Wednesday, June 12, 2013

tech now

tech now

SAP Becomes First To Test New Patent Rules In The America Invents Act, Gets Window Of Hope In $345M Versata Case

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 08:56 AM PDT

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SAP, the enterprise software behemoth dealt a $345 million penalty in a patent case brought by Versata, has been given a window of opportunity in getting that case overturned, thanks to new rules in the America Invents Act concerning business method patents — used to describe certain processes, which may be years old but then get enforced with what some believe are too-wide interpretations. SAP is the very first company to test out the new rules, which are some of the most significant reforms to the patent industry in years and could potentially help turn around a system that has been much abused in the tech industry by both patent trolls but also legit companies.

Yesterday, however, SAP claimed a victory at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board over a business method patent around dynamic pricing technology, which Versata claims SAP infringed: the PTAB has now decided that that patent, number 6,553,350 (’350), is unpatentable. This is the very first case to be tried under the new rules — SAP literally filed its appeal the day the Act was approved in September 2012 — and the success of striking down this particular business method patent could set a precedent for other companies opposing other patents based on the business methods.

This, we understand, is just the first step for SAP in turning things around. The USPTO is still considering whether to reexamine the patentability of Versata’s ’350 patent in a separate ex parte reexamination proceeding based on prior art, Arner notes. And then comes the much bigger issue: whether SAP will be able to use these rulings to overturn the damages awarded to Versata. That case, before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Court, is still pending.

The full decision is embedded below, but the background to this particular case centers around the ’350 patent. The case was first filed in 2007 by Versata, which claimed that software that it had created, and patented, to price items based on purchaser and other parameters, was effectively ripped off by SAP. Versata’s claim was that it had a thriving market for this software; then when much-bigger SAP started to offer the same, business collapsed. From its litigation site:

After several stages of the case, with increasing fees levelled against SAP, the final ruling in May was for SAP to pay $345 million in damages.

That was, however, before this secondary appeal got lodged and seen by the PTAB. Erika Arner, a partner at IP law firm Finnegan, representing SAP, notes that the PTAB had decided that the ideas described in the patent were too abstract and general, and without “enough significant meaningful limitations to transform these abstract ideas into patent-eligible applications.” The PTAB, in fact, ruled all of Versata’s challenged claims unpatentable and therefore cancelled.

Business method patents are obviously not just the terrain of older companies, nor of trolls hoping to cash in on an existing, active company’s fortunes. Amazon, for example, owns a business method patent on the One-Click shopping cart.

The rules, however, will make it easier for companies who are on the receiving end of those suits to formally question whether they are too abstract and therefore unpatentable. There are other efforts being made to also help form more useful patent methodology, such as the combined effort of StackExchange and the USTPO to crowdsource prior art that can be used to determine the validity of patents.

NFC Stands For Nobody F****** Cares And Apple Gets That

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 07:46 AM PDT

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If you think QR codes are a bad joke then consider NFC. Near Field Communications’ evangelists have been trying to get smartphone owners to share stuff by bumping and grinding their phones for years. And progress has been painful, to put it mildly. The reality is NFC is an ugly wasteland of non-use. Ever seen anyone IRL tapping their phones together? Or tapping on an NFC tag or reader? It’s about as rare as hen’s teeth.

Granted NFC is used in some countries as a payment solution but as a general, catch-all system for close data transfer it’s a dud. The latest set-back for the NFC-pushers’ cause comes courtesy of Apple. During Monday’s WWDC keynote Tim Cook & co were cracking jokes at the tech’s expense as they previewed a feature coming in iOS 7 which does the job of NFC without any of the awkwardness of NFC. It’s a classic Apple move to eschew complexity and avoid technology-based redundancy (see also: wireless charging).

It also suggests Apple is in zero hurry to add NFC to its devices. So no NFC in the iPhone 5S then. Instead, it’s adding AirDrop to iOS 7 which uses peer-to-peer Wi-Fi to allow content to be shared to nearby iOS 7 devices without having to physically tap anything together. Or, as Apple’s SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi, put it — whilst miming said NFC-induced social awkwardness — “No need to wander around the room bumping your phone.”

Of course there is a snag: Apple’s AirDrop is limited to sharing between iOS 7 devices, so it’s not an open pipeline. Still, neither is NFC — since sharing using that transfer tech means both people have to have NFC-enabled devices. It’s also worth flagging that Apple’s support for a standard can be the tipping point for the industry to coalesce around a particular technology (e.g. USB, or helping to kick Flash in favour of HTML5). Add to that there are other Wi-Fi sharing apps for iOS that work across Apple and Windows (e.g. Filedrop) and use a Wi-Fi pipe for the transfer. No NFC required.

Apple often talks about how the things it chooses not to do are as defining as the things it does. Well Apple doesn’t do NFC. And that speaks volumes. Don’t forget, NFC is not new. It’s been kicking around in phones since forever. And Apple still reckons it sucks. AirDrop isn’t the only example of Cupertino deliberately eschewing NFC either: the Passbook ticketing and loyalty card hub introduced in iOS 6 uses visual barcode scanning to deliver its discounts. The phone owner calls up the barcode on their device and the retailer scans it with a barcode reader. NFC? Not a bit of it.

Another of NFC’s myriad problems — i.e. in addition to actually needing its users to act out the physical transfer themselves – is there’s no emollient term to oil the wheels of its use, especially in the commerce space. Want to use NFC on your phone to pay for something? Asking the cashier ‘can I tap that?’ just sounds euphemistic. Falling back on miming the action is the most elegant of the various inelegant options here. It’s another instance of the social awkwardness of NFC.

Just going ahead and trying to tap phone to reader won’t necessarily work either since some NFC POS terminals need to be switched on specifically to conduct the contactless transaction. Before even getting to that point, of course, the phone owner also has to have figured out they are looking at an NFC-enabled terminal. Some resemble standard POS terminals so wanting to pay by NFC means hunting for a ‘pay by contactless’ sign, or asking if NFC can be used at that outlet.

All these barriers to contactless entry fatally erode its convenience… at least for now. Sure it might one day provide a slick way for phones to be used to pay for stuff — but that requires NFC readers to be everywhere. Which they certainly aren’t yet, despite all the hype and cash poured into the space over the past five+ years. And sure, NFC technology can work well in more simple use-cases. London’s Oyster travelcard ticketing system uses NFC to replace paper tickets, for instance. But really if the best you can say of NFC is that it’s a bit more convenient than paper, that’s not saying an awful lot.

