backer has been locked in a legal battle by proxy with Gawker Media that amounts to a First Amendment test which could potentially put Gawker out of business. The media company that consistently challenges and pokes at the powers that be in technology and venture capital has, according to “hired an investment banker to explore strategic options including a potential sale,” in the midst of this costly conflict. Now, Gawker founder has published an challenging the investor in Facebook, Palantir and SpaceX to engage in a public debate outside of the courtroom, and without the affiliated legal fees, in the name of public discourse. For those just becoming aware of the situation, here’s a timeline: In seemingly unrelated incidents: If you’ve read this far and are wondering where Thiel comes into play again, and how he could possibly be connected to a character like Terry Bollea, let’s skip a few months ahead to May 2016: Which brings us back to Denton’s challenge to Thiel. In an open letter he published late today on Gawker.com, he writes: The best regulation for speech, in a free society, is more speech. We each claim to respect independent journalism, and liberty. We each have criticisms of the other’s methods and objectives. Now you have revealed yourself, let us have an open and public debate. The court cases will proceed as long as you fund them. And I am sure the war of headlines will continue. But, even if we put down weapons just for a brief truce, let us have a more constructive exchange. We can hold the discussion in person with a moderator of your choosing, in front of an audience, under the auspices of the Committee to Protect Journalists, or in a written discussion on some neutral platform such as Medium. Just tell me where and when. At the very least, it will improve public understanding of the interplay of media and power. Considering the amount spent on lawyers, $20 million between us at this point, there should be some public benefit. We will continue reporting on the fate of Gawker Media and the impact of Thiel’s legal and political activities on his businesses. A source who previously worked for an institution that poured significant amounts of capital into Peter Thiel’s funds said he did not think endowments, wealthy individuals or family funds who are limited partners working with Thiel’s funds would react in any way. They only want to see good returns on their investments. The source said, “Limited partners in his funds know he is an original thinker, and libertarian and they probably won’t be concerned with his political involvement or legal involvement vis a vis Gawker Media.”
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Tesla’s patent strategy opens the road to sustainability for transport and for itself
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Craig Buschmann
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What makes Tesla unique? How about everything. Mention patents to most people and their eyes glaze over. Worse, they think of patent “trolls” that some say are harming American businesses. But everyone appreciates one fundamental fact: Patents, and intellectual property generally, mean value. Tesla began accepting orders on March 31 for its Model 3 electric vehicle at around $35,000. But unlike companies that jealousy guard their patents and intellectual property, Tesla’s giving away its patents for free. Why? It has a lot to do with how the company imagines its future markets — and how it manages its world-famous brand. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk famously announced not two years ago, “ ” (The sentence is an inside joke for coders and video game mavens: Musk’s seemingly unusual grammar refers to a well-known Internet meme, “ ,” a mistranslation of a Japanese phrase in the early 1990s video game Zero Wing.) Musk said Tesla would “not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” In doing so, Tesla created a limited, open-source patent pool for the technologies used to build its electric vehicles (EVs) — including for . Why give its patents away? To build the size of the market, and its own share of it. Tesla’s vision is an electric-powered future for automobiles and sophisticated energy storage systems, so the company must change a culture accustomed to internal combustion engines, and it must revolutionize the nation’s fuel delivery infrastructure. As more people buy EVs, demand for a charging infrastructure increases. As the number of charging stations increases, it’s easier for potential buyers to rationalize a purchase. Not to mention that each charging location becomes another powerful advertisement of the Tesla brand, and a showroom for its vehicles. in a positive feedback loop. And that moves Tesla toward its goal: selling all-electric vehicles to an increasingly larger group of buyers — buyers confident they’ll have access to power wherever they need it. Tesla’s not even the first automotive manufacturer to build and sell an EV. But that brings it back to brand. Consider: What name leaps to mind when thinking about an electric car? How many people think Tesla first, and any one of the Nissan Leaf, BMW i3 or Chevy Bolt second? Tesla’s Model 3 is an EV priced to put all-electric transportation within reach of middle-class buyers, with the cachet of a market-leading brand renowned for innovation. A lower-cost entry point — like Apple’s recently announced price cut for the Apple Watch, and its new, smaller iPhone — can increase market share by driving wider adoption. By making its patents available for free, Tesla empowers others to build electric vehicles. More cars come along and the grid gets bigger. As the pie grows, everyone gets a larger slice. Why don’t other automakers do the same thing? Simple: Established auto manufacturers have focused only intermittently on the EV market. More recently, Toyota, Ford and GM have focused on alternative fuel technologies like hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) or other partially electrified vehicles. Established automakers can afford to adapt to new market opportunities over time. Tesla, as many investors know already, is burning cash and has yet to turn a profit. Its very survival is at stake. Truth be told, and do license their alternative fuel technology patents: Toyota for its hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) and Ford for its HEVs. But they have different approaches to doing so. Toyota is offering its powertrain technology patents royalty-free through 2020; royalty-free access to its hydrogen production and supply patents as yet never expires. The company is less reliant on other market players to assist in setting a standard for FCVs, so it needn’t rely on others to help establish a market for them. But like Tesla, , so it’s reducing the cost to others who are interested in adding to the number of hydrogen fueling stations. Ford’s approach to licensing is more traditional. Some of its patents for HEV technology are available for a fee. But Ford doesn’t need a tool to help create the conditions necessary for the relatively more mature technology, which has been mass-marketed for nearly 20 years, to succeed. It can afford to view its patent pool as a potential new source of revenue. Tesla wins by using its patent pool to for EVs. Unique in the marketplace, Tesla wins for the brand by doing what Elon Musk famously does all the time: going against the grain. Building markets, bolstering the public’s view of the brand, staying famous, all the time, for everything it does. Technology innovators have much to learn from Tesla’s example. And whose eyes would glaze over when the topic of patents has to do with revolutionizing how the entire world travels?
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KitSplit brings its peer-to-peer, creative equipment rentals to Washington, D.C.
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Anthony Ha
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aims to help creative professionals rent the equipment they need, whether it’s basic video gear or something a little more high-tech, say or . The service launched last year in New York, and now it’s ready to expand, starting with its launch in Washington, D.C., followed by Philadelphia and Boston. Co-founder said has been allowing people to sign up in other areas (if you search outside New York and D.C., you’ll still get product listings, but they’ll be preceded by a message saying that the service hasn’t “officially launched yet”). The sign-ups suggested that these three cities “were places we should go,” Budelis said. “They don’t have as many rental houses, they don’t have as many resources, but people do own equipment, and there are people who are really in need of access to equipment,” she added. Budelis has worked as a video and multimedia producer herself, both as a freelancer and at The New Yorker. (Her co-founder and CEO has some connections to the film world, too — her father is Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of studio Troma). Budelis said KitSplit was inspired by her own frustrations with existing equipment rental companies. “There are thousands of little companies across the country that offer equipment,” she said. “They’re great companies and they’re passionate about what they do, but because they have to invest all of their capital in the equipment, it’s hard for them to scale, a lot of them require insurance but don’t offer it, most of them don’t offer delivery.” So if you need some equipment for your next video shoot, KitSplit allows you to rent it from other professionals (as well as from the existing rental companies). Or, if you have to buy an expensive piece of gear and only use it occasionally, you can make money by renting it out the rest of the time. Plus, the company handles delivery and integrates insurance purchase into the rental process. KitSplit currently has more than 5,000 members, spanning individuals and larger media companies like Conde Nast Entertainment, Hearst and NBC, and its listings include $40 million worth of equipment. The company is deepening its involvement with Hearst through an investment from HearstLab, an incubator within Hearst focused on female-founded startups. (Other investors include Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video Ventures, Joanne Wilson, JustWorks CEO Isaac Oates and Blue Apron CEO Matt Salzberg’s Aspiration Growth.) “We’re really excited about improving access to equipment, democratizing access to film equipment,” Kaufman said.
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ForcePhone adds pressure sensitivity to any phone using ultrasonics
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Devin Coldewey
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Force touch may be a feature exclusive to the latest iPhones, but something like it is now possible on pretty much any phone out there, thanks to research from engineers at the University of Michigan. It works not by polling sensors in the touchscreen, but through ultrasound. The phone’s speaker emits a sound covering the 18-24 kHz range, well outside what a human can hear — but the device’s microphone can detect it just fine. When the user presses on the screen or squeezes the phone’s body, the character of the sound changes, and the software detects that. Don’t worry, though — the sound is played at a very low volume, so it won’t bother any dogs or sharp-eared young folks in the area. Touches with different pressures don’t register on the gyro or accelerometer, but are clear as day to the ForceTouch process. “You don’t need a special screen or built-in sensors to do this,” said Kang Shin, professor in the university’s electrical engineering and computer science department, in a . “ForcePhone increases the vocabulary between the phone and the user.” A hard squeeze could return the phone to the home screen, for instance, or a series of them could call 911. Varying pressure can be detected, too — it isn’t binary. It’s not quite the level of detail you get with the sensors in an iPhone 6s, to say nothing of those in, say, a Wacom tablet, but it seems like enough that you could rely on it as a gesture. Shin and his grad student, Yu-Chih Tung, were inspired by, of all things, a recent Batman movie. You might remember in “The Dark Knight” when Batman turns all the phones in the city into sonic locators in order to find the Joker. “I thought it was an interesting idea to turn smartphones into a sonar-based system and felt this could lead to new applications to address challenges faced by smartphone users,” said Tung. I’ve asked for a bit more information on whether the process is affected by ambient noise, and when we can expect a public release so you can try this yourself. In the meantime, Shin and Tung will be presenting their work next month at MobiSys in Singapore.
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Will Twilio reopen tech IPO window?
