Friday, June 14, 2013

tech now

tech now

eBay Gets Physical With A Street-Side Sales Kiosk For Kate Spade Saturday

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 09:00 AM PDT

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On the heels of eBay CEO John Donahoe's statement at TC Disrupt in April that the company would be using mobile technology to push further into offline commerce, eBay's Retail Innovation team unveiled its second project: four pop-up storefronts created for the fashion line Kate Spade Saturday that will be live from June 8 to July 7. Using a touch screen on the store window, shoppers can select a product and schedule one-hour delivery via text message.

The Kate Spade Saturday storefronts are something like a cross between a billboard and a vending machine, with a large touch screen built into the glass. They're built to be noticed: the brick facade is painted a vivid yellow, and the DynaScan monitor on the touch screen, which is bright enough to compete with sunlight, is a total attention-grabber at night. And they're noisy. Bells and lights go off at intervals to grab passers by.

A shopper steps up to the touch screen on the store window and navigates through the products available, which are on display behind the glass. If she wants to buy, she enters her cell phone number and receives a text asking to schedule delivery. In one hour (the promised time), a courier drops off the purchase and takes the payment through PayPal.

The touch technology, mobile, warehouse logistics, delivery, and mobile payments — that's all eBay. The bags and jackets, obviously, are Kate's.

It's a cute shopping experience, if you're into acting as a very public poster girl for the Kate Spade Saturday experience. The gimmick of stepping up to the plate and picking out a dress won't form a local fan base of repeat buyers, but that's not the point. It's fun, you'll do it once, and you'll walk away feeling like Kate Spade Saturday gets your life… at least that's what the brand is trying to do with this fairly obvious ploy to grab the casual shopper.

Kate Spade Saturday launched in March as an online-only business in the US (they have four stores in Japan). There is clearly a point to having their first American brick and mortar installation be such an expensive, circus-like show of screens: it wants to leave a good first impression of tech-savviness.

The fact that only 30 items are available for sale, a fraction of what shoppers can choose from online, makes the purchase much more symbolic. It's not really about getting a great product — if it were, you would have the option to look through the entire stock to make sure you got the one you liked best — but rather about buying into a tech service show. This is a proof of concept and an effort by a traditionally low-tech industry – fashion – to dip a toe into something a little more electronic.

Keep in mind that parent company 5th & Pacific Cos Inc is going to be focusing a lot of effort this year on Kate Spade, now its biggest brand. Reuters reported on May 2 that 5th & Pacific's net loss in the first quarter narrowed to $52.2 million from $60.6 million the previous year, largely because Kate Spade sales rose 63.1% to $141 million (Juicy Couture, also a major 5th & Pacific line, reported sales down 10.7% at $98 million).

eBay, for its part, is looking to get in on brick and mortar sales by showing retailers that they can incorporate technology into the in-store experience. TC reported in October that eBay would be focusing more on mobile, personalization, and PayPal, all of which fit in with the shoppable storefront concept.

Retail Innovation's first project with Toys 'R' Us used an in-store touch screen as a search bar and a filtered gift finder, both of which led to a search results page of products in stock, sorted by what's selling the best. It then gave users a map that they could push from the screen to their phone using a QR code, coupons included.

Of course, it's not all about the customer. EBay’s head of Retail Innovation Healey Cypher said that these customer engagement tools function as a heat map: they can tell Toys 'R' Us where their customers are moving after they've left the screen and what they're buying. Tracking shoppers' behavior feeds in to the "personalization" prong of eBay's plan. They can also create a picture of the the “Kate Spade Saturday” shopper by filming the shoppers as they check out. Cameras in the glass (just above head level and very visible) record the sidewalk traffic.

"We know how many people are walking by, and of those people who turn up square and look at the glass, that's a CPM. That's an impression. Then if they touch it it's a CPC. But then also the time that it takes to do these things, what happens between them, catalysts that get them to engage. If they buy it and schedule for delivery," eBay’s Cypher said. "When in the history of retail has a retailer ever had info about what's happening outside their walls, before transaction?"