Shortcutting settings or grabbing content was another use-case envisaged by the NFC pushers. Phone owners would be tapping their devices to NFC tags stuck on movie posters to get content downloaded to their handsets, or be sent to a URL to watch a film trailer (an idea which has been kicking around since the turn of the century, I might add). This sounds like exactly the sort of not-IRL scenario that gets dreamt up in marketing departments. If that’s the best you’ve got NFC, you need to try a lot harder. And an NFC tag for pre-setting an in-car phone profile? Oh pleeease.

It’s fittingly ironic that NFC is termed a ‘contactless’ technology when its proximity requirements necessitate physical contact — or at least getting so close it’s academic. ‘NFC: irritatingly invading your personal space’ doesn’t sound quite so handy does it?

Online Fashion Exchange Bib + Tuck Addicts Shoppers With Virtual Currency, Scores $600,000 From Chris Burch & Others

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 07:44 AM PDT

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The re-commerce sector just got another vote of confidence, this time from billionaire fashion mogul J. Christopher Burch, who along with a couple of angels have put in $600,000 in seed funding into the online women’s clothing consignment shop Bib + Tuck. The service, first launched in November 2012, attempts to bridge the gap between  high-end luxury marketplaces and those that appeal to “fast fashion” consumers like Poshmark or Threadflip, for example.

The two founders, Sari Azout and Sari Bibliowicz (who yes, go by “Sari A.” and “Sari B.”), have had the idea for some time and were experimenting with early models of the service as far back as 2011 when Vogue spotted their work. However, the site itself only launched in November 2012.

Both longtime friends and fellow New York-based, self-described “shopaholics,” the women built Bib + Tuck because it was something they wanted for themselves as young professionals (Sari A. was a bonds trader, Sari B. worked at Gilt) who didn’t have a lot of money to spend on fashion.

“We really fell in love with this concept of shopping without spending, and shopping your best friend’s closet.” explains Azout. “We never anticipated building what is today Bib + Tuck from that,” she admits.

The “shopping without spending” concept Azout is referring to is the site’s built-in almost game-like experience where users sell items in exchange for virtual currency called “bucks,” which they can then spend on the other items for sale. Bib + Tuck doesn’t charge any membership fees, listing fees, or transaction fees, but rather sells the virtual “bucks ($1.00 = 1 buck) to members. That way, even those without items to sell can still shop, while others can purchase the bucks they need to make up for the difference between the fashion they want and the bucks they have on hand.

In addition to shopping members’ closets, Bib + Tuck also offers editorially selected “featured closets” from notable industry names, whose items are sold via a concierge service.

Since November’s launch, the invite-only service has grown to over 12,000 members and around the same number of items, and it has seen over 3,000 transactions to date. The founders declined to disclose their revenues, but did say that already Bib + Tuck’s repeat business is high – over 60 percent of customers have returned for a second purchase. In addition, the current sell-through rate is 20 percent.

Bibliowicz attributes the “stickiness” of the site to its use of virtual credits. “We’ve been called the first gaming platform in the fashion space,” she says. “On the platform, it’s all about giving and taking, and it becomes very addicting to people to be able to shop without using any money. Once someone puts something up and sell it, they obviously can’t cash out because that’s not an option, so they’re hooked in and they feel like they’re getting free clothes,” Bibliowicz explains.

The site’s name – “Bib + Tuck” – refers to this give and take as well, the “bib” being the listing aspect and “tuck” for the sale.

The founders say they decided to keep the seed round small on purpose, as they still want to prove the concept before raising more. Burch invested from his personal account, though his investment arm Burch Creative Capital has dabbled in tech and startups before, with investments in Bump.com, dining guide Ness and more, according to the firm’s website.

“Chris Burch understood our brand from day one – he knew we were going very deep into a specific demographic,” says Azout.

Now a team of six full-time with staff in New York and Miami, Bib + Tuck is preparing to drop the invite-only model later this summer, and open up more broadly to the public. The company will also start enforcing policies over brands it allows at that time – today, it’s a mix of high and low, with 40 percent of the site being designer labels, 20 percent vintage and the rest a mix of emerging designers. Currently, the site features brands like Alexander Wang, rag & bone, Reformation, Wildfox and others.

The company will also then launch an iPhone app, which Azout describes as having an “Instagram feel” and offering a one-click checkout.

For now, however, interested shoppers can request an invite here.

Online fashion consignment is a crowded space, with a number of newer competitors like The RealReal, Poshmark, Threadflip, Twice, Material Wrld, ThreadUP and more, with similar ideas about shopping others’ closets. But, explains Azout, “a lot of the re-commerce companies out there are just services. We’re really trying to make ourselves a voice and connect with our customers.”

Apple's iOS 7 Is A Smorgasbord For Game Developers, With Sprite Kit, Game Controller Support And More

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 07:39 AM PDT

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Apple’s developer bits are generally the bigger picture story that comes out of WWDC, and some details are slowly emerging about those 1,500 or so new APIs Apple has added for devs to take advantage of. Some of the better news is around new gaming technologies, which should result in much improved experiences for both gamers and the people creating the games they play.

iOS 7 will introduce support for “Made for iPhone, iPod and iPad” (MFi) program-compatible game controller hardware (via 9to5Mac), which means developers will finally be able to access system-level tools for building in support for a wide range of devices from accessory manufacturers. The new API supports both controller sheaths that hold the iPhone or device itself, and standalone controllers that would more closely resemble your traditional gamepad.

New images found by Touch Arcade from the iOS 7 developer’s guide shows that controllers will be able to offer support for configurations of two joysticks, a directional pad, and up to six buttons at least, so that it should be able to replicate the setup of traditional controllers like the PlayStation DualShock or Super Nintendo gamepad pretty easily. For retro titles and core games alike, this should be a tremendous addition to the arsenal, and you can expect third-party hardware accessory makers like Griffin, Belkin, etc., as well as startups on Kickstarter, to be all over this. There are third-party controllers already out there, but they’ve always required devs to integrate an external SDK to get games working with them, that’s not going to be the case anymore.

Retro games should also get a nice boost from SpriteKit, Apple’s new framework for developing more simple, 2D style games and creating interesting physics effects like the one shown in the video below. Sprite Kit looks to be pretty powerful, but has the disadvantage of not reaching outside of Apple’s ecosystem, or of supporting older devices. Still, Apple has a very fast-adopting user base for new versions of iOS, and there are a lot of dev shops that focus only on iOS, so we could see some very cool stuff built with this new, simpler Unity-type engine on Apple’s devices.