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Katie Roof
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If the company ends up going through with its plans, it would likely be just the third tech IPO of the year. This has been the worst year for public offerings since the 2009 recession. Many who follow tech IPOs are excited to see that it’s inching closer. “It all feels like a concert where the headliner is running late, and the crowd has been getting antsy,” said Atish Davda, CEO at EquityZen. “Finally, Twilio walks on the stage and gives everyone a reason to calm down.” Twilio is not profitable — the company reported a loss of $35.5 million on $166.9 million in revenue for the full year last year. This compares with a loss of $26.8 million on $88.8 million in revenue for the year before. In the first quarter of this year, Twilio lost $6.5 million on $59.3 million in revenue. In the filing, Twilio said it plans to raise $100 million. This is a placeholder and is subject to change. Twilio also revealed that it plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker “TWLO.” “We expect a modest valuation and a small float but a reasonably successful run for Twilio,” said Max Wolff, chief economist at . “As a B2B name with many marquee clients Twilio is worth watching, if an imperfect bellwether,” said Wolff. “We don’t see this as reopening the flood gates, but we are sure it will be watched and will influence timing decisions.”
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Twitter tunes into Spotify to soundtrack its audio cards
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Josh Constine
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Whistle while you tweet with the new partnership between Twitter and Spotify. Now you can listen to 30-second previews of songs in your timeline and Moments thanks to . Twitter first in 2014 with iTunes previews and later worked with . Now the most popular on-demand subscription streaming service will lend your ears something to scroll to. Beyond playing while looking at a tweet, you can dock the music player in the corner of Twitter and keep browsing your feed while the music plays. Twitter is looking for more opportunities to be the center of your social sharing and consumption, and music could give it a boost. Instead of having to blindly follow Spotify links out and wait for the app to load, you’ll be able to hear the tracks play in line. Meanwhile, Spotify is seeking any and all ways to stay ahead of Apple Music, which is rapidly shrinking the gap between them. Spotify officially has 75 million active listeners and 30 million paid subscribers, though it’s also been reported to have . Apple Music, meanwhile, has just a year after launch. Spotify recently scored a hit with its , which 40 million people have listened to in the last three months. Spotify hit in 2015, up 80 percent in a year, but it still saw losses of $194 million because it has to pay so much out in royalties and is aggressively trying to grow its user base. Spotify tells me, “As part of today’s launch, Spotify tracks can now be featured within providing another great way to discover new music.” And Twitter wrote, “Any Tweet or Moment with a Spotify track link will play the audio in-line, so you can listen to the song without having to leave your Twitter feed. The music conversation on Twitter is massive, the three most followed people on Twitter are musicians!” Spotify needs something to compete with Apple Music’s massive advertising budget and Tidal’s premier exclusives. That could be building out Spotify as a platform that supports third-party products, ranging from DJ apps that let you spin with your Spotify subscription, to integrations like this. The company has built itself up as one truly dedicated to listeners, rather than being a hardware company or money-making venture for Jay Z. Now it has to execute on that strategy by putting Spotify everywhere so your subscription becomes more and more valuable.
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B&O PLAY’s Beoplay A1 packs a lot of sound into a little Bluetooth speaker
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Brian Heater
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Some days it’s hard to get excited about Bluetooth speakers. That’s not a statement of judgment, really, it’s just that the space has been flooded with a lot of like-minded devices that are honestly pretty tough to tell apart. And then something like the Beoplay A1 comes along and gives you hope that maybe there’s still a little more excitement left in the category after all. Even at first glance, it’s clear there’s something different going on here. Bang & Olufsen’s/B&O PLAY’s “budget” speaker is a departure from the standard Bluetooth bar. The form factor is best described as a button, a circular shape with the grille on top and controls along the side. The design, coupled with the on-board microphone, also makes the A1 a solid speakerphone. Pair it to a handset, and boom, instant conference call. Honestly, it looks a bit weird at first glance, particularly when coupled with the leather string that hangs off the side like a bolo tie. But B&O has never been one to shy away from interesting designs for both form- and function-related purposes. Created by Danish furniture designer Cecilie Manz, the form factor frees the speaker from having to sit around on a desk all day. It’s a bit like the UE Roll, in that you can hang it on the wall, tie it to a backpack or throw it in a bag to take with you (as I have been doing to and from the office for the past few days). The Beoplay A1 doesn’t, however, look and feel a lot more substantial — and premium — than Logitech’s device. And that kind of build brings some comprises in terms of ruggedness. That’s not to say the speaker is fragile — it’s scratch and dust resistant and strong enough to take a few knocks, should you decide to take it camping, but don’t expect to, say, take a shower with the thing. Really, if ruggedness is a primary concern, I would look elsewhere. That said, the Beoplay looks a heck of a lot better sitting on a desk or bookcase than the sporty, neon UE Roll, which is the energy drink of the Bluetooth speaker world (making the A1 something more along the lines of a dry martini). Most importantly, the thing sounds great. B&O has done a really great job jamming a lot of sound into a little device. The speakers deliver a nice mix of highs and lows in a full and surprisingly powerful sound from a small circumference. The speaker also gets plenty loud, capable of volumes higher than some larger speakers, without risking distortion. B&O also goes big on battery life, with a promised 24 hours by the company’s count. I found that I was able to use it for several days without having to plug it in. And when that time comes, it does so via USB-C for extra speed. The caveat here, as with so many B&O products before it, is price. As mentioned before, this is a “budget” speaker for the company, which still puts it toward the high end of standard Bluetooth desk speakers at $250. There are a lot of much cheaper units on the market that offer decent audio, but for those looking for a well-crafted, great sounding system with long battery life, the Beoplay delivers the goods.
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We want you to be the next Startup Battlefield Manager!
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Samantha O'Keefe
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TechCrunch is looking for a Startup Battlefield Manager! TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield is the world’s preeminent startup competition and is at the very heart of Disrupt. At each event selected startups have an opportunity to pitch in front of top-notch investors, compete for $50K and the Disrupt Cup. More than that, teams get lots of public visibility, which is great for getting users, hiring and raising capital. Prior to Disrupt, all Battlefield teams go through a rigorous coaching process and end up with solid presentation skills, hard-earned pitching prowess and newfound courage. Over the years, the Battlefield has grown into a community of over 600 companies who together have raised $6.1 billion and had 76 exits. We’re ready to take this program to the next level. We’re looking for a bright, talented person to help manage the entire process, from bringing in applicants to picking the finalists and getting them ready for the Disrupt stages in San Francisco, New York, London and at CES. Are you already in the Startup Whisperer role at a popular accelerator and think you can take your show on the road? Are you a former founder looking to support early-stage entrepreneurs? Do you read TechCrunch every day and want to get involved? Can you find the next big thing? TechCrunch is looking for someone to oversee the Startup Battlefield process in all its phases — including applicant recruitment, applicant review and selection (working under the direction of TechCrunch Director of Special Projects), coaching sessions and, finally, stage management at Disrupt. In addition to those responsibilities, the role will aim to recruit continuously stronger pools of Battlefield applicants, strengthen and streamline our rehearsal program and further the Battlefield franchise, both online and offline, for applicants and alums. The role requires a strong writer to manage many threads of communication with the many parties who make up the Battlefield. The core of the job is a strong ability to work with relatively green, unlaunched startups and prepare them to present brilliantly on the TC Disrupt stage before a group of highly distinguished judges. That preparation process takes enormous focus and commitment. Candidates should have deep experience in the startup world and direct experience working with startups and investors to help shape new ideas and prepare them to pitch investors. They should possess very strong personal and written communication skills, outstanding organizational skills, a high capacity for detail work and a very patient and winning attitude. Please send your resume and a private YouTube video link to sam@beta.techcrunch.com with the subject line “Startup Battlefield Manager Application.” In the video, take one minute to pitch us on why you’d be a great Battlefield Manager. (Production quality of the video will not be considered.)
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Jury finds Google’s implementation of Java in Android was fair use
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Kate Conger
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“Today’s verdict that Android makes fair use of Java APIs represents a win for the Android ecosystem, for the Java programming community, and for software developers who rely on open and free programming languages to build innovative consumer products,” a Google spokesperson said. “Overall, this is a win for software development,” said Mitch Stoltz, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who focuses on copyright issues. “I think it’ll give software developers a bit more confidence that reimplementing APIs is not something that’s going to get them sued.” However, Stoltz pointed out that the appellate ruling still stands, and small developers could still face copyright lawsuits from tech behemoths. During his testimony in the case, Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page disputed Oracle’s assertion that Google engineers had copied code when they built the Android platform. “I don’t accept the definition of code includes API declarations,” he told the jury. Page also called his engineers’ use of the Java declaring code in Android “widespread industry practice.” “We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market,” Oracle’s general counsel Dorian Daley said in a statement. “Oracle brought this lawsuit to put a stop to Google’s illegal behavior. We believe there are numerous grounds for appeal and we plan to bring this case back to the Federal Circuit on appeal.”