In the end, this is a gimmick – but with a serious purpose. EBay knows it can’t cater to Beanie Baby fans and scammers forever and Paypal is up against plenty of real-world payment systems. By making these strategic partnerships they can, in the end, break out of the online and into the real.

Koge Looks To Shake Up The Vitamin Industry With Subscription Service, Personalized Combinations

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 08:58 AM PDT

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Vitamin sales is big business: in the U.S. alone in 2012, it was worth $9.3 billion in sales, and the opportunity is only growing, as more consumers turn to preventative medicine and health strategies in the face of tightening budgets and less access to health care. Toronto startup Koge wants to revolutionize the process of vitamin sales, using the recently-popular subscription goods model, along with leveraging data analytics for personalization.

Koge thinks that there are inherent problems in the way vitamins are currently sold and distributed, with problems at the sales level (customer service reps recommend expensive, big-name brands over other cheaper options that are just as good), busy schedules prevent people from sticking to a supplement regimen, and there’s an overabundance of choice and not enough help to sift through all that information. Koge wants to address all those pain points, starting with the process of choosing what works for each individual and making ordering easy.

Users of its website select a specific track of vitamins they want to take, depending on their goals or identity. Right now, Koge is keeping that to a very simple formula, by offering a choice between four different categories: one for general energy, one for women, one for men and one for protein content specifically. The aim was to get some level of tailored product out the door quickly, but still keep things simple, but in the future Koge’s goal is to launch personalized vitamin selections tailored to each individual, something which Koge co-founder Alex Hyssen says the startup should be ready to launch sometime later this year.

Hyssen is another of the startup’s key differentiating factors, since he brings to Koge years of experience in the family business of supplements and vitamins. His family is behind the Herbal Magic chain of vitamin-powered weight loss clinics, and his ties to the vitamin industry mean that unlike others, Koge can access supply cost effectively and at smaller scales, so they don’t need to worry about competing with big volume orders. Koge is vertically integrated with North America’s largest vitamin manufacturer, Hyssen says, and that company is investing in its next round of funding, too.

Finally, Koge has just secured a relationship with Loblaws, Canada’s leading grocery store chain, to provide Koge products in-store. They’ll offer the same kind of tracked vitamin shopping experience, but from store shelves, as part of the pilot project. It’s big in terms of getting the brand out there and earning consumer trust, which is key for anyone trying to sell health and wellness products on the internet.

Koge still has big challenges: it needs to figure out the right way to make sure that customers actually follow through on sticking to a regimen of taking vitamins, and Hyssen says they’ve been testing things like text-based reminders, phone calls, virtually anything and are still looking for the right solution. But it’s off to a good start, and plans are quickly coming together for the imminent U.S. launch.

Samsung Flaunts Its Smartphone Lead By Opening An R&D Center On Nokia's Doorstep

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 08:54 AM PDT

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Not content with following Nokia’s past playbook, by saturating the mobile market with countless iterations of its smartphone hardware, pushing a whole Galaxy of gizmos at every price point and form-factor fancy you can think of, Samsung has gone one further. It’s opened an R&D centre in Espoo, Finland, right on Nokia’s doorstep. Literally on Nokia’s doorstep. If you were in any doubt that Samsung is the new Nokia, this really has to be the final call.

Samsung said the R&D facility, its first in Northern Europe, is being located in Finland because of “the excellent technology development eco-system in Finland”. Which is basically another way of saying ‘thanks to Nokia, and the tech skills of the local people who likely acquired them working at or with Nokia at some point over the past several decades’. Nokia’s presence in Finland has helped build a thriving startup culture, thanks to the pool of local tech skills and experience but also as Nokia has had to reduce its own headcount it has actively encouraged entrepreneurship through its Bridge Programme by supporting former employees leaving to found their own startups. The irony now is that Samsung is looking to tap into an ecosystem Nokia has been helping to build up.

The R&D center — which is part of Samsung’s strategy of ramping up spending in this area this year, up from the circa $10 billion it spent on R&D activities last year — will focus specifically on development of open source software and “advanced technologies in the domains of graphics, web & security for digital devices such as smartphones, tablets, Digital TV and PCs”.

