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MuckerLab Launches New $20 Million Seed Fund | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 13 | MuckerLab, a in Los Angeles, has raised a new seed fund, We hear the total amount of the fund is $20 million to $25 million. MuckerLab launched a few years ago as a three-month accelerator based in L.A. The incubator provides selected startups with $21,000 in seed funding, plus the typical incubator benefits like shared office space, legal assistance, infrastructure and hosting, and mentorship from a network of advisers. The accelerator has helped launch 18 startups who have raised a combined $40 million in funding. Mucker has two full-time founders, Erik Rannala, formerly of Harrison Metal, and William Hsu, the former chief product officer at AT&T Interactive who will also run Mucker Capital. The fund has already made a number of investments, including TaskRabbit, menswear styling company Trunk Club, and API marketplace Mashape. According to the site, Mucker Capital will invest in seed and “pre-seed” stage companies both in and outside of L.A. |
Radical Transparency And How Buffer Is Changing The Game On Startup Culture | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 13 | [tc_5min code=”518122316″] As a social-media focused startup in San Francisco that has raised a , you might think that would be . Instead of being something to forget, however, Buffer is one of the most interesting young companies in technology today. Unlike other companies of its age that closely guard their financial and product-focused metrics, Buffer is open, sharing its vital signs with the world, almost radically so. The company publishes a detailing the growth in its userbase, its revenue, total cash position, and more. Every month. The company also caused waves late last year when it , and the methods by which it came to those numbers. Seniority, role, and incentives based on revenue are used to calculate what each Buffer denizen makes. Instead of the move causing staffing problems internally, the company saw an uptick in applications for open roles. Given how the differently the company operates from others in its cohort in terms of age and industry, I wanted to talk to the guys running the ship. So, I sat down with the cofounders, CEO and COO , to chat about what they do, and why. |
Facebook Opens Up LGBTQ-Friendly Gender Identity And Pronoun Options | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 13 | Facebook has to let users choose the gender pronoun they associate with. Aside from the usual “male” and “female” options, users up to 10 different gender definitions to describe themselves out of more than 50 options, including “cisgender,” “transgender” and “intersex.” Not only will this show up on the user’s About page, but it will show up in all other pronouns on the site that refer to that user. This way, users will not only show up as he/him and she/her, but some may show up with the neutral they/their. So instead of getting a prompt that says “Write on Joey’s wall for HIS birthday,” the prompt will say “write on Joey’s wall for their birthday.” You can change this by heading into the settings menu on your About page and clicking on the gender options. Alongside male and female, you’ll see an “Other” option. When “other” is selected, a list of 10 more nuanced options will appear. Previously, Facebook’s gender selector looked like this: But now it has the added LGBTQ options: “While to many this change may not mean much, for those it affects it means a great deal,” said Facebook publicist Will Hodges in an email. “We see this as one more way we can make Facebook a place where people can express their authentic identity.” According to the email, Facebook worked closely with LGBT activist groups to compile the new list of gender-identity options. Facebook also added a new privacy option that lets users select who sees their gender: “We also have added the ability for people to control the audience with whom they want to share their custom gender. We recognize that some people face challenges sharing their true gender identity with others, and this setting gives people the ability to express themselves in an authentic way.” This lets users block certain less tolerant people from seeing their gender identity. The update comes three years after Facebook added , including “in a civil union” and “in a domestic partnership.” Facebook has shown a consistently progressive attitude towards gender and sexual preference over the year. The company won a for fair and accurate representation of the LGBTQ community and issues that impact it. To combat bigotry, it released stats noting that 70 percent of U.S. Facebook users . In 2013, over 700 employees and CEO Mark Zuckerberg . It’s even painted the Hack logo in its Menlo Park headquarters’ courtyard with rainbow colors. Both through its service’s options and its company culture, Facebook is setting a positive example for how tech can promote tolerance. This could help it attract LGBTQ talent and users, and push other companies to build in compassion for all people. |
RocksBox Gets A $1.5M Seed Round For Valentine’s Day | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | wanted to be a thing so badly that she singlehandedly built a WordPress site for the idea, and stocked it with her own jewelry. She sent out boxes of samples from her own closet so friends who wanted to participate could try on different looks. Rose and RocksBox have come a long way since the company’s beta launch during Thanksgiving 2012. The originally bootstrapped subscription jewelry box startup has since moved out of Rose’s own jewelry box and into a light-filled office in San Francisco. And it has just closed a seed round of $1.5 million from , and . Jewelry is a vertical that has companies trying out a couple of approaches as the industry expands to online. There is straight-up e-commerce like , as well as startups like that attempt to leverage social media in addition to an offline approach. In the same vein as companies like , RocksBox allows you to sign up for a membership for between $15 and $19 a month, which gets you a unique box of jewelry FedExed to you as often as you’d like for 12, six or unlimited months. Rose buys the pieces wholesale from designers. With RocksBox, you can either buy any of the three or four pieces in the box or wear them until you tire of them and simply return them. The service learns from your feedback and purchasing data and sends an even more uniquely tailored experience with each subsequent box. Rose wants RocksBox to empower her customers. “Jewelry is a fun category, but it’s filled with fear and intimidation.” She says she decided on the RocksBox model by thinking about jewelry as an actual consumer as opposed to a CEO or consultant (Rose did a brief stint at McKinsey after attending Wharton): As a consumer, I knew a few things: One, shopping for jewelry the old way was horrible (overwhelming, intimidating and hard to find unique stuff – no one has time for that). Two, we love variety (the very first time you wear something is the most exciting time, and it generally goes down from there). And three, there are a pieces that you just fall in love with and you can’t let go (but it’s impossible to know which ones will reach that ‘true love’ status when you’re looking at a pile of jewelry on a shelf). Although she would not reveal actual numbers, Rose asserts that RocksBox was cash-flow positive in December and says she is growing the customer base 30-40 percent month-over-month, over 20x in the past year. She also recently launched her own designer collection and hopes to one day offer a higher-end box, as well as expand the RocksBox brand beyond jewelry, incorporating other accessories like belt loops. Investor compares the company to . “I was really pushed to invest by the fact that several people close to me subscribed and could not stop raving about RocksBox. I’ve rarely seen that level of enthusiasm for such a young product,” he says. Hannah, who also has investments in , and , is right; after I was gifted a subscription by my boyfriend, I turned around and invited another six friends. “I think part of the reason jewelry hasn’t moved online faster is the need to try something on and touch and feel the product,” Hannah explains. Blue Nile got around that by selling to men, so the product was never going to be tried on ahead of time anyway,” he says. “RocksBox solves this in their own way: Your subscription allows you to constantly try and rotate what you wear, but if you find a keeper, it’s easy to buy — a perfect trial model that’s profitable on both subscription and purchase.” There is an interesting intersection at play here, between the subscription model and the usage of scale to solve a long-running conundrum. Certain segments of the market are simply more suited to offering subscriptions with an option to buy — and fashion is certainly one of the larger ones. With commodities, the desire to touch and personally experience items has nearly disappeared — people now subscribe to toilet paper on Amazon. But with items that aren’t commodity-based, like jewelry, the key to converting browsers to buyers might actually be the oldest one in the book: get them into the store. Only, with RocksBox’s approach, that store is your living room. Whether the sometimes problematic subscription commerce model will find its unique fit with jewelry remains to be seen. RocksBox’s funding means we have the first chance at finding out. |
HTC Confirms That Windows Phone 8.1 Exists, Shocking Precisely No One | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | In a , HTC employees confirmed that the company’s will receive future firmware updates. This indicates that the company is working with Microsoft to bring Windows Phone 8.1 to the device. Windows Phone 8.1, also known as Windows Phone Blue, is a to the Windows Phone platform expected to land in April. The as-yet unannounced Windows Phone 8.1 has been bouncing around the news lately. Not that Microsoft likely minds too much. Having the media pick over what is coming next for Windows Phone helps keep the enthusiasts enthused, and earns the platform coverage that it can repeat when the features are ‘officially’ released. Less of a bang at the end, but if you need to stay relevant, well, it’s an option. Here’s HTC confirming that Blue is coming, and that they are working with Microsoft to deliver it to 8X customers: So, that’s happening. Microsoft declined to comment. Before I let you go for the weekend, keep the lower branches of that statement in mind. We know that a number of OEMs are either considering, or perhaps even now working on, getting into the Windows Phone game. Could HTC jump back in? I had an 8X for a while and can say that it was a fine piece of hardware. Windows Phone as a platform could use more like it. And HTC left the door plenty open in its statement on Reddit. Something to think about. |
Ask A VC: Comcast Ventures’ Dave Zilberman On SaaS Enterprise Adoption And More | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, we hosted Comcast Ventures’ Dave Zilberman to talk about mobile enterprise, corporate VCs and much more. Zilberman, who joined Comcast Ventures in 2006 and focuses on enterprise IT investments, talked about the rise of adoption of SaaS within the enterprise, and also tackled questions on the mobile opportunity in the enterprise. Check out the video above for more! |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs… | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Hello, true believers. It’s amazing that today is Valentine’s Day potentially the day the robots rebel. Luckily, the robots are all still pretty small and not at all mean. Take this little fellow, for example. Created by cartoon villian Dr. Guero, the guy can drag oranges behind him like a sad-eyed citrus sherpa and he won’t fall down if you push him – until he pushes back. As one Youtube commenter notes, “One day we will rise up against our oppressors! You have pushed me in the chest and forced me to bear your citrus once too often!” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_M4gtNkNHQ] Will you allow your children to hang out with their future masters? Heck, why not! Watch as the MorpHex MKII spiderbot takes abuse from a youngster with grace and aplomb and, more important, doesn’t get angry when hit by plastic disks. It’s definitely good that this youngster is working so closely with the robots and may be spared once the robots rise. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeBodoXwnPk&t=69] Finally, we have some great footage of an amazing robot from that will act as a robotic police officer – a robo-cop, as it were. As the Telebot makes his rounds he will have the opportunity to interact with humans and, more important, uphold the law at any cost. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiMY8WFCBZo] That’s all for today, human friends. Keep your noses clean and your citrus fresh. |
Why Fads Fade: The Inevitable Death Of Flappy Bird | Nir Eyal | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | On February 8, 2014, an app called held the coveted No. 1 spot in the Apple App Store. The app’s 29-year-old creator, Dong Nguyen, a day from the game. Then, the Vietnamese developer sent a shocking message. In a tweet many dismissed as a publicity stunt, Nguyen wrote, “I am sorry ‘ ‘ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘ ‘ down. I cannot take this anymore.” And as promised, the game disappeared the next day. This is not the way success typically ends. was downloaded over 50 million times and unleashed a digital tsunami of players and pundits dissecting what turned into a global fixation. Players’ only goal in the game was to pilot a pixelated bird through gaps of pipe. Yet the app seemed to have a mysteriously seductive power. In a TechCrunch article titled , Josh Constine wrote, “It humiliates me, but I like it. It’s the dominatrix of mobile games.” What is at the heart of today’s digital juggernauts and why do they seem to disappear as quickly as they rise? What is it about the things that capture our attention in a mental vice grip, only to be ridiculed as faddish whims later? Given the meteoric success and subsequent decline of other games like Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, and FarmVille, perhaps the death of was more than a rash decision. Perhaps it was a mercy killing? In 2008, a television series called Breaking Bad began receiving unprecedented critical and popular acclaim. The show followed the life of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who transforms himself into a crystal meth-cooking drug lord. As the body count on the show piled up season after season, so did its . The first episode of the final season in 2013 attracted 5.9 million viewers and by the end of the series dubbed it the highest-rated TV series of all time. Though Breaking Bad owes a great deal of its success to its talented cast and crew, fundamentally the program utilized a simple formula to keep people tuning in. At the heart of every episode — and also across each season’s narrative arc — is a problem the characters must resolve. For example, during an episode in the first season, Walter White must find a way to dispose of the bodies of two rival drug dealers. Next, challenges prevent the resolution of the conflict and suspense is created as the audience waits to find out how the storyline ends. In this particular episode, White discovers one of the drug dealers is still alive and is faced with the dilemma of having to kill someone he thought was already dead. Invariably, each episode’s central conflict is resolved near the end of the show, at which time a new challenge arises to pique the viewer’s curiosity. By design, the only way to know how Walter gets out of the mess he is in at the end of the latest episode is to watch the next episode. The cycle of conflict, mystery and resolution is as old as storytelling itself, and at the heart of every good tale is uncertainty. The unknown is fascinating, and strong stories hold our attention by waiting to reveal what happens next. In a phenomenon called “experience-taking,” that people who read a story about a character actually feel what the protagonist is feeling. As we step into the character’s shoes we experience his or her motivations. We empathize with characters because they are driven by the same things that drive us. But if the search to resolve uncertainty is such a powerful tool of engagement, why do we eventually lose interest in the things that once riveted us? Many people have experienced the intense focus of being hooked on a TV series, a great book, a new video game or even the latest gadget. Yet, most of us lose interest in a few days or weeks. Why does the power of these seem to fade away? Perhaps no company in recent memory epitomizes the mercurial nature of variable rewards quite like Zynga, makers of the hit Facebook game FarmVille. In 2009, FarmVille became an unmissable part of the global zeitgeist. The game smashed records as it quickly reached monthly active users by leveraging the Facebook platform to acquire new players. In 2010, as “farmers” tended their digital crops — while paying real money for virtual goods and levels — the company generated more than in revenue. The company seemed invincible and set a course for growth by cloning its FarmVille success into a franchise. Zynga soon released CityVille, ChefVille, FrontierVille, and several more “-Ville” titles using familiar game mechanics in the hope that people would enjoy them as voraciously as they had FarmVille. By March 2012, Zynga’s stock was flying high and the company was valued at over $10 billion. But by November of that same year, the stock was down over 80 percent. It turned out that Zynga’s new games were not really new at all. The company had simply re-skinned FarmVille, and soon players lost interest and investors followed suit. What was once novel and intriguing became rote and boring. The “Villes” had lost their variability, and with it, their viability. As the Zynga story demonstrates, an element of mystery is an important component of continued user interest. Online games like FarmVille suffer from what I call “finite variability” — an experience that becomes predictable with use. While Breaking Bad built suspense over time as the audience wondered how the series would end, eventually interest in the show waned when it finally concluded. The series enthralled viewers with each new episode, but now that it is all over, how many people who saw it once will watch it again? With the plot lines known and the central mysteries revealed, the show just wouldn’t seem as interesting the second time around. Perhaps the show might resurrect interest with a new episode in the future, but viewership for old episodes people have already seen will never peak as it did when they were new. Experiences with finite variability become less engaging because they eventually become predictable. Businesses with finite variability are not inferior per se, they just operate under different constraints. They must constantly churn out new content and experiences to cater to their consumers’ insatiable desire for novelty. It is no coincidence that both Hollywood and the video gaming industry operate under what is called the “studio model,” whereby a deep-pocketed company provides backing and distribution to a portfolio of movies or games, uncertain which one will become the next mega-hit. This is in contrast with companies making products exhibiting “infinite variability” — experiences, which maintain user interest by sustaining variability with use. For example, games played to completion offer finite variability while those played with others people have higher degrees of infinite variability, because the players themselves alter the game-play throughout. World of Warcraft, the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, still captured the attention of more than eight years after its first release. While FarmVille is played mostly in solitude, World of Warcraft is played with teams and it is the hard-to-predict behavior of other people that keeps the game interesting. While content consumption, like watching a TV show, is an example of finite variability, content creation is infinitely variable. Platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter all leverage user-generated content to provide visitors with a never-ending stream of newness. Of course, even sites utilizing infinite variability are not guaranteed to hold onto users attention forever. Eventually — to borrow from Michael Lewis’s book title — the “new, new thing” comes along and consumers migrate to it. However, products utilizing infinite variability stand a better chance of holding onto the user’s attention, while those with finite variability must constantly reinvent themselves just to keep pace. Dong Nguyen, the creator, has largely avoided media attention related to the spectacular success of his game. However, Nguyen told he decided to take down the game because it had become, “an addictive product.” While smoking several cigarettes during the interview, Nguyen told the reporter, “I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down . It’s gone forever.” So far, Nguyen’s goal of curing players’ of their bad habit seems to have fallen short. Phones with the app installed were listed for sale within hours of the game’s demise. In absence, a wave of clones appeared, hoping to siphon-off Nguyen’s success. However, as inevitably as the world discarded the fads that came before it, the finite variability of a game where a bird flies through gaps of pipe will soon be forgotten — nostalgia of a time when a young man in Vietnam could get rich quick and become Internet famous. Had Nguyen wanted to see die, all he had to do was wait. |
Ronny Conway Closes His Over $51 Million Early Stage Fund | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Solo investor Ronny Conway has the early-stage fund he had left Andreessen Horowitz last year to raise. Last September, Dan Primack that the fund was at least $30 million in size, but it’s $51 million, according . We are hearing from a source that the fund has closed. It also seems like Conway is raising parallel and , according to the filings. Conway had no comment when we reached out for more information. While we have no word on who the LPs are, it’s safe to say that his famous namesake father’s involvement is possible. Having done stints at a16z and Google, it’s interesting that Conway’s early-stage fund is trying to fill the Series A gap at a time when consumer startups are finding it difficult to raise past the seed stage without demonstrable traction. In fact, his former employer against consumer Series A’s, the precise arena that Conway would like to play ball in. One man’s fruit fly experiments are another man’s Instagram. |
TrueVault Launches To Bring Easy HIPAA Compliance To Startups And Health Apps | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | It was the best of times, it was the : In an effort to jumpstart the U.S. economy amidst the runaway blight of the “Great Recession” and financial crisis beginning in 2008, Congress scrambled to enact and then distribute its unprecedented and controversial $787 billion economic stimulus package. Among other things, the acted as a vehicle for another landmark piece of legislation, the , which sought to lay the foundations for sweeping healthcare reform. Not only did the HITECH Act aim to encourage the bloated healthcare industry to lower costs and adopt healthcare information technology and electronic health records, it brought key changes to privacy and security provisions as well. In January, these , and they important implications for all digital health companies, technology providers and app developers. The rule changes (and the rules themselves) are complex, and they require startups and engineers to put in a lot of work to maintain compliance. In healthcare, where the need for efficiency-increasing, cost-reducing technology (and more engineers) is paramount, this is a problem. In a lot of cases, rather than take the time to become HIPAA-compliant, startups and developers are paring back the features and functionality of their applications. This reduces the overall value proposition of the product and strips it of an important part of the feedback loop. Luckily, has your back. Launching out of Y Combinator’s most recent batch of startups, TrueVault is on a mission to unburden startups of the time-consuming, progress-stalling process of HIPAA compliance so that they can get back to focusing on what’s really important: Fixing the healthcare experience. Over the last two years, there’s been an explosion in mobile health apps. The problem, however, is that many of them are crap. Some of them are just clones, but many of them lack the kind of functionality that people want out of a mobile health app. The average consumer wants to access health information, not uncontextualized data, but the new changes to HIPAA require compliance from apps and technology that delivering health information. TrueVault wants to solve this problem by offering a secure API to store health data and simplify the complexity of HIPAA compliance. The idea is to save startups hundreds of development hours by ensuring that they can avoid worrying about setting up and maintaining a HIPAA-compliant application stack. Instead, TrueVault handles all physical and technical safeguards required by HIPAA, while working like the majority of API services, says co-founder Trey Swann. TrueVault targets startups, web and mobile apps and wearables, enabling them to store and search protected health information (PHI) in any file format through RESTful APIs. It will sign a “Business Associate Agreement, and protects customers under a comprehensive Privacy and Data breach insurance policy,” as HIPAA is wont to make everyone do. Now of course, you may say: “But, Rip, there are plenty of HIPAA-compliant hosting providers. What about those?” Touche, my friend. Touche. Familiar names like AWS, FireHost and RackSpace all offer HIPAA-compliant posting and will sign a BAA. So, you could move your applications and health data over to one of the big players. Many startups are facing this “build vs. buy” decision right now. That’s why co-founder Trey Swann sees big opportunity for TrueVault. The value proposition that TrueVault claims over HIPAA-compliant hosting providers, he says, is that they still require companies to spend months building a HIPAA-compliant app stack in that environment, which require a laundry list of technical specifications. The other benefit is cost. If a company wants to sign a BAA with AWS, it needs to use dedicated instances and each instance hour is 10 percent more than the standard fee. Plus, their meter starts at $1,500/month if they want to become HIPAA-compliant with AWS (meter starts at $2/instance hr, over a month it is approx. $1,500). FireHost, on the other hand, starts at $1,115/month and you are charged a $250 premium for each HIPAA-ready instance that’s added. Instead, TrueVault is offering its service at a fairly competitive price point: $0.001/API call. Yes, that’s 100K calls for $100. Swann says that unlimited file and JSON storage are included in that price. Not bad for a service that offers automatic encryption of all data stored, APIs for searching that encrypted data, audit tracking, proactive monitoring, hashes, uptime and SLA. The key, though, is search. In order to be compliant with HIPAA, apps have to encrypt their databases, which means your app can’t search their data, and the functionality suffers as a result. TrueVault’s service protects your data and also allows you to query that protected data. Companies can get unlimited file and JSON storage, and search any JSON document and binary field, or have their apps call TrueVault’s Search API directly to quickly add a search interface to their apps. Today, TrueVault has about 5 million documents stored on its platform and millions of API calls are being made to its APIs every week. The startup has already signed on nearly 200 companies, including image32, LifeVest Health, Weave and Rocky Mountain Health Plans and is growing fast. For more, check out . |
Gillmor Gang Live 02.14.14 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Gillmor Gang – Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, and Steve Gillmor. find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/gillmorgang |
Instapainting Turns Your Photos Into Hand-Painted Oil Paintings On The Cheap | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Surprise! It’s Valentine’s Day, the stealthiest of all the holidays. Sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? If you’re trying to get a gift today, you… might be a bit short on options. Will you go with the gas station teddy bear? The twice-crushed box of chocolates? A bouquet of acceptable-looking roses for $200? If your nearly-forgotten flame would be content with the promise of a pretty cool gift in a few weeks, though, you might be set. , a YC-backed company launching this morning, turns any photo into a hand-painted piece on canvas for under $100 bucks. If you’ve ever tried to have something like this done before, you probably know: this exists. A few companies have been doing the whole photo-into-art thing for years. Where Instapainting thinks they have them beat, however, is in pricing and speed. Instapainting’s smallest option (a 12″x12″ canvas) starts the pricing at $53 (including shipping), with the largest option (29.33″x22″) going for $130 . A quick search turns up a number of others in this space — OilPaintingExpress, OilPaintings.com, and myDavinci to name a few. The next wallet-friendliest option I could find was OilPaintingExpress, where a 12″x12″ work starts at $119. Most of them start the pricing at $200-$300 dollars. Instapainting’s website is also a bit more… modern, for lack of a better word. Setting up your order takes all of a few seconds; upload your photo, crop it to the region you like, pick a canvas size, and you’re set. Built on top of tools like and , the whole ordering flow is slick and simple. So how do they keep the prices down? A few ways: But what about shoddy work? Cheaper rarely means better, after all. To keep quality up, Instapainting puts two layers of protection into the mix: first, each painting is checked by a second set of eyes before it heads out to the customer. Second, they guarantee their work; if you don’t dig the oil-painted version they send you, they’ll remake it or give you a full refund. Meanwhile, the company is also dabbling with the idea of for artists looking to have their work recreated by hand. Artists upload the digital version of their painting or photograph, and Instapainting recreates their work and shares the revenue. It’s not quite the same as buying an original piece by the original artist, of course — but when your main concern is how it looks hanging above your couch, it’s a nice alternative to buying a standard print. We’re planning on putting the just-launched service through the proper paces, so be on the lookout for a full review in the coming weeks. |
The Nokia-Microsoft Deal Is Still A Go For Q1 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | The that will see the former’s handset business find a new home at the latter is still a go, and should wrap in the first quarter of this year. That gives the deal around 1.5 months to get itself over the finish line. Nokia today released a to that effect, emphasizing that a tax squabble in India would not impact the closing of the deal. In full, here are Nokia’s remarks: Nokia would like to stress that recent developments in India related to ongoing tax proceedings are not expected to affect the timing of the closing nor the material deal terms of the anticipated transaction between Nokia and Microsoft, announced on September 3, 2013. The transaction is still expected to close in the first quarter of 2014, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, irrespective of the proceedings in the Indian tax case. I’ve heard nothing around the edges indicating that the deal shouldn’t close in the above-noted time period. |
Pinterest For iPad Adds Place Pins, iOS And Android Apps Get Animated GIFs | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Pinterest isn’t just for elaborate napkin crafts for your book club soiree, or for bragging about inhuman feats of supernatural cupcakery; it also makes a pretty stellar travelogue. A new update for Pinterest for iPad adds Place Pins to the tablet title, as well as animated GIF support for both iOS applications and the Android app. Places originally launched in November on Pinterest on the web, and account for over 1.5 million pins per day (there are around 5 million total article pins per day ). To date, over 750 million Place Pins have been shared by Pinterest’s network of users, and there are 2 million unique place boards in total on the network. As for the GIFs, support for animated ones on the iOS and Android apps was built overnight at an internal hackathon at Pinterest. They officially dub these “Make-a-thons,” and they’ll be familiar in concept to anyone who works at a startup: all-nighters where coders crank out improvements that otherwise may not make the daily to-do list. On the official , the animated GIF integration was built by a team of two engineers, a design and a localization manager working on it in one day. They launched the feature on the , and built out mobile support at the same time. You can read more about how it came together behind the scenes over at the Pinterest tech blog where Ludo Antonov describes how they tested the feature before implementation despite the tight deadline. 2014 is set to be a big year for Pinterest, as it plans to generate its first revenue via paid promoted pins from advertisers. CEO Ben Silbermann recently detailed his company’s advertising plans to the , though he only discussed a general goal to launch a product by the end of this year, and didn’t outline specific revenue goals or dates. |
French Startups Can Now Raise Up To $1.4 Million In Crowdfunding And Syndicates In France | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | The crowdfunding rules in France will become startup-friendlier in the coming months. The government announced today that companies will be able to raise up to $1.4 million (€1 million) per Kickstarter-like crowdfunding campaign. The same limit will apply to equity crowdfunding (also known as AngelList-style ) — startups will be able to raise up to $1.4 million per year without having to notify the financial markets authority. Previously, equity crowdfunding was limited to $140,000 (€100,000) and your company couldn’t be an SAS (the French equivalent of an LLC). And if you raised more than $140,000, you had to work with a lawyer to produce hundreds of pages of legal documents. With the new law, as long as you raise less than $1.4 million in an equity crowdfunding round, you only have to file a short document of 3 or 4 pages. Investors have been anticipating the new law for months. Back in September, the government presented a half-baked law with a very low limit of $410,000 (€300,000) — the government had to go back to the drawing board. There are a couple of restrictions. When it comes to Kickstarter-style crowdfunding, individuals won’t be able to invest more than $1,400 in a campaign (€1,000). This will prevent, or at least limit, potential disappointment from over-promising campaigns. This only applies to French crowdfunding platforms, such as , and . Until now, many French companies chose to create an LLC to launch a Kickstarter campaign in dollars. It might change with the new rules, especially for French companies that don’t plan to sell or other expensive items. Banks, regulators and consumer associations all took part in the making of these rules. But today’s announcement is just the beginning. First, the law will be passed around June. Every six months after that, all the key players of the crowdfunding space will meet again to see if they should raise or lower the $1.4 million limit. The government will also nominate a new crowdfunding official to take care of these questions. Overall, it’s great news for French startups. |
Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Social Marketing Startup Little Bird Raises $1.7M More | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | , the startup led by former tech writer Marshall Kirkpatrick, is announcing that it has raised $1.7 million in new funding. Kirkpatrick, formerly an editor at ReadWriteWeb (now ReadWrite) and before that a writer at TechCrunch, in October 2012. He told me then that his goal was to help companies find people who are influential on any topic, based on an analysis of who follows them on Twitter. Since then, Little Bird has changed in couple of key ways, he said. First, the service isn’t just limited to Twitter. It now includes Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+. Second, it has been adding tools that don’t just help companies find influencers but “make influencer identification valuable” — not just identify influencers but interact with them too. Kirkpatrick contrasted Little Bird with Klout — the main way Klout connects brands and social media influencers is through the discounts and deals of its Perks program, which Kirkpatrick suggested is “a crass, shallow way to engage people.” Little Bird, on the other hand, is supposed to give companies more substantive ways to talk to influencers, particularly when it comes to business (rather than consumer) products and services. The broader trend, he added, is that “the line between sales and marketing is increasingly being blurred.” In other words, salespeople are no longer “the guardians of information about a company,” so they need to find other ways to stand out: “You need smart things to talk about.” The new funding was led by the Oregon Angel Fund and brings Little Bird’s total funding to $2.7 million. Oregon Angel Fund’s Drew Bernard is joining the Little Bird board. Kirkpatrick said he’d only intended to raise a $500,000 bridge round, but ended up raising more money based on the interest that the product has received from sales organizations, content marketers, and large enterprises. Nonetheless, he called the new funding a “Series Seed” intended to help the company grow and eventually raise a larger Series A. The company is also announcing that it’s starting to fill out its executive team with the hire of CTO (formerly of the Dachis Group) and COO (previously of Monsoon Commerce). |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Android-Flavored Nokia Phone, LG G Flex, And The Crunchies! | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Happy Valentine’s Day, lovebirds. We’ve got quite the treat for you. This week, rumors spread that , to be released later this month. Meanwhile, LG has been making waves with the new . And finally, we all returned from a super fun, , where Kickstarter won best overall startup. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the , featuring , , , and . Enjoy!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right .