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The circle is complete: Minecraft is getting a deathmatch mode
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Devin Coldewey
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Minecraft, a game that skyrocketed to unprecedented levels of popularity among all ages because of its open-ended gameplay, infinite worlds, and limitless possibilities for creation and collaboration, . Is this it? Is this Minecraft’s shark jump (or pig jump, or squid jump) moment? Oh, of course not. But it is a reminder that the gratifyingly long honeymoon period of discovery and scrappy underdog status is long past — Minecraft is no longer a buggy, funky, open secret among gamers and kids and modders — it’s a global platform owned by Microsoft and ripe for banality. Players in Battle matches use randomly generated resources found in chests placed in specially designed PVP maps and combat one another in a free for all death match until the final victor is determined. The fun’s not all over after you are defeated though, as fallen players can spectate the combat among remaining players in the match by freely flying around each arena as a bat. Now, to be fair, it’s probably super fun. And mods have existed to make this possible for quite a while now. Combat in Minecraft is just basic and silly enough that these matches are going to be more chaos and nonsense than serious competition. But this approach is so committee-approved! “Minecraft is popular – Call of Duty is popular – how can we combine them?” PvP maps, randomized loadouts, spectator mode — these aren’t ideas, they’re bullet points. How long before we get in-game currency to buy diamond swords or flying pig mounts? Minecraft throve on the uniqueness of every world and its open-ended gameplay. Shouldn’t it be a priority to maintain that spirit as it expands and adds genres? Why isn’t there a team battle mode where players have limited time and resources to build a fortress and send armies of creepers and skeletons against one another? Why not see who can delve the deepest and collect the most diamonds and obsidian in a randomly-generated cave system tweaked for maximum danger? Why not have players work together to build a stronghold and score them on defense against waves of Endermen and savage pigs? Instead, like every other multiplayer game since Spacewar, we get a small stage on which players try to kill each other. Like I said, it’ll probably be fun, but the prognosis is bad for the legacy of creativity Mojang established over the years before being acquired. And I would be remiss if I didn’t ask why this update is for consoles only! Let’s just hope the same doesn’t happen to Dwarf Fortress.
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Protect your pet with Treat’s on-demand vet visits
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Josh Constine
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Your pet gets sick and you don’t know what to do. Google has a thousand conflicting answers and it could be a week until you can get an appointment with a veterinarian. But to check on your furry friend. Treat can also hook you up with the best pet products, training and grooming. It’s like a medical concierge for your pooch or purring kitten. Treat is launching today in San Francisco and Oakland. Watch our Facebook Live stream with four of Treat’s kittens and ask the team questions here:
It’s got early funding from angels like Slack’s and a strategic investor in the pet care space. Live chat with a vet from 8am to midnight is free on its , while a vet visit costs $99. You can also get a half-hour training session for $59, nail trims for $29 and it will price-match online pet retailers on products it will deliver. Treat could take the stress out of being a pet parent. It’s a $60 billion market, including food. If Treat can use live chat with vets to build a relationship with customers, it could become their go-to for everything from kibble to collars to house calls. The idea for Treat came when co-founder and CEO Steve Simitzis’ cat had a stroke. She’d recover with daily physical therapy and bottle feeding, but Simitizis would need questions answered at 2am, and help with care while he was at work. “I figured there’d be an app for that,” but there wasn’t. So he built it with co-founders Marta Crowe and veterinarian Dr. Kait Link, DVM. Treat will have to compete with vet on-demand company and sharing economy startup WagWalking at first, but eventually it hopes to steal customers from big box retailers like Petco and PetSmart. What none of them offer is the peace of mind of reliable answers when you’re scared something could be wrong. If your dog’s puke is green or your cat seems unusually sedentary, combing the Internet for answers can just make you more worried. Treat won’t be able to provide an in-home X-ray if your pet breaks a bone, or provide anesthesia. “We’re more primary and preventative care,” says Simitzis. But Treat does have partnered clinics it can refer you to if something’s seriously wrong. Breaking the behavior pattern of dragging your pet to the vet’s office might be Treat’s biggest challenge. People aren’t used to in-home care or the ability to get questions answered instantly. But Treat hopes that in the same way Uber redefined how we got around cities, it can affordably redefine urban pet care by subsidizing peace of mind through e-commerce product sales. To promote the launch, in the Bay Area. It’s a partnership with a kitten shelter/rescue to find them permanent homes, and they’ll come with a vet to watch over them. In fact, they’ve brought four little kitties to TechCrunch. You can watch them bumble around and hear the Treat team answer questions on our Facebook Live video above.
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The omnichannel customer experience is poised to take off in regulated industries
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Clara Shih
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The omnichannel customer experience is nothing new, especially in the consumer and retail industries. Many companies and brands are using data and automation technologies to engage seamlessly with their customers at any time and place and across any device. At the same time, omnichannel doesn’t mean digitizing every aspect of the customer journey without regard to which channel is best-suited for customer needs at each stage. The recent news of is a great example of this. The search engine giant’s entry into — and quick exit from — financial services proves one thing: Even with all the data and insights in the world, customer value is not based solely on price or convenience. Rather, “comprehensive answers” related to insurance, mortgage and other financial products are largely best served by professionals who can provide high-touch interactions with customers across channels, online and off. But that doesn’t mean high-touch industries such as financial services, healthcare and government are completely immune from being profoundly affected by the new digital economy. Fundamental shifts in consumer expectations and behaviors, coupled with new technologies, are poised to accelerate their evolution — even in the face of regulatory pressure. A new crop of consumers is emerging. They are more informed, empowered and connected, demanding complete control when making purchase decisions. For instance, it’s no longer uncommon for consumers to roam the aisles of stores with a hand-held device in tow to comparison shop, read product reviews and ask their social media connections for advice and recommendations in real time. Consumers are increasingly relying on anytime access and interaction with products and services from retailers that provide continuous online and offline customer experiences. To ride this sea change, retailers such as Target and Macy’s began and found that ; ; and purchases ultimately take place on a computer or in the store. Even today, however, online revenues account for . But omnichannel is more than sales — it means delighting customers in person, connecting seamlessly between visits via social, mobile and web, and being able to immediately reference both store and web interaction history when customers call for help. Think about the last time you interacted with your financial advisor, doctor or government representative. You probably had to communicate with them in person, by phone or through an antiquated Web interface that required you to set up (and remember) a password. But chances are you’d much rather engage with them more seamlessly on your terms, because you’ve grown accustomed to this in your experiences with consumer brands. In all of these examples, there are regulations that dictate how and where a financial advisor, doctor or government representative can communicate with you. Regulations designed to protect consumers from , , malpractice, have the unintended consequence of making it difficult to connect in new, more efficient ways. Yet in each of these worlds, customers expect a personalized, concierge-like experience. You need your advisor to know your life situation and to be readily available if something unexpected happens; you need your doctor to know your medical history. Customers increasingly expect an omnichannel experience — both in they communicate and their advisor or doctor knows about them to provide the best course of action. Fortunately, these ensconced industries have made significant strides to bridging compliance concerns and changing consumer expectations. Thanks to the unique intersection of technology innovations and expectation shifts, we are today at a tipping point where, if done right, these industries could succeed in creating a world-class omnichannel customer experience. In healthcare, records are moving online and patients are demanding care 24/7. , given that many patients are self-diagnosing their conditions and may need help online before they physically see a doctor. At the recent Health IT Conference for 2016, Oracle debuted its Oracle Healthcare Foundation platform to And with more than on mobile devices and through wearables, mainstream medicine will have to integrate itself further with the online experience. In financial services, robo-advice technology is trying to disrupt the industry, projected to . Clients are demanding the type of simple, digital interactions roboadvisors make possible, yet they still that only a human advisor can offer. In government, agencies are pursuing and promoting approaches to communication that will lead to increased efficiency and citizen engagement. The General Services Administration has to officially recognize ratings of federal agencies. And the good old is looking to make direct mail digitally enabled. New technologies are emerging that enable these regulated industries to innovate and still remain in compliance. For example, in the wake of the , countless vendors and consultants have emerged to ensure compliance. Salesforce.com last year doubled down on its vertical cloud solutions, . And government agencies now offer specific certifications — such as — to balance the need for innovation with compliance. The result? True, individual-level personalization. Retailers may argue they tailor experiences at the individual level, but because of the sheer scale of customers, they have to bucket them into manageable categories. Instead, financial services, healthcare, and government have the opportunity to use insights gleaned across both physical interactions and digital channels and consolidated in a unified manner to truly understand and best serve the unique individual — rather than those with shared characteristics. This will result in more personalized, high-touch communications and advice, as well as unprecedented customization of when, where and how to engage with consumers. That’s precisely why the financial services industry is poised to transcend the marble buildings of Wall Street, the healthcare industry has a real opportunity to turn the traditional patient experience on its head and government agencies are set to transform the way they interact with the public.
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Airbnb + HotelTonight = new startup Overnight
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Josh Constine
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“I think it’s great that people can control their privacy as long as they abide by their agreements and local laws” Co-founder and CEO Asher Hunt tells me. “We’re invested in the long-term sustainability of home sharing and though people have seen our privacy aspects as attractive for the reasons you point to, we encourage our hosts to communicate openly with their landlords and again abide by their rental agreements and of course local regulations.” Still, I bet a lot of users will take advantage of hosting on the down-low.
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Fitz Tepper
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Adobe is bringing content-aware cropping to Photoshop
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Frederic Lardinois
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If you’ve every tried to crop a photo (and in the age of Instagram, who hasn’t?) or simply adjust the horizon line, you know how hard it can be to find just the right crop that allows you to focus on what you want to highlight in a picture without cutting other important parts out of it or leaving you with white edges. If you’re a Photoshop user, you may soon have to when cropping images. Adobe is bringing the same technology that already powers its content-aware fill, move patch to photo cropping, too. Instead of having to cut out too much of an image or ending up with lots of empty white space when you need to rotate it a little bit, Photoshop will soon be able to automatically fill in those spaces instead. Photoshop’s algorithms will simply look at what should be around the edges of the photo and then try to fill them in seamlessly. Just like with Photoshop’s other content-aware tools, this will probably work best for relatively basic structures (or the sky), but how well it really works in practice obviously remains to be seen. For now, all Adobe is giving us is a sneak peek of this new feature, though. All the company is willing to say about when this tool will arrive in Photoshop CC is that it will be part “of an upcoming major release.”