Another irony here is that as Samsung has gobbled up the marketshare Nokia used to own, the Finnish former phone giant has been forced to pull in its horns – to operate with far fewer resources than it had during its mobile heyday (when it too could produce a phone for every price-point and pocket) — thereby limiting the types of devices it can push into. Which in turn leaves room for a company like Samsung to target more development cash at other device type categories, like tablets, a category where Nokia used to play. In a sense, Samsung is just expanding into the footprints of Nokia’s past success.

Samsung said it plans to recruit at least 50 experts in the various technical domains that the R&D center will focus on in the coming years. It also plans to “steadily grow” the facility, pushing research into whatever tech areas it decides it needs to down the line.

As well as thumbing its nose at Nokia by tapping into local Finnish talent, siting an R&D Center in Northern Europe will give Korea-based Samsung a base to plug into a regional network of research and academic organisations, as well as getting close to European startups and businesses.

Europe has been a stronghold for Samsung smartphone hardware, so building closer ties to the region makes sense to futureproof its lead here. A lead Nokia has been trying to dent with its Windows Phone-based Lumia smartphones. Evidence of a slight uplift in sales for Windows Phone in markets such as the U.K. may be another factor pushing Samsung to drive deeper into Nokia’s territory — hence its stated intention now, with the Espoo Centre, to “actively build relationships and co-develop cutting edge technologies with our Finnish partners”.

Path Is On The Path To New Funding, Approaching $1B Valuation

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 08:26 AM PDT

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We’re hearing from multiple sources that private social network Path is raising a new round of funding that could value the company as high as $1 billion. According to one source, the company is in the process of seeking between $75 million to $100 million in new funding from investors.

We hear investors are approaching Path after a period of high growth, but as of yet no one has tossed out a valuation number or an amount that has stuck.

These reports come amidst controversy surrounding Path’s growth tactics and rumors that it is seeking an acquisition (which could still be the case as an alternative to raising more money). To date, Path has raised nearly $42 million in funding from VCs like Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and Redpoint (among many others).

Path, which now has 12 million users, was founded in 2010 and is led by former Facebooker Dave Morin. The startup has had a frenzied past few months. The company’s app was accused of spamming users, had its hand slapped by Facebook and was forced to pay an $800,000 fine to the FTC over uploading user address books in their entirety to its servers.

Last year, Path raised $30 million at a $250 million valuation, so $1 billion is a pretty big jump for the social network. Google offered over $100 million for Path back in 2011, but Morin famously turned down the acquisition in favor of raising more money.

With Waze, Google Gets Access To Social Mapping Data - And A Possible Lawsuit From Nokia

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 08:04 AM PDT

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The Google deal to buy Waze — reportedly for $1.1 billion — is a strong move for both companies to enhance their respective mapping services, and to help monetize them better. But it could also serve as the tipping point for Nokia to turn the screws on getting Google to take licenses for certain mapping patents that it owns, or else face legal consequences.

According to a source familiar with the situation, Nokia has been eyeing up taking legal action against the search, mobile (and mapping) giant for a while now, and the Waze deal could be the tipping point for that to finally happen.

“Nokia has held off on a suit against Nokia for Google Maps for several years just waiting for the right time to approach with an overall suit covering Android and Maps,” our source says. The right time, it seems, could be based on two patents owned by Nokia, 7,628,704 and its extension, 8,070,608, along with a possible third, 7,092,964, which is more related to location-based mobile advertising. Nokia has more than 9,000 patents both filed and granted in the area of spatial relationships (some covering software, some hardware).

On the first of these, the ’704, our source notes that this specific patent covers Waze directly, in relation to the fundamental technology behind encouraging users to collect spatial data without paying them via money, with a specific call-out for games. “This is at the core of Waze,” the source says.

“It is very likely that they would file on the spatial data side against Google,” our source added. “The Google Maps and Maps API only impacted them somewhat because of what Microsoft, Garmin, Samsung and so many others pay but Waze likely pushed it too far from a risk standpoint.”