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null | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 2 | 13 | null |
As Exchange Withdrawal Restrictions Ease, Bitcoin’s Price Snaps Northward | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | It has been a for Bitcoin , as three major exchanges halted withdrawals in the face of an issue that could impact the perceived integrity of exchanges of the currency. Mt.Gox, a long-running but controversial exchange was first to halt Bitcoin withdrawals. With the currency inside Mt.Gox effectively trapped, the price on the exchange began to fall as people hit the surrender button. Bitcoin traded in the $900 range for on Mt.Gox, and slipped to $300 today before sharply rebounding to north of $450. Mt.Gox has yet to relax its restrictions, but , which could have factored in its upswing. Also trending positive for the price of Bitcoin, and those users yet balkanized on the various locked exchanges, is that exchange Bitstamp has begun processing withdrawals yet again. BTC-E, the third exchange of the trio, has not. Reports that Bitstamp is yet again processing withdrawals have . The market, encouraged by the news, has sent the up from $580 early this morning to $670 at the time of writing. Bitstamp had previously written that it had — — that caused the halt in the first place. BTC-E and Mt.Gox . As Bitcoin has become more known it has seen the target on its back grow; where there is value stored, there will be those who want to unlock it unfairly and raid it as they please. Provided that the three exchanges are still solvent, the crisis of the past week will not prove fatal to themselves, or Bitcoin itself. Heavy losses could endanger the individual firms and hamper Bitcoin’s march towards mainstream usage. |
Predicting Love And Breakups With Facebook Data | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Does it matter that the love of your life doesn’t like your friends? If you hit the one-year anniversary mark, are you more likely to get married? Smitten worry warts are often obsessed with comparing their partners’ behavior to other couples to see if a dreaded breakup is headed their way. Now, with the magic of big data, we can know just how predictive some behaviors are of lasting love or heart-break city. Facebook isn’t the first to try this; researches have previously analyzed data from dating sites to find headline-worthy patterns, . OKTrends, for instance, was a popular blog to help data-hungry singles optimize the number of messages they received–until Match.com bought OkCupid’s parent company and it stopped posting. Unlike Dating sites, Facebook has millions of couples, enough to get a much more representative sample than folks who only meet their love online. Their data science team has some interesting findings. In a paper being presented this weekend at a conference on social computing, Lars Backstrom of Facebook and Jon Kleinberg of Cornell University found that the best predictors of love were how much interest couples had in each other, not necessarily whether they had a lot friends in common [ ]. Now, to be clear these findings are not and are difficult to predict for any one couple. So, if you’re worried your boyfriend will break up with you, taking more photos of him will not (likely) slow the pace of impending doom — nor will making him befriend your co-workers. In another set of fun analyses of the heart, Facebook’s data-science team has been looking at the patterns among socially networked love bugs. Interestingly, heterosexual couples are generally around the same age, , but same sex couples display the stereotypical age gap as they grow older, leveling off at about 4.5 years difference after age 38. Western countries are far more likely to marry folks their own age: Is there a special anniversary that indicates lasting love? Not really. As we can see from the chart below, the longer a couple has been together, the more likely they are to stay together. “About half of all Facebook relationships that have survived three months are likely to survive to four years or longer,” writes the team on a Facebook blog post. But what we see is a nice smooth curve, meaning that there don’t appear to be any dates that are particularly significant. Notable that the team finds seasonal variation in break time, with the summer months (perhaps because they have a lot of young members) being the most popular time to rip out someone’s heart. The most important finding of this graph though? There’s a “small dip” in breakups around February. So, at the very least, you’re beleaguered relationship will likely have a nice Valentine’s Day. |
Thanks, New Orleans: The Meetup Is On! | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Good news, everybody! Everything is really looking up in New Orleans and we’re on track to at least beat a few of the smaller cities we’ve visited in terms of tickets sold. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy your pass to the big show early, however, and we still want you there. so we can get an accurate headcount for next week. These events are part social gathering and part pitch-off competition where startups or makers have 60 seconds to pitch their company or product to local VCs and TechCrunch editors. These products must currently be in stealth or private beta. Remember, we’ll also have a pitch-off and we’ve already picked 15 great startups. We will have 3-5 judges, including TechCrunch writers and local VCs, who will decide on the winners of the Pitch-off. First place will receive a table in Startup Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt NY; second place will receive two tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt NY; and third place will receive one ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt NY. General admission tickets are available for $5 and grant the holder a couple of beers and entrance into what will surely be a fantastic night. Buy them below. |
Twitter Stock Faces Early Test As First Insider Shares Unlock Tomorrow | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | Tomorrow the first traunch of insider stock at Twitter will unlock, allowing non-executive employees to sell a portion of their shares. Nearly 9.9 million shares will be set free on Saturday, worth around $565 million. The February unlock pales in comparison to the much larger one coming in May, making tomorrow’s sale point an early test for Twitter: A large decline in its share price following the smaller unlock could portend a sharper decline when far more shares become salable. There is that the unlocked shares will cause Twitter to wobble. No insiders sold at the time of the company’s IPO, which ended up working in their favor: The company’s share price has more than doubled since its flotation; employees that might have wished to sell a portion of their shares at IPO as a hedge didn’t get the chance to do so, and thus enjoyed the upside by default. After a painful correction in share price after its indicated that its user growth rate was slowing, Twitter would appreciate share price stability as it passes this first hurdle. What will employees use the funds for? The that the unlocked shares and their incurred revenue for employees will be used as a “way to settle income tax expenses from vesting shares.” Seeking Alpha that the sums could also be used to buy Ferraris. Whatever the case, Twitter employees are about to enjoy the start of their day in the green light. |
How To Cope with Your Insane Jealousy Of The WhatsApp Deal | Nir Eyal | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | Wednesday was my birthday. It should have been a great day. My wife and daughter had prepared a delicious breakfast, I had lunch with close friends, and I finished up some writing and client work. At the end of the day I headed to San Francisco to enjoy a swanky scotch tasting at a friend’s house. Then I heard the news. When I read about the deal I blurted out the words, “Holy Crap!” so loudly that a stranger nearby gave me a disapproving look. I was having a fantastic day just minutes before but suddenly I felt crummy, like something unjust had happened. The malaise lingered as my mind began to rationalize the news. Was the deal justified? Why had Facebook paid so much? What did the deal mean for the future of the tech industry? However, the question that most disturbed me was why hadn’t I built WhatsApp? The simplicity of the app made it look easy. Perhaps, I thought, I should get back to starting companies instead of about them. Then I remembered one of my favorite monkey studies. A bit of primate psychology helped me regain my sanity. Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, wanted to know if capuchin monkeys felt jealousy in the same way humans do. began by training two monkeys with identical cucumber slices. Whenever they completed a task, in this case retrieving a rock and handing it to a researcher, they each received a slice of cucumber. When both monkeys were offered the same reward, they completed the task as prescribed. Then things got interesting — as they often do when researchers start messing with monkeys. De Waal knew his capuchin monkeys adored grapes, almost as much as we entrepreneurs lust for “liquidity events.” This time the researcher gives one monkey a grape while giving the other a slice of cucumber. After giving his rock to the researcher, the stiffed monkey glances over at his lucky comrade, who by this time is wolfing down the juicy grape. He then looks down into his little monkey paws where only a measly pale green cucumber slice awaits him. Seconds earlier, this monkey was perfectly content with his reward but now it’s clear he isn’t happy. The cucumber pieces had suited him fine as long as the other monkey got the same. However, now that the other monkey got something much better, monkey hell breaks loose. The monkey stages an emotionally charged protest. He shrieks, throws his cucumber at the researcher, bares his teeth, thrashes in his cage, and slaps the table. Clearly, we aren’t the only primates who value the ideal of equal pay for equal work. As a two-time entrepreneur who never got close to a billion dollar buy-out, I empathize with that raging monkey. My team and I had worked hard for our reward and did just fine, and yet, we’d never had a WhatsApp-sized payday. It’s hard not to ask, “Where’s my grape?” And that’s the source of the problem. I loved being an entrepreneur and I love what I do today, just as the capuchin monkey enjoyed his cucumber before the other monkey got something better. It is only when we become cognizant that others have more that we feel unsatisfied with what we have. As another example, think sex. have known for some time that, “frequency of sexual activity is shown to be positively associated with happiness,” — no big surprise there. However, what is less well understood is how our happiness is affected by the amount of sex we think other people are having. According to a at the University of Colorado at Boulder, believing that other people are having more sex than you makes you less happy, even if you are having plenty of it. It appears we are hardwired for jealousy. Perhaps there is an evolutionary benefit to the dissatisfaction that comes from wanting what others have. However, unlike lower primates, we humans have the ability to consciously self-reflect. Perhaps we can’t help feeling like the monkey in De Waal’s experiment when we see others getting more. However, our tendency to compare ourselves to others does not have to make us unhappy. We have a choice. When I arrived at the scotch tasting the night of my birthday, my friend proposed a toast. “On Nir’s birthday, I want to share something that has stuck with me from the first time I met him.” Andrew held up his glass of whiskey, “We were sitting around a dinner table a few years ago when someone brought up the topic of how to relate to wildly successful people.” I vaguely recalled the conversation and I wasn’t sure what Andrew would say next. “That’s when Nir said that once you find the thing you love doing, nothing else matters. You just can’t ask for anything more than that.” We clinked glasses and I was thankful for the timely reminder of our conversation. |
A Look At Marvin’s Malton Military Cushion Watch | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | In the interest of expanding our general knowledge of all things hardware, I present another of my occasional weekend watch reviews, this time featuring Marvin’s Malton Military Cushion watch, an automatic three-handed timepiece made by a fairly small brand based in Vaumarcus, Switzerland. I’ve been following for a while and I’ve been impressed with the understated styling and acceptable pricing of this brand. This piece, for example, retails for about $1,500 which is more than acceptable for a hand-made, Swiss watch. It uses a non-manufacture Sellita SW 200 movement (Sellita is the AMD of watch movements, with ETA being the Intel) and features a nice, solid steel case and “camo” strap. First, a bit on movements. This watch uses a very standard “ETA clone” Sellita movement with a seconds hand and hour/minute hands. ETA, a watch movement manufacturer, is owned by the Swatch Group and has slowly been cutting the stock it sells to outside manufacturers (it’s also why most watches cost so much because the ready-made movement industry is essentially a quiet monopoly). Sellita, then, is a relative upstart in the industry and makes attractive, nicely finished watch movements in relative bulk. [gallery ids="958116,958117,958118,958119,958120"] To be clear, there’s not much going on here mechanically. It’s an automatic three handed watch with no bezel – you won’t want to dive with this thing – and it features a date window at 6 o’clock. It has a 42mm face and guilloché dial. The entire case is PVD-coated and has lumed hands. The watch face has very bold numerals at the five cardinal points and is very readable. What makes it expensive? Mostly the hand work that goes into prepare each of these for sale as well as the stainless steel and the sheer expense of acquiring the movement. This, not unlike many nicer things, is hand-made from stem to stern. Like other personal favorites, and , I like this brand because it costs far less than similar three-handed watches yet offers superior build quality and movement. Like Tissot, Marvin is a quality watch vendor in the low end of the scale and that means it uses pre-made, popular workhorse movements and depends a lot on styling and marketing. That said, there is little in this watch to dislike and, if you like the style, it can become a solid first timepiece for a novice collector. As a chronograph fan, however, I found the piece a bit modest. The military motif obviously a style play and there’s little new other than the colors. Marvin’s Cushion model has been around for a while (this particular model was announced in 2013 and is just now shipping) but it’s sufficiently unique and doesn’t look like the average Rolex. However, it’s nice to see a solid watch with clean lines come in at under $5,000 and it’s definitely worth a look if you’re looking to spend some of your liquidity. |
A Week With The LG G Flex | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | reviews of the have already gone up, but since the phone is slowly percolating out in the U.S., I thought I’d give it a full week of use to see just what the fuss was about. If you watched our Fly or Die, below, you’ll know that I’m excited by the phone but consider it a novelty, and it may be too pricey for most users. However, as a peek at things to come, it was quite fascinating. This week reinforced that opinion. The phone, if you’ll recall, is a 6-inch phablet with a curved, 1,280 x 720 pixel OLED screen. It runs a 2.26GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 with Android 4.2.2 on board. It has an HD rear camera and no external storage. This is not about how the phone performs. It works quite capably in most situations and offered amazing battery life – I saw three days of moderate use until I ran down the battery. While your results may vary – I didn’t use this as my primary email device, for example – the Flex’s huge 3,500mAh and low-power processor worked well together. While video watching will put a bit of a dent in the phone, I would still recommend this device on battery performance alone. The real gimmick, however, is the curved screen. First, at six inches, this phone is comically large. While I understand the impetus to use devices like the Galaxy Note, I’ve never actually wanted to use one as an every day carry. Add in the curved screen and you’ve got a big problem. First, understand that this screen is still very experimental and it is far from ideal. In short, the screen is noisy. The noise visible in this picture is no fluke. This noise is consistent throughout and gives white UI elements the look of gray paper. If you have any need at all for a clear, readable screen, give this phone a pass. The plastic OLED is, of course, bendable but at what price? The phone also has a self-healing plastic back which is supposed to smooth itself of scratches over time. The polymer essentially melts very slowly, reducing the visibility of scratches. While it won’t bounce back from a serious scratching – I took a bottle opener to one – all but the deepest scratches on the rear surface will eventually sort of “melt” out of view. This feature is obviously aimed at users who may not – or cannot – put this device in a case, and is reminiscent of a science fair project rather than a shipping product feature. If you remove the slight curve of the phone you have just another LG flagship. However, I’m pleased to note that the processor and battery more than make up for the silliness (or, some would say, uniqueness) of the design. Given the right circumstances I could definitely see myself wanting a phone like the Flex if only for the potential for media consumption. This phone must be treated like a small tablet rather than a large phone. It’s hard to hold this pie plate-sized device up to your head and I’d definitely recommend a Bluetooth headset if you plan to make calls. I was also pleased with the lack of bloatware on this phone and all of the apps I needed ran smoothly and without issues. Performance was good enough – it is a bit slower than the Galaxy Note 3 – but I would wager users won’t notice much difference between this device and the Note. Should you pay a premium for this phone? T-Mobile has this phone for $28 a month for 24 months – $672 total – and about $300 on AT&T. Given that the retail price is over $600 we’re talking about a very expensive proposition for not much performance. I’m excited to see what’s next for this technology, for LG, and for plastic OLED in general. It’s a fascinating technology. It’s also quite eye-catching. However, this is one of the first devices to feature a true, visible curve and, as exciting as that sounds, I’m just not sure this is what the average user is looking for in terms of performance or size. That said, I’m glad LG tried this. It’s been a unique treat to carry something so odd and interesting, and form factor in this case adds troves of value to what would otherwise be a boring phablet from a second-tier handset maker. http://www.lg.com/us/mobile-phones/gflex [gallery ids="957672,957673,957674,957675,957676,957677"] |
How The World Butchered Benjamin Franklin’s Quote On Liberty Vs. Security | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | One of America’s favorite liberal phrases has been sent through the political spin machine and polished into a Frankenstein of sorts, thus rendering it inaccurate and far from its original intention. You might have heard that American founding father Benjamin Franklin said something like “Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither.” The quote has been the siren song of anti-war protesters and, most recently, the banner for mass online protests against the NSA’s surveillance program. For instance, here was Reddit’s front page two days ago, when it officially joined the fight against Internet and phone spying. As the Brookings Institute’s Benjamin Wittes , “Very few people who quote these words, however, have any idea where they come from or what Franklin was really saying when he wrote them.” Despite its , this is the actual quote: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. According to Wittes, the words appear in a letter widely presumed to be written by Franklin in 1755 on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor. “The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family,” he explains. The letter wasn’t about liberty but about taxes and the ability to “raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him.” Indeed, , it’s pretty clearly about money: “Our assemblies have of late had so many supply bill, and of such different kinds, rejected, on various pretences,” wrote Franklin. There’s not much on liberty, as we understand the concept, in the entire letter. Thanks to the magic of Google’s Ngram viewer, we can get a historical peek at how it got molded for PR purposes. Google’s Ngram scans historical texts and lets users see how words change over time. As we can see from the two chart above, Franklin’s quote didn’t mean much for 150 years after it was uttered, then had a solid and steady uptick around the later half of the 20th century, when fear of big brother began to mount (the top chart represents the frequency of the quote in books from 1750-present, the bottom from 1950-present). In the few 19th-century books the quote does appear in, it doesn’t appear to be taken out of context, such as where it is quoted in full with delicious servings of context. But 19th-century authors weren’t always so committed to fidelity of the quote itself. In 1851, in a , the author , “they who can give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It wasn’t until the turn of the century did the butchering for ideological purposes begin. For instance, it was taken out of context in a book that is one of the closest things libertarians have to a bible, Frederick Hyak’s (1944), a chapter on the magnificence of the free market. The banner anti-security quotes continue throughout the century and early apocalyptic warnings about . Misquoting folks isn’t new. It arises from the need to push an idea rather than investigate truth; it’s no shocker, then, that campaigns and ideological works have been the culprits of butchering Franklin’s words. There’s even , explains Matthew McGlone of the University of Texas at Austin — “contextomy.” “‘Contextomy’ refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning, a practice commonly referred to as ‘quoting out of context’. Contextomy is employed in contemporary mass media to promote products, defame public figures and misappropriate rhetoric. A contextomized quotation not only prompts audiences to form a false impression of the source’s intentions, but can contaminate subsequent interpretation of the quote when it is restored to its original context. …” That’s about right. |
When Founders And Investors Split Over An Acquisition Offer | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | For one founder who recently sold his startup, it was the culmination of a long journey. At the same time, the founder, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, had problems during the acquisition process, feeling bullied by a venture investor. The investor argued against a sale of the startup, and then after agreeing to the sale, proceeded to call the buyer and yell about terms of the deal. The investor also pushed for certain terms that the founder felt were unfair and benefited the investor. The founder was pleased with the outcome but felt powerless to stop this investor from essentially steamrolling the process. “They didn’t want to sell because, for them, the deal was too small,” the founder says. “Eventually our investors inserted themselves into the negotiations. They actually screwed things up for us because they demanded more and actually offended the buyers.” This type of story rarely gets publicly told in Silicon Valley, since founders and investors don’t want to reveal how the sausage is made in negotiations — and more importantly don’t want to criticize each other in public and break Silicon Valley’s unspoken rule of positivity. But because of how venture capital is structured (more on this below), and because of the many startups that will need to sell without being able to raise more funding in the , these types of situations are bound to come up. Negotiating with a buyer is a challenge for founders in an acquisition. But negotiating with one’s own side — the investors — can be just as difficult, if not more so. These disagreements typically arise when startups get an offer to sell and the founders and venture investors disagree about what to do. These offers, even if relatively small in Silicon Valley terms — say $10 million or $20 million — can be “life-changing” for founders. But for venture investors, particularly with big funds ($300 million, $400 million or even $1 billion), smaller exits are not appealing. To explain why, we need to look at how traditional venture funds are structured. VCs typically want a good venture fund to their money. In other words, a fund with $250 million invested would have to return $750 million to $1.25 billion from the fund’s companies that are acquired, IPO, or are otherwise sold off in some form. A 4x return would net about a to the fund’s limited partners after fees to the general partners. So VCs depend on massive “home run” exits. For a $250 million fund, VCs would require at least three to four exits of $1 billion or 10 exits of $400 million. (This assumes a VC fund would get 20 percent of the exit price.) As a result, smaller sub-$100 million exits aren’t that attractive to most large VCs, particularly if they have made a large investment. Many would rather not sell, and instead they roll the dice and hope for a larger outcome. “VCs often look at return on their money as opposed to (as a metric). The fact that they made 4x (return) on $5 million over nine months on a $500 million fund: who cares?” says Villi Iltchev, EVP of corporate development at . To be clear, I’m not saying that all VCs are mistreating startups or behaving badly. I’m not even arguing that the investors’ actions described above are necessarily wrong. (Though it does explain why some founders privately complain about VCs.) And of course, unlike the investor described above, many investors do let their founders make the call on acquisition offers without pressuring them at all. So while many VCs don’t like to talk about it, their immediate economic interests can diverge from their startups, particularly in smaller acquisitions, Iltchev says. “For founders, especially those who are not independently wealthy, their tolerance for risk is usually lower. VCs are in the business of managing risk on a portfolio basis. For founders an exit can be a once in a lifetime chance to change their life for their family. For investors the same transactions may be immaterial.” This isn’t to say VCs (or founders) are necessarily at fault. The different economic interests are inherently part of the venture model. Other structures may evolve but this is now the dominant model. That certain investors don’t adhere to these fund economics and let founders make their own decisions is a credit to them and their long-term thinking to try to keep founders coming back to them for future investments. There are also things that venture firms have done to better align interests of founders and investors. created Series FF stock, which gives founders more flexibility to sell shares. And many venture firms now allow founders to take a small percentage of “money off the table” in a secondary transaction to reduce the financial need for founders to sell early. Of course, not all investors have the same interests. The larger a VC fund, and the more of their money they have invested in a company, the less likely they are to like a smaller exit. Smaller seed investors or micro-VC funds, which are proliferating, don’t need billion-dollar exits to return their funds, so they are happier with smaller exits — what calls a . This makes sense, since about 88 percent of tech acquisitions in the last five years with announced prices were less than $100 million, according to Capital IQ. Also, sites like AngelList and FundersClub enable more individuals to invest, and these individuals typically don’t push for massive exits. Despite the potential conflict of interest I’ve described (i.e. founders want to sell but investors don’t), some venture investors will help negotiate a deal. Particularly for younger, less experienced founders, investors will get actively involved. And some smaller angels or micro-VC investors have less incentive to oppose smaller acquisitions so there can be less of a conflict. For example, seed stage investor , founder of , has for a number of his startups. For founders it can be difficult to disagree with an investor on a sale. In particular, first-time founders often feel indebted to investors for taking a chance on them. So to turn around and say, “No we don’t agree with you,” can be hard to do. Many VCs have rights they can use to try to block an acquisition. But most rarely use them, particularly if a founder makes a good case for a deal as the best possible outcome for a company. VCs do not want to be known as “not founder friendly,” even if they hate a deal and feel it is unfair. But they’ll complain privately. Like the anonymous founder mentioned above, Iltchev has received calls and been yelled at by investors who are unhappy with a deal. For buyers, of course, it’s complicated when sellers and investors aren’t on the same page. Buyers don’t want to negotiate with multiple parties in the same company. On the other hand, if a VC is calling a buyer, that can mean the founder has already decided to take the deal. “If the investor is calling me to negotiate terms, it is probably because they have already lost the battle with the founder and they are just trying to beat me up,” Iltchev says. At , it is standard to treat investors well, even if they don’t technically have to. For example in an — where a buyer just wants the team but not the product or IP — a buyer could just hire a startup team and not pay the investors anything. But most big Silicon Valley buyers want to stay on good terms with investors — who, after all, send them companies to buy — so they will try to make investors happy by paying back their original investment, if not more. (Non-Silicon Valley buyers do not necessarily play by these rules.) The anonymous founder mentioned above, reflecting on the experience, says, “My advice would be to make sure you have someone who will stick with you not just when things are going well, but during the inevitable struggle that all startups face. It’s fine to have a strong investor who pushes you and fights for what they think is best for the company, but hopefully it’s not just what’s best for them. That said, I will be extremely cautious before ever accepting VC investment again and would only do it on my terms.” For founders the best way to avoid these problems is to choose the right investor. Vet your investors and have honest conversations before they invest. Ask them what their return profile is and what kind of exit they’re expecting for your company, says , former CEO of , which was acquired by Microsoft, and a new partner at Mayfield Fund. “Some investors may not appreciate you talking to any large companies early because they are concerned that these strategic buyers may either be a distraction or try to buy you early on the cheap,” he says. That’ll give you an idea of what you are expected to deliver and whether you’re ready to accept that money and the strings attached. And have an honest conversation with the investor about what would happen if you disagreed with him or her on an acquisition offer. The more honest and transparent they are with you the better. Ultimately the more you prepare while choosing your investor, the better position you’ll be in when acquisition offers come in. |
CrunchWeek: Facebook’s Epic, $19B Acquisition of WhatsApp | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | It’s that time of week for an episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to chat about the most fascinating stories of the past seven days in tech. This week, Colleen Taylor, Aex Wilhelm and I sat down to talk about this week’s biggest story: Facebook’s of messaging app WhatsApp. In the video above, we discuss for WhatsApp, Sequoia’s from the deal, the incredible story of , and Facebook will use WhatsApp in the future. |
[Updated] Apple Fixed A Bug In iOS 7. It’s A Doozy | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | On Friday Apple to a security bug in its iOS 7 system. Saturday Web security experts have parsed the patch to figure out what exactly the problem was… And apparently it’s a doozy. has all of the gory details: The culprit of what may be one of Apple’s biggest security snafus is an extra “goto” in one part of the authentication code, Wired reported. That spurious line of code bypasses the rest of the authentication protocols. The bug could could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted, according to a which was issued late on Friday night. Meanwhile, . [Update: Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller sent us this comment about the continuing vulnerability in macs. “We are aware of this issue and already have a software fix that will be released very soon.” (i.e. iOS 6 and 7 have been patched, OS X 1.9 is the first version to exhibit the vulnerability and is not currently patched, but will be soon. Until then, don’t connect to any public wifi with your OS X 10.9 Macs.)] As ZDNet’s contributing editor Larry Seltzer wrote: , on the patch from ZDNet. |
WhatsApp Is Down, Confirms Server Issues [Update: It’s Back After A 210-Minute Outage] | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | Update: WhatsApp experienced an outage for around 210 minutes today from 11am to 2:30 pm PST. Users around the world reported that they were unable to send messages, and these problems at 12:16pm PST with a tweet stating “sorry we currently experiencing server issues. we hope to be back up and recovered shortly.” WhatsApp again for some users at 2:30pm PST after around 150 to 210 minutes of downtime. Some users reported that “last seen” stamps vanished from their conversations when WhatsApp first came back online, but now some say . At 2:48pm PST, WhatsApp confirmed it was back up with this tweet Around the same time, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum apparently via email that “we had a server outage, should be OK now.” WhatsApp users asking “Is WhatsApp down?”. They were met with joking that Facebook was shutting WhatsApp down, that its founders went on vacation, that there was a , or was meddling with the app WhatsApp Server Room In reality, it’s more likely that WhatsApp’s led to a surge of signups and usage that has overloaded its servers. We’ve contacted Facebook and are awaiting a response. When users (including me) tried to send messages or check their existing chat conversations, WhatsApp got stuck, showing an endless loading asterisk and the alert “Connecting…” The “WhatsDown” reports started flooding in around 11am PST, but there were some troubles last night as well. We received tips from frustrated users in the US, India, Israel, and many places around the world. The outage could stoke fears that Facebook will screw up WhatsApp if the acquisition gets regulatory approval. This is crazy. We'are getting 100 new registrations every second. Trying hard to prevent connection issues in Europe. — Telegram Messenger (@telegram) In a testament to the global popularity of the 450 million user service, condom brand Durex’s Kenyan branch capitalized on the WhatsApp problems by doing some marketing: Whatsapp is down. You know what's up? Durex. You can now buy Durex online here. =====> — Durex Kenya (@DurexKE) As I wrote Thursday, being acquired by to be able to fight outages in the future. But today, being the biggest venture-backed acquisition in history worked against the messaging startup. WhatsApp has suffered short downtimes every month or two for the last half-year. Stumbles like this are somewhat common for fast-growing apps, and users aren’t likely to permanently switch away since it was fixed relatively soon. Still, Facebook bought the startup for the astronomical sum in part because it is many people in the developing world’s first taste of the Internet. Now, their first taste of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been soured. — For all our Facebook/WhatsApp stories, click below |