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The rise of APIs
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Matt Murphy
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It’s been almost five years since we heard that “ .” The number of SaaS applications has exploded and there is a rising wave of software innovation in the area of APIs that provide critical connective tissue and increasingly important functionality. There has been a proliferation of third-party API companies, which is fundamentally changing the dynamics of how software is created and brought to market. The application programming interface (API) has been a key part of software development for decades as a way to develop for a specific platform, such as Microsoft Windows. More recently, newer platform providers, from Salesforce to Facebook and Google, have offered APIs that help the developer and have, in effect, created a developer dependency on these platforms. Now, a new breed of third-party APIs are offering capabilities that free developers from lock-in to any particular platform and allow them to more efficiently bring their applications to market. The monolithic infrastructure and applications that have powered businesses over the past few decades are giving way to distributed and modular alternatives. These rely on small, independent and reusable that can be assembled relatively easily into more complex applications. As a result, developers can focus on their own unique functionality and surround it with fully functional, distributed processes developed by other specialists, which they access through APIs. Developers realize that much of the functionality they need to build into an app is redundant to what many other companies are toiling over. They’ve learned not to expend precious resources on reinventing the wheel but instead to rely on APIs from the larger platforms, such as Salesforce, Amazon and, more recently, specialized developers. We’re still in the early innings of this shift to third-party APIs, but a number of promising examples illustrate how developers can turn to companies such as and for payment connectivity, for telephony, for location-based data and for site search. Indeed, the area is booming. On last check, was providing searchable access to almost 15,000 APIs, with more being added on a daily basis. Developers can incorporate these APIs into their software projects and get to market much more quickly than going it alone. While getting to market more quickly at a lower cost is a huge advantage, there is an even more important advantage: Companies that focus on their core capabilities develop differentiated functionality, their “secret sauce,” at higher velocity. Another advantage is third-party APIs are often flat-out better. They work better and provide more flexibility than APIs that are built internally. Companies often underestimate the amount of work that goes into building and maintaining the functionality that they can now get as a third-party API. Finally, third-party API developers have more volume and access to a larger data set that creates network effects. These network effects can manifest themselves in everything from better pricing to superior SLA’s to using AI to mine best practices and patterns across the data. For example, Menlo’s portfolio company offers fraud analysis as an API. They aggregate retail transactions across hundreds of companies, which allows them to understand a breadth of fraud markers better than any individual customer could. Releasing software as an API allows those companies to pursue a number of different adoption routes. Rather than trying to sell specific industry verticals or use cases, often the customer is a developer, leading to an extremely low-friction sales process. The revenue model is almost always recurring, which leads to an inherently scalable business model as the end customers’ usage increases. While the ecosystem of API-based companies is early in its evolution, we believe the attributes of these companies will combine to create ultimately more capital-efficient and profitable business models. This opportunity is not limited to new upstarts. Existing developers may have the opportunity to expose their own unique functionality as an API, morphing their product from application to platform. Some outstanding companies have built API businesses that match or exceed their original focus: Salesforce generates 50 percent of its revenues through APIs, eBay nearly 60 percent and Expedia a whopping 90 percent. The model is attractive to entrepreneurs and investors. Rather than trying to create the next hot app and having to invest heavily in marketing and distribution before validating scalable demand, it may make more sense to build a bounded set of functionality and become an arms merchant for other developers. The API model creates a compelling route to market that if successful can scale capital efficiently and gain a network effect over time. Currently, there are 9 million developers working on private APIs; as that talent sees the opportunity to create companies versus functionalities, we may see a significant shift to public API development (where there are currently only 1.2 million developers). In the past, the biggest companies were those closest to the data (e.g. a system of record), able to impose a tax, or lock-in to their platform. In the API economy, the biggest companies may be the ones that aggregate the most data smartly and open it up to others. This enables new types of competitive barriers, as in Twilio’s ability to negotiate volume discounts from carriers that no individual developer could obtain, or the volume pricing that Stripe enjoys by pooling payments across many developers. Companies like (a Menlo Ventures portfolio company) show great promise in allowing enterprises to move beyond their single-application silos by creating workflows and simplifying the API connections between their existing SaaS applications. While the ecosystem for API startups is attractive today, we believe it will only become stronger. Over the last five years there’s been a broadening of interest in enterprise-oriented technologies like SaaS, big data, microservices and AI. APIs are the nexus of all four of those areas. As the world of enterprise software development further embraces third-party APIs, we expect to see a number of large companies emerge. The low-touch sales model, recurring revenue and lack of customer concentration lead to a very attractive business model. In addition, the benefits for the rest of the software development ecosystem are profound, as app developers can focus on delivering the unique functionality of their app and more quickly and less expensively deliver that ever-important initial product.
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Startups to Congress: Strong data security keeps us competitive
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Karyn Smith
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Twilio recently had the opportunity to meet with members of and their staff who have taken on the difficult task of balancing and privacy. We were struck by the sincere desire to understand how actions proposed by those in Washington impact smaller technology businesses. It’s been clear to for some time that, in order to get the full picture, to from tech companies at all stages of growth; we were encouraged to see that realization dawning on the Hill, as well. faces a difficult challenge in striking a balance between securing the that powers our economy and allowing law enforcement access to that in the interests of public safety and national . Companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have cautioned against mandating weakened information measures, a view shared by info security experts, scientists and the technology sector. However, if members of only from the largest technology companies, they won’t the full story. U.S. and small businesses also stand to be greatly impacted by the words and actions of our legislators. As we and our customers bring communication services to users outside of the U.S., one of the things we frequently is an increasing level of concern about how our government handles personal . We see these concerns creating a ripple effect with far-reaching impact on smaller businesses attempting to do business abroad. As an example, after revelations about how the NSA obtains and analyzes mass amounts of private citizens’ communications, last year the European Court of Justice invalidated the Safe Harbor agreement between the U.S. and the EU. For larger companies, the death of Safe Harbor was certainly inconvenient, but the impact was relatively manageable, because these companies have global legal teams and are resourced to deal with the resulting legal and operational repercussions. For smaller companies the impact was much greater. Those who previously relied on Safe Harbor were largely left with only one option for doing business in the EU: sign model contractual clauses with each and every EU customer. This is a massive undertaking for small companies that don’t have the global legal teams that larger companies have. Companies like Microsoft have come up with an even more drastic solution: spinning up processing facilities or physical locations in new countries, an approach that comes at enormous cost and is simply not a viable option for most small businesses. The fallout from privacy concerns only serves to worsen the uncertainty that already exists around compliance requirements for U.S. companies. European authorities continue to express concerns about insufficient assurances that personal originating in the EU will not be subjected to mass and indiscriminate collection by U.S. government agencies, going so far as to indicate this may be a potential obstacle to adopting the newly proposed Privacy Shield. Anti-encryption legislation, such as the bill proposed by Senators Burr and Feinstein, exacerbates these privacy concerns. In addition to further undermining the trust required for small businesses to compete globally (which is very hard-earned to begin with), we are concerned about the ramifications of such a bill and the resources it would require for tech companies, especially those just starting to do business outside the U.S. Requiring smaller technology companies to circumvent proven design principles without unintentionally introducing broader vulnerabilities is virtually guaranteed to introduce error and unintended consequences. While the economic and operational impact on small businesses of compliance with such a mandate would be significant, the impact on innovation is potentially even greater and longer lasting. Redeveloping technology and deploying the extensive legal resources required to evaluate and respond to demands or ensure compliance is simply not feasible for many, if not most, small businesses. These are the very businesses driving enormous innovation and adding significantly to our economy. The tone around and privacy in Washington has a ripple effect, and the rest of the world is listening. For U.S. companies to remain at home and abroad, our commitment to time-tested design principles can’t be compromised. This is not the time for knee-jerk legislation, but rather it’s the time to pause, engage in discussion and seek to understand all viewpoints and potential consequences before imposing mandates and additional requirements on businesses. We are encouraged by the time we’ve spent with the legislators and their staff who are seeking to broaden the discussion and strike a more collaborative and inclusive tone. That’s why we’re asking other small technology companies to join in sharing their concerns and engaging in this important conversation with . By helping our legislators understand the realities faced by our businesses today, we can help forge a path to reasonable measures that don’t undermine design principles, privacy expectations or our global competitiveness.
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Camellia Labs debuts single-cup chai brewer, Chime
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Lora Kolodny
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In the world of kitchen appliances, everyone wants to be the next , it seems. First, there were single-cup coffee brewers that followed and claimed to be better than Keurig, from Nespresso, Mr. Coffee and Lavazza to name a few. Later came cold drink machines like the Bartesian for cocktails, or PicoBrew for craft beer. And most recently, the Juicero cold press juice machine promised to save us all the pain of chopping and cleaning up our own organic fruit. Now chai is having its hardware moment with a new appliance called the by Camellia Labs. , founded in 2014 by CEO Guarav Chawla and Samip Bhavsar, recognizes that coffee isn’t king the world over. In India, chai is a daily or even five-times-daily ritual for most families, Chawla explained. But making chai the standard way entails a lot of waiting around for milk to boil, yet not boil over, and waiting for the right flavors to be extracted from various spices and black tea. It also leaves brewers with a sink full of spent leaves. Camellia Labs created a single-cup brewer for chai, and sees a huge potential market in the South Asian diaspora in North America. Eventually, the startup wants to get everyone hooked on chai. Real chai is a completely different thing than the watery imitations and sweet, boxed or powdered mixes that pass for a chai or chai latte at most U.S. coffeeshops, including Starbucks, the cofounders said. The cutely-named Chime, which is about 14-inches tall, includes a spot for the company’s recyclable tea capsules, and a separate tea boiler and milk carafe. It promises to brew a cup of authentic chai in 3 minutes. The Chime is also “smart,” allowing users to adjust their tea to milk ratio, cup size, brew strength and temperature via a bluetooth-connected smartphone and app. Users can keep their preferences as pre-sets. While Camellia Labs is still readying its prototype for manufacturing, it is also developing tea capsules with tea and spice suppliers from India. The capsules contain ingredients like cardamom, ginger, rose and masala, traditional chai ingredients, and retail for $1 a piece, a source of recurring revenue for the company on top of hardware sales. Part of the , Camellia Labs made its Chime available for pre-order this week at BrewChime.com, promising to ship to customers by early 2017. Early-bird customers will pay $249 for a machine in total, including shipping and 60 “Chime Caps” of tea and spices. The company intends to sell the Chime at retail eventually for about $400 the co-founders said. Asked if he worries about adding waste to overflowing landfills by turning chai into a habit that requires disposable capsules, not just looseleaf spices and teas, Chawla, the company’s CEO, said environmental sustainability remains an ongiong concern. Camellia Labs is constantly evaluating new recyclable or compostable materials that could work in their machine, he said.