The ’704 patent was first filed in 2006 and granted in 2009. From the abstract, it looks like it was conceived for gaming first, and location tracking second:

A method is disclosed for collecting geographic data during game play. A game scenario includes an activity for the game player to perform. The game player may be given an incentive within the context of the game for performing the activity. The incentive may be of non-monetary, monetary or in-game value. Performing the activity within the context of the game directly or indirectly results in the generation of data that is collected and used for the purpose of updating, adding to or supplementing a geographic database.

The patent and the related patents all come from a trove that Nokia picked up as part of its $8 billion acquisition of Navteq, which forms the basis now of its here mapping division.

That division is still loss-making, but has also been highlighted as a core part of Nokia’s mobile strategy. That is both for their own devices now running on Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, and as a way of moving in as a third-party player for IP for other mobile companies. After losing its position as the world’s biggest phone maker after the rise of Apple’s iPhone, Android and a number of strong handset makers (like current world leader Samsung) that have build devices on Google’s OS, maps are arguably one of Nokia’s strongest products.

On another track for revenue generation, CEO Stephen Elop has noted that Nokia will make $653 million in patent licensing revenues this year, and it is “watching closely” for more targets.

One of the lead inventors named on the patent, Kurt Uhlir, ran Navteq’s skunkworks for years, along with board-level projects. His patents are used for a number of video games including Flight Simulator X from Microsoft (going back to the gaming element of these patents).

Nokia does not details of all its patent licensing deals, but Facebook, Foursquare, Garmin and Motorola are among those who are believed to have already licensed the ’704 and related patents, some possibly in connection with licensing mapping data or in exchange for providing other data to Nokia.

As you can see from this SEC request to Apple for details of its patent licensing settlement with Nokia, the exact terms of what licenses get granted to whom are not required to be made public (and that, by default, could raise questions of whether Apple also has access to this patent). Another company that could fall into that category is TeleAtlas, now owned by TomTom (which provides some data to Apple for its mapping product), which also settled with Navteq over patents (but also sued it for antitrust violations).

Asked for a response, Nokia would not confirm anything to TechCrunch. “We don't comment on our legal strategy,” a spokesperson said. “We also don't discuss whether we may or may not have been in talks with other companies. But, as a long term innovator in this industry, and with a portfolio of around 10,000 patent families, it should be no surprise that we have a number of patents for leading edge technologies.”

Plum District Has Acquired AngelPad-Backed Spotivate For An Undisclosed Amount

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 08:00 AM PDT

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Plum District, the hyperlocal deals site built by moms, for moms, has just acquired Spotivate, a startup led by ex-Googler Anthony Lee and former Telenav engineer Jorge Chang that launched out of AngelPad to offer local experiences to parents. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

For those of us who don’t have miniature terrors traipsing through our lives, here’s a little background on Plum District: The company was founded in 2009 by Megan Gardner as a local deals site that is not only dedicated to moms, but actually powered by moms. Plum District lets local moms hop on board as regional sales people who would then source the deals in their neighborhood for the site.

The company saw a number of large investments, namely from Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst, which has led to a total of $30.6 million in funding over the past few years. Plum District even dabbled in some acquisitions, picking up DoodleDeals Inc. and Chatterfly in 2011.

But then the hyperlocal deals market went through its own winter, as clarified by Groupon’s more recent tribulations, but Plum District held on. The company reorganized a bit, with a relatively large round of layoffs in August of 2012, and then founder and CEO Megan Gardner stepped down, making room for ex-Googler and longtime member of Plum District’s leadership team Susan Kim to take the helm.

Things have been quiet, but seemingly smooth, at Plum District ever since.

The Spotivate acquisition is the first big deal under Kim’s leadership, but seems like a strong fit and a good way to expand into experiential goods like summer camps, ballet lessons, etc. The deal began as a partnership between Plum District and Spotivate, wherein Spotivate content was being distributed through the Plum District network.

According to Kim, the open rate on emails increased by 50 percent, and the click-through rate doubled. That said, it wasn’t long before both Spotivate and Plum District were discussing a merger of some kind. Lee relays that after Plum District made an offer, a number of other offers came in as well (alongside the option to continue Spotivate), but Plum District felt like the right fit.