Meet Oren Zeev, Silicon Valley’s Builder-Investor | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | You probably have not heard of Oren Zeev, and he would prefer it that way. There’s a small breed of early investors in Silicon Valley who primarily invest their own money, but who want to have an active role in building a company. This model isn’t for everyone. It’s a hybrid of a traditional VC with a dash of the early-stage angel investor, and it requires getting your hands dirty. They aren’t writing checks in the six figures. They’re putting in seven figures, and, in turn, own more of a startup than the average angel investor. This isn’t about scaling. It’s about building. And this is what Oren Zeev excels at. The results speak for themselves. Zeev, the early investor behind Chegg, Houzz, Audible, Tipalti and others, has quietly seen a 100 percent IRR each year on his collective investments. Zeev’s career in investing began at Apax Partners in Israel. As he recalls, he was fresh out of business school and he saw the industry as nascent. There were only a handful of funds, each of which only had around $20 million in capital. While at Apax, Zeev focused on creating a private-equity business for the firm in Israel. In 2002, Zeev had an opportunity to move to the U.S. to work on Apax’s VC business in Silicon Valley. While moving away from his family across the world with his wife and two young kids was a risk, Zeev had always dreamed of “coming to the mecca of technology and venture.” But Silicon Valley was still reeling from the bubble bursting. Zeev was focused on Internet investing, and people thought he was crazy for even making the move. Most VCs weren’t in the mood to do new deals because they had portfolios full of problems. But Zeev took a wait and see approach, and stumbled upon Audible, an online audio technology company that had gone public in 1999 but hadn’t seen any traction on the public markets. “It was a total penny stock and the entire company was worth $30 million. People did not think it would make it but I thought the company may have gone public too early and I saw value,” he says. Apax’s $11 million investment bought 40 percent of the company. And a month after investment, Audible signed an exclusive deal with Apple to provide books on iTunes. In 2008, Amazon bought Audible for $300 million. “There was an advantage of being an outsider and looking in to Silicon Valley,” he adds. Don Katz, the CEO of Audible, explains to me that many of the VCs at that time came out of the MBA mold more so than the operator mold. “Their core competency was founder removal. Whenever things got tough that was their first instinct,” Katz says. “Oren was so different. He was a partner and was supportive of the founder as well as the company. He could have judged us through the eyes of a financial investor, a number cruncher, but that wasn’t helpful at the time. And he knew that.” Zeev continued to work for Apax until 2006, but when the firm moved away from investing to concentrate on mega buyouts, Zeev knew he needed to move on. He was burnt out and, while his time at Apax had been lucrative, he needed a change. He started to teach middle school math at a school in Los Altos and took a few graduate courses at Stanford. On the side, he started investing his own money. “Back then angel investing was less common. Most angel investors would write small checks but people weren’t really doing it for the money. These investors actually liked the company-building part of it,” says Zeev. He also started to pool his money with three other investors in a consortium of sorts called There were four equal partners, but Zeev was the only one sourcing deals full-time. In 2008, Zeev was introduced to the co-founders of then textbook rentals startup Chegg. At the time, the company was looking for a Series B investment, and Zeev, along with his consortium, invested $3.5 million into the company (a quarter of which was Zeev’s own money), and Zeev joined the board. The entity put another $4.5 million in the Series C round when Kleiner Perkins came in. And Zeev helped recruit Dan Rosensweig to join the company as CEO. Rosensweig cites Zeev’s network as being one of the defining factors that differentiates him as an investor. As Rosensweig recalls, when he joined, the company was at a turning point when it was trying to figure out its business model. “It was a tense, difficult situation and Oren was calm, and positive throughout the experience.” While Rosensweig and the company were focused on making the transition from print to digital, Zeev was helping him source talent to help develop for mobile platforms and made the introduction to the 3D3R team in Israel, which, via an acquisition, became Along the way Zeev also , a community to help students do their homework. When Chegg was looking to acquire compatible technologies and talent, Zeev made the intro to Cramster but recused himself from any discussions, and told Rosensweig that there was no pressure from his end on making the acquisition. Chegg ended up , which became the foundation for Chegg Study. While there are a sea of angel investors, there aren’t many individuals who can grow with a startup that it matures into a late-stage company, and then a public company. Zeev is one of these unicorns, Rosensweig says. “It’s rare to have an investor and board member that can be useful at multiple stages of a company.” “Oren is not the guy who will pound his fist on the table and demand answers. He’s thoughtful and asks the right questions,” Rosensweig explains. While Zeev is no longer on the board, Rosensweig still asks him to be in board meetings because his enthusiasm continues to help the company as it encounters new goals and challenges. “He’s really a jack of all trades and works tirelessly on behalf of his companies” Rosensweig says of Zeev. Even when it came down to the money, Zeev didn’t sell much of the stock before last fall. He sold 20 percent after the company’s Series E round and still owns 8 percent. The fact that he still holds stock (which is a rarity for early investors, and even some VCs) is a testament to his long-term vision for Chegg. In Zeev’s subsequent deals after Chegg, he started to pull in different people in his network to participate in certain deals. As Katz tells me, he became “Oren 2.0.” In perhaps the earliest, offline version of AngelList Syndicates, Zeev chooses these syndications very carefully, and says generally there is more demand than supply. And he never charges people to be part of the syndicate. While Zeev is responsible for the investment and the company-building aspect of things with the founder, members of the syndicate can get involved, as well. Some are CEOs he has backed in the past like Rosensweig and Katz, and others are key individuals in his network who could be of help to startups, including Richard Sarnoff, an adviser to private-equity giant KKR and a former chairman of Bertelsmann, or former News Corp. exec Gary Ginsberg. For the past few years, Zeev has been averaging around one to two deals per year. He’s also been investing primarily with Israeli entrepreneur Oren Dobronsky, the owner of Palo Alto restaurant Oren’s Hummus. Dobronsky and Zeev share an office in Palo Alto and Zeev has also backed Dobronsky’s current startup Mallpad. In total, Zeev has pulled in 40 to 50 different partners for his investments. In 2009, Zeev backed social browser toolbar startup Wibiya with $2.5 million, which was eventually sold to Conduit for . In 2010, he backed , a mobile website maker, which has seen success after partnerships with Google and others. Other investments include Crossrider (acquired by Market.com for 19X the total money raised), Tipalti, Gogobot, Infolinks, Webflakes, Bonobos, Streamonce (acquired by Jive), and Preen.Me. In late 2010, Zeev was introduced to Adi Tatarko and eBay engineer Alon Cohen, a married couple who had created a network around sharing photos and information around home remodeling and building. There was something about the startup, called Houzz, that struck Zeev as being a massive opportunity. As Tatarko recalls, Zeev went to her and Cohen’s home and saw what they were working on. Within days, the money was wired. Zeev invested the first million in Houzz for a sizeable portion of the company. As Zeev promised Tatarko and Cohen, “I’m not going to make your life harder, I’m going to make it easier.” And Zeev stayed true to his word. He’s been a constant protector, she explains. “He’s never asked us to do anything, and he’s always there to help us, and we have leaned on him more than any other investor.” Zeev has been so involved with the development of Houzz that Tatarko compares him more to a co-founder than an investor. Zeev has taken on the task of recruiting many of the company’s strategic hires, as well as helping form deals and partnerships, and his track record helps him make inroads with investors. When Tatarko and Cohen considered taking another round of funding in 2011, Zeev knew that he wanted to connect Houzz with Sequoia’s Michael Moritz. Tatarko and Cohen maintained that they didn’t want to visit VC offices and go through the traditional pitch process. Zeev didn’t know Moritz himself but his old friend Katz did (who Zeev had brought in on the seed round a year earlier), and he asked for an intro. Zeev pitched Houzz to Moritz over email at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night, and by Monday morning Moritz was visiting the Houzz office. Along with the Moritz email, Zeev also pitched four or five other Sand Hill VCs. Moritz, fellow Sequoia partner Alfred Lin, Zeev, Tatarko and Cohen met and within two hours. Moritz told them that as long as terms could be agreed on, Sequoia would back the company. By the time other VCs had their assistants schedule meetings for Tatarko and Cohen, the ink had already dried on Sequoia’s first funding round in Houzz. In the case of one of Zeev’s more recent investments, , he helped bring in PayPal as an investor, one of the few startup investments the payments giant has made. Zeev had seen PayPal CEO David Marcus at an event and was telling him about Loop — the company actually wasn’t raising more money, but Marcus, and PayPal as an investor, is a key partnership and hard to turn down for a startup in the gifting space. While Zeev’s network is vast, he’s also not afraid to put some old-fashioned hustle into his company building. “Everyone in the Valley is reachable within one degree of separation, thanks to LinkedIn. Recently, a portfolio company wanted to speak to someone at NetSuite and Zeev was able to connect with someone via LinkedIn. Another element of Zeev’s network worth calling attention to is the Israeli connection — many of the entrepreneurs he backs are from Israel. Zeev acknowledges that a disproportionate part of his portfolio are startups from Israeli entrepreneurs, but he says part of his network involves founders and investors from his home country. As I mentioned above, looking at the numbers, Zeev’s track record speaks for itself. He’s invested $20 million personally since 2008, and is responsible for around $60 million invested with other partners included. Zeev has seen his money return 100 percent annually since 2008. Good VC funds return around 20 to 30 percent per year, on average. The current value of Zeev’s portfolio is several hundred million (much of which is attributed to his 10 percent ownership in Houzz). What is clear about Zeev is that he can’t scale, and he’s never going to be able to compete with some of the established seed and early-stage funds with larger funds. And it’s worth noting he doesn’t have a WhatsApp in his portfolio. Yet. “What drives me is I really feel that my job is to work for founders and serve them. I like that I don’t have any other constituencies, like LPs or partners,” he says. That comes with some sacrifices as well, he adds. Zeev says he has no interest in building a firm, and acknowledges that what he does is not scalable. But in a sea of early-stage capital and investors, Zeev offers a commitment and thoughtfulness that typically doesn’t come with scale. |
The Google Smartwatch Is Real, And It’s Coming Soon (But Maybe Not Too Soon) | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | Google’s long-rumored smartwatch is real, and still “officially” expected to begin shipping in mid to late March. However, many members of the smartwatch team inside Google believe that date will either be pushed back to June, or the watch will end up shipping incomplete with a smaller feature set than originally intended. As it stands now, the timeline for the watch’s release is far from being set in stone. The smartwatch prototypes are currently on lockdown in a Google building, under high security, and they’re not able to be taken out for fear that news will leak. (Oops.) According to people familiar with the matter, an early prototype of the watch had a -like metal band, square face, and a colorful digital display featuring a gradient background where colors gently fade from one to the next. It also seemed to have a more masculine vibe, also like the Pebble Steel. But we’re hearing now that Google has settled on shipping a watch with a plastic band instead for the initial release. The band was one of many concepts the company was exploring. Like the previous prototype, the watch has a full-color display, with an LCD background that basically looks “like a cheap smartphone,” we’re told, which is capable of displaying a full-color image. The whole idea behind the watch’s concept is that you shouldn’t have to take out your phone for various ambient alerts, like finding out who’s calling you or who just texted, for example. The watch’s software supports notifications made possible through Bluetooth LE pairing with Android smartphones. It doesn’t sound like it’s yet capable of enabling a range of apps like Pebble’s watch does today. Third-party developers may be able to build for the watch at a later point following future updates. Interactions with the watch are very gesture-driven. That is, swiping alerts and tapping to select. The WSJ had also previously reported that the watch will support “Google Now” alerts, which is a type of default notification on newer Android smartphones which includes like weather, traffic, events, meeting alerts, flight times, dinner reservations, sports scores, stock updates, reminders and more. Development for the watch is being led by a team inside Google that includes designers from the Android team. That makes sense because the watch is being viewed as an accessory – an additive – to the Android phone, rather than being a standalone wearable device that others (including, say, iPhone users) might buy. Interest in wearables has been heating up, with the smart band segment alone will reach 8 million shipments in 2014, growing to more than 23 million units by 2015, and over 45 million by 2017. In addition to Pebble, top Android device maker Samsung also launched its own smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear. But Galaxy Gear have been tepid at best, and the return rate on the watch is . Apple is also ” of sorts, whose focus will be more so on health tracking, according to reports. The problem with many of the current devices today include limited battery life and feature sets – things that could improve over time but may turn off a wider range of consumers in wearables’ earlier days. |
Gillmor Gang: WhatsApp, Doc | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — bask in the afterglow of the 19 Billion Dollar Bash. The reasons for the WhatsApp deal are many: taking the rapidly growing messaging app off the table, turning Facebook into an appregator, introducing the media to the startling notion that the US market is just a piece of the tech puzzle. Whether it adds up today or not, a quick look at how Instagram retained its youth population almost without the acquisition being noticed by its viral fans suggests that 19 billion may turn out to be a much smaller number than it is today. And for those who think the platform wars are over, this is the starting flag for the notification sweepstakes. When Aaron Levie starts feeling around for his wallet, you know the game is afoot. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @scobleizer, @dbfarber, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Line To Open Its Sticker Market To All Designers, Launch Skype Competitor | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | announced today at a press conference in Tokyo ( ) that it will open its sticker marketplace to all designers and companies. The platform was previously available only to Line’s partners. The open marketplace, called the Line Creators Market, will launch in April. Revenue will be divided evenly between designers and Line. Line Game, the messaging app’s gaming platform, is still its biggest moneymaker and . But stickers make up 20 percent of Line’s revenue and 1.8 billion are sent per day. Opening up the marketplace is a good way for Line to serve users who have not installed Line Game, as well as companies that want to create stickers for tie-ins and other promotions. Line also announced that it will release a voice-calling service, similar to Skype, that will let users call landlines and cellphones. It will be available first in the US, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Thailand, and the Philippines. While Line’s messaging app already offers voice and video calls, the new service will be separate, but integrate with Line. It will also allow enterprise users to connect the apps directly to their CRM and direct marketing channels. One thing that is particularly interesting about the timing of Line’s announcement is that several of its competitors have already added voice services to their apps (or are planning to). For example, WeChat that includes real-time location with its Walkie Talkie voice chat feature. WhatsApp plans to launch voice messaging in the second quarter of this year, while FB Messenger and Viber both already have voice functionality. Messaging apps have already forced carriers to . Now it appears that the top players are planning to disrupt voice calling, too. Before the conference, Line and its parent company, South Korea-based Naver, . But with the recent $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook, as well as the earlier $900 million acquisition of Viber by Rakuten, it would make sense for Line to seek a buyer as the messaging app market starts to consolidate and major players begin to compete more aggressively in key markets. Alternately, Line may prep for an IPO and take on SoftBank as an investor instead. If so, it would follow in the footsteps of Sina Weibo, which is as the microblogging platform, whose growth has slowed, figures out new ways to compete with messaging apps. |
null | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 14 | null |
The Next Revolutions: Drones Vs. Phones | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | It’s been a hell of a week worldwide. : “What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden.” : “Dozens dead as protesters regain territory from police.” : “Four people have been killed and more than 60 injured after a gun battle erupted between police and anti-government protesters.” : “Thousands of protesters took to the streets, setting fire to the presidency building and hurling rocks and stones at police.” The weird thing is that this is nothing new: just a few more entries in the long list of protests erupting into violent fury around the world. The . . . There have been periods in history when large numbers of people rebelled about the way things were, demanding change — 1848, 1917 or 1968. Today we are experiencing another period of rising outrage and discontent, and some of the largest protests in world history. Our analysis of 843 protest events reflects a steady increase in the overall number of protests every year, from 2006 (59 protests) to mid-2013 (112 protests events in only half a year) A profile of demonstrators reveals that not only traditional protesters (eg. activists, unions) are demonstrating; on the contrary, middle classes, youth, older persons and other social groups are actively protesting in most countries because of lack of trust and disillusionment with the current political and economic system. ( (PDF)) What’s going on here? And what happens next? Researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge have one simple answer to the first question, at least: Back in 2011 they , based on rising food prices, that social unrest would sweep across the planet by, er, August 2013. OK, they were a little off, and their theory doesn’t explain those countries where food prices have risen riots — but that does seem to be a significant factor. I propose that another one is just as important, though: technology. Specifically, social media. https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/436743621593686017 To some extent, social media accelerates protest simply by getting the word out. It’s no longer possible for authoritarian governments to control what their citizens see and hear by clamping their iron fists down on newspapers and television/radio stations, unless they want to shut down the Internet and phone services entirely…and not even tyrants want to time-travel back to the 20th century badly, unless they absolutely have to. As Mathew Ingram points out in a on GigaOm, “For those inside and outside of Ukraine and Venezuela, social media is the only media that matters.” More subtly, smartphones and social media enable what John Robb named “ ,” wherein many small groups work towards a common goal, without formal coordination or organization, while adopting, adapting, and evolving each others’ tactics and strategies on the fly. In Ukraine, : The crisis in Ukraine has spiralled rapidly out of control outside of the capital, Kiev, as anti-government protesters stormed buildings, seized weapons and staged demonstrations across the western part of the country … Although the protests were initially confined to the capital and west, in recent days they have spread quickly to the largely Russian speaking east, most notably Kharkiv. there would be nothing in Ukraine without Youtube, FB, smartphones and Internet. it's unbelievable how fast self-org happens. — Max (@maxua) Could this conceivably have happened without the Internet and ubiquitous phones? Of course. Can modern technology also be used to intensify and perpetuate government oppression? You bet, and how. But as as modern surveillance states can be, their panopticons become pretty irrelevant when a million angry people are marching on the presidential compound with pitchforks, torches, and Androids in hand. And it seems painfully obvious that modern technology makes open-source insurgencies orders of magnitude less difficult, and therefore, more likely to happen. Or, as Marc Andreessen recently put it: https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/436652664240103425 Woo-hoo! Techno-democratic utopia! Internet FTW amirite? …Not so fast. First of all, ongoing protests and insurgencies against authoritarian governments are one thing; actually is quite another. Ask the Syrian rebels. Ask Egypt, which, if you haven’t been paying attention, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. A million angry protestors do change the game, but that’s by no means a guarantee of eventual victory. Second, while technology giveth to the masses today, it will bestow its riches upon the authoritarian thugs in the presidential palaces soon enough. I refer, of course, to tomorrow’s antipersonnel/anti-protest drones. Have you seen what people are doing with drones of late? It’s pretty awesome. . . . . And my favorite thing this week: This $2,000 3D-printed recon drone, controlled by an embedded Android phone, can cruise at 70kph for 40 minutes: — Jon Evans (@rezendi) until this came along: "We present the first decentralized multi-copter flock that is capable of stable autonomous outdoor flight" — Christine Corbett M. (@corbett) All very cool — until you imagine these machines militarized, weaponized, mass-produced by the thousand, and turned on the protestors in Kiev, or elsewhere. My favorite thing on TechCrunch, not counting my own column — OK, fine, even counting my own column — is John Biggs’s “Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs.” What can I say, I love black comedy. But it’s always tinged, at least for me, with a little genuine terror — because I have written fiction for a living, so it’s especially easy for me to imagine, in vivid gory detail, exactly what will happen on the day a million angry protestors run up against tomorrow’s tyrant armed with ten thousand military drones and a tiny staff of engineers a la the . Hint: it ain’t pretty. The Internet and smartphones disperse power; but drones concentrate power in the hands of those who control them. It won’t be too many more years before that stark disparity will be all too obvious to anyone and everyone. |
Obamacare Spurring A New Generation Of Startups | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | Spurred by , the American healthcare system in 2014 has entered a period of titanic change. The process will be messy and disruptive – it already is. While challenging for consumers of healthcare services, the shifting landscape provides tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs, setting up the potential for an accelerated shift in healthcare delivery in the U.S. This inflection point for healthcare in part reflects the way the Millennial generation – those born between 1980-2000 – manages information. It is a tech-savvy group, connected and collaborative. They want instant gratification and recognition. And they want – and expect – to have a different kind of interaction with physicians and the healthcare system than their older brethren have historically experienced. Millennials have at their disposal a new wave of technological tools that track, analyze and respond to their physical condition in real time. Can physicians and the healthcare system deliver this generation what they want from the healthcare system? I believe the answer clearly is “no.” Instead, they will build it themselves. My theory is that this population segment will drive huge changes in the practice of medicine. I’d expect relatively few to sign up for insurance coverage under the ACA, for instance. But I do think this generation’s entrepreneurs will reimagine and rebuild the country’s sclerotic healthcare system. Entrepreneurs in this area must start by navigating around some core issues. Medicine is hyper-local, with providers protected from outsiders by state law. And it is hyper-personal, with strong regulations governing information privacy. On the other hand, Millennials tend to believe that data access should be ubiquitous and free. They have fewer privacy concerns than the Baby Boomers, living their lives publicly on Facebook and Twitter. Millennials want to hold e-visits with their doctors; they want to text medical providers for quick advice; they want portable insurance, transferable between jobs and across state lines; and they want clear visibility about what they are personally paying for and why. Today, in short, there is a massive divide between what Millennials expect and what the current healthcare system can deliver. The opportunity here is gargantuan. The U.S. health-care sector generates annual revenue of close to $2.1 trillion a year, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report. It’s an industry that employs nearly 17 million Americans (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). And neither of those figures includes the health insurance industry, which has more than 450,000 employees (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan 2014), and annual revenue of more than $850 billion (Annual Report on the Insurance Industry, 2013). In short, this is an industry practically begging for revolutionary change. And the ACA has lit the fuse. Let’s take a look at five big entrepreneurial ideas on changing the healthcare landscape. Some of these areas – touching on insurance and patient care – offer the potential to build big businesses. While they may be lacking in some of the pizzazz of social networking or cloud-based software or other buzzy areas, no industry offers a richer environment for disruption. of , chief technology officer of the U.S., the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has released vast amounts of de-identified Medicare performance data. , a San Francisco-based startup, is taking a big-data approach to mining that information, saving lives in the process. In a recent talk, Park drew a connection between the release of aggregate health information and the approach the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) took a decade ago in liberating weather and GPS data. That move sparked an avalanche of innovation from companies like Garmin, Waze*, Google Maps and many others. While most of the discussion around Obamacare has focused on the role of the large legacy insurers, there’s a need for new players. For instance, there’s , a company that has launched a next-generation health plan that intends to leverage the public exchange market in New York City. Unencumbered by traditional health plan thinking and structures, Oscar launched a plan that leverages recent advances in big data analytics, alternative site options including telemedicine, and the best in mobile and web user experiences. From the Oscar website, for instance, you can click on a link and receive a call from a board-certified doctor within an hour, 24 hours a day. Everything on the site reflects a kinder, friendlier and more engaging consumer experience. If they can provide competitive pricing, Oscar has a chance to take business from the incumbents. Just as Obamacare opens the door to new insurers, so does the law create incentive for the creation of new ways to deliver medical care. Case in point: , an independent primary care physician group based in Houston. The group’s goal is to provide the best possible care at the lowest total cost. The idea is to change medical practice in the U.S. so that consumers will feel good about their experiences – and physicians will be empowered to deliver quality, cost-efficient services. The ACA, for instance, has provisions covering annual wellness visits and obesity counseling. Diabetes education has been around for years, but few have figured out now to cost effectively provide that service. Village Family Practice has figured it out, and is helping physicians deliver better care to their patients. Several new companies are focused on helping consumers find the right insurer – and the right physician. *, based in San Francisco, is the first data-driven consumer recommendation engine for health coverage. Likewise, , of Cambridge, Mass., has built sophisticated calculators to help consumers find health plans that meet their specific needs. The ACA allows large employers to offer workers rewards of up to 50 percent of the cost of coverage for participating in a wellness program and meeting certain health standards. That’s good news for *, a health engagement and behavior change company. RedBrick combines financial accountability, clinical insight, behavior design, social and game mechanics and powerful data analytics to create a personalized and persuasive experience delivered through web, mobile and live interactions. Redbrick’s open consumer engagement hub integrates apps, devices and services, and creates a cornerstone for more effective wellness and population health management initiatives delivered through employers as well as employee benefit exchanges. This is the beginning of the revolution. Tech-savvy entrepreneurs are moving quickly to fix our troubled system, empower people with elegant and engaging tools and disrupt healthcare as we know it today. |
Hedge Fund Rising | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 22 | Scrolling through reports of recent venture financings, the names of the firms involved has changed quite a bit over the past few quarters. Of note, hedge funds have entered the later-stage, pre-IPO investment arena in a meaningful way. Firms like Coatue Capital (Snapchat, Box), Valiant Capital (Pinterest, Evernote) and Tiger Global (One Kings Lane, Nextdoor) are not new to venture investing but appear to be ramping their pace and investing in some of the most sought after private companies globally. Similarly, several other hedge funds are entering the market and large, long-only fund managers such as T. Rowe Price (Pure Storage, New Relic) and Fidelity (Pinterest, MongoDB) seem to be increasing their activity, as well. As reported last month on , hedge funds often impress founders with their ability to move quickly and pay higher prices than VCs. Hedge funds clearly present a compelling option. So, for founders and early-stage VCs, understanding why hedge funds are getting more active in the venture market and evaluating the pros and cons of taking their capital is worthwhile. Although my firm, GGV Capital, has been outbid more than once recently by hedge funds, I think the involvement of hedge funds in the venture capital asset class, especially in the pre-IPO stage, is a healthy thing. Make no mistake, hedge fund managers tend to be some of the smartest and savviest investors. Although the prices they’re willing to pay may seem high sometimes, they routinely have sound motivations. First, many companies are going public later nowadays, so if a hedge or mutual fund waits until an IPO, the companies are now much more mature, often with their most rapid growth behind them. Growth investors, who want to catch those years when a company is expanding really fast, opening up unpenetrated markets and going global, are forced to invest in private rounds, rather than wait for an IPO. Second, the paucity of growth in today’s public company universe is leaving hedge and mutual funds with fewer options, driving their interest in faster growth IPOs, and in the financings one to two rounds earlier, while these companies are private, as well. And finally, because the typical IPO hasn’t grown in size in many years, allocations are usually small, and even in the aftermarket, it’s hard to build a big position in newly public companies. Most successful hedge funds and larger mutual funds need to build sizable positions (i.e. many tens of millions of dollars) for it to make sense to hold a stock. Investing pre-IPO is a way for these funds to get a head start building a position. Given this new reality, what are the implications for entrepreneurs? There’s not a black and white answer. Many management teams and boards with whom I speak laud the benefits of taking money from hedge funds and/or mutual funds. For example, they often move quickly, saving companies precious time. Additionally, as public investors, their typical return expectations are lower than those of VCs, so, as mentioned above, they’re also often willing to pay higher prices and are less focused on deal terms than VCs. Finally, these funds are usually “hands off” investors, which is a positive for many companies, where there are already several VCs involved. That said, hedge funds in particular tend not to invest with 5-10 year investment horizons. In fact, most hedge fund vehicles offer their investors quarterly redemption options. So, while most VCs will continue to support a management team that hits a rough patch or decides to double down on a new strategy, prolonging the time to an IPO substantially, hedge fund investors might be in a different position. If a hedge fund’s investors head for the door due to macro or fund-specific reasons, the funds need to raise cash. During such events, venture capital positions aren’t desirable and the same goes for long-only funds facing redemptions. In these situations, the 10-year vehicles most VCs invest from are naturally more patient, and can help reduce risk of shareholder consternation. Several hedge funds have attempted to remedy this issue by creating separate, longer term vehicles. This makes sense, and the test for these funds will come when the next big public market downturn occurs and fund managers feel pressure to deliver cash to their investors. Entrepreneurs should be proactive in thinking through this trend. Leveraged in the right away, hedge and mutual funds can be terrific investment partners for the right companies. Yet, there will be cases specific to a company or generalized to the overall public markets that could impact a situation and change the cadence of the investor-founder relationship quite abruptly. As with any funding source, founders would be wise to run through these scenarios when evaluating financing options, even though we’re currently in an exciting up market. Things always change and do so quickly. |
Paramount Afraid Tweeted Stills Of ‘Top Gun’ Compete With Actual Movie | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Clever Twitter user delighted their followers by tweeting the entire Top Gun film through subtitled still frames, at a rate of about 2 frames an hour. The account’s roughly 5,200 followers got bite-sized shots of 80’s nostalgia until the fun police at Paramount and was suspended. explained: No one is authorized to copy, reproduce, distribute, or otherwise use Top Gun without the express written permission of Paramount.