Other new gaming features include turn-based multiplayer game modes, ladder rankings for high score leaderboards and more. But the game controller element alone could have a huge impact on iOS and its role in the mobile gaming market, and it’s quite likely that Nintendo and Sony should be watching very closely to see how the ecosystem around that feature develops.

The Steve “jOBS” Biopic Will Finally Land In A Theater Near You On August 16

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 07:21 AM PDT

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We’ve all been waiting restlessly for the release of the jOBS biopic, starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs, but dismay overtook us when we heard its April release date had been pushed back.

But fear not, you Jobsian fanbois, for Open Road has finally revealed that jOBS will see a nationwide release on August 16.

Word comes by way of The Wrap, which got the scoop last night, and official word came via Deadline.

Here’s the studio’s official statement:

Open Road Films will release JOBS – the highly anticipated film chronicling the story of Steve Jobs' ascension from college dropout to one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century – nationwide on August 16, 2013. JOBS details the major moments and defining characters that influenced Steve Jobs on a daily basis from 1971 through 2001. The film plunges into the depths of his character, creating an intense dialogue-driven story that is as much a sweeping epic as it is an immensely personal portrait of Steve Jobs' life. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern, written by Matthew Whiteley, JOBS was shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Carpenter and produced by Mark Hulme. JOBS stars Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons and Matthew Modine.

The movie has been in development since last year, and TechCrunch even got a sneak peek behind the scenes after Rip Empson made his way down to L.A. to be an extra on the set. Since then, the biopic has debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

However, Open Road explained that its original April release date would have to be pushed back since the film wasn’t receiving enough hype to be released. In other words, expect to see jOBS biopic posters about as often as you see an article on the forthcoming iPhone over the summer.

Ashton Kutcher, part sexy actor and part Silicon Valley investor, reportedly took his role as Steve Jobs quite seriously. During the 1983 Keynote scene, wherein Jobs introduces the famous 1984 commercial, Kutcher was said to have been quite bossy, just like Steve likely was, and in-character the whole time.

He even went on Jobs’ fruitarian diet, forcing him into the hospital after trying to sustain himself on nuts and fruits alone.

But all’s well that ends well. Let’s just hope that critics and fans are less critical of the Jobs biopic then they are of a Jobs-less Apple.

[via TheVerge]

Ex-Tandberg and Cisco Executives Join The Quest To Conquer Old School Video Conferencing

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 06:46 AM PDT

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A group of ex-Tandberg and Cisco executives have launched a software-based video conferencing service that works across traditional hardware systems, the browser and mobile devices.

Pexip Infinity is an all-software, pay-as-you-go, virtualized platform that requires no upfront hardware costs. A customer can set up multiple virtual meeting rooms for any number of users.

Services like Google Hangout and Skype provide a mass-market way for really anyone to do video conferencing. These online services have disrupted the video conferencing world. There is also a new generation of video conferencing services that have emerged. But the abstraction of hardware is also making IT rethink its approach to investing in high-end systems that can cost millions to install across a worldwide network of offices.

Pexip executives see its value in running software that can be optimized to the end point where it is running. Pexip Infinity can run on Cisco, Polycom or Lifesize video-conferencing systems. It supports Microsoft Lync and WebRTC. With WebRTC, the browser is the end-point. No Flash or other plug-in is required. Mobile users follow a link to participate in a video-conferencing session.

The Pexip software maximizes the bandwidth. It understands who is presenting and who is watching. A presenter, for instance, would appear in high-definition video. People watching would only get the bandwidth they need to participate.

By licensing its software based on usage, the service is more affordable than integrated hardware and software-based systems. By using a software-only approach, Pexip appeals to the people who work at home on a laptop. People on the road can use an iPad or a smart device to access a video-conference session.

Pexip has people with the experience to appeal to customers who buy high-end gear. But there are a growing number of services that are developing new kinds of software and cloud-based video conferencing services.

Vidyo offers a software-based video conferencing service as does Blue Jeans Network, FuzeBox and Zoom.

In April. Telefonica's TokBox launched Mantis, a cloud-based platform that adds some smarts to WebRTC. A focus of the efforts  is on building out a developer community that will use WebRTC and the TokBox platform to build out their own types of apps and services.

The Pexip approach is less about building a developer community than appealing to the CIO who can use software to cut hardware costs and appeal to all those people who work at home on mobile devices.

Google Glass Gets A Teardown, Revealing It Can Be Hacked To Prescription Glasses

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 06:38 AM PDT

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Google Glass isn’t in the hands of consumers yet, but a pair of intrepid Glass explorers didn’t let that stop them from taking the thing apart to see what makes it tick. This teardown is also especially pleasing in terms of shot composition and image quality, so if you’re hankering for a really good, close-up look at the tech inside of Google Glass, I highly recommend checking out what the Catwig guys have put together (via 9to5Google).

Not only do they take Glass apart, but they also put it back together Frankenstein-style in some surprising ways, including by attaching the business bits to a pair of prescription glasses. The hack works, they say, but only in a rudimentary sense; the proximity sensor built into Glass wasn’t working quite correctly when positioned as it was with respect to the prescription lenses, but it doesn’t look like there are any major barriers to making Glass eyeglass compatible.

Other interesting finds from the treasure trove include a specialized Synaptics touchpad controller to handle the touch-based controls, as well as a battery module that’s tiny at only 570 mAh capacity, and a technological marvel of a display that’s smaller in surface area than a dime and yet has 640×360 resolution, with each pixel around 1/8th the size of the ones found in Apple’s iPhone 5 Retina display.

There’s no telling how the final shipping version of Google Glass will compare in terms of hardware and build to the current Explorer edition, but this still provides a very interesting look behind the curtain at how Google’s big wearable tech experiment performs its wizardry. Oddly, this unceremonious deconstruction actually has me wanting Glass more, despite my earlier, more tepid interest in the still very unproven hardware.

Uber Confirms UberX Price Cuts In San Francisco To Target Rivals Lyft And SideCar

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 06:34 AM PDT

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On-demand transportation startup Uber is making a serious commitment to its UBERx service, making on-demand rides with hybrid cars and community drivers less expensive. Today on the Uber Blog, the company confirmed what we reported last week — that it will be cutting fares on UBERx rides in an effort to be more competitive with ride sharing apps like Lyft and SideCar.

It’s been about three years since Uber launched its service as “Everyone’s Private Driver,” offering a convenient and reliable alternative to taxi cabs in San Francisco. Since then, the company has expanded pretty rapidly, offering its on-demand UberBLACK black car service in dozens of cities around the world.