Both Lee and Chang will move over to Plum District, as VP of Product and VP of Engineering respectively, and both seem pleased to get back to developing excellent products instead of running a business from the top-down.

I Think We Can All Agree This Is Better Than Apple's iOS 7 Redesign, Right?

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 07:32 AM PDT

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Lisa Frank. Dayglo Barbie. Rainbow unicorn. Fisher Price. A mess, trouble, confusing. Marketing department. What are, “words used to describe the iOS 7 redesign,” Alex? Now that the Apple keynote beer goggles have worn off, the polarizing makeover of Apple’s iOS 7 operating system is starting to sink in. Surely, this is not it? This is not done, right?

Given its “beta” label – which Apple actually uses correctly – there’s a good chance that many of our quibbles with the disjointed OS will be fixed by the time of its public release later this fall. But one of the most upsetting things about the makeover is unfortunately one of the most visible: the icons. They’re inconsistent, they seem rushed, and in some cases, they’re just downright ugly.

Apple has billions of dollars in cash just sitting around, and it couldn’t buy itself a set of nice-looking icons?

And don’t give me that “they only had eight months” crap. I know plenty of people who would forgo eating, sleeping and sunlight for less than even a single billion to pump out better icons than this in that same time frame.

Well, Apple’s misstep is Dribbble.com’s gain. The online community for designers is having a moment as its users try to fix all Apple’s mistakes. And some of these third-party makeovers are actually quite good, too.

One, in fact, is now becoming one of the most-viewed images on the site. Ever. The iOS 7 redesign here, created by 20-year old UI/UX designer Leo Drapeau has, as of today, reached over 97,000 views.

Drapeau, who’s currently living in Paris and is pursuing his Bachelor’s in Web Design at a school called EEMI, says he made his version of the redesign in a few hours.

“I was following the WWDC keynote, and I was really excited about the overall UX and UI changes and evolutions in iOS 7, but the icons of the homescreen bugged me,” he explains. “So, I just wanted to refined them a little, to make them cleaner and more harmonized, but not to reinvent the whole design.”

Drapeau downplays his work, humbly adding, “there’s really nothing revolutionary about this post. I think it just got popular because it was one of the first redesigns on the site.” However, Dribbble.com’s co-founder Rich Thornett tells us that Drapeau’s image here is the second-most viewed attachment the Dribbble.com website has ever had. Meanwhile, another in the set is currently the third-most viewed shot ever, and just a couple hundred views from reaching #2.

The student designer’s work has clearly struck a chord. The set of iOS 7 images now has ten pages and hundreds of comments, most of them positive and some offering tips as to how the design could be improved a bit further with minor tweaks.

Overheard at TechCrunch while clicking through Drapeau’s work: “I didn’t realize how much I missed the drop shadows.”

And on Dribble.com: “nice,” “better,” “bravo,” and “perfect!”

Drapeau says he’s been making little updates based on some of the remarks  - for example, with the third version of the redesign, he modified the Compass icon entirely, bringing it closer to the real one.

Since then, he has also uploaded a final update, with all the previous changes and other improvements to the Clock, Stock, Compass, and Mail icons, and also added a Dark mode and Light mode, depending on the wallpaper you use.

(You can see an earlier version of the design above, and the newer one with the more Apple-like Compass beneath it).

Since the post, Drapeau says he’s received several work inquiries, mainly from individuals and startups, both French and American, as well as internships and job offers from bigger companies. But he’s continuing with his schooling and side projects for now.

iOS 7 isn’t all bad by any means, though it has a number of issues to address between the beta and the release. Many of those are under-the-hood changes, however, or less obvious quirks like the confusing lockscreen arrow or that you have to swipe emails right to left to delete, for example. But the homescreen icons – the imagery that everyone can relate to, designer or not – should have been given more attention before being trotted out on stage as the next big thing.

This is not Apple perfection. We expect more.