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The wide world of e-sports
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Christoffer O. Hernæs
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Technotopia: Haseeb Awan on why the sun is rising on Asian startups
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John Biggs
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This week’s features . Haseeb is pretty bearish on the current financial markets but he sees the growth of Asia and India as a true powerhouse that will be able to use all of the cool new stuff the world is building in a very real way. You can or
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How Prince and Bowie started streaming music services
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Tien Tzuo
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In the wake of Prince’s untimely death, more and more stories have been revealed about his secret life of good works: anonymous checks, civil rights activism, charity concerts, etc. Right now, Paisley Park staff members are handing out to mourning fans purple boxes filled with CDs, t-shirts and other memorabilia. But I’d like to talk about something else — the , an online subscription music club founded on Valentine’s Day 2001 as a virtual love letter to Prince’s many fans. Sure, Prince had a conflicted relationship with the Internet — just try to find any trace of him online (it’s nearly impossible due to his strict control over his music and his liberal use of takedown notices). But what many don’t know is that he was also a digital pioneer in the Subscription Economy. For five years, NPGMC (named after Prince’s backing band the New Power Generation) offered a monthly or annual membership that not only let fans get new releases, but also provided access to prime concert seats and passes for events like sound checks and after parties. Perhaps most importantly, the site provided a place for his dearly beloved fans to gather, “to get through this thing called life” amidst a supportive community of like-minded Prince devotees. As with most things, Prince nailed the subscription business model: NPGMC didn’t just send out invoices once a month as a mere conduit for recurring revenue. It was built on a foundation of meaningful relationships, which were carefully and respectfully cultivated. Case in point: When members complained about heavy traffic on the site, which limited their access, Prince lowered the price from $7.75/month ($100/year) to $2.50/month ($25 for a lifetime membership). In 2006, the Webby’s acknowledged the strong community Prince had built with a lifetime achievement award, saying: “Prince’s leadership online has transformed the entertainment industry and reshaped the relationship between artist and fan.” Prince always wanted to make sure he was putting his subscribers — his biggest fans — first, so after five years, when Prince felt like the music club had “maximized its potential,” he shut it down, saying, “In its current form, there is a feeling that the NPGMC has gone as far as it can go.” The club was put on indefinite hiatus until such time as Prince could be sure he was providing value to his subscribers and authentically honoring that relationship between artist and fan. NPGMC never did return as a subscription music club, but Prince continued to play a big role in the subscription economy. In December 2015, he released his two HITnRUN albums (Phase One and Phase Two) on Tidal, a streaming music service fronted by Jay Z. Jay Z said in a statement about their partnership: “Both Prince and Tidal share the belief that all creatives should have the opportunity to speak directly to those that love and support them. This partnership with Prince represents TIDAL’s philosophy in its truest form, a 1 to 1 connection and direct delivery of artistry to the world.” The late, great David Bowie predicted the future of music back in 2002: “Music itself is going to become like running water, or electricity.” Prince recognized the same thing. In getting their music directly to their fans through digital subscription clubs, both of them looked way beyond CD sales in order to create direct relationships and connections. Like so many other children of the 1980s (and beyond!), I grew up on Prince, so, from me and all his many loyal fans… farewell to an innovator and a trailblazer, a musical icon and an inspiration, a preacher and a prophet, a poet who always promised us there was something else, and led the crowd in seeking it.
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Uber and Lyft shut down in Austin after voters defeat Proposition 1
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Fitz Tepper
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Today voters in Austin went to the polls to weigh in on Proposition 1, an attempt to overturn a bill requiring mandatory fingerprint-based criminal background checks for new Uber and Lyft drivers in the city. The results are in, and with voting against Prop 1, the proposition failed to pass. This means that the bill requiring fingerprint-based background checks will proceed, with new drivers needing to pass the check before being able to drive. In response to the news, Uber and Lyft that they will be shutting down operations in the city — at least temporarily. Uber and Lyft have argued that their own background checks are stringent enough, and that the fingerprint-based checks (which would be done by the city of Austin) are an unnecessary burden and cost that would make it harder to recruit drivers to the platform. The defeat is a serious setback for Uber and Lyft, who spent a on advertisements encouraging voters to support the proposition. Comparatively, that is anti-Prop 1 spent under $100,000 on advertisements opposing the proposition. In a , Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who did not support the proposition, responded to the vote saying that “The people have spoken clearly tonight. Uber and Lyft are welcome to stay and I invite them to the table regardless.” Now, it will be up to Lyft, Uber and the city of Austin to figure out a solution that works for all parties. In the meantime, both services will remain shut down in the city until further notice.
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The Disrupt NY Hackathon kicks off in Brooklyn
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Anthony Ha
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, welcome to Brooklyn. TechCrunch’s big conference has moved out of Manhattan, into Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. The hackathon that opens the event got started to 12:30pm today, with attendees given less than 24 hours to form teams, build products and prepare a presentation for our judges. They’ll compete for a number of prizes including tickets to Disrupt itself. Before the doors opened, Katie Roof and I interviewed some of the hackers lined up outside the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. Most of them were local, coming from New York City and New Jersey, but one team, at least, traveled all the way from Italy. Some seemed optimistic about their chances of winning, while others were a little less confident. Everyone, however, seemed excited to be here — even if that means bringing sleeping bags for the all-night grind.
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The next AI is no AI
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Jarno M. Koponen
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Artificial Intelligence is starting to turn invisible from the outside in — and vice versa. The exact effects and workings of AI technologies are becoming more challenging to perceive and comprehend for humans. Even the experts themselves don’t always fully understand how an AI system operates. Effectively, as the impact of AI technologies increases, the more limited becomes our ability to understand their impact. What does this mean for human agency and the future of artificial intelligence? In the near future, artificial intelligence will commonly become intangible, indistinguishable and incomprehensible for humans. Firstly, AI doesn’t necessarily need a tangible embodiment. It can manifest itself through different mediators, such as a graphical user interface or a voice interface. Already we trust Spotify recommendations without a glance or talk to Siri and Alexa like they were summoned spirits, intelligences without a tangible form. Secondly, AI becomes invisible by passing the Turing test, or its more relevant variants. An intelligent system that manages to simulate human-level communication, and cognitive as well as emotional abilities, can become indistinguishable from humans and, thus, the “artificiality” of its intelligence becomes imperceptible for us. Thirdly, and most importantly, AI escapes human gaze when the details of its effects and technological dynamics go beyond human perception and understanding. We can be aware of the existence, presence and effects of intelligent systems, but we no longer fully comprehend what these systems do, how they achieve their goals or what are their definite effects. This means that AI technologies will soon go beyond Clarke’s third law, stating that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Indeed, we don’t anymore have a chance to figure out the trick — or even realize that any trick occurred in the first place. Following this, we are able to perceive manifestations and presentations of artificial intelligence, but the intelligence itself becomes unknowable to humans through human senses. Currently there are two distinct traits in this development. First, most algorithmic systems, as well as the latest advancements in AI technologies, are black boxes; inaccessible, unfathomable and uncontrollable to most people. Therefore, it’s hard to perceive or assess how intelligent systems shape your life online and offline, from your latest song recommendations to your personalized insurance policy, not to mention the algorithmic stock market trading that shapes the global market economy affecting almost every aspect of modern life. Concretely, when the actions of intelligent systems become more holistically intertwined with personal, social, cultural, political and economical systems, it becomes challenging to distinguish the exact effects or impact of the machine intelligence itself. Second, AI technologies are becoming so complex that they are hard to understand — even for the experts designing and developing them. In his recent book, , machine learning expert Pedro Domingos points out that already back in 1950s scientists created an algorithm that could do something that humans couldn’t fully comprehend. This development hasn’t changed its course; rather, to the contrary. With the current pace of AI development, even seasoned experts have a hard time keeping up. Today’s various machine learning systems can already provide unexpected insights in varying fields, from personalization technologies to particle physics, from cooking recipes and outlandish game moves to crime prevention and bioengineering. Concretely, specialized systems can empower scientific discoveries in biology or help you choose the best route to your next meeting. The more universal, self-learning and self-adjusting an intelligent system becomes, the harder it is for humans to follow its exact dynamics. And further on, when a super-fast self-learning and self-assembling AI system starts to develop and engineer itself faster than any human ever could, it evades our intellect for good. Eventually, AI systems will be leading experts on their own behavior, predicting their own future better than any human ever could. Hence, sophisticated AI technologies will provide legitimate and correct insights based on a chain of complex interactions that can’t be followed by any human being, even an expert. If so, can we anymore reach definite scientific conclusions or make well-informed decisions without the assistance of artificial intelligence? As with any significant technological innovation and its mainstream adaption, artificial intelligence is evolving from an obscure curiosity to a powerful utility. Consequently, the most valuable asset of tomorrow’s world might be an intelligent system that no human can fully understand or control. Simultaneously, AI is turning into an unprecedented cultural and technological phenomenon, affecting the way we assess and define “intelligence” itself. Regarding this, human intelligence might not be the most relevant measure for intelligence itself. The “artificial” in artificial intelligence starts to lose its meaning. Today, human intelligence is shaping artificial intelligence and, increasingly, artificial intelligence is starting to shape human intelligence. When the impact of AI systems increases, more people need to be able to understand their workings and effects. To achieve this, we need to be able to augment human intelligence to allow us to interact with various specimen of intelligent systems in sustainable terms. First, it’s crucial to enhance the capabilities of today’s (human) researchers, designers and engineers to keep up with the AI technologies they’re building. In addition to better practices, tools and techniques, diverse multidisciplinary teams can better understand both the workings as well as the effects of the intelligent systems. Second, as many people as possible need to be empowered to interact with AI technologies on their own terms. New learning games are presently enabling children to learn coding and robotics, familiarizing them with intelligent systems and their possibilities. Systems like could make “the ghost in the machine” more tangible, distinguishable and comprehensible by illustrating the effects of intelligent systems in our daily lives and enabling people to decide their personal level of interaction. Black boxes need to be uncovered to enable co-agency and collaboration on a wider scale. “Democratizing” artificial intelligence would allow more people to create diverse ways to design and develop new approaches to intelligent systems. Just like coding or media literacy are seen as today’s essential skills, being able to comprehend and affect intelligent systems will be an essential skill for tomorrow. In this way, AI technologies could evolve into a platform, an infrastructure similar to the Internet, that would allow people themselves to decide the way they utilize AI or contribute to its design and development. Such an AI grid, like the Internet of Things², powering various experiences and applications in different environments and industries, being open for tinkerers and specialists alike, would significantly change the way we could understand AI or interact with intelligent systems in general. Human and machine intelligence would be intertwined in unseen ways. The border between physical and digital realities is beginning to dissolve. If and when the relationship between humans and intelligent systems gets more seamlessly intertwined, the border between human intelligence and artificial intelligence might begin to dissolve, too. The A disappears in front of the I, making the concept of artificial intelligence irrelevant and obsolete.