At the same time, Uber has begun offering lower-priced options in many of its markets. In some cities, it’s launched UBERx, which is kind of like UberBLACK except that passengers are generally driven around in hybrid vehicles. In others, it’s partnered with local taxi drivers to launch UberTAXI. (In Paris, passengers can hail motorcycle taxis!)

Lower-priced options are becoming necessary now that Uber is facing competition from other on-demand transportation apps. On one hand, there are services like Lyft and SideCar, which connect passengers with community drivers — i.e., people who haven’t been licensed to drive commercial vehicles like taxis or black cars. And there’s also a proliferation of apps that hail taxicabs from a user’s mobile device, like Hailo, Flywheel, and Taxi Magic.

San Francisco, which was the first market for Uber, has become one of the most competitive cities, with a wide range of low-priced options. With convenience and reliability becoming a commodity, now the battle has moved to price.

Even with its UBERx option, Uber struggled to compete with Lyft and SideCar. It had previously lowered fares by 10 percent, as it began to offer its own ride-sharing offerings, but still tends to be priced above other options. But today’s announcement will likely bring it in line, or even below, the fares offered by competing services.

Uber says that UBERx rides will now be priced at 10 percent cheaper than its UberTAXI service, and gave some sample fares to show users how much typical rides might cost:

uberX at cheaper-than-taxi pricing means never, ever waiting for a bus in the rain or walking alone at night. It means $8 from FiDi to AT&T Park, $15 from the Marina to the Mission, and $50 from North Beach to SFO. It means a single, cost-effective solution for dependable pickups in minutes, 24 hours a day, all over the Bay.

Now that Uber has lowered prices in its home market, the company could look to expand UBERx availability elsewhere. The company has already said that it will offer peer-to-peer ride-sharing services anywhere that its competition has gotten “tacit approval” to operate. We expect to see it make cheaper options available in even more cities as time goes on.

The Mysterious Case Of The Missing Jawbone Up

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 06:16 AM PDT

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It seems a week doesn’t go by without finding out about a malfunctioning Jawbone Up band. The wearable step tracking bracelet measures how much you move each day and how well you sleep.

It was relaunched late last year in the US, and came to Asia in March.

I have five people on my Up friends list (all with new bands less than two months old), and already four of them are facing issues. Some are saying their LED lights have stopped working, and one of their bands is not being able to track sleep anymore.

My own band coughed and died just two weeks after I purchased it from an Apple store in Hong Kong. It stopped being able to retain a charge, and its purported ten-day battery would go flat within half a day.

A Japanese user I met this week saw I was wearing one, and informed me that his stopped working as well after about a month.

This is not good.

The Up is currently in its second generation. The first was a fiasco. Shortly after a triumphant launch in 2011, users complained that the band wasn’t holding a charge, and the company was forced to issue a global refund.

It came back a year later, full of promise, but these anecdotal stories of woe keep popping up.

When I went to return my band, one of the sales staff at the International Finance Centre (IFC) Apple store in Hong Kong informed me that the store was running dry on supplies because it had sent back a large batch of devices back to Jawbone. This was prompted by numerous customer returns, she said.

A user in Singapore, Kimberly Mah, had a band that had battery issues as well. She wrote to Jawbone, but was informed that the company would not ship a replacement “due to international shipping regulations”. Jawbone said she should check with the retailer she bought the band from.

But when she went to the Challenger outlet at Funan Centre, the retailer was completely out of stock, saying new bands wouldn’t come in for at least another month. Could this be signs of technical issues with production at Jawbone?

A survey of the numerous PC stores at Funan Centre also showed that each had just one or two bands on the shelf, potentially indicating a supply issue. The Apple Singapore online store lists an 8- to 10-week wait for new bands, as well. Jawbone has a lot resting on this new product — it’s raised about $210 million so far from venture firms, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer joined its board a little over a month ago.

At the top of the supply chain, the company who brings in the bands to Singapore, Digital Hub, couldn’t help with a replacement either, because they too were out of stock.

Jawbone’s response to all of this is that it’s a supply problem due to the bands selling like hotcakes. “It’s one of our fastest-selling products in Jawbone history… we are working to keep up with the incredible demand,” said a spokesperson.

On any new technical issues, she simply said that the band is “entirely new, inside and out” with regard to its redesign after the first generation, and pointed me to the testing processes they put the bands through before they’re sent out of the warehouse.

One can only hope these claims hold true.


Synkio's ‘Soundcloud For Licensed Music' Tries To Take Pain Out Of Soundtrack Mess

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 06:11 AM PDT

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The sheer amount of media produced by film makers, advertisers and ad agencies is exploding. And of course, literally everything from a TV ad to an app like Angry Birds needs a soundtrack. That means money. So-called ‘synch deals’ with this soundtrack music grew in 2011 by 5.7 per cent to US$342 million according to one estimate. Music licensing is a market worth at least $6bn globally. But at the same time there is an overwhelming and confusing process for licensing music. The market needs a simpler model where everyone wins and which changes the way bespoke music is licensed. That platform hopes to be Synkio, which has launched with a new model and a new person-to-person marketplace.

Now, there are a lot of existing platforms. Audiodraft offers custom music on spec and fixed pricing but has not been in the news much. Epidemic Sound has a good library but is not a marketplace. CueSongs from the Peter Gabriel stable is about synch of existing commercial work for small budget productions. And Getty Music is mostly about off-the-shelf stock music and indie artists.

So we have a problem.

Part of the trouble with off-the-shelf stuff is you have to search using tags to find what you want. More often than not that leads you down a creative rabbit-hole and you don’t get the work done.

However, Synkio’s human-to-human custom method means it’s more possible to get creative results.

On Synkio there is a clear briefing form that connects to thousands of artists who are ready to compose bespoke music. Conversely, those artists can upload their existing catalogue.

Think of it as a sort of Soundcloud for easily licensed music.

Since the beta went live 9 weeks ago, Synkio says it has already generated the score to a documentary which was premiered at SxSW, ‘Fall & Winter’, is now working closely with various advertising agencies, and has 100 live clients and 20 live briefs. This is with no promotion.

“All the agencies and film makers we’ve met are excited not only to get their audio more easily, but also to own a portion of the copyright and earn royalties,” says co-founder Vince Lynch, who adds that the startup is looking to raise seed capital with a lead investor.

It’s winning plaudits from creative agencies in particular. Robin Burke, Creative Director, Ignition Creative UK, calls Synkio “the Mount Everest of music discovery and licensing.” High praise indeed.

The potential is obvious: The platform could develop as a focal point of the global songwriter/composer community, a home for music supervisors synching tracks to media, a large volume rights owner or perhaps a way for songwriters and composers to generate income from a global base.