Image credits, obviously: Leo Drapeau

Neighborhood-Oriented Social Network Nextdoor Adds Mayor Bloomberg And NYC As Its Newest Users

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 07:09 AM PDT

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Nextdoor, the company for creating private social networks accessible only to your local neighbors, has had a lot of people join since it first launched in 2011: More than 14,100 neighborhoods have been created on the site, and more than 100 new neighborhoods are being added each day. But today Nextdoor is set to announce a new user that’s special — the Big Apple itself.

Today, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is set to announce a partnership with Nextdoor to adopt the service as a citywide communications tool. At the moment, the Mayor’s office is the first to sign on for using Nextdoor to communicate with NYC citizens about things like neighborhood safety issues, natural disasters, and local events. Other NYC city services are set to roll out use of the site in the coming months.

In a phone call this week, Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia said that no money has changed hands as part of this partnership — it’s been an organic approach much in the same way that a city would opt to create a Twitter or Facebook account. New York is actually just the latest (and largest) of more than 120 cities that have partnered with Nextdoor to use it in an official capacity.

He also said this wasn’t a case where the city had to be sold on the utility of technology and the social web. “The city of New York is incredibly innovative, starting with the government itself, which has really embraced the technology revolution,” Tolia said, pointing to Bloomberg and NYC’s chief digital officer Rachel Haot as leaders as particularly tech savvy leaders. “You hear that cities move slowly and have a lot of bureaucracy, but in establishing this partnership the city of New York has been as well-functioning as an organization as any company in Silicon Valley.”

In a prepared statement Bloomberg, who will announce the Nextdoor partnership in person at the company’s San Francisco headquarters today, is quoted as saying:

"Partnering with Nextdoor is an important step in our adoption of strategic technology that better serves New Yorkers. Nextdoor gives New York neighbors an easy way to connect and communicate with those who live around them. It also provides the City with a direct line of communication to residents about important and often critical updates."

EU Digital Commissioner Vows To Protect European Citizens from PRISM

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 07:05 AM PDT

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Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission and the Commissioner for Europe’s Digital Agenda has vowed to protect EU citizens from privacy invasion by outside entities like the PRISM monitoring program run by the NSA. Speaking to TechCrunch TV (interview above) at Founders Forum, an annual meeting of global entrepreneurs, Kroes said “We need to protect our people.” She said the EU needed to be “clear and transparent over data protection and that the emergence of the existence of PRISM was a “big wake up call” for the privacy of EU citizens. “We don’t want to be dependent on the US or China,” she said.

She said the was an “opportunity for the EU to take the lead” over the issue. Indeed, she went further, saying there would now be business opportunities for EU companies in the realm of data protection.

Kroes was speaking ahead of her initiative to receive a “Startup Manifesto” put together by some of Europe’s leading entrepreneurs.

The so-called “Startup Europe Leaders Club” is designed to provide guidance to the Commission on what needs to be done to strengthen the environment for web entrepreneurs to start in Europe and stay in Europe. It consists of founders including Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon of Spotify, Kaj Hed of Rovio and Niklas Zennström of Atomico, among others.

The Manifesto calls for a number of pan-EU initiatives including the creation of an EU start-up visa; getting every EU country to appoint a chief digital officer; encouraging people to start businesses WHILE they are studying; teaching entrepreneurship from a young age; and making is easier to hire and fire employees – something that remains much tougher in Europe than the US.

ZEFR Launches BrandID To Give Advanced YouTube Analytics And Tools To Brands

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 07:00 AM PDT

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Over the past year, Los Angeles-based startup ZEFR has been using its technology platform to help content owners identify and monetize videos on YouTube that have been uploaded by fans. Now it’s hoping to extend its technology to brands with a new product called BrandID, which enables customers to figure out just how many of their fans are discussing their products on the video network.

Once upon a time, the company was known as Movieclips and specialized in helping Hollywood studios monetize the long tail of *ahem* MOVIE CLIPS that they had gathering dust in their vaults, by putting them on YouTube and serving up ads against them. Then last summer, it rebranded as ZEFR as it is focusing on providing a robust Content ID system for finding videos that users have uploaded and monetizing them on behalf of content owners.