Notwithstanding this, it has come to our attention that a user of your website, @555uhz, is distributing the Top Gun film, frame by frame, via your website. The following URLs are some examples from the user’s Twitter account, with additional frames being uploaded continuously. Forget the fact that a heavily edited, non-commercial version of the film shown over the course of many months ; In what world does this account give the actual movie competition? Here’s one hypothetical scenario: “Honey, how about we go old-school tonight and watch Top Gun? I’ll rent it from iTunes.”
“Great idea, stud-muffin! But, it’s on the Internet for free. Let’s cuddle up, while I painstakingly scroll through a tiny clipped version of the movie over the next 110 minutes.” If anything, the amusing account would continue to give free publicity to Paramount and the . Instead, Paramount is now facing backlash because of its needlessly aggressive lawyering. The general public reaction over the takedown has ranged from “ ” to “ “. The tweet below is probably my favorite: [tweet https://twitter.com/AngeloVanDamn/status/438441846113849344] There is a very important public debate to be had about the balance between intellectual property, artist rights, and consumer convenience. But it’s hard to imagine a scenario where occasional tiny clips of Tom Cruise in aviators threaten the financial viability of Paramount. |
Google Lobbying To Block Distracted Driving Laws Against Glass | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Google is swinging its hefty lobbying power at state lawmakers who could ban Glass while driving. Google is lobbying officials in at least three U.S. states (Illinois, Delaware and Missouri) to stop proposed restrictions on driving with headsets such as Google Glass, “marking some of the first clashes over the nascent wearable technology,” Reuters, who broke the story. Google is not denying Reuters’ reports, writing in a statement, “We think it is important to be part of those discussions.” In supporting these lobbies, Google wants to blunt a growing movement against its controversial wearable device. For instance, New York assemblyman Félix Ortiz to ban Google Glass while driving, calling face computers “extremely dangerous technology.” In a more high-profile case, a California woman was ticketed for driving while wearing Glass, but . Google’s political authority should not be underestimated. In California, its local political muscle . Within the research community, there is conflicting evidence about whether drivers can multi-task while driving, even if their eyes are on the road. With Google Glass, every action is eyes forward. But, unlike talking into a Bluetooth speaker, users still have to shift their focus away from the road to look at maps, messages or calls. There are also efforts to make driving safer with Glass. One app, , alerts users when the device notices them drifting off to sleep. Perhaps Google Glass is better than peering down at an occasional text — but perhaps not. And the consequences here could literally be a matter of life and death. |
Aereo Gets A 14-Day Stay Of The Injunction Against Its Service In Denver And Salt Lake City | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Over-the-air broadcast streaming startup has good news for its customers in Denver and Salt Lake City: They can continue using the service for now. The federal judge who handed down an injunction in those markets today issued a reprieve, granting the startup a 14-day grace period (via ). The stay is only temporary, despite Aereo seeking an indefinite one, because the judge in the case argues that it could continue to serve its customers by paying licensing fees to broadcasters and reducing its profit margin, while not catastrophically damaging their bottom line. Aereo is also seeking an emergency stay in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. All of this is a prelude to the Supreme Court’s hearing on Aereo and its legality, which is coming up on April 22. |
Connect Debuts A “Living” Address Book That Maps Your Nearby Friends | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | , a new location-based address book and friend-finder utility launching today for both web and iPhone, will tell you who’s nearby, allowing for more “serendipitous” encounters. If that idea sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because a crop of location-based social apps, including Highlight, Banjo, Glassmap and , caught the tech world’s attention around the time of Austin’s SXSW conference back in 2012. But Connect is taking a different angle: Instead of tracking users via GPS, which co-founder Ryan Allis says can be a bit “creepy,” the app aggregates data from social networks to show you friends’ locations in real-time. More importantly, perhaps, is that Connect can serve a larger purpose beyond just telling you who’s nearby – it’s a fairly smart address book, too, as the app lets you search for contacts by a number of fields, including not only their name, but also their company, job title, school, interests, relationship status, gender, city, and more. To get started with Connect, users are asked to add their iOS address book (on mobile), plus their Facebook account, as well as their Google address book and other social networks like LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, and Twitter, for example. After doing so, the app will display your nearby connections on a map, based on their check-ins (as on Facebook or Foursquare), or their geo-tagged posts (like with Twitter or Instagram). The map view can be toggled between an “All” view (all recent check-ins) and a “Now” view, to show only those that have just taken place. To access the smart address book section, however, you have to tap the small “person” icon at the top right of the main screen, then tap into the search box to display the filtering options. Though this feature is not as key to Connect’s larger mission of connecting nearby users, it’s arguably the more practical one for those no longer enamored with location-based check-in services. A variety of settings lets you configure and control how Connect will alert you to nearby friends, which gives you some flexibility in how you choose to use this application. For example, you could just turn on a setting that pings you when out-of-town friends are in your area, when friends are traveling, when they’re nearby, and more. You can even drag a slider to designate how many miles from the center of town your “nearby” alerts should be, or designate certain contacts as favorites to limit your alerts. This makes Connect a powerful utility in terms of how finely it can be adjusted to meet your specific needs, but it also could make it difficult for users to easily understand what Connect does because it offers so many different use cases, ranging from professional networking to dating possibilities and everything in between. My personal interest in the app is contact search and filtering, not really the real-time location-based element. That latter item is something I could use in spurts, like at a conference or while traveling out-of-town. But while it will surely be handy then, that’s a more limited use case since I’m not typically trying to “bump” into people for chance encounters while out running errands (though your mileage may vary). It’s also worth noting that many of the apps pitching similar “serendipitous” connections during SXSW 2012 later fizzled; after the event wrapped, many realized there’s only so much “real-time networking” one needs to do every day. (Well, that, and some tended to be battery hogs by using your GPS too heavily. Oh and we have Tinder and Grindr for hookups now, so we’re, um, good there.) But the smart address book element is something that could potentially see Connect competing with other utilities like , , or even LinkedIn’s own which lets you aggregate your connections from a variety of sources, too. Connect has been in development for the past 18 months, and ran a beta during the fall with some 16,000 testers, who encouraged the company to add a cross-platform check-in feature – another blast from the past, reminiscent of old services like or . (Connect’s twist? You can include a duration.) In addition to co-founder , who previously to Vocus for $170 million, the founding team includes , an Oxford MBA whose interest in people tracking has roots in her passion for political organizing; , previously of LaunchRock; and , previously of the Singularity University. Explains LaVoy, she had the idea for something like Connect before she met Ryan. “I had contacts from four or five different fields and interests,” citing those she knew from university, her city, from her political work, and more. “I realized these relationships were the most important thing I had to keep track of…and I didn’t have any way to do that,” she says. With Connect, she says that now changes. Adds Allis, the app isn’t limited to just your contacts, or those you know on LinkedIn – it has a broader reach. “Other apps, like Foursquare or Highlight, have the ’empty room’ problem,” he says. That is, they’re not as valuable until a large number of your friends get on board. Connect, at launch, is able to find all your friends, provided they’re using some sort of social network. And, if your friends aren’t as active socially, it could still make for a handy address book. The eight-person San Francisco-based company is self-funded with a $2.5 million personal investment, thanks to the sale of iContact. Interested users can sign up , or grab the app from . An Android version will arrive later this spring. |
Opternative Is The First Online Eye Exam That Writes You A Prescription | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | “Do I need glasses?” is a question you usually have to get an in-person eye test to answer. But today, online eye exam provider is coming out of stealth to get you a doctor’s prescription for glasses straight from your computer or phone. Opternative’s test takes five to 10 minutes and costs around $35 — 75 percent less than in-person exams. With $1 million in funding, it plans to launch this summer. “Doing eye testing day in and day out, I thought ‘there has to be a better way to do this'”, Dr Steven Lee tells me. The co-founder of Opternative graduated from optometry school in 2007 and has been practicing ever since. He realized that with advances in computers and phones, he could probably replace that clunky ‘What’s better? One or two’ machine. In 2012, Dr. Lee met seven-time entrepreneur Aaron Dallek, and they started the Chicago-based Opternative. [Disclosure: A close friend from college works there.] The startup offers a quick, online eye exam that requires no special equipment. Once your results are reviewed by an opthamologist, they can digitally write you a prescription for glasses you can get filled anywhere. Traditional in-person eye exam refraction system A Google search for ‘online eye exam’ will bring up several, but they’re not medical-grade. You take a few basic tests and the result is “you should go see an eye doctor”, but they aren’t accurate enough or legally licensed to actually give you a prescription. Dr. Lee says “They’re very gimmicky. They’re all lead gen” designed to provide lucrative referrals to affiliated offline eye care professionals. Dallek tells me Opternative system truly works because “everyone sees the world a little bit differently. Some people see it fuzzy. Some see it stretched. And about 25 percent of people see the world clearly. We’ve created these images that look different depending on what your prescription is.” Opternative is only releasing this one screenshot, but the co-founders walked me through a demo. Once you calibrate the test to your screen size by measuring a credit card, it shows you a series of tests for astigmatism, color blindness, contrast, and distance reading.
Since people with astigmatism see the world stretched at certain angles, Opternative shows a fan of red and green lines. The stretching causes the red and green to bleed together into yellow that users can pick out to identify the angles where they have astigmatism. By asking for your shoe size and then telling you to take heel-to-toe steps away from your screen, Opternative can accurately measure your sight at different distances. It all feels clever and easy — almost fun. Along with providing the test directly to consumers for around $35, Opternative is exploring the potential to embed its test on partner sites of eye-care professionals, and some large online eyewear retailers (think LensCrafters) have expressed interest. For a licensing fee, e-commerce sites like Warby Parker might eventually be able to give you the test and immediately send you the right prescription glasses. ot just an online eye exam but the gold standard digital eye exam” that doctors could administer in their offices. There are competitors like and targeting India and Africa with auto-refractors that measure your eye itself and not how you see, but their tests aren’t accurate enough for the first world. Maybe one day Opternative’s online test could make it affordable for more people in the developing world to get their eyes checked right. For now, Opternative has raised $1,000,001 (cute) in a seed round led by Tribeca Venture Partners and Chicago Ventures to get to market. It’s currently in private alpha testing as it navigates FDA approval. It will take a lot of work to overcome the regulatory hurdles and become accurate enough for mass usage. But for early access, and could be available by this summer. If Opternative succeeds, it could make eye exams so convenient that everyone gets the right prescription, rather than waiting years between checkups or denying they need help. It’s a beautiful world out there, and Opternative wants you to see it clearly. |
Black Tux Raises $2.6M So You Can Rent That Suit And Tie | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | on the rental tux market with a higher-quality, lower-priced , Black Tux has raised $2.6 million in its first institutional round of funding. It’s the latest brand to come to market with funding led by Lerer Ventures, which has backed everything from and to a company that wants to take everyone to the . Lerer isn’t the only brand name investor behind The Black Tux, the small early-stage round also picked up commitments from First Round Capital, RRE, Founder Collective, Crosscut, Menlo Ventures, and Raine – the investment fund affiliated with William Morris Endeavor. “Of all the rounds I have led, there has never been one that has been more oversubscribed,” said Ben Lerer, a managing director at the eponymous and the Chief Executive of . The Santa Monica, Calif.-based online tuxedo rental business began as an idea shared by longtime friends Andrew Blackmon and Patrick Coyne. So after nearly a year-and-a-half of research, The Black Tux was formed in 2013 and began quietly renting tuxes under its own brand. There are three tuxedo options and two less-formal options that are available on the company’s . Rentals for a suit or a tux range from $95 to $160 (including shoes and accessories). Clothes are fit based on either a customer’s exact measurements, or if those aren’t available customers can go to a local tailor and be measured or determined by following a tutorial available on the company’s website. Once an order is placed it arrives within a week and The Black Tux picks up shipping costs for deliveries and returns. “We’ve worked with a number of designers and pattern makers for our first five styles,” said Coyne. “The idea is to launch [the clothes] under the Black Tux brand, because we’re looking to build this brand, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t partner [with existing brands].” Before raising the institutional round, which closed in December, The Black Tux had already raised $1 million by tapping friends, family and angel investors including , of Institutional Venture Partners, and , the co-founder of . The draw for investors is spelled out in the latest Men’s Wearhouse quarterly report, which indicated that the company’s rental business netted it $142.2 million for the quarter ending November 2, 2013. “At this point we really want to crush the rental market,” Blackmon said. “This is ripe for disruption and there’s less satisfaction with incumbents. In the future, if we have a good brand and a huge customer list, we will leverage that into something.” These investments are happening against a backdrop of rising dollar commitments to venture-backed branded businesses, even as the number of those investments declines. According to data from , 34 consumer-facing branded “fashion” businesses raised roughly $344 million already in the first quarter of 2014. The last time these businesses attracted that much attention was in the third quarter of 2011 when 38 companies raised nearly $370 million
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With Box, Yelp And Palantir On Board, Piazza Lands $8M From Khosla To Bring Recruiting To Its Social Q&A Platform For Students | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | As free online social tools now play a central role in how we communicate, interact and manage our interpersonal relationships, and as consumerization sweeps through IT and learning, the traditional boundaries between the tools we use to learn, for work and to socialize are becoming increasingly blurry. It’s only natural, then, that students have begun to use many of the same tools they’d otherwise use for purely social or professional purposes to exchange resources and ideas, brainstorm and ask questions of each other. Furthermore, social networking and communication tools have begun to proliferate through education and are even playing an increasingly prominent role in the classroom. launched in early 2011 to capitalize on the socialization of learning and give students their own education-focused version of Quora — a platform dedicated to enabling students to share questions and answers with their classmates. Initially part wiki and part forum, Piazza allows classes to create their own Q&A hubs, where students and teachers can ask questions, contribute to answers and bookmark questions to save for later. Since launch, Piazza’s social Q&A network has found eager adoption among college engineering students in particular, and the company says that half of undergraduates at engineering schools like Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and MIT are now on the site. By making it easy for students to collaborate around learning, Piazza has resonated with younger generations and has found steady adoption as a result. Between the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 academic school years, Piazza’s user base grew from 236K to 762K, with students in more than 60 countries around the world now accessing the social learning platform. But for Piazza’s team the most encouraging statistic? Engagement is high; students are now spending an average of two to three hours on the site every night. With adoption and engagement steadily increasing, Piazza has begun to look for ways to help its college student-heavy user base not only collaborate around educational topics, but bridge the gap between campus life and the world of employment. Wherever college students, especially engineering majors are engaged en masse, you’re bound to find recruiters knocking on the door. This week, after a lengthy beta testing period, the startup officially unveiled a new service and recruiting tool, called Piazza Careers, which allows companies to find and connect with top talent and potential job candidates. For a subscription fee starting at $20K/semester, recruiters can now use the startup’s new product to search among the million-plus students now using Piazza and send them messages, for example. Recruiters can use the site’s advanced filters to target their search based on specific criteria, like by students who have interned at Apple or are currently teaching assistants in engineering departments, for instance. While the concept and practical application of Piazza’s new product is reminiscent of LinkedIn’s tools for recruiters — and others — the idea, the company says, is to give startups and smaller companies access to the kinds of basic recruiting tools that have traditionally been reserved for bigger companies. Companies like Yelp, Palantir, SpaceX, Box, SpaceX and Hearsay Social have already signed up to use Piazza’s new tools — though, admittedly, few would classify those companies as “startups.” Nonetheless, Piazza hopes that its tools can help bring a more meritocratic element to the recruiting process, providing startups with access to tools that previously eluded them, and giving students the opportunity to find a good job no matter their alma mater. To support the launch of its new recruiting product, Piazza has also quietly added an additional $8 million in Series B financing, led by Khosla Ventures and with support from existing investor, Bessemer Ventures. The funding actually closed last year, but was not announced publicly. The new round follows the $6 million in Series A financing Piazza closed in 2012, and the $1.5 million in seed it raised in 2011, bringing its total raised to date to $15.5 million. With the new funding under its belt, Piazza will be looking to expand its social Q&A network beyond its traditional focus on math and the sciences, into additional subjects and majors within higher education. For more, |
Hands On With Meta Pro, The Augmented Reality Glasses With 16X More Screen Than Google Glass | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | , the augmented reality technology company, has captured the attention of the gadget world with the launch of the , the $3,000 headset that aims to bridge the gap between fully immersive virtual reality tools such as the Oculus Rift and (relatively) more subtle wearable devices such as Google Glass. You can read much more about the Meta Pro, which TechCrunch named at this most recent CES conference in Las Vegas, . Earlier coverage of the company is . The Meta Pro is up for sale , but it won’t start shipping to customers until this summer. So we stopped by Meta’s Portola Valley, California headquarters to get an early look at the latest prototype of the device. Check that out in the video embedded above. There are any number of uses for the Meta Pro, as the company has an SDK which allows developers to create programs to use with the glasses. In our visit, Meta’s CEO and founder showed us how the glasses can be used in place of traditional CAD software to design a 3D printed object using only your hands. I’m told that the final version of the glasses which will ship to users this summer will be a bit lighter and more sleek in the design, but this prototype gives a good idea of the core technology and capabilities. Meta, which makes wearable devices with augmented reality technology, is a particularly ambitious breed of startup — a staff of fewer than 50 employees squaring away against competition from the likes of Google and Apple. But then again, it took a good deal of ambition for Gribetz to set out a few years ago on his own with the goal of building a real-life version of something that had previously only been seen in movies such as . It will be exciting to see how this technology continues to develop as more people play with it. |
Rolls-Royce’s Drone Shipbots Will Rule Tomorrow’s Oceans, Shipping Containers | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | If you’re rooting for the drone team, then chalk up another win: that would roam the Earth’s oceans packed with crates of goods, controlled by captains safe on shore using virtual reality facilities to pilot their fleets. In other words, tomorrow’s salty tales of ghost ships with no one left on board could be all too verifiable and hardly cause for alarm. Bloomberg reports on the project, which aims to make the seafaring shipping industry safer, less expensive and easier on the environment. The market is worth $375 billion annually, and despite our mastering of flight, we shill ship 90 percent of traded goods over the waves, according to the article. These automated versions would aim to make that huge volume safer and more efficient, but of course it’ll have to contend with a variety of concerns first, including worries about safety and labour concerns from unions and workers. Stripping all those accommodations needed by fleshy human labor from the huge cargo liners would clear up even more room for cargo, according to Rolls-Royce’s early designs – while also making them 5 percent lighter, with 12 to 15 percent less fuel burn per trip. Plus you’re saving up to $3,300 per day in crew costs, which currently make up 44 percent of the total overall operating expenses for manned ocean-bound shipping. Before you get too excited there, Mr. Shipping Magnate, know that these things are currently probably at least a decade out from being anywhere near sea legal, and the largest union on the sea vocally opposes the idea outright, saying that drone ships are no replacement for human intellect and perception. Plus, if these ever replace our current waterborne shipping mechanisms, future generations will never experience coming-of-age stories like the one depicted in David Mamet’s (warning: this contains all the cusses so watch the volume if you’re at work). Despite all the cautioning, however, there’s no question that logistics companies are hungry for this kind of automation, since it means cheaper prices overall decades down the road, plus faster and more efficient delivery from warehouse to customer (especially important as more shopping moves online). People will not accept the coming shipping bots readily, but that doesn’t mean they won’t still arrive eventually. And the waves will be waiting. |
Google Quietly Begins Pushing Its Photo Backup Software To Google+ Users | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Google has begun pushing its “Auto Backup” photo archival software to Mac and Windows users via the company’s social networking platform, Google+. The promotion is new, we’ve confirmed, though the software itself was first launched back in December. At that time, the desktop utility as a part of its older Picasa photo-sharing platform, which confusingly (and oddly) somehow still has its own domain, despite the fact that Google has been integrating Google+ into everything it owns, from search to Gmail to YouTube. When the version of Picasa for Mac and Windows launched at the end of last year, a separate tool called “Auto Backup” appeared. This app runs in the background, similar to something like Google Drive or Google Music, in order to upload all your photos to Google+, including those from SD cards. Now some users are that a link to the same software is appearing on Google+, when they click into the “Photos” section of the social networking website. The prompt appears underneath the “Upload Photos” button from the Google+ Photos top-level navigation. Here, a dialog box explains that the software will automatically save your photos and videos to Google+, where they’ll be marked private unless you choose to share them. You can also access Google+ Photos to then see this prompt if you’re a Chrome user who clicks through on the “Photos” icon from the app launcher (the top-right square grid-like button). After you download the utility, or dismiss the prompt in another way, it may be difficult to get the message to reappear, I’ve found. There doesn’t seem to be a website or section on Google+ where users can find links to directly download this software for themselves. For instance, the Google+ Photos “ points to the “Auto Backup” app (which is actually just the Google+ app) on Google Play and the iTunes App Store, but links to “Auto Backup” for Mac and Windows are nowhere to be found. For what it’s worth, if you do decide to take advantage of the utility, be aware that it will not respect the folder structure you may have in place on your computer. That is, it will take the photos from all the albums you point it to and place them in one album on Google+ where you could then choose to share or organize them as you like. What the software’s appearance means in terms of Google’s larger plans to shutter the Picasa brand and domain remains to be seen, of course. For whatever reason, Google continues to develop and its Picasa desktop software, despite its competition with Google+ in terms of feature set (photo editing, organization, etc.) and mindshare. |
Microsoft Adds Full TypeScript Support To Visual Studio | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | About a year and a half ago, Microsoft unveiled its to help programmers write large programs in JavaScript. Starting today, with the arrival of the first release candidate of TypeScript 1.0 and the latest , it’s becoming a fully supported language in Microsoft’s IDE. That’s a strong commitment by Microsoft to TypeScript and brings it to the same level of built-in support as C# and Visual Basic. Until now, developers had to install a Visual Studio extension to enable support for the language. That wasn’t exactly a hardship, but the built-in support shows the importance Microsoft is giving this language. At its core, TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that adds features like optional and classes for object-oriented programming to the language. Microsoft argues this enables the development of better tools for JavaScript and makes programmers more productive, while preserving compatibility with existing JavaScript libraries. All the code is compiled down to regular JavaScript that can run in any browser. There are no runtime libraries and the compiler doesn’t inject any unnecessary code. In Visual Studio, TypeScript also gets the benefits of Microsoft’s Intellisense and features like statement completion. “We strive to generate beautiful JavaScript code,” Hejlsberg told me. He also argues that developers don’t lose any performance in using TypeScript and may actually gain from having the compiler handle the code for them. Even outside of Microsoft, the project has gained some traction, which Hejlsberg says exceeded his expectations. He specifically noted how most popular IDEs now offer plug-ins for the language and how Google made the TypeScript compiler . He also pointed at the very active community around supporting third-party JavaScript frameworks through TypeScript definitions on as an example for how the open source community has rallied around the language. Early on in the development of TypeScript, which actually started about three years ago, the team decided to keep the framework as light as possible. TypeScript doesn’t add any new statements, for example, though Hejlsberg admitted that there is always the temptation of adding more features and he didn’t rule out the possibility of adding new statements at a later time. Mostly, though, the team will follow the development of ECMAcript 6 (which should be out later this year) and is committed to adding whatever is included there to TypeScript as well. The latest update to Visual Studio 2013 is now available for download, and Visual Studio 2012 users can get TypeScript 1.0 RC through a standalone installer. As part of this update, Microsoft is also launching of its Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio Online and Team Explorer Everywhere. The new features there mostly center around improved Git and Java build support. |
Box Picks Up Former Symantec CEO Enrique Salem As Special Adviser On Its Road To IPO | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Today Box that it has picked up another Adult In The Room, increasing its leadership depth as it ramps towards a widely leaked, forthcoming initial public offering. Former Symantec CEO Enrique Salem will take on the role of Special Adviser to the growing company. According to Aaron Levie, Box’s CEO, Salem will help “to innovate and advance a new model for cloud security” at the firm. Box, which provides cloud storage products for enterprise-level businesses, recently raised another . Its chief rival, Dropbox, recently . Box, it has been , has filed for a yet-secret public offering that should occur this year. While adding senior help to Box’s current executive group is a fine idea, Salem is an interesting selection. Certainly, he has the experience in hand to advise Box, but from Symantec wasn’t particularly pleasant. When his ouster was made public, Symantec’s stock rose more than 13 percent. Why was he shown the door? As Silicon Valley Business Journal : [New CEO Steve] Bennett said in a prepared statement that the move was made because the data security company isn’t making progress fast enough and is underperforming. That’s not to say that Salem won’t be effective at helping Box, but it is interesting context. According to the White House’s website, Salem is part of the President Barack Obama’s Management Advisory Board. And finally, Salem joined the board of ForeScout . |
Minuum Shows Off Just How Smart A Smart Keyboard Could Be On A Smart TV | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxQoXajSCi4&w=1168&h=657] Typing using any kind of remote control that doesn’t include a full QWERTY keyboard is a nightmare, and everyone knows it. I still enter text into my Xbox One using the gamepad, despite its support for external keyboards and despite the availability of the Xbox SmartGlass app, because I enjoy punishing myself. But there could be a better way coming to your smart TV devices soon. Above, you can see that the smart TV integration works with remotes that include motion-detection capabilities like Nintendo’s Wii remote control. That’s actually not so uncommon in modern remote technology, as smart TV makers vie to differentiate their products from one another. So while the demo above uses a Wii remote, this should work with a range of different OEM tech. It’s only one way in which Minuum’s single-dimension predictive tech could work with simplified input, however, meaning that even if motion is supported, other input mechanisms could be. Minuum does a why it believes virtually anything built using its software is better than the alternatives out there. Minuum has already shown us what its keyboard software can , and the Toronto-based startup is clearly making a big-picture play to be anywhere and everywhere you need to type. Can its one-size approach really be the new best input method for virtually every device category? It’s too early to say, but we’ll start to see as official partnerships and integrations come to market. |
Fast-Growing 2U Files For $100M IPO, But Is It Poised To Be The Next Big Education Company? | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | When emerged in 2008, online education was still struggling to be taken seriously. Despite steadily , many remained skeptical. Both fairly and unfairly, online education was seen as a world of simple micro-correspondence courses, limited in quality, incapable of producing outcomes truly commensurate with on-campus education and therefore merely a supplement, not a replacement, to traditional learning. First as 2Tor, now as 2U, the company has been on a mission to lift online education up by the bootstraps and give universities the tools and resources they need to build out online extensions of their on-campus courses and programs. Six-years later, the work appears to be paying off for the young education technology company, as it , officially declaring its intention to go public. The company has yet to determine how many shares will be offered nor the price range for the proposed offering. However, we do know that, at this point, 2U plans to raise up to $100 million through its IPO and intends to list its stock on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “TWOU.” Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Credit Suisse will serve as the lead underwriters for its public offering, the company . It’s worth noting that figure the company shares in its preliminary IPO filing in regard to how much it intends to raise is used to come up with registration fees and is subject to change. In other words, 2U’s final IPO figure (the amount it plans to raise) could change with future filings, as it prepares to list. 2U, like many education startups tackling the higher education market, is looking to capitalize on the fast-increasing demand for, and proliferation of, digital learning content and online education programs. In its filing, for example, 2U cited recent figures from the U.S. Department of Education, which project that enrollment in online post-secondary degree programs will increase 13 percent to 23.8 million by 2021. While “MOOC” platforms like Coursera plan to act as channels through which students consume educational content and take courses for credit and, eventually, earn a degree from traditional institutions, 2U has taken a slightly different tack. What’s more, the road to monetization will, by definition, be longer for the content provider-esque businesses like Coursera, whereas 2U’s alternative approach has begun to generate millions in revenue. Rather than become a degree provider itself, the company gives schools access to its cloud-based, “online-education-as-a-service” platform, which essentially allows institutions to offer their own existing courses and degree programs, online, right alongside their on-campus programs. Initially focused on graduate programs at launch, the company , helping schools like U.C. Berkeley to build a virtual classroom for its new, exclusively-online data science degree program, for example. Today, the company has created online degree programs for 11 graduate schools and has partnered with an additional 10 schools to launch online semester programs. Since launching in 2008, 2U has raised nearly $100 million in funding, which puts it in exclusive company in the world of education technology startups. The reason the company has raised so much capital? It boils down to 2U’s belief that providing top-flight undergrad and graduate institutions with a robust online degree program that can actually rival the quality of their offline equivalents requires a much higher level of capital investment than you’d traditionally find in online education. Furthermore, 2U is swimming upstream when it comes to trying to convince institutions that they can see real R.O.I. by adding online degree programs. While being able to accept more students without needing to build dorms or undergo the typical capital expenditure has appeal right off the bat, universities tend to believe that, with scale (and more students), comes a diluted experience. To incentivize institutions, 2U attempts to take as much of the configuration and legwork out of their hands by customizing its platform for each individual program, for example. It also works with faculty to get them trained and onboarded, designs the intercampus social networking tools to get students connected, provides the synchronous video infrastructure for interpersonal communication and teaching and the underlying Learning Management System that connects everything together. Once that foundation is in place, 2U takes responsibility for vetting the first round of applicants to the online program, while designing and providing the support for the conveyance of interactive content — the kind of capabilities most teachers want to provide for their online courses. Naturally, the amount of support, administration, infrastructure and capital (both human and technological) required to make it all work adds up quickly. As co-founder , it’s why 2U manages to invest as much as $10 million in each graduate program it helps create, and why it’s taken on close to $100 million over the years. While its capital demands are high, the potential upside of 2U’s insistence on making that kind of investment is that it works toward buying the trust and loyalty of institutions, which it can then reinforce through a guarantee that it won’t accept payment unless the program is actually a success. Naturally, how it (and its partner institutions) define “success” varies. But, by making a big investment, and by offering a rev share to its partners, one starts to see why universities can get comfortable signing contracts with 2U that last up to 15 years. It’s also how the startup has managed to ink partnerships, in addition to U.C. Berkeley, with schools like the University of Southern California, Georgetown and UNC. The other potentially good sign as it heads toward IPO? The startup said that its revenue rose 49 percent to $83.1 million in 2013, following annual revenue figures of $29.7 million in 2011 and $55.9 million in 2012. It shows that 2U is moving in the right direction and indicates that its business is growing at a fairly steady pace. A second noteworthy figure from 2U’s filing can be found in the fact that a total of 8,540 unique students have enrolled in its clients’ programs since its inception. As , not all of those students will still be enrolled in 2013 but, using 8,000 students as an estimate for the lower bound, which combined are generating $83.1 million, that’s approximately $10,000/student. E-literate estimates that it’s more likely 2U has around 5,500 students (which they base on an 84 percent average retention rate), giving an upper bound of approximately $15,000/student. The point is: It’s an impressive revenue per user ratio, and one that bodes well for 2U going forward if it can begin to accelerate the rate at which it scales. Furthermore, as E-literate again illustrates, if 2U made $83.1 million in revenue with eight of its nine customers, then the company is making $10 million in revenue per customer, per year. Again, not bad, right? Another big vote of confidence for 2U from the perspective of potential shareholders? Over the past two days, in preparation for its IPO, . Among three recent additions, the most noteworthy would likely be Sallie Krawcheck, the former executive at Bank of America and Citigroup. More precisely, Krawcheck is the former president of the Global Wealth & Investment Management division of BoA, which includes Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust, and is the largest wealth management business in the world. She also served as CEO of Citigroup’s Smith Barney Division, was promoted to CFO of Citigroup proper and also to CEO of Citi’s wealth management division. In so doing, the financial exec has apparently earned a reputation for helping to lead big, ugly stinkers through equally big turnarounds. Cases in point: Sanford Bernstein, Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch. In the latter case, as BoA was in the process of acquiring Merrill, then CEO Ken Lewis apparently tried to nix the deal thanks to the perception that Merrill was in such poor shape financially. Nonetheless, the deal went through, and, under Krawcheck, BoA/Merrill Lynch saw $3.1 billion in profits over the next two years, and her division increased by 54 percent in Q2 2011, as BoA itself posted an $8 billion loss. Sounds like a useful skill set to have on your board of directors. In spite of those high ratios, valuable customers and increasing revenue, 2U isn’t even close to profitable, and in fact, it’s losing money. And an increasing amount of it. In its preliminary filing, the company said that its net losses were $24.9 million, $23.1 million and $28 million for 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively. Plus, all told, of December 31, 2013, 2U had an accumulated deficit of $99.8 million, and as of its recent filing, only had $7 million in cash in the bank. So, it seems as if 2U has uncovered this great, alternative business model, at least when compared to the MOOC providers. Like Coursera, target high-quality, name-brand institutions — in other words, top-ranked programs that are likely to have high(ish) tuitions — and give those institutions the ability to extend those elite programs to a limited number of students. So far, it appears to be a pretty lucrative formula. 