One to watch.

[Image courtesy Flickr]

Apple Continues Lead In 3G Mobile Data Use, With iPads The First Tablets To Break Into The Top 10, Says Actix

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 06:10 AM PDT

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Android has convincingly overtaken Apple as the most popular OS in the smartphone industry both in terms of sales and overall penetration. But when it comes to how much wireless devices are actually used on cellular networks, those who own Apple handsets are disproportionately the biggest users of apps and the mobile web — possibly a sign of why developers continue to make iOS a major focus, but also possibly one reason why Apple is also changing in its newest version of its mobile OS, iOS7, how apps use mobile data.

According to figures out from Actix, a specialist in mobile traffic analysis, combined traffic from the iPhone 4, 4S and 5 makes up just under 54% of all 3G traffic on the networks that it monitors. If you add in traffic from iPad tablets, which came in at 6th and 7th positions, that figure goes up to almost 59%.

The company, a specialist in optimizing wireless network performance on congested routes, tells me it collected the data over the past six months from “mature” carriers that it works with (it has operations in over 100 countries) and used data from the busiest hour on the network. The data is anonymized.

Android, in contrast, has three devices in the top-10, all Galaxy S devices, but none the newest S4. Together the Galaxy S, S2 and S3 make up just under 18% of 3G data traffic. The list is rounded out with BlackBerry handsets (again, older models), which make up just over 3% of traffic. Nokia and other handset makers are not part of the equation at all.

The data stands in contrast to how devices actually around the world. Phones running Google’s OS are taking about 64% of new sales; while in countries like the U.S. they are accounting for about 53% of all existing smartphone ownership.

What to make of these conclusions? Actix doesn’t specify whether the high rankings of Apple devices are directly related to their users being such avid consumers of apps and mobile data, although recent evidence from companies like Flurry, which measures app usage and analytics across both platforms, seems to point to this fact.

Still, the fact remains that some of this usage might not always be welcomed by users, for example when it relates to certain apps’ automatic data polling, which can be a drain not just on your battery but also your monthly mobile data allowance.

Apple will be addressing this in one way in the latest version of iOS. Users will be able to decide how much of that activity they would like to run over non-WiFi connections, by offering an option for users to turn off cellular data not just for the whole device, but for each individual app. The feature, as you can see from this illustration, also specifies how much data each app is using up.

Tablets: Actix says that this is the first time that tablets have broken into the top-ten list of most popular devices on 3G networks that it helps manage. As they entered the top 10, the iPhone 3GS and the 9700 from BlackBerry dropped out.

Most tablets are equipped only with WiFi connectivity, and while figures from a year ago indicated that tablets were accounting for very little traffic on 3G networks, it appears that this may be changing.

Actix says that traffic from tablets, and specifically iPad devices, increased four-fold in the last six months. When compared against the longer tail of smartphone usage, these tablets typically consumed three times as much mobile data. That’s because we know that tablets, with their bigger screens, are natural places to consume data-heavy services like video on the go, so it makes sense that as more of these with 3G and 4G connectivity enter the user base, the more likely it is that they will have an impact on data networks.

“The easy availability of iPads with a mobile network contract is now impacting growth in data demand on the mobile networks as users demand a connection wherever they are and whatever the device,” said Neil Coleman, marketing director of Actix, in a statement. “This is the second phase in the mobile data revolution started by the iPhone in 2007.”

While Actix is perhaps more interested in how to tackle this problem for mobile carriers, for users this could see a bigger focus on special tariffs for tablet devices, and the rising popularity will also have a knock-on effect of more apps and other content getting created specifically for the medium, maybe even with a focus on how to do it in the most data-efficient way.

That’s because this appears to be trend that is only going to grow.

The analyst firm Canalys counts tablets as “PCs” in their calculations, and in some figures it released yesterday, the company noted  that of the 493 million PCs that will be shipped this year, 183 million of them will be tablets, with the rest split between desktop PCs (105 million) and notebooks (2015 million). By 2017, that balance will shift massively in favor of the more mobile, lighter and often less expensive tablet, with 456 million shipped compared to only 86 million desktop PCs, and 172 million notebooks. While WiFi will certainly continue to a mainstay in those devices, it’s inevitable cellular use will also ride the wave.

Image: @javi on Twitter

Singapore's DealGuru Spins Out Food Delivery Business To Chase New Funding

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 05:58 AM PDT

Foodrunner

DealGuru, one of the major daily deals sites in Singapore, has spun out its food delivery subsidiary, called FoodRunner.

Prior to the new name, the service was called Room Service Deliveries, which DealGuru set up after it acquired Malaysia-based operator, Asian Room Service in October last year.

The acquisition was DealGuru’s first big step into the online food delivery business. Before that, it tried its hand with a small service called Dealivery.sg, run as a subsection of its deals site for about six months.

Since it bought Asian Room Service, DealGuru expanded its presence out of Singapore, into Malaysia and Indonesia (run through a franchisee). Asian Room Service was operating Room Service Deliveries for nine years prior to the acquisition.

With the spin out, DealGuru has placed its CFO, Lance Frey, into the CEO spot for FoodRunner. Part of Frey’s job is to raise funds under the FoodRunner entity for expansion into more markets in Southeast Asia.

Frey said the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are next on the radar. New funding will go toward acquiring existing food delivery services in those countries as it enters them, he said.

A quick check on the FoodRunner site showed that its Vietnamese service is listed as Hungry.vn. At time of writing, the site doesn’t exist, but it looks like the company’s booked the URL for starters.

Frey said the company is in talks with investors on funding, and hinted that it might secure a round within the next month or two. FoodRunner saves on some operational costs by sharing resources such as finance and marketing departments with DealGuru. “We’ve got enough money in the bank to complete some acquisitions and keep running for the next year,” he said.

FoodRunner is a pretty early entrant into a space that has investor dollars up for grabs. Rocket Internet-backed rival, Foodpanda, just scooped up $20 million in funding last month.

Foodpanda was launched in April 2012, and has a staff of 150. It’s already in eight Asian countries, including Indonesia, Pakistan, Taiwan and India.

Over at DealGuru headquarters, they’ve probably picked up a thing or two from Foodpanda’s operational manual. Christian Hauville, DealGuru’s former general manager and head of operations, just left two months ago. He started Foodpanda’s Indonesian business when he was working for Rocket Internet.

FoodRunner employs about 120 people, with the majority of them in Malaysia, coming from the former Asian Room Service. Frey said this number is expected to double by next year as it hires and acquires.