ZEFR has found a whole new market for that Content ID technology in major brand marketers who will now have a suite of analytics tools for identifying their influence and return on investment from campaigns on YouTube. Before BrandID, brands only had analytics for their own individual channels, so they could measure just the viewership on videos they uploaded.

But of course, YouTube is full of content that users upload in which they talk about their favorite brands. With BrandID, marketers will be able to see what all those users are saying about their brands, identify their biggest and most influential fans, and connect with them directly.

BrandID gives them a comprehensive dashboard that combines brand alerts, discovery, and insights into videos people are publishing that mention them. The insights section shows the number of videos and channels and views that user-generated videos mentioning those brands and products, notable YouTube creators and highly ranked, most engaged videos mentioning them. The dashboard also provides comprehensive competitive analysis, enabling marketers to see how their brand stacks up against competitors among fans in the same category.

The platform allows them to reach out to fans who are creating videos directly. They can send messages from their YouTube accounts as a way to reach video creators and possibly start working with them to amplify their videos. Marketers can also view comments and respond to commenters on the channels of third-party creators through the dashboard.

In addition to deep analytics tools, the platform can also be customized to provide alerts when new videos are created about a certain brand, or a competitor. It can even keep tabs on trending video memes across YouTube — you know, just in case a brand marketer wants to jump on the Gangnam Style bandwagon or whatever.

While BrandID is just entering beta, it’s already gotten a few big brands using it: P&G’s COVERGIRL and Pantene are launch partners for the SaaS-based platform. The company sees a huge opportunity to get more onboard in the coming months as BrandID really takes off.

BRIKA Wants To Tell Maker Stories, Help Handicrafts Become Haute Couture

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 06:45 AM PDT

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Toronto-based startup and Extreme Startups Spring 2013 cohort member BRIKA is a sort of Etsy meets Fab company, with the goal of taking the current maker movement and helping it reach a broad and discerning audience. The company has already managed to attract a strong creator and member community, but the big vision is to now leverage its ecommerce start to take advantage of the current “bricks and clicks” trend in traditional retail.

What BRIKA does is provide provenance for artisan goods; it’s like Etsy, in terms of sourcing its wares from handicrafts makers and independent creators, but it emphasizes the story. That means you know who made what you’re buying, and why they’re driven to do so in the first place; it means you know where the materials came from, and how they were made; it means you’re connected to the goods you purchase, rather than disconnected. It’s almost Marxist. Except for the part for it’s all very much a for-profit business designed to capitalise on current consumer trends.

Co-founders Jennifer Lee Koss and Kena Paranjape both understand consumer shopping trends very well. Koss and Paranjape are both experienced retail professionals, and Koss came across Paranjape’s blog once while sourcing info for a previous job. She found that Paranjape’s passion for curating and surfacing the best in unique clothing and accessories was something that could apply on a much grander scale. The two women then developed the idea behind BRIKA, which funnels products through a multi-stage process that curates good candidates, develops them from a story perspective, presents them to consumers in a unique way, and then brings them to market.

I spoke to Paranjape about the process, which seemed to me to be fairly labor-intensive, compared to automated or mostly self-run systems like the ones employed by Etsy. She says that it is indeed labor-heavy, but that’s what makes the difference between it and blind approaches. And because the idea is to foster a small community of quality makers for now, the workload is entirely manageable by a small team. And the team should be able to grow in pace with new demand, she says, with new curators being added to help the maker community expand in step with shopper interest.

Currently, there are 150 U.S.-based makers profiled and featured on the site, and so far the company has seen around $70,000 in sales since late last year. It has just finished with a prototype mobile app, which was required after it saw that 45 percent of its traffic was coming from mobile devices, and has also just secured partnerships with Lauren Bush, Donna Karan, Madewell (a division of J. Crew) and Hudson’s Bay. The plan now is to help retailers capitalize on online shopping trends, while also giving maker culture some shelf space show time.

BRIKA is doing well, and says the market it’s targeting is worth $30 billion per year, but it still has to contend with the well-established Etsy to forge out this new space. Luckily, consumers seem to be focusing more and more on stories, and less on products, so it could ride that wave to success.