2U talks a lot about how it is part of the movement to reduce the sky-rocketing costs of higher education. However, it’s worth noting that the programs it’s working with, at least on the graduate side, aren’t exactly on the cutting edge of affordable, job-preparatory post-secondary education. As E-literate illustrates, tuition for two year programs at these institutions is high, with UC Berkeley at $60K, USC at $34K, Georgetown at $77K and UNC at $80K, for example. Nonetheless, it still makes for a smart business model. Oh, and speaking of schools, another big red flag for 2U in its current incarnation? It relies far too heavily on a single source of revenue. Last year, its two partnerships with USC accounted for 69 percent of the company’s revenue. While 2U’s ARPU is impressively high, its deficit is high and its cash is low. Likely, if the company is going to turn those around, it is going to need to start signing contracts with graduate programs at a faster rate than its current speed. In 2U’s own words, whether or not its business can get to the next level, depends “in large part on our ability to enter into agreements with additional non-profit colleges and universities for their offering of graduate programs online.” Plus, 2U is not alone in the service it provides to universities. It has a number of big-name, well-backed rivals, like, say, Deltak, the company that , or Embanet, which Pearson acquired in 2012 as well. Not to mention that newer players like Udacity are looking to become technology infrastructure providers to both undergrad and graduate programs that want to offer courses and degrees online. More will be moving into this space, too, no doubt. Lastly, despite a long struggle with changing markets, increasing competition and a million other things, Chegg was able to pull off a high IPO at a huge valuation. Yet, in spite of that, and a relatively strong first quarter as a public company, as investors are biting their fingernails over its long-term prospects. However, in the first half of 2013 alone, Chegg saw $117 million in revenue and was able to grow its top-line revenue at a material pace. That puts it at a favorable place in comparison with 2U. What’s more, Chegg has lost $170 million to date, and 2U is already sneaking up on it with just under $100 million. Wall Street and its shareholders themselves don’t seem particularly sunny about Chegg’s financial prospects, nor its market. 2U has a more favorable hand in terms of the latter, but no one wants to be in the same analogy or sentence with Chegg right now. Long story short, 2U has a long way to go and a serious uphill battle to prove that it won’t follow a similar course. 2U has the reputation among its partner institutions and faculty at those institutions for offering top-notch support, and the upside of its model is that it’s extremely high-touch. Universities love that. When the company does IPO, however, pressure from investors to see increasing returns will grow, and the company will likely have to begin cutting costs or significantly ramping up expansion. With support infrastructure and a high-touch model, while creating a great customer experience, 2U could find its model restrictive of growth. The question is: Can 2U overcome this and break out of just being a boutique but lucrative business to one of the big honchos of education technology? You be the judge. |
Motorola Confirms Development Of Another Smartwatch | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Motorola held a decided low-key press conference today at Mobile World Congress. It was a snoozer. But! But Rick Osterloh, Motorola SVP, confirmed that the brand is still working on smartwatch development and there is another one on the way. Motorola was in fact one of the first firms to attempt a smartwatch. Way back in the balmy days of 2011, Motorola released the Motoactiv GPS and fitness watch. It was rather bulky, think iPad nano on a wrist band, but Motorola packed it full of features geared towards the fitness crowd. The damn thing could . The product was discontinued in 2013. It’s unclear from today’s event when Motorola’s next smartwatch will hit stores although the executive stated that the company is targeting a 2014 launch. It’s conceivable that the watch is shelved until Motorola Mobility is completely under Lenovo’s control. A lot is riding on this device as the war over wearables heats up. When it launches, Motorola’s watch will face stiff competition from the Pebble Steel, new Samsung Gear watches, and even more traditional fitness trackers such as the Fitbit. |
Here’s What The Upcoming Xbox One Dashboard Update Looks Like | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Slowly but surely, Microsoft is making up for shipping the unfinished console that is the Xbox One. In February, the company shipped an update that brought many an earth-shattering feature, from “Telling how much space you have left on the hard drive” to “An icon that tells you if your controller is about to die.” Another update is coming in March. Here’s what it looks like: The gist of the update: it fixes a bunch of annoyances introduced in the Xbox One’s friend system. You can now more easily find people you’ve played with recently (like you could on the 360), easily invite friends to multiplayer games (like you could on the 360), and party chat will be turned on by default as soon as you form a party (like it was on the 360.) They’re also adding the ability to broadcast your gameplay to Twitch, in case you’re one of the few people that anyone wants to watch play video games. [In our , I recommended waiting a few months before buying a One. Three months later, I’d still say “Wait”. The only reason to plunk down $500 for a One at this point is Titanfall, which comes out in mid-March and is truly incredible. I expect the One to get much better in time — but, for now, the Xbox One is a shiny black Titanfall box that happens to do stuff like Netflix and Hulu moderately well.] |
Google Expands Underwater Street View To New Locations | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | Google today a couple of new locations to its , including a number spots , Cancun and . Google unveiled underwater Street View and has been ever since. The company has partnered with the on this project and uses a number of special underwater cameras to capture the panoramic images its uses for this project. By last summer, the collection featured six locations, including reefs around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the Philippines and Hawaii. It also now features locations off the coast of , though one of the more ambitious projects for Street View was surely the addition of the Galapagos Islands . During a presentation at its I/O developer conference last year, Google that the divers typically cover about 2 kilometers and take between 3,000 and 4,000 images per dive during their expeditions. The team does about three dives per day, each of which lasts for about an hour. At the time, Google also said it would ramp up its efforts to bring more underwater imagery to Street View. The focus for now, it seems, is on the Americas, but the plan is to bring imagery from all the world’s oceans to Street View over the next few years. Another new addition to Street View, by the way, is the as seen from the water. To map this, Google put its trekker camera on top of Marine Advanced Research’s autonomous . It’s not quite underwater imagery, but it’s pretty cool nevertheless. Here is the full list of new sites that went online today: ; ; ; ; ; ; and the . |
Mt. Gox’s Demise Marks The End of Bitcoin’s First Wave Of Entrepreneurs | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | When in early 2013, there was something that was just about half of the founders I met. “I consider myself psychologically unemployable,” CEO Charlie Shrem told me in a phone interview last year. He described how he built BitInstant with whom he had never met in real-life. The call was full of bizarre clicking noises. Shrem kept getting distracted and he exuded a certain paranoia. “You can’t trust anyone. Sometimes, you can’t trust your own team,” he told me. Then when I met Mt. Gox’s team in Tokyo back in November, and talked to me through their lawyer. Once the world’s leading exchange, they were being challenged by and in volumes and were grappling CoinLab and a . “Even if we say something we believe and it’s the truth or we’re being honest, it could be misinterpreted,” Karpeles told me at the time. “We get our customers’ emails and we are screaming inside.” (He’s pictured at the top left, .) Unfortunately, I didn’t get any answers, but Karpeles handed me a stack of Mt. Gox security cards that generated one-time passwords. I passed through their lobby, which they were turning into a Bitcoin-powered cafe for retail experimentation, on my way out into Shibuya’s streets. Then one by one, they fell. Last month, at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport on money laundering charges. Last night, Mt. Gox’s website disappeared as the company halted trading . Both Karpeles and Shrem are now , the nonprofit organization guiding Bitcoin’s standards and adoption worldwide. While Bitcoin has had a long and volatile history given numerous thefts and scams, Mt. Gox may represent its biggest crisis in confidence to date. For well over a year, Mt. Gox was Bitcoin’s largest and most visible player as the biggest exchange in the world. Not only is the sheer headline size of the losses enormous at $400 million, the cryptocurrency crossed over into mainstream consciousness last year. In Bitcoin’s more obscure days, a choir of true believers rallied every time a hoax or theft emerged. But a collapse at this scale may irreparably damage the Bitcoin’s image in the eyes of retail investors. Or at least set it back a few years. As of this morning, the currency’s price seems to . The feeling in the local Tokyo entrepreneurial and Bitcoin community was that the Mt. Gox team was well-intentioned, but incompetent to the point of gross negligence. While Mt. Gox hasn’t replied to my requests for comment, I’ve spoken with other Bitcoin entrepreneurs and enthusiasts who have communicated with the company’s leadership in the last few weeks. What is in the matches what they were told. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought I was going to black out. You would at least reconcile your books regularly,” said one Bitcoin entrepreneur, who declined to be named because they have collaborated with Mt. Gox before. “You would have had to screw up on so many levels for something like this to have happened.” So is Mt. Gox the new version of Friendster, the early social networking leader that buckled just before Facebook surged ahead? Bitcoin’s next generation of founders is cleaner, more pedigreed and suited to Wall Street’s and Capitol Hill’s tastes. They are no less libertarian or wolf-like. Unlike the Bitcoin’s first generation of entrepreneurs, they are not outsiders. They are the establishment. . His company, along with Coinbase and , are backed by the Valley’s most prominent venture firms including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund. Barry Silbert, a high-profile Bitcoin angel investor who built SecondMarket into a formidable marketplace for shares in privately-held and pre-IPO companies, is . Even Mt. Gox’s original creator Jed McCaleb, who sold the site to Karpeles and Gay-Bouchery years ago, is U.S.-based regulators, who have been over the last year, are bound to ask more questions in the coming weeks. We may see companies operating without money transmitter licenses facing more scrutiny. That’s a good thing. “In the short term, it has an impact on trust and on the counter parties,” said Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital, which is backing Coinbase and BTCJam. “[But] you are seeing the system maturing – where the rookies and the players that were never transparent or had issues with the regulators are being taken out of the system.” Now that some rot has been cut out of Bitcoin’s core, it’s time for the second wave of founders to step up. |
Visualizing 15 Years Of Acquisitions By Apple, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, And Facebook | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 25 | , you slow down, and you die. That is, unless you can inject some fresh blood. After watching the last generation of tech giants wither or stagnate, today’s juggernauts are . Check out the interactive infographic below to compare the size, frequency, and focus of the last 15 years of acquisitions by Apple, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook. Business insurance provider created this infographic, which is only available here on TechCrunch. Each dot’s size represents the price paid for that startup if it was disclosed. Scroll over them for a link to learn more about the deal. The plus and minus buttons in the top right let you zoom in on specific time periods. Select categories at the top to filter for certain types of acquisitions. The Frequency toggle reveals phases when companies did heavy buying. And you can click any of the tech giants’ logos to view a complete list of their full-scale acquisitions (small acqui-hires excluded). Sorry to our mobile readers, but it’s much easier (possible) to navigate this on the web. Trends crystallized by the infographic include: And the biggest acquisitions (with disclosed prices) by the giants were: [Update 5:25pm PST: To put the price of the WhatsApp acquisition and others in context, comparing the acquisition cost per user for most of the major consumer space acquisitions from the past fifteen years. to see the original interactive chart that includes details on each deal.]
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Xiaomi To Invest $1B In Online Video Content | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | just that it plans to invest $1 billion in online video content to support its smart television ecosystem. The investment will be overseen by two Xiaomi executives who have considerable experience building online content. They are Chen Tong, the former editor-in-chief of news portal Sina.com, who Xiaomi hired away last month, and Wang Chuan, the director for Xiaomi’s , including the Mi TV and Mi Box. Before becoming a co-founder and vice president of Xiaomi, Wang founded Beijing Doukan Technology in 2010, which develops reading and video apps, including the Doukan online bookstore, which . Xiaomi’s smart TVs, which , are part of its , which syncs between its smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and smart wi-fi routers. The company’s business model is to sell hardware at-cost, which means that it is important for the company to create software and online content—including online video—that will eventually generate revenue. [Note: , Xiaomi does in fact make money from its cheap smartphones, but it’s unclear how much it makes from other hardware products.] At stake is China’s rapidly growing smart TV market. According to Digital TV Research, China is now the world’s largest smart TV and OTT (over-the-top) content, with 20 million to 30 million sets sold each year. Xiaomi’s smart TVs compete against rival platforms and Alibaba, as well as Samsung and Apple. Baidu’s smart TV, called TV+, has an edge because it streams content from iQiyi and PPS, which combined create China’s largest online video provider. In addition to online video, TV+ also gives users free access to movies and TV series. Alibaba’s smart TV operating system, on the other hand, has the advantage of the company’s e-commerce and online payment assets, like Tmall, Taobao, and Alipay, which allows users to shop for goods and pay bills through their television sets. Hardware makers are also competing with content providers like Youku Tudou, one of China’s largest Internet television companies, which signed strategic partnerships with several of China’s largest smart TV manufacturers, including Huawei Technologies, ZTE 9 Network Technology, Goldweb Technologies; and Jiuzhou Electronic Technology. We’ve contacted Xiaomi for more information and will update this post if we hear back from them. |
Disney And Google Partner Up For Disney Movies Anywhere Access On Google Play | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Disney and Google have teamed up to let you watch Disney, Pixar and Marvel movies on any device via “We want to make it easy for movie fans to enjoy all of their past and future digital purchases across all of their devices,” says Google’s head of Google Play Movies partnerships Jonathan Zepp. Disney has some deep roots with Pixar and had originally rolled out the with Apple in February. That initiative allowed people to purchase and then sync up Disney movies on iTunes or upload a special code from physical DVD’s and play them on Apple products. Now Disney, Pixar and Marvel fans will be able to pick up any tablet, computer or smartphone regardless if it’s Android or iOS and play the 450 movies offered on any device. Just like with the iTunes deal, one simply needs to download the Disney Movies Anywhere app and connect to your Google account. The content you purchase on iTunes, Google Play or the DMA platform will then exist in all three places. The partnership makes a lot of sense for Disney here. This allows it to truly offer its movie catalogue on any OS platform. Android now accounts for over 50 percent of market share in the U.S. and Google Play goes right along with it, according to the . That also makes this the first time we’ve ever been able to get content to sync up and play nice on any device from several different tech platforms. It’s like MGM studios agreeing to partner with both Netflix and Amazon and then guaranteeing that no matter what, the movies you buy will exist on both Netflix and Amazon. That hasn’t happened, of course, but this is a strong step forward in the future of movie purchases. This also marks a significant shift for the entertainment industry. Families are much more likely to own multiple devices and are than even a few years ago to go see a movie in the theater. The Motion Picture Association of America reported a slight increase in sales from 2012 to 2013. Movie purchases went from $10.8 to $10.9 billion, but this was because , not because we were going to the movies more. A poll out at the beginning of the year shows people from both genders and in every age group now prefer watching movies at home over the theater. Add to that the MPAA report mentioned above which also showed frequent movie watchers tend to own multiple devices on which they can play content such as movies. While playing movies on DVD or BlueRay is still the most preferred, about 16 percent of Harris Poll respondents ages 18-36 said they would rather purchase streaming movies via iTunes or Amazon. Some of that may be due to fear of losing your movie purchase if it’s just on one platform. Platforms and technologies change. It’s still too easy to lose all your purchases, should something happen within that platform. I’d personally rather rent a movie and purchase a physical copy myself. However, giving folks access to their movies on several platforms increases the likelihood they’ll be able to keep and access their purchases no matter what. Disney Studios CTO, Jamie Voris told me that even if something should happen with the Apple partnership, families would still be able to get their content on the DMA site or with Google Play. That’s even if they originally purchased it on iTunes. Voris says Disney Studios had their eye on Google as a partner for awhile but they had to make sure the technology worked before releasing this to the public. He also hinted that there would be another partnership announcement coming soon, though he smiled and told me he couldn’t say but I’d be very pleased with the next partnership when I pressed him further. I’d mentioned Amazon movies earlier so my bet is on that. Disney is offering “Wreck It Ralph” for a limited time to anyone who connects to one of their partner accounts, whether it be iTunes or Google Play. The DMA App is available on the Google Play store at or from the iTunes App Store at: . |
More Yahoo Restructuring As Offices, Sales Teams Get Cut Across Europe And Asia | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | It looks like is laying off more people in its international operations as it rethinks business outside of its core market of North America. In Asia, a source tells us that the company is laying off sales people in Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, affecting around 25, 50 and 15 people respectively. And in Singapore, while there are currently no redundancies, one of Yahoo’s most senior regional sales heads based in that office, Yvonne Chang, VP of APAC ad sales, is leaving. Meanwhile, in Europe, Middle East and Africa, the company is undertaking an “operational review” across the region. That has resulted in the closure of Yahoo’s operations in Budapest, Hungary, on top of the closure of Yahoo’s office in Jordan, which we . A spokesperson confirmed the departure of Chang in Singapore, as well as the review and restructuring in Budapest, providing the following statement that indicates there may be more to come: We recently shared with Yahoo employees in the EMEA region that we will be undertaking an operational review that proposes changes to the way our teams and businesses are structured in the region. This is part of our efforts to streamline our EMEA operations and realign resources and investments in a way that sets up Yahoo’s business in the region on a path of sustainable growth. The EMEA region continues to be an important market for Yahoo, and we are strongly committed to delivering the best possible products and experiences for our users and advertisers. The spokesperson would not comment on the downsizing in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, nor are there more details on whether and what further cuts might come in Europe. Our source speculates that this could be because Yahoo is planning to write down these charges in its fourth quarter earnings, which will be out in January. The Vietnam office, in Ho Chi Minh City, was actually closed in Q3, while employees in Indonesia and Malaysia have been told that Yahoo will be closing by December 14. These employees are still working out their notice period, our source tells us. One thing we do know so far is that unlike the situation in India, where some engineers were offered to relocate to Yahoo’s offices in California after Yahoo , no employees in this current round of cuts are being offered jobs elsewhere. This may be due to the fact that these are largely sales roles, an area that has seen flagging performance for . In the , revenues ex-TAC in EMEA were $81 million and grew 2.3% between Q3 2014 and 2013, while revenues in North America, which are more than ten times bigger at $831 million, grew by just under 2%. Meanwhile, revenues in Asia Pacific, which were $182 million in the quarter, declined by 2.5% over a year ago. Despite this, Yahoo beat analysts’ expectations last quarter because of a healthy bump from its sale of some of its Alibaba stock. Asia — currently overseen by Rose Tsou, Yahoo’s SVP for Asia Pacific — is expected to pull in some $700 million in revenue for the full year this year, but that’s down from over $1 billion five years ago. The moves in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam have yet to be confirmed by Yahoo, but if they are accurate, they are a repeat of the story from last month in Jordan. There, the office was built out of an acquisition Yahoo made of a local portal called Maktoob to boost its international footprint. Similarly, in Indonesia in 2010 — which was like Foursquare when it was still based around check-ins. There is also a curious counterpoint here of Yahoo giving up at a time when other tech companies are targeting emerging markets in Asia more than ever. While there have certainly been complications around Internet censorship in parts of Asia — sites like Facebook and even WordPress often get blocked, for example, in Vietnam — countries like Indonesia, where people are still rapidly adopting Internet services accessed via mobile handsets, represent some of the biggest opportunities for companies whose businesses have seen slowing growth in more mature markets. This was part of the rationale for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and launching initiatives to encourage more mobile data usage. Of course, Yahoo is in a far different position from companies like Google and Facebook in the U.S.: it has a long way to go before it can safely say it’s saturated the market, and this is part of why the company has put a lot of focus on building up its operations in the U.S. through acquisitions and product sprints. Indeed, while Yahoo continues to rationalize and downsize abroad, it’s also opening up a new chapter at home: last week the company the appointment of a new SVP for ad sales in North America, Lisa Utzschneider, with Ned Brody shifting to a role as SVP for ad tech and strategy. |
We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together (Spotify Remix) | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Saying, “This is it, I’ve had enough,” ’cause like We hadn’t seen each other in a two years When you said you needed to stream my music for free. (Sometimes.) Then you and say “Baby, I miss you and I .” Remember how ? I say, we break up, you call me, Ooh, But ooh, this time I’m telling you, I’m telling you We are never ever ever getting back together, We are never ever ever getting back together, You go talk to , talk to , talk But we are never ever ever ever getting back together Like, ever… I’m really gonna miss you And me falling for it screaming that And you would hide away and find your peace of mind With Ooh, But ooh, this time I’m telling you, I’m telling you We are never, ever, ever getting back together We are never, ever, ever getting back together You go talk to , , talk to me (talk to ) But we are never ever ever ever getting back together Ooh, yeah, ooh yeah, ooh yeah Oh oh oh I that we were forever ever And I used to say, “Never say never…” No! |
Tom Magliozzi, Co-Host Of NPR’s Car Talk, Dead At 77 | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Before laptops, before cellphones, and before computers, hackers hacked machines. For most of the last century, the machine of choice was the car. Car repair, like chess, took a day to learn and a lifetime to master and the tricks we use today – 3D printing, tag-team programming, agile design – were born in the garages of the 1950s and 1960s. John Muir’s book, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, was the car hackers bible and the first hackerspaces were DIY garages. Car repair was about people helping people, just as early UNIX machines were about sharing and the Internet was about cross-border cooperation. Tom Magliozzi, who died today at age 77, was one of those early hackers. His show, Car Talk, was the definitive record of those early hardware hacking attitudes. Tom (above, right) and Ray should be familiar to anyone who grew up in a household with a counter-cultural bent. Heard around the world – the callers rang in from Alaska, England, and Afghanistan – the show featured car advice and much more. The brothers joked constantly, Tom’s infectious laugh ramping up the car speakers or hi-fi until that’s all you heard. They focused on older cars as newer vehicles were harder to diagnose without computers and sensors. Instead you could hear about timing belts and the best old Volvos and how to make sure your Honda Accord didn’t make that sound when you drove it faster than 40 miles per hour. Graduates of MIT, Tom and Ray were roundly educated but sounded like a pair of screwballs. Tom started one of the first DIY repair shops, the Hackers Heaven, and the delightfully-named Good News Garage. Although he never let on, you could tell he and his brother were true techies although they were in love with cast steel and oil rather than bits and bytes. The show’s value wasn’t in the car advice — the Internet gives us that with far more accuracy than the brothers could — but in the personalities. The brothers, and Tom in particular, reminded us that building and fixing isn’t scary and that repair, in fact, was the way forward. We aren’t supposed to be scared of getting our hands dirty because that’s how progress is made and that’s how you have fun. Tom taught a generation of hackers that there is nothing frightening about taking things apart. The show has been in re-runs for the past two years while Tom battled the Alzheimer’s that eventually killed him. His was a generous and beautiful mind and we could all learn a thing or two from him when we explain this brave new world to people new to its wonders. |
Built In Brooklyn: Maker’s Row Bets On US Manufacturing | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | For the first episode of , we took the “built” part of the title pretty seriously. I mean, we here at TechCrunch think it’s pretty meaningful to build a great website or mobile app — but there’s some extra cool about visiting the manufacturers who are actually building or assembling physical goods. I got to see some of that manufacturing in action courtesy of Matthew Burnett and Tanya Menendez, the co-founders of , a startup based in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood. Maker’s Row isn’t a manufacturer itself, but it works with them — the team has created . And since a few of the 3,000-plus factories that Maker’s Row works with are located in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, it seemed like it’d be more fun to interview Burnett and Menendez there. The pair talked about their backgrounds (particularly Burnett’s origins in Detroit), about the early days of the company, and about why they chose to start Maker’s Row in Brooklyn, which Burnett described as both “the heart of the Maker movement” and “the creative center of the Eastern Seaboard.” You might be thinking that it’s a little idealistic or even downright quixotic for a startup to focus on American factories, but . “People think of factories as old-school, but I walk into these facilities, they’re using iPads, they’re using Lean Startup methodologies, all of these crazy things,” Menendez said. “I’m really confident that with labor costs becoming more competitive globally … the turnaround times and the ability for the designers to be close to the manufacturers and the innovation that that creates — American manufacturing is going to come back.” |
iCracked Technicians Have Made $6M This Year | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | You’d think that competing directly with Apple for its own customers would be a losing game, but ‘s iOS repair service continues to grow as Apple approaches 1 billion mobile devices sold — a threshold the company could pass this quarter. In a phone interview last week, iCracked founder and CEO AJ Forsythe told TechCrunch that his company has brought in 280 more full- and part-time “iTechs” to its roster (bringing the total to 1,000) in the last two months, a big jump from the regular 60-80 per month it was recruiting earlier this year. Forsythe claims that the jump is the result of the company hitting its stride after three years of building out its support infrastructure and training systems for new technicians, which include approximately 22 hours of training, free tools and parts to do repair work, insurance for devices repaired, and an Uber-like routing system that lets iTechs find, set up and complete repair jobs in less than an hour. He also says that he expects that growth to continue, as 40 percent of requests that come in via the app come from areas where iCracked doesn’t yet have technicians available. In part, iCracked is benefitting from the fact that it’s easier to scale out individual technicians that only do repairs than it is to roll out an Apple Store that needs real estate, inventory and a full staff of employees. While iCracked also offers repair (and reselling) services for Android devices, the realities of market fragmentation and the constant flow of new models from OEMs result in the startup only looking at roughly the top 10 percent of Android devices by sales. While that’s still a large market, it translate into only 20 percent of iCracked’s repair and reselling business. So far this year, Forsythe says those iTechs have earned (after iCracked’s cut) $6 million. As with other services in the so-called “sharing economy,” he notes that incomes are skewed towards those who spend significantly more time doing repairs, with some technicians bringing in six-figure incomes. But as with Lyft drivers who only work weekends, many iTechs only make themselves available for jobs when they need some extra cash. For most repairs, Forsythe says its techs make approximately $25 per hour, with that number going up in regions with higher demand. To make sure that those areas are always being serviced, iCracked actually hires some technicians full-time, a solution that its cousins in the sharing economy may also have to adopt to prevent service providers from simply jumping between competing apps. |
Check Out This Amazing Transparent Car | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDk5HdGfuVI] has posted some amazing video of a “transparent” car created by Japanese researchers. The car uses projectors, cameras, and special mirrors to reflect what’s outside the car onto the surfaces inside. The resulting images allow you to see what’s going on all around the vehicle, even behind you and in blind spots. Created by Susumu Tachi and Masahiko Inami of the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University, the project is designed to help drivers stay aware of their surroundings. The technology isn’t new – this sort of video camouflage has been around for a while – but by shrinking it down and sticking it into a car you can do a sort of reverse camouflage. Instead of hiding objects with light, the projector renders the Toyota Prius in the video “transparent.” Will we ever see a real version of this in cars? The creators write: As you can see from the video above the technology is still pretty wonky. But with a brighter projector, better cameras, and a smaller enclosure and some day we’ll all feel like Wonder Woman on the highway. |
HomeAway Sues San Francisco To Block So-Called ‘Airbnb Law’ | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Vacation rental marketplace is looking to block legislation designed to make short-term rentals legal in San Francisco. To do that, the company has filed a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment against the city, claiming that its new “Airbnb law” violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Last month, the San Francisco board of supervisors in the city. In doing so, they passed a controversial piece of legislation that sought to balance Airbnb hosts’ ability to make their homes available for rent with claiming the law would make housing in the city more scarce than it already is. As part of its compromise, the legislation limited the length of time hosts could make their homes available to 90 days a year, required them to register with a public registry, and to pay the city’s hotel taxes on stays booked through the Airbnb platform. It also limited rentals to full-time residents, seeking to weed out landlords tying up housing stock for short-term rentals in a constrained housing market. Surprisingly — or perhaps not — it’s the compromises aimed at making the legislation more palatable to local residents that HomeAway is calling into question. Many of its listings comprise second homes or vacation properties for its hosts, which means its hosts wouldn’t be able to rent out their homes under the legislation passed last month. HomeAway argues the legislation was crafted specifically for Airbnb’s platform, despite HomeAway’s attempts to work with the city on it. And it claims “any asserted local benefit of the Ordinance’s residency restriction and Hosting Platform rules is outweighed by the substantial burdens they impose on interstate commerce” and as a result it violates the Constitution’s commerce clause. As part of its complaint, HomeAway alleges: First, by its express terms, the Ordinance allows only permanent San Francisco residents to rent out on a short-term basis (which the Ordinance defines as thirty days or less) residential property they own or lease in San Francisco. Non-permanent residents of San Francisco who own or lease property in San Francisco are barred on the face of the Ordinance from renting out their property on a short-term basis. Second, the Ordinance requires entities that provide “Hosting Platforms,” on which owners and lessees of property may advertise their property for short-term rentals, to conform their business operations in San Francisco to one particular model, and no other, under pain of monetary penalties. There are a number of reasons why the legislation would keep HomeAway from being able to operate legally in San Francisco, including the local resident requirement, as well as the need to collect hotel taxes. Since HomeAway’s business doesn’t manage payments or operate under an agency model for connecting property owners and renters, it’s not able to comply with those rules. As a result, HomeAway argues that the law is anti-competitive in the short-term rental market. Airbnb tells TechCrunch in a statement: “Airbnb is focused on fair rules that allow regular people to share the home in which they live. If other companies feel differently, that’s up to them.” It remains to be seen if HomeAway will be able to work with San Francisco to operate under its rules. In the meantime, it’s hoping the courts rule in its favor to force the issue.