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How to keep your investors invested
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Navid Boostani
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You did it. You secured your funding. Good for you. You tirelessly developed, pitched, sold, maybe even danced a little. Not a song and dance, but a display of passion, commitment and promise. You successfully instilled the confidence investors need to see before signing on the dotted line. Now that you’ve earned this faith and raised that critical cash, it’s time to consider the new relationship with your investors and maintain their faith. There’s plenty of advice out there for how a first-time founder should scout and pitch investors. But similarly to many of the topics they didn’t teach us in school, nobody taught you what to look out for once you’ve actually raised your seed round. There’s no formal handbook for founder-funder etiquette, but here are some of my learnings that have served me well. Don’t announce your financing, sign a new office lease or expand your team before the money is in the bank. Until then, you’re not out of the woods. Even with signed term sheets and subscription agreements, the deal can still fall through. Doing so is the first warning sign to an investor that a founder might not know how to manage finances or business deals. Once you do announce a major financing round, stay focused. In the weeks following our own Series A announcement, everyone wanted 15 minutes of my time; I was suddenly the most popular kid in school, with a barrage of emails, LinkedIn contact requests and proposals for services. At this point, with a mountain of work ahead, time is now more valuable than ever, so avoid distractions and get used to saying “no.” Wasting your time is the one thing worse than wasting your investors’ money (partly because your time is your investors’ money). Just because you’ve raised a big round doesn’t mean you can mindlessly spend your cash. When it comes to making initial purchases, spend it on things that matter, things that will help your team work productively and comfortably. Computer hardware and an inspiring work space are worthy investments. Expensive lunches and an ostrich leather sofa for the reception area? Not so much — especially when an IKEA sofa works just as well (and the assembly process can even double as a great team-building exercise). The CEO does not need to be the highest-paid person at your startup. When it comes to your own salary, make a statement. Sacrifice is leadership. No investor appreciates a founder who gets rich, irrespective of the company’s actual performance. It’s normal to give yourself a raise after a major financing round, especially if you were living on a minimal salary. But whatever amount you raised, if your business is still in its infancy and operating in the red, don’t pay yourself “like a boss” just yet. Instead, wait to increase your salary once you’ve started creating value for your investors. Investors want to know how the company is doing, so keep them in the loop. Regular email updates and phone calls to all your shareholders should inform them of new material developments, major business trends and upcoming news you’ve heard on-the-ground as a startup founder. It’s tempting to talk about the good and leave out the bad, but if people are successful enough to become investors, they’re shrewd enough to smell BS. Make sure you are open about the challenges you are facing, but always maintain an optimistic tone and end your communications on a positive note. In a startup, it’s normal — even likely — for the plan to change, and pivoting to meet this change is often the best course of action. If and when the time comes for a pivot, don’t shy away from letting your investors know about the new direction. Your goal is to run a business that makes money and delivers value to your investors, but that goal should not extend to delivering on a plan devised when the facts on the ground were different. Trust in the founder is what can get a startup through its daily uphill battle and big pivots. Investors are business partners; acting with integrity only helps the relationship. One of our co-founders dropped out shortly after we raised our seed round. We had the opportunity to legally retain the shares among the founding team, excluding our investors. But that did not sit right with us; we understood the departure of a co-founder made the deal riskier for our investors, so we distributed the shares among all parties. It paid off — as we opened our next round of funding, we had investors at the table who said they’d heard about this move, which demonstrated they were able to trust us. And that’s what it all comes down to, trust built over many instances of getting it right. And remember that the risk your investors take with your company is different from the risk that you take as a founder. You’re gaining experience and lessons in business, in addition to the opportunity to build a great company. It’s up to you to keep your investors informed and reinforce the decision they made to back you.
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Bots, Messenger and the future of customer service
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Michael Schneider
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In the 1970s, CFOs sat with CEOs and devised ways for upset consumers to not be able to get compensation easily. They put up automated phone systems and arcane and inflexible policies and rejoiced at how little the company had to “give up” to complaining customers. And this system worked… until social media gave every average “Joe” the same power as society’s most prominent citizens to get a company’s attention when they weren’t happy. Watching F8 last month, one couldn’t help but wonder if the future is truly as simple as opening a chat and texting what you need. Order flowers ✔ Get news ✔ Check the weather ✔ Handle customer service issues? How many of us who have called our cable company and been on hold “forever” wouldn’t love to chat with a rep and get our issue handled in a minute ( )? How many of us would love to chat with an airline and resolve an issue in real time? While these things sound great in theory, it’s not quite so simple. Chat is a better medium than the phone for most people, especially younger people. But it doesn’t solve everything. An inarticulate consumer is going to be inarticulate over chat. A rep that’s having a bad day is going to be just as inflexible and unsympathetic in a chat. Changing the medium isn’t a silver bullet for customer service. Bots can help with customer service. They can gather information for the eventual interaction with a human rep, understand exactly what happened and what the consumer wants and even be empowered to solve basic issues, automatically. Bots have been around a long time — phone systems ask you to speak your account number, say what you’re calling about or push a digit corresponding to what you want. The difference is that, while those kinds of bots typically annoy customers, chatbots have the potential to have the reverse effect. The right balance of “bot” and “human” is going to be different for each company, and it depends greatly on the quality of the bot — and, of course, the quality of their human customer service reps. I believe in an intelligent mix of humans and bots to get the job done — the “job” being making a consumer happy when things go awry, while being fair to the business. Over time, AI (“bots”) will get smarter, and brands will trust it more to solve issues for them. Imagine the cable company allowing you to schedule an appointment in 30 seconds via a chat (versus 5-25 minutes on the phone). Imagine a retailer replacing a defective product in seconds. Or a hotel making up for a bad experience by awarding points. Bots can handle all these scenarios automatically, freeing up the brand’s valuable (and expensive) reps to handle the issues that truly require a human touch. Facebook’s Messenger platform is just one of many future platforms where you’ll be able to handle customer service issues. By blending smart software with a light human touch, consumers will have a better experience when they need customer service, and companies will avoid nasty tweet storms, negative online reviews and the kind of brand damage consumers are now capable of inflicting when they’re upset. The future of customer service is making it easy for consumers to go through the medium they want (likely not the phone), have an experience that respects their time and have issues resolved quickly, ideally without involving a human at all (via intelligent software). In the future, “customer service” won’t be something consumers dread having to call, it will be something that builds powerful relationships with consumers. The best marketing is great customer service, and chatbots are a great step forward.
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Apple’s new site lets you create a custom “Shot on iPhone” ad for Mother’s Day
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Fitz Tepper
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFFLEN90aeI Last week Apple released the latest iteration of its “Shot on iPhone” campaign. The new ad was developed for Mother’s Day, and features a slideshow of pictures and videos of moms and their kids. Now, a week later, Apple launched the aptly-named website , which lets you create a custom version of the ad that has a photo of you and your own mom. The site works on both desktop and mobile, and if opened on an iOS device will let you import a picture directly from your camera roll. Then, the site will churn out a 30-second clip that mixes in your uploaded photo with the rest of the ad. After generating the video, Apple gives users the option to share it to their Facebook page, which is just another sign of Apple starting to like Facebook and Twitter. One fun benefit of this is if your photo is semi-professional looking, you may be able to trick your friends on Facebook into thinking your submission was chosen for the official Apple ad. But, even if it’s not, you know your mom will be thrilled that you publicly posted how much you care about her.