It has a customer base of about 80 restaurants in Singapore and 100 in Malaysia, and it has 50,000 registered consumers with the service.

Like its rival, DealGuru is also owned by a German incubator, Rebate Networks. DealGuru logged revenues of $40 million (S$50 million) last year.

Reminder: Sign Up For The Balkans Mini Pitch-Off

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 05:58 AM PDT

tc balkans

Are you in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, or Slovenia? Have I got a treat for you. In an effort to spread the good word about TC in the rest of Europe, I will be rolling through Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana at the beginning of July for a series of informal meet-ups. If you’re in those cities, I want you to attend!

Assisting in the planning is Netokracija / Netocratic, the “TechCrunch of Southeast Europe.” They will provide us with locations and more specific timing but as it stands we expect to have some free beer, lots of sunshine, and a great chance to talk about your startup in an informal setting. We’ll also be scouting for Disrupt entrants for Disrupt Berlin in October.

At each of these events I’ll talk a little bit about TechCrunch and getting the attention of media outside your own country and we can talk startups, entrepreneurship, and funding all night long. We’ll also hold a mini-Pitch Off with the winner getting a Startup Alley table at Disrupt Germany. You can apply here. If you’re chosen you’ll join one of ten startups on stage for a two-minute presentation about your startup. There will be no PowerPoints and the presentation is English only, so get your elevator pitch ready!

The locations are nearly final and you’ll find them on the Plancast pages below:

To RSVP for Sofia on July 1 click here. Co-hosted by  Netokracija / Netocratic & Eleven
To RSVP for Belgrade on July 2 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.
To RSVP for Zagreb on July 3 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.
To RSVP for Ljubljana on July 5 click here. Hosted by Netokracija / Netocratic.

Interested in sponsoring the event? Please contact organizer Ivan Brezak Brkan, head of MemeMedia, directly. We’ll have much more information soon, but until then RSVP and get your product ready for our Southeast Euro Trip!

Special thanks to our main sponsor, the .me domain.

Minilogs Raises €200K Because Social Bookmarking Isn't Done Yet - Apparently

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 05:56 AM PDT

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Like me, many readers will look back at Delicious with Web 2.0-tinted glasses. The social bookmarking site, long before it was acquired and then offloaded by Yahoo!, helped define what the cloud could deliver: By enabling a user to save their browser bookmarks online — a potentially selfish act — the wider community also got to benefit.

Fast forward nearly ten years and you’d think that social bookmarking as a startup opportunity has had its day. But in actual fact, linking to, and therefore sharing content, is built into the Web’s plumbing, while the success of Pinterest, which adds a visual twist to the social bookmarking idea, has likely inspired other startups to try their hand.

One of those — at least on the surface — is Minilogs. The Paris-based startup is launching publicly today, as well as announcing a modest €200,000 seed round.

Carrying the strap-line “the best way to save, organize and share the things you love”, the site lets you ‘bookmark’ videos, audio, maps and slides, and arrange content into ‘minilogs’ which function like a playlist. These can be for personal utility or — you guessed it — shared publicly.

As you’d expect in 2013, Minilogs supports additional social features, such as the ability to vote up a minilog and to follow other users, Twitter-style. But, perhaps most useful, the site has implemented its own player, which lines up all content in a playlist as a single piece of content. The Minilogs player can even be embedded elsewhere — which I’m told is seeing it used by the French newspaper Le Figaro.

“We found that despite the explosion of rich content on the web over the last decade, the tools for saving, organizing and re-mixing these contents are woefully nonexistent,” said Minilogs co-founder Jean-Philippe Coutard in an email. “Pinterest (and its many clones) with their very visual product offering still only caters to one such media type – photos. What about videos, sounds, maps, slides? With Minilogs, we aim to bridge this gap by truly allowing you to bookmark and fully experience all content type on the web.”

However, “woefully nonexistent” is overstating it somewhat. There a ton of sites that enable you to bookmark and share video and audio content online, for example. Though Minilogs is also talking up its cross-provider compatibility. And it’s certainly true that users shouldn’t have to care what format content exists in — saving and sharing it should be just as easy as bookmarking a hyperlink.

Oh Delicious…

Wave Partners With Box, MailChimp, General Assembly And More To Launch One-Stop Shopping Tool For Startups

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 05:52 AM PDT

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A new convergence of startups and Internet companies has come together to provide other early-stage companies with the tools required to get up and running quickly, and most importantly, cheaply. It’s sort of like a Humble Indie Bundle, except instead of gaming, GetStartupTools.com offers software from Wave, Box, MailChimp, Zendesk, Uberflip and General Assembly that most brand new internet companies would need or at least appreciate.

Toronto-based Wave operates its free accounting platform, and now also does payroll, as well as invoicing and tracking receipts via mobile apps. As part of the package, they’ll be offering three free months of payroll in the U.S. in Canada, which is normally a paid service on their freemium SaaS model. General Assembly offers online education and courses, with a lot of focus on subjects startups will benefit from. Box is offering 10GB of free storage for current sign-ups, MailChimp is doing an exclusive $50 credit for new sign-ups to its newsletter service, and Zendesk is doing a $1,000 credit with a free year of subscription for its customer support tool. Finally, Uberflip is offering two months of free use for its content marketing platform.

Of course, Get Startup Tools isn’t something that these companies have just put together out of the goodness of their hearts – each enjoys a very healthy influx of customers from startup clients, and early-stage companies, especially those in tech but also beyond, are a key target demographic for each, especially given that most are low-cost alternatives to more traditional and complex enterprise software. Joining forces, especially since no company on the list really steps on the toes of any other in terms of their service areas, makes a lot of sense for each party involved.

Wave and the others might be more or less self-interested in setting this up, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also a convenient resource for startup companies, either. Wave CEO Kirk Simpson said that putting together a bundle is a way of making it easier and cheaper to launch a company, and that’s true in this case, especially given the special discounts some of the participants are offering. Plus it shows a renewed interest in the startup market by each of those companies involved, which is refreshing because often you see businesses go after more established customers as their own company matures.

As Mac software and game creators have long known, a bundle is a good way to shift product. We’ll see if the same applies for startup-focused SaaS providers.

Qualcomm's Rob Chandhok On How AllJoyn Will Let Users Control Devices With Their Own Personal Clouds

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 05:44 AM PDT

QualcommAllJoyn

Imagine walking into a new room and, like Harry Potter, being able to control all the devices in there with a few gestures. But (because you are a Muggle) instead of a wand, you use your smartphone. Developed by Qualcomm, AllJoyn is an open source peer-to-peer software designed to give manufacturers and developers the framework to seamlessly connect a wide range of devices, appliances and mobile apps.