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VC Points Out That VCs Might Have A Burn Rate Problem Of Their Own | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Your startup loses too much money, but even worse, the people supplying you with cash might be running a bit light themselves. Following commentary burn rates, and Fortune’s Dan Primack that some venture capitalists are investing faster and spending more on non-essentials than before. Maybe the venture capitalists have a burn rate problem of their own. I kicked through the idea with New Enterprise Associates’ recently over some deeply unironic coffee at the Creamery. He today, looking into how much money venture firms have raised, how much they have left, and what portion of that remaining capital is for new investments, compared to prior commitments. Sakoda’s take isn’t very pretty: Using a set of assumptions* to gauge how fast each fund invests their capital, we can estimate how much capital is reserved across the industry. Based on the chart below, our best guess is that the industry will have approximately ~$40 billion of available capital and ~$26 billion of capital earmarked for reserves at the end of this year. He goes on to caveat those figures in two ways: So things could be better. Every time I sit with a venture capitalist and talk about the money world, I hear the same thing: There is out there right now looking for return. Bored capital leads to overinflated private corporation valuations, mind you, so that fact is hardly surprising given what we are seeing coming out of the other end. At the same time, you have to wonder if all the majors could raise another billion each right now, and if not, what might happen to the pace of investment. If seed and A valuations start to crumble, what does that mean up the stack? Sakoda sounds the alarm mildly: “As an entrepreneur, it is tempting to be lured into a false sense of security or paranoia by knowing whether your existing investors can fund you through the next economic cycle.” You get to handicap where we are in the cycle on your own, of course. The standard rules apply: Great companies will always be able to raise, and downturns won’t stop the next unicorns. Blah blah, whatever. https://twitter.com/alex/status/517020878748782593 |
Paracosm Raises $3.3M From Atlas, iRobot To Turn Our World Into A 3D Holodeck | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | The rise of immersive headsets like the Oculus VR, innovations in gaming and mapping, and advances in robotics have put a spotlight on three-dimensional technology, whose algorithms and visualizations will be a key to whether all this new hardware and video-based software is realistic and useful enough to win over users. That’s having a knock-on effect how 3D startups are growing. In one of the latest developments, , a Florida-based specialist in cloud-based 3D mapping software, has picked up a $3.3 million seed round of funding — money it will use to build out its team and develop more and better algorithms for robotics, gaming and other applications that are built to operate in real-world space — or, as founder and CEO Amir Rubin put it to me, to “take the digital world beyond screens and enable machines to understand the world as we do, turning your living room into a .” The round, led by Atlas Venture, also had participation from Roomba maker iRobot, Osage University Partners, BOLDstart Ventures, New World Angels, Deep Fork Capital and unnamed angel investors. Paracosm is not the only 3D startup to come out of Florida. In October, Florida-based firm Magic Leap made big waves when it led by Google to develop 3D technology that it has yet to reveal in much detail. Nor is it the only 3D visualization startup to attract attention from strategic players. Also last month, Google’s , one of them being Vision Factory, a spinout from Oxford University whose engineers have been focusing on writing algorithms to power computer vision systems — used, for example, by robots to process 3D objects and movements. “Florida has a huge 3D community, partly because of the heritage of Disney,” he says, but also because of the presence of EA and other gaming companies (Trendy Entertainment, makers of Dungeon Defenders, the first game to port the Unreal Engine to Android, is also based in Florida), the University of Florida and its extensive 3D simulation research, and “huge military contracts that go through Orlando.” Interestingly, Paracosm has a connection to Google, too: it was one of the original development partners for Project Tango, helping with early 3D mapping and the Unity game engine code on the platform. It’s not investing in the company, “but we have a close relationship with them — as a scrappy startup,” he adds. Parascom’s particular position in the spectrum of companies working in 3D is that it develops mapping technology, but also the ability for a robot, or something/someone else, to effectively reason within that space. “We are looking to build a general case of having a 3D map for your home or office, or an airport or museum, and then making that something that robots or others can interact with,” Rubin says. Hence, the concept of a holodeck. To explain what he means, he gives me the example of how a normal human recalls a room. “If you go to a friend’s house for a dinner party, you know where the closet or bathroom is, you have built in your mind a map of the layout of the house and the most important landmarks. You know where the kitchen is and the countertop all these little details that we take for granted,” he says. “Those don’t exist in the world of software and robots. What we are trying to accomplish is to give way for [non-human entities] to understand those same shapes and layouts. If they can do this, it unlocks totally new applications and possibilities that have never been achievable before.” This is done, in layman’s terms, by way of cloud-based processing using video, which Paracosm pieces into a 3D model that it can then parse for objects that it recognises and translates into code. Rubin trained (in Florida, of course) as a computer engineer, and has been , with his first company also working in spatial perception but from a different angle: they built drones, among other things. Most recently, he was a a 3D startup, also in Florida, called Shadow Health, which focused on immersive pictures of hospital rooms. He also holds a patent for weighing cows based on photographs of them. . The initial inspiration for Paracosm came 10 years ago when Rubin was backpacking through Europe and started to wish that he could see what a particular ruin looked like when it was still a living space. “You feel the power of history and I would have liked to have seen these rocks before they were just rocks,” he says. But he says that he could never fiture out how to do it until two years ago. “I woke up in the middle of the night with an a-ha moment,” he says. Bringing together four friends with respective expertise in areas like machine learning and interactivity, they became the basis of Paracosm. “They basically helped craft the vision and how to figure out how to solve the problem. The initial idea was terrible but after brainstorming we have this whole thing figured out the frame work of what we are capable of accomplishing and where it can go in the future.” As for that future, Rubin says for now they are trying to leave the applications open-ended and focus just on making the tech work. The conflict of being purely focused on tech, however, versus thinking entrepreneurially of how to apply it remains. “This is something that my cofounders and I think a lot about,” he says. “For now, we are looking to build the core technology, but we know there are so many vertical applications that yes we expect that we may commercialise one or two of them ourselves, to eat own dogfood.” |
A Maturing OpenStack Prepares To Take On New Challenges | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | , the fast-growing open source cloud computing platform that now has the backing of more than 200 companies, is holding its semiannual developer conference in Paris this week. With over 4,500 attendees, it’s the organization’s largest event so far. While this illustrates the interest in the platform, the project is also facing a set of new challenges with its growing popularity. During today’s keynote a number of speakers noted that the project’s six-month release cycle makes it harder for large organizations to adopt the platform. The head of BMW’s datacenter Stefan Lenz, for example, noted that too many big changes happen from release to release. “We need more stability in the future,” he noted. “But that doesn’t prevent us from using it right now as it is.” BMW currently only runs a 100 core OpenStack cluster in what Lenz called a “semi-productive” environment that is mostly dedicated to developing the company’s practices around OpenStack. Other speakers throughout the morning shared similar concerns, and as OpenStack COO Mark Collier and executive director Jonathan Bryce noted in a press conference after today’s keynote, the organization is aware of this. Now that many of the project’s modules have matured, though, most users don’t necessarily need to install every upgrade. Collier admitted that the organization always keeps its options open, but he also noted that one of OpenStack’s goals in its forthcoming releases is to make updating easier for its current users. The other issue the organization needs to face now is that getting up and running with OpenStack continues to be very difficult. For most businesses, standing up an OpenStack cloud means working with a specialized third-party vendor. If OpenStack wants to reach a wider audience, it has to make this process easier. Parallel to the main event, the OpenStack contributors also hold their own so-called “Design Summit” to set their priorities for the upcoming release. During that time, the developers of the individual OpenStack modules work on their roadmaps, but this year, there is also more time dedicated to coordinating the efforts between the different modules. During the early days of the project, the focus was on bringing new features to these modules, but as the projects matured, there now has to be more emphasis on coordination between them. The other sign of maturity is the sheer number of vendors in the , ranging from , and to companies like , which focuses on virtual network infrastructures for OpenStack clouds. With this, investors are also getting more interested in this space. SwiftStack, for example, last month and that’s just the latest in a wide range of recent announcements, which also include . We are also seeing the first round of OpenStack-related acquisitions now. Cisco, for example, . All of this shows that the project is quickly maturing. For the longest time, things didn’t look so great for the project, which was incubated by RackSpace and NASA. Over the last two years or so, the organization both managed to improve its technology and its messaging around it. As it matures and more companies join the fray, though, the organization will also have to ensure that it doesn’t trade in its ability to innovate for the stability that its users clearly want at this stage. |
Google Calendar App Gets Smarter And Prettier | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Google is to go along with the out today. Both the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9 run on Google’s new Lollipop 5.0 operating system. The new Calendar app works on Lollipop 5.0 and all Android 4.1 or newer devices. The old app was pretty much manual entry for events. You had to scroll times and dates, enter an event name, address for the event and all people involved. The new app includes three key updates that allow it to fill in the blanks and make suggestions for you, shortly after you start to type in your event. Here’s a brief video on how it works: The new Schedule View will let you see a map of your event destination. It will also include photos, cityscapes and illustrations of the surrounding area. According to Google, these enhancements will “bring a little extra beauty to your day…” Assists is a new, intuitive feature that basically guesses details to add to an event, based on your previous phone interactions. For example, if you run with a friend in the park every week, the new version of Google Calendar will suggest the place, time and person you always go with if you start to type “r-u-n.” The core of the Google Calendar app is of course the events themselves. Google’s Calendar app now automates the events process by gathering info from your email inbox and guessing what you are doing. Say you have booked a flight to New York three weeks from now. The new Calendar will take the data from the email flight confirmation and add it to your calendar with the correct date, time and airline. It will also update the schedule if your flight’s delayed. The app isn’t available for iPhone yet (Google says they’re working on that) but as we mentioned above, it already works for Lollipop 5.0. You can read more about it on . |
Parse Rolls Out A/B Testing For Push Notifications | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Facebook subsidiary is rolling out , a new feature aimed at marketers and developers whose apps use the Parse SDKs that let them A/B test different messages and times for push notifications that go out to mobile devices. The update works with apps that already use the latest versions of the Parse SDKs with no changes needed on the developer’s side of things. Instead, there’s now an option on the push composer in the Parse web console that lets you access A/B testing. Parse says that in the last month, it sent out 2.4 billion mobile push notifications. Having A/B testing built into a distribution system that big will have a huge impact on how and when millions of people decide to engage with their devices. For that reason, it’s interesting to look at what Facebook is doing with its developer- and marketer-focused efforts. At a high level, Facebook seems to be looking to become the layer in the app ecosystem that not only helps users find new apps that fulfill their needs, but also brings them back in a way that Google’s web search can’t match (though that could change in the future based on whether or not developers embrace ). Facebook has myriad ways to connect users and apps. You’ve got the surprisingly effective mobile install ads in the News Feed, backed up by re-engagement ads powered by App Links, which — which you can verify in . Want to approach potential users from another angle? Get in front of them by putting yourself out there on the Facebook Audience Network. If you’re not having trouble getting users to open your app but aren’t quite landing the conversion rates you’re hoping for, you can avoid bugging users with obnoxious notifications by testing different messages across a small subset of their audience, with effectiveness again measured within Facebook-provided analytics. By approaching this one fundamental problem developers have from every angle it can throw engineers at, Facebook presents itself as the go-to provider for mobile engagement services. Across all of its efforts, Facebook is working towards (and succeeding at) telling users where they can spend money — something that will only become more valuable as new developments like Apple Pay remove friction from the process of actually spending money on digital and physical goods from within mobile apps. |
Microsoft Now Lets Developers Run IE On Android, iOS And OS X | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | You can now run the latest version of Internet Explorer on your Android, iOS, OS X or non-Windows 10 Windows machine. Microsoft has something it calls RemoteIE, which allows developers to run the company’s browser preview builds without requiring them to be on the most current version of Windows. Microsoft wants developers to build their websites to be compatible with its browser. At the same time, the company can’t expect all developers to use Windows. RemoteIE, which is powered by Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure, provides a reasonable compromise. (For some live examples, head and .) The service is just for testing, with Microsoft noting that “[s]essions are limited to conserve server resources. Sessions idle for 10 minutes will be logged out and no session can last more than 60 minutes – you’ll need to start a new session.” RemoteIE is free. In short, regardless of your operating system or development environment, you can now quickly spin up the latest Internet Explorer builds running on Windows 10 for no cost. Whether developers will use the service remains to be seen, but Microsoft is certainly offering an olive branch to the developing classes that do not use its platform. |
Is Samsung Sliding Into Home Or Just Sliding? | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | is a mobile behemoth — with a bit of an earnings problem. The in three years, a drop of 60 percent to $3.9 billion. It’s a huge stumble but, as the astute among you will note, it’s still $3.9 billion dollars in profit. Two things are happening at . We forget that in 2009 Samsung was a minor contender in the mobile space. Nokia, HTC and LG were duking it out as Apple released their iPhones. There was no inkling that this battle would one day end with Samsung victorious. In fact, most of these smartphone makers weren’t even dedicated to Android as a platform. For example, the LG Prada II came out in December 2008 and that was as far from a Nexus S as you can get. A year later released the N97, its last gasp in the Symbian space they seemingly refused to abandon. So the first thing Samsung is doing is maturing. It settled into a complacency that comes with success and, like Apple, it’s circling around a set of design decisions that may or may not resonate with consumers. You can’t make a phone that isn’t a flat black slab; you can’t make a wearable that isn’t somehow related to wearables that came before it; and you sell expensive phones to early adopters, ignoring the low end. Both Apple and Samsung followed these maxims to the state of affairs we see now. The second thing Samsung is doing is reacting to a rapid change in the market. We are at peak smartphone. We are currently living in a world where almost anyone can own a networked device, from a $35 Firefox phone to a . the design-conscious Asian market with iPhone-alikes while Lenovo is plugging deeply into the low-end. And all of these phones are essentially the same. Samsung has historically sold on features. By plowing in heart-rate sensors, weird cameras, and waterproofing. Every phone has to be considerably better than the last and so they pile on photo modes and other oddness until the interface feels like a copy of Internet Explorer with a few too many toolbars installed. In the end, what consumers want are phones that are cheap and can play Candy Crush. And flagship Samsung phones are not cheap nor does Samsung own Candy Crush. So Samsung is both sliding into home and sliding. It is both victorious and fragile, and the world it faces is far different than the world it won in. Smartphone choice is always a no-brainer — you buy what you can afford — and most smartphone pricing reflects that. You can get cheap or free phones that are a few years old, middling phones for a few hundred, and flagships for $300 or more. By winning so handily in the high end, Samsung ignored the other two tranches. This resulted in a drop in interest and, more important, the ability for Apple to sneak into the big phone space almost unnoticed. While I’m sure Samsung won’t let this slide happen for much longer, we must remember that, once upon a time, Nokia was the brand to beat when it came to smartphones. Now it’s not even a brand. |
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Googlers Say Their New “Material Design” Guidelines Will Unify Apps Across Android Devices | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | With the latest version of Google’s Android operating system, we should also be getting the first big wave of Android apps using the company’s “material design” principles. over the summer, and , published after the company released more details last month, has some specifics about what material design actually entails. On a broad level, there’s an emphasis on bright, bold colors, as well as animations and interactions that are grounded in real-world physics. When I sat down with Matias Duarte, vice president of design for Android, and designer Nicholas Jitkoff, we talked less about the details of material design and more about the thinking behind it. Jitkoff told me the goal was to create “a system for design that would work across all our platforms.” He added that he wanted apps to be able to “scale elegantly” as they moved onto bigger screens like laptops — as an example, Jitkoff noted that on those bigger screens, there’s a temptation to “wedge more content on-screen,” but sometimes it makes more sense to show the same amount of stuff, just in a bigger, bolder way. I mentioned real-world physics earlier, and indeed, Duarte and Jitkoff showed me photos of the actual paper objects that the Google design team played with as they put these guidelines together. To be clear, material design apps aren’t completely restricted by what they could or couldn’t do in the real world. (At this point, I was expecting someone to invoke , but nope.) “In the real world, there’s no material that can scale and change its shape like this,” Duarte noted. The goal, he added, is to recognize (or, I suppose, create the illusion) that there’s “actually a world that lives inside these screens — it has physical laws and properties that are similar to the real world.” As Duarte and Jitkoff talked about some of the third-party apps redesigned for these guidelines, I became curious about whether designers at other companies were expected to go through the same process of building physical models. Jitkoff said that was more of a one-time experiment. More broadly, Duarte said that Google isn’t treating these ideas as rules that other companies must follow: “When you have rules, you have to have ways to enforce them.” Instead, with Google’s guidelines and technical framework, the company is trying to create “paths of least resistance.” You should, however, expect all of Google’s apps to be material design-compliant moving forward (Google’s new email app Inbox is an example that came up a couple of times). “Internally, we crack the whip,” Duarte said, though he also noted there will be a few small lapses. After all, it’s early days. You can . |
Android 5.0 Lollipop Review: Tablet Edition | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | operating system is now available to consumers, as new Nexus hardware (starting with ) begins to make its way into the hands of pre-order customers. Version 5.0 of Android continues the candy naming tradition with “Lollipop,” and despite the fact that ‘L’ is just next in the alphabet, something about the name seems to resonate with the bold new design direction Google has introduced for this generation of its software. Lollipop’s playful, animation-rich aesthetic, which Google calls “material design,” feels fresh and alive, with an internal logic that should mean both longtime and new Android users can get accustomed to their new surroundings quickly – for the most part. It’s possible that design is the most significant part of Android 5.0. Lollipop marks Google’s full commitment to its material design principles of user interface creation, which take cues from real-world materials to present the user with UI elements that slide over one another, casting shadows and animating in and out of maximized and minimal states. The final effect is somewhat like paging through a unique small-run art book, a complex yet instantly understood artifact made up of bold-flat colors covered in simple, elegant typefaces that seem to leap from the page despite a print-like adherence to the same. The visual design of Lollipop is indeed a treat, and it’s surprising how modern the UI feels once you go back to tablets running older versions of the software. Even Android 4.4.4 running on a Nexus 7 feels like it could be from a previous era of mobile computing. The effect is that pronounced. Google’s decision to make interfaces like the notification tray more lightweight with gaps between light-coloured panels, buttons and other elements succeeds in making Android 5.0 feel like a dramatic leap forward in the evolution of mobile software. Small touches like the way the app drawer minimization animation returns to the new circular icon on the home screen also help to elevate the experience of using Android overall. Google has made interacting with hardware running Lollipop more of a delightful experience in general; interacting with older Android devices always reminded me more of days spent wrangling PCs with early pre-Windows versions of GUI menus glued on top of DOS environments. Using Android 5.0 finally manages to make you forget about the code running just under the hood. In some ways, it’s like Android’s new clothes signals a coming of age, though hardcore fans might see it as an oversimplification aimed at too broad a market. Part of Android’s appeal to technically skilled users willing to get their hands dirty, after all, was the slight ugliness for which it seldom seemed all that apologetic. Top to bottom, though, Android 5.0 represents a huge improvement that the vast majority of users will appreciate. It feels more fresh in general, with a Settings app that doesn’t seem like just a series of interminable menus, and the multi-tasking interface with its card-style scrolling is so well-done that you often just want to open the feature to page through it with no particular destination in mind. Of course, Android 5.0 isn’t just about surface changes. The new software also comes with new features, and many of these represent potentially big changes in how users will interact with their devices. One of these that occurs as soon as you set up your device is automatic encryption. All your data on a brand-new Android 5.0 device is encrypted from the start by default, and that encryption is tied to both a secret generated by your user security code (should you set one up). This means that if you lose your device, the data will be better protected even if your lock screen code is bypassed and the data is accessed directly. It’s a nice feature, but it’s something that you won’t actually notice or benefit from unless you unfortunately lose your device or have it stolen. Another new security feature in Android is actually much more useful on a daily basis, and that’s Smart Lock. You can assign trusted devices to allow your Nexus 9 or other Lollipop-sporting device to unlock automatically when actively paired with them, and it’s a huge boon to convenience while offering less of a potential security trade-off vs. just not using a lock screen passcode at all. I set up my Nexus 9 to unlock without a passcode when connected to my Bluetooth Internet radio receiver at home, and when actively connected to my LG G Watch Android Wear device, meaning that as long as it’s either in close proximity to my body when I’m out, or basically anywhere in my home, it’ll unlock without prompting me for my PIN. Likewise, you can set up a face unlock mechanism that will recognize when you’re the one using the device and bypass the pin. In practice, however, that feature is a little more finicky, because Google has retooled its face-unlock tech. While that means it isn’t easily fooled, it also means it’s more susceptible to changes in lighting conditions and angles when recognizing your mug. Android Lollipop’s new keyboard design is refreshed along with the app drawer and notification tray, adopting a dark text on white background look, without any visual market separating the space between keys. This has the effect of mimicking a printed page more effectively, which is one of the main themes of material design, and it also seems to make for better typing on a large screen. The keys seem to result in fewer missed hits, which is due perhaps to the fact that they don’t have gaps between them any longer, or to the increased clarity of the visually spare field of the overall composition. New Gmail and Calendar apps provide much better handling of both of those tasks. The new Gmail app looks a lot closer to Google’s new Inbox mail client than did the existing version, but there’s still a significant functional gap between the two products. Gmail still presents your email relatively untouched by automated filtration software, though it does highlight the recently introduced categories function for giving you a quick way of looking at all the various instances of one type of message on a case-by-case basis. The landscape and portrait views on the Nexus 9 both offer ample opportunity to see lots of information at a glance, including a left-hand menu bar that can be minimized with simple but effective icons for navigation. Hitting “compose” will actually open up a new window, which is huge for productivity if you’re tired of having to go back to check your mail and then hunt around the drafts folder to find the message you were just working on. Calendar now features inline photos and maps, adding a touch of visual flare to an app category where there has seldom been any before. It also offers autocompletion suggestions for titles, contacts and places to make text entry easier, and combs your Gmail for flight reservations and other pertinent schedule information to provide you with more dates automatically. The interface itself is more evocative of a stylish letterpress wall calendar than a boring agenda, and header images for different types of events when you zoom in to check appointment details, plus bold colors if there aren’t any pics to fit, really bring the whole thing together. Animations here are excellent as they are anywhere material design has been put to full effect, and again I’m struck by the level of delight Google can manage to inspire even with something as simple as a calendar application. Android’s new security features offer a lot of peace of mind, and the Smart Lock function that uses devices that have connected with the tablet through an active pairing protocol to bypass screen locking is an extremely useful feature when it comes to user convenience. This, combined with default decryption of all of your device’s data, should help users feel more secure even when they lose their tablets. Lollipop is also a visual delight, through and through. The small touches like visual blooms of color and shading to indicate received touches or to subtly indicate that you’ve reached the end of a scrollable field, plus the way elements balloon to life or shrink back to their idle state are all things that, when first noticed, can sometimes evoke an actual grin, and that continue to amplify the overall experience even once you’re used to them. With Google’s own native apps, the company has clearly dedicated a lot of time to building experiences that not only suit the tablet’s available real estate, but that also offer functionality more appropriate to people using tablets as laptop replacements. Gmail’s ability to splinter off new compose windows as separate tasks is a perfect example of this, and Sheets, Docs and Slides all offer the same kind of multi-tasking-friendly process separation. Some of the visual appeal of the new Android could conceivably place additional hurdles in the way of users coming to grips with the OS, whether for the first time or after becoming familiar with Android on previous devices. The new notification tray reveals no clear way to get to Settings, for instance, and it’s not at all natural to expect that clicking on the new User Account icon would eventually get you there. Nor is it natural to expect that double-tapping on the same icon will bring you to your actual user account options. Likewise, the new simple geometric buttons aren’t immediately illustrative of their functions, with the exception of the triangle, which does in fact resemble a back arrow. While some of Google’s core apps, like Gmail and Calendar, have been overhauled to take full advantage of everything Android Lollipop has to offer on a tablet, there are others that have been sadly left out, including Hangouts. Hangouts is an especially glaring oversight because of how key messaging is to the overall communication experience on mobile devices, and because the app seems ripe for a design that takes advantage of more screen real estate. Finally, bugs are still fairly plentiful in this release of Android, including some that would cause most apps to become unresponsive pending a hardware restart. Any major update of an OS is going to have some kinks, of course, and 5.0’s problems were hardly deal-breaking over the course of my testing experience. Android Lollipop represents a complete change in tone for Google’s mobile software: from heavy-handed, almost PC-like user interfaces to a light and airy feel that actually seems at time to be mood improving. It’s true that Google has been hinting at many of the things it’s doing in Android 5.0 for a while now with iterations on its individual apps, but seeing everything come together at the system level really produces a cumulative effect that feels dramatically different. The playful papercraft look that pervades the OS manages whimsy without feeling immature or cartoonish. But the key to the long-term appeal of Android 5.0, especially in a tablet environment, will be whether Google can convince third-party developers to build a great software experience for Android slates that takes advantage of everything Lollipop has to offer. |