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Meet the robot that pretends to listen
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John Holden
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We’ve all done it. Cornered at a party by some bore talking about his unimaginative app that will “change the world.” All seemingly convincing excuses to leave have already been used by the rest of the group (who were all there just a second ago). The last refuge of the rude scoundrel — the smartphone — is in your jacket pocket in the cloakroom all the way across the room. So you just have to suck it up and simulate enthusiasm for this guy’s pitch. Through a series of pre-prepared “oohs,” “aahs” and contorted eye movements, you just might get away with it. Even those who spend a large proportion of their working lives pretending to listen (VCs being some of the most well-rehearsed) must still feel unconvincing from time to time. After all, human beings are social animals. Faking it doesn’t come naturally. However, when you engage with a group of CommU robots for the first time — the latest creation by world-renowned Japanese roboticist, — it becomes apparent pretty darn quickly just how easy it is to feign interest in someone else’s BS. TechCrunch caught up with Dr. Ishiguro at the Extension of Humanity event at SXSW Interactive 2016 in Austin, Texas. While he may not be a household name, anyone with even a passing interest in robotics and AI should be aware of just how much Ishiguro, the director at the in Japan, has accomplished in his field. Ishiguro has become synonymous with the creation of eerily lifelike robots. He even designed his own android doppelgänger in 2008. Named The Geminoid, this apparent act of narcissism is but one android in a growing army of human-like robots Ishiguro has helped realize. But it would be remiss to overlook his work as little more than a vanity project getting out of hand. The key to Ishiguro’s talent for robotics has always been the centrality he places on human psychology within robotics engineering. “AI isn’t just about programming and engineering skills,” he says. “Equally important for roboticists is an understanding of human psychology and behavior, not just clever math and novel design applications. One must find a balance between the psychological and the scientific when building androids.” For Ishiguro, understanding cognitive science and psychology greatly improves any engineer’s ability to turn an artificial android into a convincing lifelike replica. Ishiguro was in the Lone Star State to promote a number of his products and prototypes, including a small, rather unimpressive-looking robot named the CommU (short for Communication Unity). This isn’t one of Ishiguro’s most advanced AI prototypes, but the CommU’s relatively simple design demonstrates a key aspect of the modern human condition: group dynamics. In doing so, however, Ishiguro has also inadvertently shown how easy it is to pretend to listen. In its simplest terms, the CommU, which looks like a creepy baby, is 11 inches in height, and ideally come in pairs of two or more. Ishiguro is quick to point out that the bigger the group, the more realistic the communication exchange. The robots are programmed to “talk” to each other on a number of topics; when observing from afar, there does appear to be a real conversation taking place. When the group senses the presence of a human, they are programmed to engage with them and involve them in their exchange. “If you have two or more robots having a conversation with each other and suddenly a human joins the group, the CommU will recognize the human is talking and say something along the lines of: ‘What do you think?’” he says. “When you answer, the robots will say, ‘I see’ or ‘Interesting,’ then return to their own ‘conversation.’ They don’t understand what the human is saying. The CommU simply demonstrates the dynamics of group communication.” But with two or more, a convincing communication exchange in a group setting happens — even though the robots cannot understand the human. In a previous interview, Ishiguro claims the idea for CommU was, in part, inspired by watching groups of children interacting. If an adult joins a group of kids in conversation, he doesn’t expect much by way of stimulating exchange: He engages with the children for fun. Aside from the various verbal prompts used by the CommU to realistically engage with a human, Ishiguro also included some key body language characteristics, important in making any conversation feel real, such as rolling eyeballs. However, there couldn’t be a convincing exchange between one CommU and a human. “The robot would need voice recognition technology for that to work,” stresses Ishiguro. It is in the pre-programmed interplay between these robots in a group that makes the technology so interesting. Hence the need to purchase them in pairs or groups of three or four. Starting at $850 per robot, though, it might be cheaper just to RSVP the next networking event in your neighborhood and plan to tell everyone in attendance about your college thesis.
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Lightening the cognitive load
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Joe Rizk
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A longtime colleague and friend of mine used to love to say “Let’s just make this easy for them” whenever we discussed an upcoming meeting. I think I winced the first few times I heard it. It didn’t seem like much of a negotiation strategy… at least, that is, until he helped me appreciate how powerful it can be to manipulate “cognitive load.” It’s a fairly straightforward principle — cognitive load is the level of mental energy you expend to interpret a situation and act on it. Because our “working memory,” the part of our brain that powers conscious thought, is limited to only 4-5 pieces of information at any given time… the lower the cognitive load, the easier and faster a decision can be made. A simple arithmetic problem has lower cognitive load than a complex exponential equation. Like juggling with only two hands, you necessarily have to put some parts of the equation down so you can pick up others into focus. You can also imagine a more abstract example: coming to an intersection with a single turn option versus arriving at a subway platform with countless pathways to maneuver. It is easy to appreciate how different an experience feels when it requires low cognitive load, but as a “supplier” of an experience, it is often overlooked how much agency you have in the outcome and how best to assess the trade-off required. The trade-off essentially boils down to the time and energy spent to lower cognitive load, in exchange for increased probability in the desired outcome. The more time you spend making it easier for the recipient, the higher likelihood they decide in your favor. The irony is that it’s essentially just a shift in cognitive load from the “user” to the “supplier.” What is easier for them becomes more challenging for you to work out on their behalf. Sometimes it means going out of your way to simplify a set of choices; other times it is about tailoring or contextualizing an experience for specific needs: A revealing last year showed that when presenting NYC taxi riders with pre-set tip amounts for fares (20 percent, 25 percent and 30 percent), riders tipped an astonishing 22 percent on average versus 10 percent before that. The effort to make out an appropriate tip based on a fare isn’t much, but most find it easier to click on the available options than think through the calculation. Uber takes this one step further and assigns an automatic amount that you need not ever consider, a very significant part of what makes the service feel so seamless. Unsurprisingly, e-commerce is littered with examples, as the friction removed lowers the threshold to purchase, which directly translates into revenue. So many of the elements of the modern check-out process are designed with cognitive load in mind — from eliminating lengthy scrolls (so you don’t have to remember what you input farther up the page) to smoother input fields (where the ZIP code is asked first, then city, state and country are automatically populated) and even scientific analysis on the optimal number of options for a given question ( ). The extreme example here is Amazon Prime / 1 Click Ordering, which is a cognitive load scheme masked in a loyalty program. It turns out consumers find the exercise of weighing a delivery charge for a given purchase a prohibitive task — Amazon completely alleviates that. In 2003, two social researchers very significant differences in the percentage of people in different countries who pledge to donate their organs after they die. The lower countries averaged close to 15 percent, whereas the higher ones closer to 99 percent. Initially attributed to religious or societal country biases, the researchers discovered it was actually the difference in what the default option was on the DMV form (opt-in versus opt-out). From psychologist Dan Ariely: “This is a hard emotional decision about what will happen to our bodies after we die and what effect it will have on our those close to us. It is because of the difficulty and the emotionality of these decisions that they just don’t know what to do so they adopt the default option.” When negotiating a transaction, there is almost always someone else within the organization (usually more senior) with whom you’re not currently speaking who will ultimately weigh in on the decision. That person usually has different biases, incentives and questions in mind. Arming the contact with the questions you can anticipate they will later be asked lowers the cognitive load for the intermediary (and potentially makes them look smart in their internal process). In startup financing, it is about knowing the difference between the common market questions an associate VC might ask and the nuanced industry-specific questions her partner might wisely zero in on. Requests for an introduction almost always place an expectation on someone to craft a new message and go through the thought exercise of clarifying the context about why the connection is being made and how it may be mutually valuable. The easier alternative will always be to ignore, delay or decline the request, so reducing the thought process helps. Rare but effective: sending a separate note that includes the context that is immediately forward-able. Opportunities to use cognitive load surface in everything from product features to day-to-day communication. It’s not always worth it to work out how to reduce it, but it is a remarkable tool when you can appreciate the influence you actually wield over a decision that’s not your own. The key is to assess the true dynamics of the trade-off and which factors effectively compress the load.
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NVIDIA ups the power and drops the price with its impressive new graphics cards
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Brian Heater
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While you were out enjoying your Friday night, NVIDIA kicked off the weekend with at the DreamHack gaming event in Austin to debut its latest gaming GPUs. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang took to the stage at the city’s Emo’s music venue to showcase , the company’s first Pascal-based GPU, which promises double the performance and three times the power efficiency of its current top dog, the Titan X. Oh, and it’s about $400 less expensive than that $1,000 card. Huang called the new card “insane,” adding that the performance was “almost irresponsible,” perhaps referring, in part, to the “several billion dollar,” two-year research and development process he says went into the project. Due May 27, the GTX 1080 packs nine teraflops of computational power and 8GB of GDDR5X memory. According to NVIDIA’s numbers, the card’s Boost clock is capable of over 1700MHz, but an Unreal Engine 4 demo at the event pushed it over 2000MHz. The system is designed to meet the increasing needs of multi-monitor ultra high-def gaming and virtual reality systems, boosting the power while dropping the entry price. Speaking of which, the company also made mention of the even more affordable GTX 1070 which is set to run $379 when it arrives on June 10. That cheaper unit still outpaces the Titan, with 6.5 teraflops and 8GB of GDDR5 RAM.