In an interview during last week's Computex in Taipei, Rob Chandhok, the president of Qualcomm Innovation Center, told me that AllJoyn's goal is to break through the current limits of the Internet of Things. For one thing, connectivity currently relies on specific wireless standards such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Although many manufacturers are keen to build their own software platforms, most people don't rely solely on one brand to supply all the appliances in their home. Furthermore, as the Internet of Things scales up to potentially include trillions of devices, security is a key concern for consumers. Chandhok talked about how AllJoyn will address those issues as it seeks to give consumers wireless control over their environments.

Why make AllJoyn open source?

The open sourcing of AllJoyn is because it's the only way that an ecosystem can develop on the Internet of things. We've tried to take lessons from other systems and one of the ways the Web moved really fast was when WebKit came along. Here you had an open source project that really drove a tremendous amount of innovation because people knew that if it made it into WebKit, then it would come out in both Apple and Google products. So we decided to take a similar approach with AllJoyn as a path to creating a standard.

Another way to ask that question is why is Qualcomm giving away something and putting it in open source when that's typically not how we monetize our products. The way we're monetizing this product is if it's useful for things to be connected in the Internet of things, that grows the market for the whole communication industry. We will compete in that market and should be able to sell more connectivity parts.

What about OEM support?

That's not really required. The model right now is that AllJoyn would be embodied in an application that you would download on your phone. You can have AllJoyn on Android, iOS and Windows. When I think about OEMs related to AllJoyn, I broaden it to include the consumer electronics industry and the white goods industry also. I can't specifically announce partners, but we are working with manufacturers, very strong global brands with large volume shipments are actively working with us to use AllJoyn to deliver experiences that we hope to be able to announce in the near future.

You’ve talked about AllJoyn powering the “Internet of Things near you.” How is that different from the Internet of Things? 

Some people think of the Internet of Things as a model where you just give everything IP connectivity and you send all data into the cloud. It's just a bunch of sensors and then the cloud does something because the cloud is smart, and it sort of spits it back out at you.

We take a different approach in that we think that there should be local clouds of devices talking to each other because, first of all, it's going to scale up very quickly. I worry about the security risk of that. I don't want my refrigerator on the Internet or my fireplace, or my garage door on the Internet.

So these approaches are quite different in how you think about it. I want a personal cloud that follows me as I walk down the road. If I go into a room that I have never gone into before, I want to inspect it. If I come into this room, I want to figure out there is a TV over there and that I can display slides on it and change the channel or increase the volume. With AllJoyn I can do all that stuff because it is at its core a way for software to expose interfaces securely to things around you.

I know you can't give specific details about projects now, but can you describe some of the things that you are excited about that use AllJoyn?

We are really working with commercial partners, we're not just talking about demos. One partner, for example, has devices that already have Wi-Fi on them and can software update these devices, so AllJoyn will be pushed out in a software update. That's exciting because it's a lot of units and it gives us instant penetration into the market.

In particular I'm excited about audio streaming notifications and the control panel. The idea with the control panel is that you can come up to a device you have never interacted with before and it can tell you this is how you control me. I'm doing it by looking it up in a database and by asking the object. You can see what the object looks by using augmented reality tools. If you walk up to a coffee maker, you'll recognize it [on your mobile device] and an interface will pop up. That stuff to me, my gut tells me that some developer will do something really cool with those facilities.

The audio streaming stuff will be really cool. Not only will I be able to get things like album art, but I can change bass, treble and volume from my phone. I can use the control panel protocol with audio streaming to build an experience even on a box with no LCD or even no buttons at all because I can build a virtual interface. I'm very excited about getting customers to see what AllJoyn can do using audio streaming and laying it all on top of a common protocol.

Silverback Learning Adds $2.5M To Try To Unify The Fractured Education Software Market With Its SaaS Platform

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 04:47 AM PDT

mileposts-home

Idaho-based education software provider Silverback Learning Solutions announced a new round of funding today, adding $2.5 million from a collection of angel investors to help fuel its continued expansion. The new cash will help Silverback’s Mileposts platform achieve greater exposure across more of the U.S., according to CEO Dr. Jim Lewis, and will help it speed up the process of executing its product roadmap by adding additional partner integrations.

For Lewis, the time is exactly right for a solution that can meet the needs of parents, educators and students and does so in a way that’s easy to understand, use and follow. When asked about the state of the education software market, which in many ways seems more fractured than ever now that new startups are vying with some of the few technology solutions in the space that have gained any real traction, he said that Silverback is aware of this problem, and that’s why they’ve taken a different approach to building product from most.

“The platform was truly built by educators and teachers in-district to solve for a problem that needed to be solved for the district in order to personalize every student's education in the classroom,” Lewis said. “Being built in a school district, we knew we couldn’t afford to over-engineer.  We put the software engineers together with a committee of educators and told them “If you can't build what these teachers and administrators need and will use you won’t have a job for very long.”

This approach to building the platform differs considerably from that of other companies, especially new ones, trying to tackle the education market, according to Lewis. Most Silicon Valley-based competitors treat the endeavor more like they would any other product, in terms of their development cycles, and he says that’s the wrong approach to take in this specific case.

“Startups in the Silicon Valley tend to build products with a fast-as-possible, “rapid prototype/rapid iteration” approach.  Silverback’s beginnings was really the opposite,” he said. “As found in any emerging market, we understand the increasing number of new companies and technologies can also create 'solution confusion', which is why we are especially excited to demonstrate our decade of partnership in educator collaboration… and product innovation.”

This round will mean that Silverback can push Milestones more effectively through accredited national distribution networks like the Association of Educational Service Agencies (AESA). Lewis says approval by these kinds of organizations is hard to come by, but now that Silverback has it, they’ll be able to more quickly and effectively get set up in AESA member schools with the new resources.

Silverback’s funders in this round include all of its existing board members. ATA Ventures co-founder and partner Pete Thomas participated as a personal investor, and Lewis says all of Silverback’s investors, who were also involved in the company’s $900,000 Series A round back in 2012, were chosen because they “buck the trend of VCs seeking a ‘cash-out’” and are truly invested in the process of helping educators with better tools.

Idomoo Closes $9M To Develop On-The-Fly Personalised Video Platform For Brands

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 04:02 AM PDT

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Back in 2010 SundaySky raised $9 million in a Series B to develop its technology capable of extracting content from any website and molding it into videos created on-the-fly. This enables consumer brands to engage people with personalized, real-time video. It’s clearly a hot area. Now another Tel-Aviv company is emerging with a competing product. Idomoo has now closed a $9 million funding round led by New York based Marker LLC. The startup provides a platform to create – you guessed it – personalised videos.