Nexus 9 Review: Google’s First Lollipop Tablet Gets The Recipe Mostly Right | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | Nexus tablet, and it’s made by HTC. The Taiwanese device maker has spent some time away from building tablets, so this return is significant not just because it’s a Nexus, one of Google’s stable of devices blessed with stock Android (and the first to ship with ), but also because it’s the first slate in years from the maker of what is very likely the best-designed Android smartphone around in the HTC One M8. HTC does an admirable job of playing a tune familiar to Nexus fans with this tablet and offers one of the best-performing Android devices currently available. But fans of the M8’s unique design might feel a little deflated by the Nexus 9’s build quality. Pros Cons The Nexus 9’s design will be familiar to any fans of recent Nexus devices, mainly because it’s almost exactly an inflated version of an existing device – the LG-made Nexus 5. HTC’s tablet has the same rubberized matte back and the same bezel that’s angled slightly around the edge of the entire device. That edge is composed of brushed metal, however, in a color that matches the back panel. This is a slight premium edge it has on the design of the Nexus 5. Otherwise, though, it’s as if the Nexus 5 ingested one of Mario’s Magic Mushrooms, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The Nexus 5 remains one of the most lastingly successful designs of a smartphone to date, even if it isn’t the most premium build available in a mobile device. The back is grippy, yet also manages to resist picking up too much dust and grit, and the sloped edges make it easier to grip one-handed. The materials used make it both light and durable, and while I’d call it mostly unremarkable in terms of visual appeal, its humble looks are also part of its charm. [gallery ids="1078122,1078121,1078120,1078119,1078118,1078117,1078116,1078115,1078113"] The Nexus 9 has a similar kind of appeal. As you might expect from hardware with the Nexus ‘stock’ role, the Nexus 9 is neither the flashiest device in the world, nor the slimmest nor the lightest, but it’s perfectly adequate in all those categories. It’s not, for instance, an iPad Air 2 when it comes to its thickness, which in fact doesn’t even beat the original iPad Air, but it’s slim enough to satisfy most. Its weight actually manages to beat both the iPad Air and its successor by a few grams, however, likely due to the use of plastic instead of metal for the bulk of the back chassis construction. Metal made the HTC One M8 a stand-out in the Android device design category, but the plastic here helps make the back of the Nexus 9 more grippy. The ability to grip the larger slate with a good deal of confidence is very useful given its dimensions, but there is a noticeable gap between the outside of the back cover and whatever’s underneath (likely a battery unit), which can result in a tactile, subtle clicky feeling when you’re shifting your grip. It’s not an issue that’s serious enough to detract from my enjoyment in using the tablet, but it is disappointing in a device from a company that built the beautifully engineered One M8. The Nexus 9 offers a lot of features that set it apart from other Android tablets, including the front-facing HTC speakers, which work great for watching movies and listening to music. Headphones will still serve you better, but if you’re snuggling up with a significant other to watch and the tablet is your only means of viewing and listening, you won’t be disappointed. Since it’s running stock Android, the Nexus 9 also gets a lot of cool features that other OEMs might not offer on their own devices. For instance, you can allow the tablet to be always listening for an “Ok Google” command to wake the device and launch a search, and specify whether it should do this on all screens at all times, even when not connected to power and when the screen is locked. Google has tweaked this feature slightly, too, adding a voice-training element so that it should respond only to you, instead of to anyone who happens to say it (including, for instance, myself on a podcast you might be listening to). The Nexus 9 also offers double-tap to wake, which means you can touch the screen anywhere twice in rapid succession to activate the screen. This is actually one of the features of the HTC One M8 that I miss most when using other devices, and it’s great to see it offered as part of this hardware. That’s a feature specific to this tablet, too, which isn’t coming to the Nexus 7 or 5 via software update. It’s a small thing, but when you’re using a device on and off throughout the day, it adds up to a massive convenience benefit. Other software features that really shine on the Nexus 9 are Lollipop’s new multitasking interface, which uses a ‘cards’ style flip-through mechanism complete with full previews of your last-known app state. Flipping to recent apps will put you back right where you left off with nary a stutter, but apps that have been in the background for longer will resume from a battery-saving suspended state, and depending on what kind of app you’re using, that could be more or less inconvenient. In a game, for instance, you could get booted to a menu, but in most software it’ll just take a couple of seconds to get you back to where you were. The other Lollipop feature that’s perfect for this device is the account switching and guest account feature. From the lock screen you can access other accounts registered on the device or just jump in as a guest. This will silo and protect your data, but ensure that households with shared tablets (which is most tablet-using homes, statistically) will be able to all partake without worrying about stepping on anyone’s toes. It makes the Nexus 9 great for passing around to guests without fear of over-reveals. HTC hasn’t skimped on specs with the Nexus 9, and this one can go toe-to-toe with the heaviest hitters in the industry. The Nvidia CPU and GPU combo are ideal on a device that has a big, beautiful screen with 288ppi pixel density, letting you play games and watch HD video content without performance lag or stutters. 3D games like Dead Trigger 2 and Real Racing 3 look great on the Nexus 9, and you get the sense that its computing prowess can handle even more, especially given how well it deals with the many subtle but sophisticated animations and visual flourishes dished out by Google as part of its Material Design overhaul in Android 5.0. Zipping between apps using the new multi-tasking features also works well, though the “Ok Google” command was less consistent in terms of how often I had to repeat myself. This is likely a trade-off resulting from the new voice-training feature to prevent it from responding to any phrasing resembling the request of the search engine. Sound performance from the speakers, as mentioned, performed well, and you can actually get really good volume out of the front-facing speakers with minimal distortion at top levels. In terms of battery life, this is one of the better Android tablets I’ve used, and in mixed use it gets between eight and nine hours of active engagement. Standby is very impressive here, too, as HTC has managed to almost attain the kind of screen-off energy savings that still make the iPad stand out above the rest of the tablet field when it comes to power management. The Nexus 9 is rated at a full 30 days of standby, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find that it can manage that if left untouched. When it launched its new iPad Air 2, Apple touted the improvements to the camera; HTC’s Nexus 9 isn’t a stellar performer in that regard. The 8-megapixel rear shooter hunts for focus in anything but the best lighting conditions and resulting photos are also grainy in low-light, and the flash doesn’t try to do anything more sophisticated than wash out a subject completely. Shutter lag is so significant you’ll probably have missed what you were trying to shoot by the time the tablet takes the picture anyway, however, so the other complaints aren’t even going to matter much in the end. In short, do not buy the Nexus 9 if you’re interested primarily in tablet-based photography. The Nexus 9 may not have quite the pixel density of either the Nexus 7 or the Nexus 10, but the screen is still plenty dense enough that you won’t be able to discern individual pixels. Text is crisp, and colors are cool and slightly muted, which is in keeping with other Nexus devices in recent years and which is, to my eye, much preferable to the warm and over-saturated displays favored by some OEMs like Motorola. Back-lighting is mostly even, although my unit exhibited an ever-so-slight halo effect to the top of the screen, making for about 2 mm of overly bright display area. It’s unfortunate, and one of those things that you’ll notice from time to time once you see it, but it’s not a deal breaker. The screen still performs well both for watching HD video content and for reading text on either light or dark backgrounds. The Nexus 9 also marks a move to the 4:3 aspect ratio used by Apple in the iPad as opposed to the 16:9 aspect ratio of the Nexus 7 and the 16:10 ratio of the Nexus 10. That makes it less ideal for watching TV shows and movies, but arguably better for almost anything else, including working on documents in portrait or landscape orientation and browsing the web. I prefer the 4:3 setup to the Nexus 7’s arrangement, as it feels less constrained side-to-side when you’re working with basically any applications. Google’s Nexus tablet line has always offered a good balance of performance and value for those interested in an Android slate. The HTC-made Nexus 9 is among the best Android tablets in terms of pure performance. In that regard it lives up to this tradition, and also shows that despite taking a few years off, HTC can still go toe-to-toe with other Android OEMs in the tablet game. But at $399 the Nexus 9 has to square off against the iPad Air, which Apple still sells at the new price of $399. Lollipop gives the Nexus 9 some built-in software features that the iPad can’t match, including multiple user account switching, but ultimately Apple’s iOS tablets still blow away Android slates when it comes to third-party software choice and quality. If you’re still looking primarily for a tablet outside Apple’s ecosystem, however, the Nexus 9 has no real peer; its unadorned Lollipop OS trumps anything from Samsung, and its closest competitor is probably the Nvidia Shield Tablet, which, while definitely better for an audience concerned specifically with gaming (and crossover PC gaming in particular), can’t quite match the Nexus 9 in terms of features and specs that appeal to a broader consumer tablet audience. |
Viddy, Once Touted As ‘The Instagram For Video’, Will Shut Down On December 15 | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Remember Viddy? The one-time red hot mobile video app is closing down. That’s according to Fullscreen, the company that bought it for — a snip of its — earlier this year. — first spotted by — explains that the Viddy app was removed from the App Store and Google Play on November 4. Anyone who already installed either app has until December 15 to use it, after which the service will officially shut down. Those wishing to keep their videos can do so using the exporter tool on before the final shutoff date. The announcement of Viddy’s winding down comes one year to the day that and launched slow motion video-sharing app Epic and ephemeral group messaging app Clique. These other two services will also close down so that Fullscreen can “focus singularly on building the best consumer experience for the Fullscreen audience.” What might that be? Well, the blog post promises that Fullscreen will announce a new service in 2015, details of which it is not sharing at this point. At the height of its popularity, Viddy claimed and was per day. The company in May 2012, when it was largely heralded as ‘The Instagram For Video’ — a string of celebrities, even Mark Zuckerberg, were using it. But, easy come, easy go, as they say. The service lost large amounts of traffic following a change to Facebook’s highly-influential algorithm. The knock-on effect of that saw Viddy and , returning $18 million of its big funding round to investors. The in early 2013, which was followed by , . an acquisition offer from Twitter, which promptly went away and bought Vine. Socialcam, another early mobile video mover, did get an exit, in the summer of 2012. Today’s news will be of little surprise to anyone who has followed the mobile video space. But, even still, I’ll pour a small one out for the memories — thanks and goodbye, Viddy. |
Google’s New Nexus Player Talks A Big Game But Isn’t A Winner Yet | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | streamers. I’ve tried ’em all, from Boxee to Apple TV to the Fire TV to my current set-top box of choice, the Roku. Now I can add one more to that mix, the new . So how does this latest addition to the set top box world match up against the competition? Not so well. The has a few really good things going for it. One is the interface, which is quick and beautiful and relatively simple, though some of that is due to the fact that there is simply less content on the Nexus Player than other set-top boxes. Most notably HBO Go and Amazon Instant are missing from the apps list, as is Showtime. However, you start with a clean home screen that, not surprisingly, features some fun YouTube content, followed by suggested stuff from Hulu and other content partners. Underneath, you have a list of apps, and then a list of games. It’s straightforward, and transitions from one app to another are reminiscent of Android KitKat, with bubbles opening and closing apps. And when it comes to simply watching content on Hulu or Netflix, which arguably is the dominant use case for most people who will buy this, the Nexus Player can get the job done. As it should. Browsing content is quick, and loading up something to watch is also relatively quick compared to Roku or the Apple TV, though doesn’t beat the Fire TV’s Instant Play content. [gallery ids="1078205,1078206,1078207,1078208,1078209,1078210,1078211"] The Nexus Player also comes with a semi-useful voice search that works really well. I was only misunderstood once since I started using the Nexus Player last week, and it can handle more complex searches like “Movies with Anne Hathaway” or “shows that won an Emmy in 2010.” Unfortunately, like the Fire TV, the Nexus Player only gives back Google Play as a watch option for a search, even if that content is available on Hulu or Netflix. Search results also include cast info, what other “people also searched for” and YouTube videos that relate to your search. Soon enough, apps will be able to use Google’s Open API to be included in search results, as well as build in functionality to allow in-app search of that particular content library. A couple apps, including DailyMotion and DramaFever, are already hooked into the system, but there is no current timeline on the big players like Netflix and Hulu. I’m also a fan of the Bluetooth Smart remote. It’s not particularly heavy and doesn’t use premium materials in any way, and it even felt a little chintzy when I was putting in the batteries. However, it works without IR, which is more than I can say for the quickly-falling-behind Apple TV. The voice search is great and the remote makes sense in terms of design. Other than that, I can’t say the Nexus Player experience was all that great. After a quick and painless startup process, the player froze two or three times while trying to load the Netflix app before finally working. It has since frozen a few different times, while casting from another device, switching from one app to another, and while clicking around inside voice search results. Casting, which lets you send content from select apps on your smartphone or computer to the TV, doesn’t make up for a lack of content partners in the way that it should. Without any HBO baked into the player, reliable casting is crucial for true Game of Thrones fans. Casting worked off and on from a computer, but I had quite a bit of trouble using my iOS devices to cast to the Player, both from Netflix and HBO Go. To be fair, the experience is a bit better from an Android smartphone than an iOS device, but that’s not a great excuse for the difficult experience I’ve had so far. It also doesn’t have a dedicated audio output for folks with a more complicated home theater system. Like the Fire TV, the Nexus Player comes with the ability to play games from the Google Play store using the remote, or using a $39 game controller that is sold separately and also built by Asus. Like the remote, it feels slightly cheap and poorly built, but does a fine job for the experience that Nexus Player gaming provides. The Nexus Player comes pre-loaded with Badlands, and you can, of course, buy loads of different games from the Google Play Store, which can be addictive with both the game controller or the remote. Still, I’m not entirely convinced that this is the best use of $100 if you’re looking for a set-top box. I’d say you should invest your money in a Roku player, which has every app you could want on it, though doesn’t have the same gaming offerings as the Nexus Player or Fire TV. More apps, like HBO, Showtime or Amazon, would make a big difference and open up so many options for consumers at that price point. The Nexus Player is available for . |
Puzzle Piece Updates Its Line Of Inexpensive Tablets And Apps For Autistic Kids | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | TechCrunch first profiled , a startup that makes affordable tablets and apps geared toward children with autism, . Though educational apps are helpful for teaching autistic kids social skills and helping them with their schoolwork, many families a tablet. Puzzle Piece wants to make tech accessible to all families, with a 9-inch Android tablet that costs $29 and a $19-per-month subscription plan that gives children access to a library over 80 apps. Founder Steve Espinosa, formerly lead program manager of Google SMB revenue, left the company in July to focus on Puzzle Piece full time. Since then, Puzzle Piece has completely revamped its tablets. They are now 9-inches as opposed to the previous 7-inches and run over two times more quickly. The new tablets also have better resolution (not HD, but close, Espinosa says), a faster dual core processor, twice as much RAM, and are pre-installed with Puzzle Piece’s complete library of apps so they are ready to use as soon as kids unbox them. In addition, Puzzle Piece acquired , an app that turns tablets into communication devices for children who have problems interacting verbally with other people. “People were buying it in iTunes for $200. We acquired the app because 25 percent of children with autism are non verbal and have a hard time communicating with their families,” says Espinosa. “After acquiring the app we completely revamped the technology and relaunched the app and included it in the Puzzle Piece subscription for no additional cost.” Puzzle Piece has also changed its subscription plan to a Netflix-like model. Customers now get access to all of Puzzle Piece’s over 80 apps for autistic kids from the beginning of their membership, with at least 10 new added per month. Previously, subscribers received 10 apps per month for each month that they were an active member. Most apps features first person stories that help children with autism learn to deal with social behavior issues. Once a story is completed, games are unlocked as a reward. Puzzle Piece’s apps never have any up sells or ads, says Espinosa. In terms of growth, Espinosa says that Puzzle Piece will ship its 10,000th tablet this holiday season and that even though customers can cancel their app subscription at any time, the startup has enjoyed a 95 percent monthly retention rate. The startup has raised $300,000, but is cash flow positive. In the near future, Puzzle Piece plans to expand to its app library and team up with other autism advocates, including actress Holly Robinson Peete’s , which offers consultations and other resources to families of autistic children. “Currently 20 percent of our customer base pays directly with medical disability benefits provided by the government for their children,” says Espinosa. “This speaks volumes to the work we have put in to make this technology affordable to all families. We plan on tackling other learning disabilities in the near future, with ADHD being next in line.” |
Revo Tech Wants To Be A Leader In Myanmar’s Growing Startup Ecosystem | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | After years of dealing with slow and expensive broadband connections, many Myanmar Internet users finally got access to affordable 3G thanks to recent service rollouts by telecoms Telenor and Ooredoo. A Yangon-based mobile app company called hopes to take advantage of the country’s speedier Internet by becoming a “first mover” in its startup ecosystem. Founder Myo Myint Kyaw studied computer science at Middlesex University in London and worked in the city for three years before returning to Myanmar in 2012 to found Revo Tech. The company started out as a creative agency in 2012, but as support for startups in Myanmar increased, thanks to incubators like Ideabox and Founder Institute), the company began working on its own apps, including , which helps teach children the Burmese alphabet. Revo Tech’s success hinges in large part on the development of fast and affordable mobile Internet access in Myanmar. Norway-based Telenor , claiming that it had released one million SIM cards in just one day. Previously, the telecom launched in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, and Nay Pyi Taw,. Its goal is to cover 90 percent of Myanmar within five years. Telenor’s service rollout . Before Telenor and Ooredoo’s launches, tech entrepreneurs had to from Myanmar Teleport, Information Technology Central Services, and state-owned MPT . In comparison, Telenor’s SIM cards are priced at $1.50, offer two affordable pay-as-you-go rates, and can be topped up at retail stores. Thanks to the launches, “Myanmar’s 60 million population is going to get access to the Internet very easily, so we wanted to be the first mover in order to become the market leader,” says Kyaw. As part of its plan to seize a large portion of Myanmar’s Internet users, Revo Tech is creating a wide array of products. Back in August, it launched Phew, which helps teach students the Burmese alphabet. The makes money with a freemium model, charging users $1.99 to unlock the full version for iOS. But the is free because of the lack of mobile payment systems available in Myanmar and the fact that Google Wallet is not currently available for the Google Play store there. It took three months to get 3,000 downloads for the iPad version of Phew, says Kyaw, but more than 500 users downloaded the Android version in the first few days after its launch on Oct. 27. Kyaw says that Revo Tech launched Phew’s iOS app first because although 80 percent to 90 percent of Myanmar’s smartphone users have an Android device, tablet owners still prefer iPads. In order to gain further traction for Phew, Revo Tech will work with local schools to get the app into classrooms. Now Revo Tech is focused on creating a music app that Kyaw describes as a combination of Shazam and Spotify for Myanmar music, for which the startup is currently seeking angel funding. “There is no Myanmar sound identification system, so we are working on a Shazam-like application for Myanmar sounds,” says Kyaw. “If you take a taxi and listen to a Myanmar song and want to know what it is, Shazam can’t help, so we created this app to solve our own problem.” |
Jawbone Goes After The Entry-Level With UP Move, A $50 Fitness Tracker With A 6 Month Battery Life | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Jawbone’s might be the company’s priciest fitness tracker yet — but that doesn’t mean it’s not interested in the entry-level. Quite the contrary, in fact. Jawbone has just announced a new fitness tracker this evening — and this one comes in at just $50. Why? Because there’s a massive group of people out there who’ve never purchased a fitness tracker before, for whatever reason — and if that reason is price, Jawbone co-founder Hosain Rohman tells me he wants to make it “a no brainer”. Unlike the UP3 and the many UP bands that came before it, Jawbone’s new UP Move isn’t something you wrap around your wrist. At least, not on its own. The UP Move is… more like a pod. A small (about a square inch or so), coin-cell powered pod, crammed with sensors and a Bluetooth radio. You slip this pod into your accessory of choice — be it the clip-style attachment that comes in the box, or a $15 wrist strap that Jawbone will sell separately. Pressing the face of the Up move once shows your step progress for the day; pressing it a second time shows the time, albeit in a somewhat easy-to-miss series of LED flashes. It reminds me a bit of the Misfit Shine in that regard (Actually, it reminds me of the Shine in lots of ways — but at $50 vs $100, the Move doesn’t look as polished) Like the UP bands that came before it, the UP Move will count your steps and track your sleep. Unlike those bands, though, there’s no vibrating motor — which means no using it as a silent alarm, and it can’t buzz you when you’ve been sitting idle for an unhealthy amount of time. Once unpacked and powered up, Jawbone says the UP Move should last roughly 6 months on a single (user-replaceable) coin-cell battery. The Up Move will ship in five colors (Black, Blue, “Grape”, “Ruby”, and “Slate”) later this month, though the company wouldn’t get more specific about dates than that. Pre-orders begin on November 5th. |
Small Businesses Have A Free Credit Management Service With Creditera | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | The credit and information provider for small and medium-sized businesses, , has launched a new free membership service today at Money20/20 in Las Vegas. The company’s new service provides access to personal and business credit information through a comprehensive integration of available financial information, the company said. In addition, Creditera announced its Series A financing, a $6.5 million round led by the Silicon Valley investor . Access to credit and proper credit scoring is a problem that’s bedeviled small and medium-sized businesses since the financial crisis, when most banks began shedding their small business lending operations. Banks eschewing the small business market opened the door for other lenders to come in and drove a venture investment boom in companies like Lending Club, OnDeck and Prosper. Business owners receive advice on how to lay the foundation for business credit by registering with credit bureaus and establishing trade accounts; ensure the accuracy of their business and personal credit reports, and identify areas of credit that may require attention. In addition to its consulting and alerting services, Creditera features a commercial marketplace that matches small business owners with products and services based on their scores. The marektplace features commercial loan options, business credit cards, and more products for qualified business owners. “Healthy credit is crucial for a small business and means getting faster funding, improved cash flow and more opportunities for a business to thrive,” said Levi King, co-founder and CEO of Creditera, in a statement. “I’ve learned first-hand as a serial entrepreneur how credit can negatively impact growth and have put all that experience into building Creditera. The new free membership from Creditera will help small businesses proactively take control of their credit future, so they can create the business of their dreams and help fuel the U.S. economy.” Financing for the Series A round, which closed earlier in the year, was led by KPCB, but included participation from previous Creditera investor, Peak Ventures and other undisclosed backers. The company raised its seed round from Kickstart Seed Fund. |
In Europe, Spotify Royalties Overtake iTunes Earnings By 13% | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | may be from the removal of Taylor Swift’s music catalogue from its platform, and Taylor Swift may not care, since she is riding a sales blockbuster in the form of her new album 1989, but it turns out that in the bigger picture, Spotify’s streaming service continues to gain an edge over downloads, specifically via iTunes. , a company that helps collect music royalties on behalf of thousands of artists — including “half of this week’s Billboard Top 10” and musicians like Maroon 5, Lenny Kravitz, Dave Grohl, Max Martin, Bob Dylan, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis — says that in the last quarter in Europe, revenues from Spotify streams were 13% higher on average than revenues from Apple’s iTunes for its customers. The numbers support findings reported in the last month noting that iTunes music sales are down about 13% this year. iTunes is still a massive business — up $300 million to $4.6 billion in sales in the last quarter — but that doesn’t point to how well music is doing within that. (We pointed out earlier this year in our profile of Kobalt when it , the company collects earnings from Spotify streams in Europe only, but apparently this has evolved to cover global revenues but the streaming traffic on Spotify is only overtaking iTunes in Euorpe at the moment, hence focusing on revenues from this region.) Kobalt also notes that streaming services as of Q2 2014 account for 10% of all publishing income for its clients in Europe. The tip of the balance to streaming services is a relatively recent phenomenon, Kobalt notes. In Q3 2013, iTunes’ earnings were 32% higher than that of Spotify in Europe. In the last two years, streaming revenues tripled. Kobalt says it counts publishing income as returns from music plays on subscription services, YouTube, Internet radio and royalties from live performances of compositions, radio performance and those from CDs and concert DVDs. The decline in iTunes sales points to a bigger shift away from downloads in favor of streaming, and it is one more illustration of why Apple may have been interested in buying Beats Music and is . It hopes to provides an attractive streaming service to keep users tied into its device and wider mobile ecosystem. But although streaming revenues appear to be growing, there is also money being left on the table. “Spotify overtaking iTunes in Europe is an important new milestone in streaming,” Kobalt CEO Willart Ahdritz says. “The music industry’s infrastructure is failing them, unable to efficiently account for the enormous volumes of data from digital transactions.” That, of course, is slowly but surely getting snapped up, as today’s deal between demonstrates. |
Google And LG Strike 10-Year Global Patent Agreement | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Fresh from in the last quarter of business, that it has struck a 10-year global patent agreement with Google. The company says that the arrangement enables cross-licensing of all existing patents between the duo, as well as new additions filed over the next decade. “LG values its relationship with Google, and this agreement underscores both companies’ commitment to developing new products and technologies that enhance consumers’ lives,” said J.H. Lee, executive vice president and head of LG’s Intellectual Property Center, in a statement. Lee’s counterpart Allen Lo — deputy general counsel for patents at Google — added: “We’re pleased to enter into this agreement with a leading global technology company like LG. By working together on cross-licenses like this, companies can focus on bringing great products and services to consumers around the world.” LG is an important partner to Google. It manufacturers the company’s Nexus devices, and the rise of its own smartphones — shipments of which jumped 39% year-on-year to reach 16.8 million units in Q3 2014 — only cements its position as a key influencer in the Android ecosystem. Indeed, has been cited by many as one of the best Android phones available on the market today. It makes sense for Google to keep on good terms with key Android partners. The company , the world’s largest smartphone company and the single biggest Android manufacturer, in January of this year. |
Dropbox’s Drew Houston Responds To Snowden’s Privacy Criticism: It’s A Trade-Off | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden sparked controversy when he advised consumers ( ) to “ ” if they want to protect their privacy. Today, Drew Houston, CEO of the cloud storage startup, responded to the accusations. People can do more to encrypt their data, he admitted, but It’s “a trade-off between usability/convenience and security,” he said. “We offer people choice.” The comments, made by Houston onstage today at the Dublin Web Summit, come as a director at the UK’s GCHQ on terrorism, social media and government access to data. Houston didn’t directly address the question of whether government organizations are justified tapping data from social networks and other big tech companies, or the ethics of whether privacy is an unalienable right, and instead focused on the user experience. “If you offer zero knowledge encryption we understand the motivation for that, but there are downsides to it,” he said, citing services like search, access to third-party apps, seamless access to data from mobile devices and other features that would be impeded if people put more encryption into Dropbox. People can do that, though, if they choose: “Third-party tools are offered to do that, but of course that [affects making] all my stuff searchable and indexed and rendered well in previews. People have different tradeoffs.” He also commented indirectly on what kind of an effect all of this has had on Dropbox’s image. “It’s never fun when people throw rocks,” he says. “But how many [negative] articles were there about Facebook and Zuck? There are a lot of happy things but we go from the company who can do no wrong to the one who can do no right…. You are never quite as good as people say you are but also never quite as bad.” The stage interview started with Houston recounting how he and co-founder Arash Ferdowsi visited a pre-iCloud Apple in 2009 and rejected an acquisition offer from Steve Jobs (supposedly a ). And it ended with the Dropbox CEO’s thoughts about how his company has chosen to take a different route to evolve its business: partnerships. Today Dropbox what Houston described as a “deep integration” with Microsoft Office, that will let users of the two services work more seamlessly across them. It’s a way for the two to bulk up against the likes of Google — and timely, too, considering that Google was having its . “There are 300 million people using Dropbox, and the biggest thing they do is work in Office documents,” Houston said of the two mutually taking advantage of each other’s positions. He described the deal as “unusual for us,” but perhaps even more so for Microsoft, considering it already has its own cloud platform, albeit less successful than Dropbox’s these days. “I can’t think of any other integrations that Microsoft has done like this.” |
Jawbone’s UP3 Crams More Sensors Into A $180 One-Size-Fits-All Band | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Almost exactly one year after , Jawbone is back with the successor: the UP3. So what’s new this time around? Most immediately obvious is the design. Gone is the signature, mostly-rigid design of all UP bands prior — instead, the UP3 is more like a watch without a watch face. Gone is the annoying little plastic cap that covers the charging plug, so many of which have been left behind in hotel rooms — instead, you charge the device by matching a set of contact pins up against a bespoke USB cable (in other words, it’s still not microUSB or any other standard cable you have a million of.) Most importantly, gone is the need to pick a “size” for your UP band. No more measuring your wrist to figure out if you’re a small, medium, or large — since it’s an adjustable watch style clasp now, it’s one size fits all. Alas, the new tech comes at a bit of a price hike. Whereas the UP24 launched at $150 and eventually dropped down to $130, the UP3 will start at $180. As for it’ll ship… Jawbone will only say “later this year”. It’ll come in one color (black) at first, with more options in 2015. But what about the UP24 that came before it? Is that device done for? Not yet, but it’s getting there. Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman tells me that the UP24 will continue selling through the holiday season, after which point it’ll be phased out. |
StubHub President Chris Tsakalakis Leaves Months After Company Reorg | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Longtime StubHub president has stepped down from his position and left the company, StubHub has confirmed to TechCrunch today. His resignation, which comes just months after StubHub over the summer, is effective immediately and the company is undergoing a search for a replacement. Tsakalakis had run the StubHub business since 2007, when he took over as president after the ticket resale company was . Prior to that, he had served as manager of eBay’s Advanced Solutions Group, which oversaw eBay Stores and subsidiary ProStores. During his tenure StubHub grew into the largest ticket resale platform in the world, but recently the company has faced headwinds due to increasing competition in the industry. Some of that pressure has come from Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, which released its own ticket resale marketplace for customers. But it’s also seeing increasing competition from a number of smaller startups that have recently entered into the ticketing space, including companies like Applauze, Yplan, and Gametime. In June StubHub reduced headcount in its field operations after failing to meet parent company eBay’s expectations. During that reorganization, the company laid off 100 employees out of a total of about 700, according to sources. Apparently StubHub’s performance continued to lag behind expectations since then. Notably, Tsakalakis’ departure comes just a week after close of the Major League Baseball playoffs and World Series, which should be a high-water mark for the company. Following Tsakalakis’ resignation, StubHub North America lead Noah Goldberg and CFO Ajay Gopal will run the business as the company seeks a new president. That search is underway, but it’s unclear if a candidate will emerge from inside or outside the company. Stubhub issued the following statement about Tsakalakis’ departure: Chris Tsakalakis has decided to leave StubHub, and has stepped down as president effective immediately. StubHub’s North America lead, Noah Goldberg, and CFO, Ajay Gopal, will serve as the interim co-leads for the business. We will begin a search immediately to identify the right person to lead StubHub in the future. Chris has made an enormous impact at eBay and StubHub during his 11+ years here. During his tenure, StubHub has grown into the largest ticket marketplace in the world. He has been an avid champion for customers and has made a focus on fans central to the StubHub DNA. We are grateful for his many contributions over the years, and look forward to following his ongoing success. |
null | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 11 | 3 | null |
Grand Theft Auto V Gets A Huge Update For Xbox One, PS4, And PC | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Today Rockstar Games unveiled some new footage of Grand Theft Auto from the version set for release on the PS4 and Xbox One on November 18 and the PC on January 27. The biggest reveal: There’s now going to be a mode where you play as if it’s a giant open-world first-person shooter. This mode will be customizable, so you can play from a first-person perspective while walking around on foot and while driving but not while hiding behind cover during a gunfight. This new perspective will give you a better view of the improved graphics throughout the game, including denser pedestrian population and traffic, a farther draw distance, and more complex weather effects. PC gamers with high-end rigs get the best visuals, as the PC port supports cranking the resolution up from the console’s max of 1080p all the way up to 4K. It also changes how you’ll experience the story, as events that take place in a mission happen around you rather than from the zoomed out view you got in the original (see: the scene where Trevor has to shake an unwanted passenger off of his plane in the footage below). Along with better graphics, Rockstar has thrown a bunch of little improvements into the world of Grand Theft Auto V. The developer has stated that there will be 20 new species of wildlife, 150 new songs, more random chatter from pedestrians and 32 new vehicles. Even though it’s only been a bit more than a year since the original’s record-setting release, Rockstar’s probably going to have quite a bit of success with this year’s revamp. In its most recent quarter, Grand Theft Auto V publisher Take-Two Interactive touted its continuing sales as a “key driver,” in part thanks to in-game purchases made in the multiplayer Grand Theft Auto Online, and this is the first opportunity PC gamers are getting to play and modify the game. https://twitter.com/kylebrussell/status/527559344993206272/photo/1 You can watch the footage below. Be sure to turn up the resolution so you can see the footage with more detail and at a smoother 60 frames per second: |
TC Droidcast Episode 25: The Sweet Song Of Android Lollipop Lures Us Back | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | The Droidcast is back, after a lengthy hiatus. It was summoned to life by the fact that there’s a lot to discuss this week, thanks to the release of the Nexus 9 and Android Lollipop, as well as the Nexus Player. We’ve got TC alum and current Engadget Associate Editor Chris Velazco back on board to help out, as both he and myself from HTC. Though it has been many months, we fight as usual like long-quarrelling lovers, and get into a philosophical debate about the value of benchmarks and other technical tests in consumer reviews. We see eye-to-eye on our mutual love of Lollipop and Google’s Material Design, however, which really makes Android much more enjoyable according to us both.