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The next stop on the road to revolution is ambient intelligence
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Gary Grossman
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It’s easy to see a rainbow when it’s in the distance, but more difficult to discern when you are in its midst. Though it’s still early days, we’re now in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution. , the founder of the , says the impending “transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before.” Digital technologies now surround us, with many people having multiple devices for business and personal use. When combined with the Internet of Things and its assortment of embedded sensors and connected devices in the home, the enterprise and the world at large, we will have created a digital intelligence network that transcends all that has gone before. Some have referred to this as a “ ” of computing, where technology gains the ability to sense, predict and respond to our needs and is being integrated into our natural behaviors. Regardless of definition, we are witnessing an explosion of digital technologies and intelligence. Digital progress is advancing across multiple technologies and seemingly speeding up at an exponential rate. The next stop on the road to the fourth revolution is ambient computing or ambient intelligence, where we continuously interface to the always-on, interconnected world of things. The Internet, then, becomes an Internet of experience, a place where we will dialog with ambient intelligence, or digital intelligence everywhere. Ambient is generally defined as “surrounding on all sides.” Ambient intelligence is born of digital interconnectedness to produce information and services that enhance our lives. This is enabled by the dynamic combination of mobile computing platforms, the cloud and big data, neural networks and deep learning using graphics processing units (GPUs) to produce artificial intelligence (AI). An example travel set 10-15 years into the future outlined in Information Week describes arriving in San Francisco. Upon exiting the plane, a traveler will get a message that says, “Welcome to San Francisco. Please go to the curb after picking up your bag.” When at the curb, a self-driving car will meet them and, once inside, advise that the destination is the Marriott hotel. A recent notes that computing is on its way to becoming a sea of background data processing that bears little or no relation to the familiar world of PCs and servers. “We will talk, and the world will answer.” We have more than a hint of this with current implementations of Siri, Cortana and Echo. Using natural language processing and AI, these devices understand what we are asking and supply us with useful information. In the case of Amazon’s , it can do a lot more than answer a question, including keep track of a shopping list and place orders on Amazon.com, book an Uber ride, control a thermostat and other household appliances, tell you transit schedules, start a seven-minute workout routine, read recipes and do math. Most recently, it can even and share medical advice. How long before we see homes and businesses with an Echo-like device in every room? Futurist and founding executive editor Kevin Kelly that one day in the not too distant future, digital intelligence will flow like electricity and be seen as a utility, or “IQ as a service.” Enterprising people will be able to buy AI much like we do electricity and use what we need. , , and have started providing this capability, making it easy to access portions of their AI software. In Kelly’s view, a winning formula for the next wave of startups is to take something that already exists and add AI to turn it into something more. Self-driving cars are likely the best example of this to date. In citing ambient computing as one of the top technology trends, says that products now often embed intelligence as a competitive necessity. Much of AI is built upon the voluminous amount of data — so-called big data — being collected through search, apps and the Internet of Things. These data provide the opportunity for neural networks to learn what people do, how they respond and their interests, providing the basis for deep learning-derived personalized information and services based on increasingly educated guesses within any given context. In , philosopher and technologist Jason Silva says AI is simply the outsourcing of cognition to machines, amplifying the most powerful force in the universe, which is intelligence. He adds there’s no reason to fear this, it’s just evolution. Another emerging ambient intelligence application is bots, including those recently announced by . An example is a new personalized news bot created by that uses machine learning to serve up recommended stories from the site. Another gives the example of a food-ordering bot that will take an order, acknowledge it and pass the order on to an e-commerce system, along with a user’s credentials to approve payment. A basic implementation would behave and operate much like interactive voice response services over the phone. The article notes that “more complex bots will take advantage of the explosion of machine learning-powered AI systems” to help refine understanding of user context. Accurately parsing the language and appearing to understand the context a person is in will make a bot seem more natural, more like interacting with an actual person, and become an intelligent and ambient part of day-to-day life. Google is combining voice search and , its predictive service that shows users information, before they actually go searching for it, in the hopes of creating an omniscient assistant, ready to step in and fulfill any request, including those you haven’t yet thought about. This is being positioned as a universal digital assistant. A recent story a Google Bluetooth-enabled lapel pin prototype equipped with a microphone and activated through a simple tap, similar to the communicator on Star Trek. What is clear is that our AI-powered assistants will increasingly manage our digital activities and address increasingly complex questions and situations. We don’t know what devices are coming, whether lapel pins, augmented reality visors or something else, but we know they’re coming. We are fully within the rainbow of digitally driven change. Will these make life better or somehow easier? We will definitely be more guided by the technology, relegating mundane tasks to ambient intelligence. Connecting the technologies and crossing the boundaries necessary to provide seamless, transparent and persistent experiences in context will take time to realize. This is all a part of the ambient intelligence future where technology fades into the fabric of daily life, becoming both more pervasive and less overt, present wherever you are and always accessible. It’s still early days, but we’re already living in it, and the speed of advance appears to be accelerating. The revolution won’t be far behind.
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Gillmor Gang: Verbal Agreement
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, May 6, 2016. Size still matters as we move from primaries to the fall campaign. Can the next Google emerge from the next big search thing, or will the Establishment strip the unicorns down to size? @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @dbfarber, @jtaschek, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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FwdForce faces an uphill battle in trying to make crowdfunding more accountable
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Haje Jan Kamps
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For entrepreneurs, artists and people with an idea burning their way out of their souls, crowdfunding is a way of turning dreams into reality. For backers, the campaigns are a way to be tastemakers, to be on the cutting edge of what is new and cool and to get the newest gadgets before they’re available in shops. There’s a lot to love about crowdfunding, but one of the challenges is that once the campaigns have raised their money, most crowdfunding platforms step away, refusing any further responsibility. Kickstarter puts this particularly succinctly: “We don’t oversee projects’ performance, and we don’t mediate disputes between users,” it states . is a new crowdfunding platform that has examined crowdfunding to see how it works — and doesn’t work. The company, which came out of private beta this week, believes it found a different model that will make raising money from the crowd a safer and more transparent experience for everyone involved. But I have my doubts about whether the solution they offer is an effective one. FwdForce wants to involve users in the process much earlier and add a layer of accountability along the way. It lets anybody submit a pitch for a product, then it establishes checks and balances for the prototyping and production process. It says its model will make things more accountable for the backers. “Current crowdfunding platforms fail to bring viable products to market,” said Moshe Baum, co-founder and CEO of FwdForce. “We’re looking to shake up the space with our new model that will dramatically increase the products that go to market.” An artist’s impression of a home surveillance drone, featured on the FwdForce website The platform turns the crowdfunding model on its head by introducing the concept of challenges. A challenge is essentially an idea for a product that someone believes should exist and a crowdfunding campaign based around it. It’s a valiant effort, and not actually a bad idea — but in my opinion, the company is failing to accomplish its goals; not because the platform is bad, but because they misunderstand how people use crowdfunding. To participate in a challenge, companies submit concepts. The project backers vote on a shortlist of concepts. The winning concepts receive funding to prototype; from there, the prototypes must be submitted for testing before a deadline. The prototypes are tested in a third-party lab, after which a winner is declared and the concept advances to the next stage. Projects on the platform at the moment include , , and . It’s an interesting selection; all of these projects have been tried on other crowdfunding platforms with significant and very public failures in the past, but FwdForce believes that by applying its logic to the proceedings, its campaigns will fare better. Moshe Baum, CEO of FwdForce “We do not consider ourselves a crowdfunding platform,” Baum emphasizes, and instead refers to what they are doing as “a crowd-powered innovation platform.” A successful project would go through a series of steps in order to bring a product to fruition, following a process that is rather different than most current crowdfunding sites: Of course, things could go wrong in a few of these steps, and FwdForce has plans to deal with those eventualities. For example, if none of the prototypes pass muster, the remaining money is refunded. Later in the process, if the product fails to pass the QA criteria for delivery, the second team in line gets a shot. Concept pitch for a portable 3D printer listed on FwdForce “We have remaining funds to either provide a refund or allow the second-in-line challenger to try production,” says Baum. “We want to provide the user with the best resources and guidance to make sure that they have successful final production,” Baum said, confirming that “We do not guarantee delivery.” If the plan fails at some point along the way, the remainder of the money would be refunded to the user with two caveats: the company isn’t planning to refund the 6 percent fees it charges to run the campaign, nor would it offer refunds on the 3 percent processing fee. Crucially, what the campaigns are missing is . Take a campaign like . Extremely interesting idea, but it immediately raises a barrage of questions that the campaign is unable to rebut on its relatively sparse information page. In my opinion, it’s unlikely that $30,000 is enough to build a functional prototype that de-risks the project to the point that one can be certain of delivery; especially failing to consider that one of the requirements is that the bike is “road legal” without specifying in which jurisdictions. A concept image for the non-lethal self-defense weapon listed as a project on the FwdForce site Or take the project that, as I am writing this, has the most money pledged to it. This one is that has to be legal in all 50 states and has a $2,500 prototyping budget. The design and development of this is unlikely to happen for $2,500. Weapons — even non-lethal ones — are complicated and require extensive testing. Let’s not even talk about the legal costs and challenges to bring a product like this to market. The fatal problem, I believe, is that FwdForce is all about ideas, which misses the point of why people care about crowdfunding. Backers invest their money in crowdfunding campaigns because they buy into the dream of the people who put the campaign together. At the stage of development where FwdForce’s crowdfunding campaigns are happening, you cannot expect to find the level of passion you see from projects like the , or . These projects are all in the top 10 most-funded projects on Kickstarter. They didn’t succeed because they are great ideas. In fact, I would suggest that the ideas behind all three of them are profoundly daft. The point, however, is that none of these ideas would have raised much money at the ideas stage. The FwdForce design concept for a pair of fully wireless earbuds So what was it? What made people invest in these incredibly popular Kickstarter campaigns? Maybe they were buying into the dream. Or perhaps they loved the cult of personality, the vision or the execution… Either way, none of what makes a customer reach for their wallet is present in a FwdForce campaign. The corollary is that I don’t believe the platform will ever see a multi-million-dollar fundraiser; it simply won’t experience the levels of success that have seen. FwdForce raises some fantastic questions around who ought to run crowdfunding campaigns, what they are for and how they work. The crowdfunding community should be grateful for that, and the discussion ought to continue from here. Nonetheless, the company hasn’t presented the answers required in order to solve the challenges at hand, and I’m not convinced the crowdfunding landscape is noticeably better now that the platform is live.
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