Companies can use the platform to generate massive numbers of personalized videos quickly. It’s being used by TIM Cellular in Brazil, Portugal Telecom and Generali, the global insurance company – serving tens of millions of videos in 16 different languages.

Idomoo President and co-founder Yaron Kalish says the investment will be used to accelerate its plans to expand its international operations: “As soon as companies allow Personalized Video to demonstrate a rapid return they start to enjoy the additional benefits of delivering a moment of "Wow" every time they talk to their customers.”

Samsung Just Killed Nokia's ‘True PureView' Windows Phone And It's Not Even Unboxed Yet

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 02:40 AM PDT

Galaxy S4 Zoom

Poor Nokia. Samsung doesn’t stop. It’s just announced a new iteration of its flagship Galaxy S4 handset which has a digital camera embedded in its rump. The Galaxy S4 Zoom has a 10X optical zoom lens on the back, giving it two clear aspects: from the front it looks exactly like Samsung’s flagship S4 smartphone. But from the back it looks like a point and shoot digital camera.

The result is a hybrid handset that squeezes the ability of Nokia’s carefully crafted PureView cameraphone brand to stand out. Sure, Nokia’s high end phone lenses might still have better — or at least decent — low light performance, but to the untrained consumer eye which device is going to look more capable in the camera department?

This one:

Or this one?

And that’s before Nokia has even got around to launching the long rumoured ‘true PureView’ Lumia. Which will possibly look a little like the original (Symbian-based) 808 PureView — so something along the lines of this:

If you’re going to ask consumers to lug around a bulky, heavy phone, might as well make it look as much like the camera they used to own as possible. Familiarity will aid the trade off, helping them justify carrying a much larger device because it clearly melds two functions. Meanwhile Nokia’s PureView brand has to shout even louder to get noticed. And no matter how great their camera algorithms are, a lens that relies on digital zoom alone simply doesn’t look as capable as an optical zoom lens.

As well as a 10X optical zoom, the Galaxy S4 Zoom has a 16 Mega Pixel CMOS Sensor, Optical Image Stabiliser (so it’s raining on the Lumia 920′s parade too) and Xenon Flash. So basically Samsung is pushing into all the areas where Nokia is trying its utmost to differentiate its flagship Lumias vs the Android-powered competition (i.e. low light photography and extra steady video). Nokia could still push the boat out on megapixel count — if it launches a 41MP Lumia — but that’s a nerdy specs game to play that’s unlikely to have an impact on the mainstream consumer.

Beyond looks and specs, Samsung has also embedded new camera functions into the S4 Zoom designed to tie hardware and software together. For example, a feature called Zoom Ring allows the user to activate an in-call photo sharing feature by twisting the zoom ring on the device and then capturing and sending an image to the caller via MMS — all without having to suspend the call. The Zoom Ring can also be used to activate the Quick Launch and Shortcut features to navigate to the camera and through its modes quickly, again by twisting the ring.

Of course, the S4 Zoom will stand and fall on camera performance — so there’s a lot riding on the quality of the optics and the smoothness of its functions. But from the outside, at least, Samsung has created a device that bellows a heck of a lot louder than Nokia’s Lumias do, for all the marketing cash Nokia has poured into PureView. Even if Nokia can produce some camera comparisons that rank its kit over Samsung’s, being technically better isn’t always enough in the fiercely competitive smartphone space. Having the marketing brashness and brass neck (and massive budget) to get noticed is what counts.

Samsung has not released full details of all the markets where it intends to sell the S4 Zoom but has confirmed the handset will be coming to the U.K. this summer, and the U.S. and other parts of Europe from Q4. Like Nokia with the original 808 Pureview, Samsung dabbled in this area before with last year’s Galaxy Camera but that device was a Wi-Fi/3G/4G connected camera only, so did not include a phone dialler function. The Galaxy S4 Zoom is a full hybrid of phone plus camera, and yet another iteration of a flagship brand. This is Samsung continuing its strategy of iterating its portfolio to saturate the market by pushing its hardware into all the niches, large and small.

Nokia, meanwhile — which used to follow a similar strategy to Samsung, i.e. by producing a vast portfolio of devices across multiple price-points and form factors — now has a larger mountain to climb to get its camera-focused flagship phones noticed by the general consumer. Since switching to the Windows Phone platform, Nokia has had to rein in its portfolio to fit the shrinking size of its business, no longer having the resources to spread its hardware so far. But even while it’s focusing its remaining energy on specific niches, like high end cameraphones, Samsung is harrying those efforts by pushing its fingers in all the smartphone pies.

Click to view slideshow.

WorldDesk Raises Further $1.25M As It Adds Support For Chrome, Skype And Kindle To Its Virtual Desktop

Posted: 12 Jun 2013 01:30 AM PDT

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Desktop virtualisation startup WorldDesk has raised $1.25 million in new funding, in what is effectively a follow-on round from existing backers Lough Shore Investments, the Belfast-based angel investment firm, and a number of unnamed California and New York-based angels.

The Northern Irish-founded, now Menlo Park, California-based company says the additional capital will be used to bolster engineering and sales in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Notably, however, it isn’t disclosing the total amount of funding raised to date.

Today’s funding news also coincides with what WordDesk is describing as a “significant overhaul” of its free ‘WorldDesk for You’ consumer offering. The virtual desktop, which utilises virtualisation technology to enable a user to take not only their files but also their apps and desktop profile from one Windows PC to another, has been given a completely new User Interface, faster boot time and other performance improvements, and perhaps most significantly, support for new applications.

These include Google’s Chrome browser, Skype for both voice and video calls, and Amazon’s Kindle e-Reader software — three apps that are likely to be high on a user’s wish list. The ability to take your apps and files with you falls down if your day-to-day wares aren’t supported.

To that end, WorldDesk enables users to store and carry their virtual desktop, apps and files via a USB drive, or even a smartphone or iPod with support for Mass Storage mode. The platform also enables access via the cloud, courtesy of collaborations with Dropbox and Box announced in February and June 2012, respectively.

As well as its free consumer offering, which presumably acts as a shop window and testbed for its technology, the company sells into the Enterprise Desktop Virtualization space. Its paid-for ‘WorldDesk for Enterprise’ uses the same core technology that powers ‘WorldDesk for You’ but also has a range of additional features to support and manage the creation and deployment of virtual desktops in the enterprise.
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