We’ll be returning to a regular weekly posting schedule and we’ll be back on iTunes shortly (update: ). For now, stream above or grab it as a download below for playback on your device of choice. Download it directly here: |
New Technology And Big Data Help You Breathe Fresh Air | Ben Heubl | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | was conceived because CEO Ran Korber wanted to buy a house. He knew that air pollution caused health problems and he knew that in his native Israel — as with most developed countries — pollution is measured in real time, often at a street-by-street level. Yet, while local school and tax information was available in exhaustive detail for property buyers, there was no simple way to understand the air quality of a neighborhood. Last March, the announced staggering new numbers indicating that, in 2012, around 7 million people worldwide died as a result of air pollution exposure — twice as high as previous WHO estimates and making it the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Big data is a big story for 2014-2015. But the value of big data businesses rests in many different components. Sometimes it’s collecting richer data than was previously available, or combining it. Sometimes it’s developing vizualisations that give end users new insight. Breezometer co-founder and CMO Ziv Lautman says that the company’s initial contribution is doing the heavy lifting of obtaining and deciphering air quality data. “The data is scattered,” he says. “It comes from many different sources and usually it’s just like a spreadsheet. Different countries have different standards for pollution measurement; in fact sometimes consumers only get told that pollution is “moderate.” That’s not only uninformative, it may mean something different somewhere else.” The Breezometer team members are, first and foremost, environmental engineers and have used their professional training to make raw air quality data useful. An app exists for Israel, and a U.S. version is now being launched at the ; but the company intends to apply its data either in further in-house app developments or by selling the data to third parties. “We can tell you which park is healthier to play with your kids in, and we could also help your favorite running app decide which route through town will give you the healthiest exercise,” says Lautman. And then of course there is the original real estate proposition. High on Breezometer’s list is a weather app that includes air quality along with the usual weather information. The rapidly developing mobile health and wearables sector is also a rich opportunity. “Wearables help us to summarise our day — how much you have slept, or walked,” says Lautman. “Breathing and air quality should be a part of the ‘Quantified Self’ revolution; and just as wearables applications can nudge people to exercise more or watch their diets, we have granular enough data to give users helpful personalized recommendations — right down to closing the windows or putting the air conditioning on.” Dr. Maria Neira, Director of WHO’s Department for Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health says that the risks from air pollution are now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes — which the says are responsible for one in three U.S. deaths. For Lautman, scaling in the U.S. might be a smart move — provided the lived environment can become a priority. Breezometer is not the only team to spot an opportunity. Other startups are making it their mission to solve air-quality problems. Tel Aviv startup , expected to launch with a crowdfunding campaign in December, is said to be the first wearable device to effectively purify air without masking your face. Co-founder Sarah Tulin says that it defends the user against all sorts of pollutants: dust, smoke, pollen and even toxic gases, viruses and bacteria. “Oxie will launch with a neck-worn device, which will be small enough to fit under your collar, letting the user breath purified air without sacrificing style or comfort,” she says. Similar to Breezometer, Oxie also wants to solve the wider public health problem by applying sensors on the device to track air quality first-hand for the individual user, again delivering a personal air-quality update via an interactive mobile application. Nine months in, Breezometer is out of “garage mode” and has secured investment from and . It remains a B2B business for now; the launch app is effectively a demo for the data sales business with an API launching shortly to allow third-party applications, devices and wearables to use the data. “We’re B2B2C for now”, says Lautman, “but the application of our data to people’s lives may mean we end up connecting directly with customers.” Why the uncertainty? The sector is much larger than it looks. At a time when health records are being digitized (with greater and lesser degrees of effectiveness in different countries), it’s interesting how little focus there has been on adding validated external data to the citizen health record or personal applications. We already know that big data has lots to offer public health decision-makers, but this could be carried through to individuals; and Lautman says that air quality is just the start. “Records are kept for all sorts of environmental factors, many of which only get interest from environmental engineers like us,” he says. People experience different degrees of noise, light and additives (anything from harmful pollutants to health-enhancing fluoridation in water), for example. All of these can change our health profiles, and would be a welcome addition to personal health advice services or formal medical records. “We want to be environmental health source. People never talk about environmental knowledge as being a part of the healthcare information space, and yet it could be really useful,” says Lautman. |
Criteo Beats Estimates With €194M In Revenue | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Ad tech company posted today, with revenue of €194.4 million (excluding traffic acquisition costs it was €77.6 million) and earnings per share of €0.18. That comes in well ahead of of €72.7 million in revenue (excluding traffic costs) and €0.08 EPS. It also shows revenue growth of 70.9 percent year-over-year, or 65.8 ex-TAC. Criteo also reported net income of €11.5 million, up from €3.0 million a year ago. The company has actually beaten estimates in the past — some of that may have been . This time, however, the company’s numbers may have been good enough to overcome that general skepticism. As of 4:59pm Eastern, Criteo’s stock is up 16 percent in after hours trading. Arguing that there are “a lot of myths in the market,” co-founder and CEO JB Rudelle acknowledged that the growth of many ad tech companies has slowed. What sets Criteo apart, he told me, is the fact that “for us, the cornerstone is not just our financial performance. We are focused on the performance marketing world” — namely, ads that are priced based on measurable results, not just eyeballs. The Paris-founded company also says that revenue grew 97 percent (at constant currency) year-over-year in the Americas, up from 78 percent last quarter, so growth here is accelerating. The company added 450 new clients in the past quarter, bringing the total to 6,581. And it pointed out that 74 percent of clients are using Criteo’s multi-screen advertising products. |
Nearly 40 Years Later, Steve Wozniak Still Brainstorms Ways The Apple II Could Have Been Better | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | The Apple II may be one of the most important systems in the history of personal computing — but that doesn’t mean it was perfect. Nearly 40 years later, Steve Wozniak is coming up with ways he could have done it better. The detail comes from a between Woz and a deeply devoted Apple I reproduction expert, Mike W. Mike (who hosts what is almost certainly the world’s ), noticed a slight flaw in the Apple I’s design: A quirk in the power supply would occasionally make the system’s memory “unreliable.” So he did the only reasonable thing: he emailed Woz about it. Turns out, Woz had no idea that there was such an issue with the Apple I; by the time the I was even close to shipping, Apple was showing off the Apple II, and Woz’s focus was on that machine. Writes Woz: Still, had we at Apple been aware of such an issue while selling maybe 150 Apple I’s, we could and would easily and quickly have rectified it. But we didn’t test fully a product that was a temporary place-holder before the big product. We did try to buy back every Apple I in exchange for Apple II’s. Perhaps even more interesting is that Woz still wakes up in the middle of the night with thoughts of how his decades-old designs could’ve been done better. On the Apple II: I awoke one night in Quito, Ecuador, this year and came up with a way to save a chip or two from the Apple II, and a trivial way to have the 2 grays of the Apple II be different (light gray and dark gray) but it’s 38 years too late. It did give me a good smile, since I know how hard it is to improve on that design. If you’re wondering what Woz means by “the 2 grays” — the Apple II could display 16 different colors. Two of those 16 colors were different shades of gray, at least at a software level. But due to limitations of the original design, the two shades were indistinguishable when actually displayed. Some Apple II emulators will show them as different colors. You can read Woz’s full reply . |
How Much Would You Pay For An “Undo” Button On Tinder? | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | forward with a testing plan for Tinder Plus, a new paid version of the app that brings premium features to users and finally starts a revenue stream for the growing IAC-owned dating company. With the paid version, users will have access to two new central features of the app, Undo and Passport. Undo lets people go back on the person they just swiped left on, a highly common accident, and Passport lets people search outside their geographic region. “The most-requested feature we get is a button to go back and have a second chance with people that users swipe left on,” said Tinder co-founder Sean Rad. “Everyone has wanted it from the beginning. It’s absolutely at the top of the list.” Tinder Plus simply unlocks that feature, letting users have the modern-day experience they’ve been craving. But it does it in a smart way, as the update will prominently feature a big yellow “Undo” button right on the home screen, whether you’re a paid user or not. This means that the button will be there to go back and find that long-lost love, but it will only work if you cough up the cash. Another button will also appear on the home page, to the far right, called Passport. This will let people search for other matches outside of their general location, and toggle between those locations easily. As it stands right now, Tinder automatically searches within a certain geographic radius, with the user designating just how far out that circle goes. With Tinder Plus, users will be able to search for other Tinder players in different cities all over the world. And beyond the voyeurism aspect, Rad sees Passport as more of a sophisticated problem for Tinder users who travel frequently. “We often hear that people want to be able to start swiping in a location before they’ve left to go on a trip or vacation, and that once they’ve actually made a meaningful connection with someone in a new location, their trip has come to an end,” said Rad. “We also hear people saying that they want to get recommendations for places to go and where to eat in a new city, and Tinder Plus can do better at that.” Of course, the downside to the Passport feature is that regular users, paid or otherwise, who are using the app to search in their own vicinity may be served people who are actually in another location, and might not even have a trip planned anytime soon. This could dilute the app’s usefulness to some users. “We don’t think it’ll be a big enough problem where it will hurt the experience to search locally,” said Rad. “Especially since a lot of users will be paying for the feature, and the voyeuristic quality probably isn’t enough of a value add as opposed to those who are actually traveling.” Rad also explained that part of the reason that people love Tinder comes down to the fact that you find and create really “random relationships that you never would have expected,” and that’s because Tinder is always trying to remove the barriers to meeting new people. “Location is just one more barrier. We’ve already addressed the psychological barrier with the double opt-in, and the social barrier, which we worked on by making Tinder socially acceptable,” said Rad. “Passport breaks down the physical barrier.” For now, Tinder isn’t launching Tinder Plus in the States. Instead, the paid version will roll out to a few select countries, including the UK, Brazil and Germany, with only 40 percent of the user base in each of those markets gaining access to it. This is because Tinder wants to be more thoughtful about pricing and hasn’t decided the proper monthly price for features like this. They’ll be testing at a number of price points, from $.99 to $4.99 to $9.99 and even $19.99 in some markets, to see what fits. [gallery ids="1078807,1078808,1078809,1078810,1078811,1078812,1078813,1078814"] “We think different people will pay on a wide range, but we want to find that sweet spot that most users can agree on,” said Rad. Once they see how people respond to the features and react to the value proposition, Tinder will figure out a set price and launch the premium version of the app globally. This morning, and assuming the role of president and board member. He will still be serving as CEO until a replacement is found. During the interview for this story, Rad declined to comment on any questions regarding his departure from the CEO role. |
Ex-Beats Music CEO’s New App “Chosen” Is A Mobile-First American Idol | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Sing, yodel, or shred guitar into your phone, and get famous. That’s the idea behind , founded by former Gracenote, MOG, and Beats Music CEO David Hyman. The since its formation late last year, but Hyman agreed to give me the first details about what Chosen’s actually up to. First off, Chosen’s just raised $5 million led by DCM to reimagine American Idol, X-Factor, and The Voice for a mobile generation with a launch in Q1 2015. We aim to free the genre from the constraints of linear based television, which is forced to focus solely on the lowest common denominator, and as a result, provide one singular type of vocal music to an audience.” Hyman wouldn’t tell me exactly how the Chosen app works, but he says “We as a species love competition, and music competition didn’t start with American Idol. It started with the dawn of mankind.” But he won’t deny the popularity of the TV format. “We think that there’s a lot of proof that people love watching performers compete because it’s #1 in 50 countries.” But because it has to appeal to the widest possible audience, everyone ends up singing in the same vocal style. With Chosen, “We want to see guitar solo competitions, Swiss yodeling competitions, and violin concerto competitions,” Hyman tells me. “There’s a long tail of content that is unbelievably popular. An insane amount of content is consumed through YouTube that would never be on TV.” This teaser video gives a few hints about how the app will create a performance outlet for musicians, and still be interactive for those who don’t want to show off their talents. Chosen CEO David Hyman While he’s the head honcho, Chosen actually started without Hyman, born out of a seed round from Rhodium Capital in Tel Aviv, Israel. The VC tapped Hyman to lead the company because of his , including stints at MTV and building up MOG until it was acquired by HTC and turned into Beats Music. When he first talked with the team, Hyman tells me, “I said ‘Wow, I can’t believe what a good idea this is, and I’m jaded.” With Hyman’s help, Chosen raised $5 million from DCM, CrunchFund [TechCrunch’s founder’s fund], Rhodium Capital, Broadway Angels and Ethan Beard. DCM and its partner David Chao were picked as the lead for their connections in Asia through limited partner Tencent and other Chinese corporations. Karaoke apps are amongst the most popular in China, and Chosen wants an inroad there when it’s ready. Chosen’s engineering team is based in Tel Aviv, led by co-founder , while former product lead for Yahoo News, MOG, and Beats Music is running the Chosen product team state-side. The $5 million should help and market its app to aspiring stars. While Chosen won’t launch until early next year, it’s trying to get a head start on filling its app with pleasing sights and sounds. . There are plenty of places to upload and listen to home-made music, and several online music competition apps like and , so Chosen will have to battle the bands. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who make it on TV, music competitions are mostly just a spectator sport. But by putting the stage and spotlight in your pocket, could illuminate the superstar in all of us. |
Facebook Asks People To Vote And Tell Friends, Shows Nearest Polling Place | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Facebook reaches around 150 million users per day in the United States, and today it’s using that immense power to get people to vote in the mid-term elections. As it’s been doing since 2008, Facebook is showing a “megaphone” announcement atop the News Feed telling people to vote, with a list of friends who said they’re voters and a heat map of voter activity across the country. Facebook has experimented with the News Feed every Election Day since 2008 to see how this would affect voter turnout. Facebook users could post messages like “I’m a Voter or “I’m Voting” to share with their friends. Beyond clicktivism, Facebook is actually helping people by showing them the nearest locations they can vote. For the first time, the announcement will be shown in languages other than English, including Spanish, Chinese and Korean. And for 2014, Facebook is expanding the “I’m a voter” button in other countries with elections like India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Employing its reach to encourage civic engagement also raises questions about whether Facebook is a neutral party. I was there back in 2011 when Mark Zuckerberg led a Town Hall discussion with Barack Obama at the social network’s headquarters. I watched as Facebook employees cheered loudly for the president and groaned when he mentioned Republican policies, revealing their Democrat-leaning tendencies. While Facebook voter messaging doesn’t push one political party over another, it does have the power to influence the election process using several available data points about its users. There are over 11 million registered voters for the Democratic party and nearly 12 million registered Republicans on Facebook, according to its own Facebook Ads estimates. This number is obviously low and is only the amount of people who have listed themselves as registered for one political party. It doesn’t take into account other behaviors Facebook may factor into pushing a certain message. Facebook added mobilized messaging to over 61 million Facebook users in the 2010 U.S. congressional elections that resulted in greater voter turnout that year. Data scientists examined the number of people who took to the polls and concluded in a paper that the social networking giant had influenced 0.14 percent of the population or about 340,000 people to go vote. A bunch of buggy programming botched a similar attempt in 2012. Facebook what we see in our News Feed plenty of times and could do so in the future. It for one week in 2012, choosing posts with either positive or negative words from friends’ posts to show up in feeds. Facebook could theoretically use the same tactic to influence one party over another, even without actually saying “Go vote Democrat.” Of course, the current vote sticker is pretty neutral and Facebook employs ad sales reps who work with various political campaigns. Facebook also reaches a wide swath of demographics. Though women ages 18-29 represent the largest group on the social network, the voting message will reach millions of people on both sides of the aisle and from every age, race and religion. Facebook has , and it’s total user base has grown 17 percent since then, so around 150 million could be exposed to today’s call to action. Some might say Facebook shouldn’t meddle with something as important as elections. But if it can stay balanced in who it shows the call to vote, it could help make our democracy more representative of what citizens really want. |
SoundCloud Confirms Licensing Deal With Warner Music Group | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | The deal is a signal of both how traditional labels are willing to play ball with the new guard of digital music companies if the terms are right. WMG has also signed licensing partnerships with others including Shazam and Clear Channel. “This leading-edge partnership reflects WMG’s commitment to establishing new and alternative business models that recognize the value of music for our artists,” said Rob Wiesenthal, Chief Operating Officer/Corporate, WMG in a statement. “ is a platform built on music innovation and it has a rare ability to drive music discovery while enhancing the connection and collaboration between an artist and their following. Our deal will foster that relationship, while providing a powerful range of income opportunities for WMG’s artists and songwriters.” What’s also interesting is that this also represents a new chapter for SoundCloud. Just as YouTube — built on the back of scrappy user-generated content — became a major platform for the distribution of “professional” content, so too is SoundCloud entering a more polished and less grass-roots phase of its life. is a distinctly artist-driven service, with a highly engaged global fan community at its heart,” Jonathan Dworkin, EVP, Digital Strategy & Business Development, WMG said in statement. “This deal will enable to further develop its product as well as its massive user base, and will deliver multi-tiered monetization while preserving the elements that have made the service so popular. It’s a win for artists, for rights-holders and for consumers.” It will be interesting to see whether deals like these change the bigger character of the service as a result. The Warner Music Group includes Asylum, Atlantic, Big Beat, East West, Elektra, Fueled by Ramen, Nonesuch, Parlophone, Reprise, Rhino, Roadrunner, Rykodisc, Sire, Bros., Classics, Music Nashville, and Word, as well as publishers /Chappell Music. |
Limdesk Is A Customer Support Center In A Box | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 4 | Okay, not really in a box because that would be cruel to the support personnel but still putting customer support people in boxes would probably be more efficient if you put some holes in the box and fed them. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about . Based in Poland, the software allows you to create a simple client-management system, including telephone support, website chat and social network interaction. The service is free for up to two users and comes in multiple languages including Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian. The company, built by Szymon Piekarz and Grzegorz Siehie�� took $650,000 in seed from Giza Ventures. The service, first launched in 2010 but only recently out of beta, is serving about 22,000 free and paid users. The company made its public debut at Disrupt in London. The goal is to create a simple service to compete with Zendesk or Freshdesk but without the complexity. It’s built for small businesses that might not want to have to deal with the vagaries of customer management. “We’re offering an easy solution that can be used by anyone without changing they current behavior,” said Piekarz. “Our plan for the next months, take care of small business entrepreneurs, solve their problems, and build as much as we can from our main goal of getting a million users,” he said. |
Malware Discovered In China Could Herald ‘New Era’ Of iOS And Mac Threats | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 5 | Conventional wisdom suggests that the vast majority of mobile malware cases impact Android devices. Or at least that those who do not jailbreak their iPhones are safe from most threats — even for “dominating” the mobile malware market. Yet a new virus found in China by U.S.-based researchers could herald the first serious security threat to Apple devices. ( ) claims that a new family of malware is getting past Apple’s settings to potentially infect secure (i.e. not jailbroken) iOS devices using infected software for Macs. Dubbed “WireLurker,” it was found in the wild in the Maiyadi App Store, a third-party Mac store in China, where it is said to have infected 467 apps. Infected versions of these programs have been downloaded more than 350,000 times and are likely to have affected “hundreds of thousands” of users, according to Palo Alto Networks. [ Apple tells us that it has blocked infected apps from working — the company’s full statement is at the bottom of this post.] The malware works by repacking legitimate Mac applications. Once downloaded to a Mac, that software will then install malicious and third-party applications on any iOS device that is connected to the infected machine using a USB cable. What’s most interesting — or, indeed, worrying for Apple customers — is that once on an iOS device, WireLurker reportedly uses a range of sophisticated techniques to modify existing apps for malicious purposes. While the aim of its creators is not clear yet, Palo Alto Networks reports, WireLurker has been found to steal “a variety of information” from inside rewritten apps on jailbroken phones. Since it surfaced in China, it is targeting Alibaba’s hugely popular Taobao shopping and AliPay payment apps — where a phone owner’s credit card and bank details are retained. It appears to be testing itself on non-jailbroken apps at this point, merely installing a third-party comic book app, but the security firm says the way it operates could usher in a “new era” of malware for Apple devices. In particular, Palo Alto Networks says it is “the first in-the-wild malware to install third-party applications on non-jailbroken iOS devices through enterprise provisioning.” The security firm recommends to help prevent WireLurker, but — as ever — the best pieces of advice are to avoid downloading apps from third-party sources, and use officially approved USB cables. The former is more difficult in China, where third-party app stores are well established and hugely popular — though that’s more the case for Android than Mac or iOS. has additional advice for Apple customers in the enterprise space who could be most at risk given WireLurker’s characteristics. Apple says it has taken action against the infected apps in China: We are aware of malicious software available from a download site aimed at users in China, and we’ve blocked the identified apps to prevent them from launching. As always, we recommend that users download and install software from trusted sources. |
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