Hey Silicon Valley, The British Are Coming (To Learn Your Startup Secrets)

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 06:32 AM PDT

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Doing a startup in Europe is challenging for all sorts of reasons. But one key issue is cultural — even if the gritty realism of European entrepreneurs is ultimately tied to the relative difficulties of raising larger investment rounds in the region. The can-do attitude of Silicon Valley is undoubtedly fuelled in part by the amount of investor money flying around. But that’s not the only reason. Failing in the Valley isn’t seen as an end point in the way it can be in Europe.

Being exposed to a little of that ‘fail and move on’ and ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude is a key part of the rational behind a new internship programme for U.K. computer science graduates that’s placing them with Silicon Valley startups for a year, starting in August. The Silicon Valley Internship Programme (SVIP) is aiming to get some of this Valley chops to rub off on 15 students from nine U.K. universities by giving them real-world startup experience in the place that knows how to do it best.

Programme founder, Michael Hughes, explains the idea for SVIP sprung from a conversation he was having at a meeting in San Francisco involving British entrepreneurs, UKTI reps, the British Ambassador and British Consul General, talking about — inevitably — why Silicon Valley has such a successful startup culture, and how the U.K. can emulate the Valley vibe.

“The meeting was to discuss why Silicon Valley was so successful and what could be done in the UK to try to stimulate similar levels of entrepreneurship,” he tells TechCrunch. ”A big theme coming from the entrepreneurs was that the prevailing 'feeling of the possible' in the Bay Area meant that you really felt like you could give things a go in this environment and hence, a lot more people take the leap to start a business knowing that even if they fail, they can have another lash.

“In Britain however (generalizing terribly), there is more of a tendency towards critique of ideas and it is harder to have your career recover from a failed venture.  So if your view is that entrepreneurial success comes with a big dollop of luck, the more people having a go the better.”

What better way to instill a sense of the possible in young coders than by exposing them to startup life for a year. After the year is up, SVIP grads return to the U.K. with a year’s worth of experiences under their belt and — hopefully — bring back a little bit of the West Coast positivity to contribute to the local startup scene.

“Ultimately the goal of the programme is to have a cadre of top engineers who combine the technical expertise with the experience and attitude to start companies once they return to the U.K. after the programme.  My dream is that a few of the guys on the programme get together and start something in the U.K. when they go back, supported and advised by the network they will have developed in the Bay Area,” says Hughes, himself a startup co-founder.

His startup, LoopUp, is one of the nine that will be accepting the 15 paid student placements in the first year’s intake. The other startups are EdgeSpring, Nimble Storage, EAT Club, PostRocket, Caring.com, viagogo, GuideSpark and Coffee Meets Bagel. Hughes says he got the others involved by reaching out to friends in the Stanford community and also hiring a Programme Manager to do more outreach.

“All the guys are coming out on a one year visa which requires them to return to the U.K. after.  Realistically, we all know that some of them will find a way to stay in the U.S., but even if they do, I don't see this as a disaster for the U.K. After all I am a Brit, living in the U.S. for 17 years, yet with our start-up we employ 40 people in London and have fostered strong technology interchange between the companies,” he adds.

One of the students who will be flying out to California in August is Paul Wozniak, who is graduating with a Computer Science degree from the University of Kent. Wozniak applied for the SVIP in January, and had four interviews with two startups before securing his placement at LoopUp.

“My goals for the year are very much aligned with the goals of the programme: to learn the entrepreneurial skills in the trenches of Silicon Valley. I hope that by the end of the year I will pitch a company idea to an investor. One such idea is based on my final year project and is about making medication a worry free experience for everyone using technology,” he says.

Asked whether he intends to return to the U.K. after a year on the West Coast, he says he does ultimately want to contribute to the U.K. scene. ”I feel so much gratitude towards all the people and the community around these places [where I went to school] and I want to give back also. So when I return at the end of the year, if starting my own company is the best way to do that, then that is exactly what I will do.”

Of course a handful of grads aren’t going to change ingrained, prevailing British attitudes to failure on their own. But as Hughes’ example underlines, the network of people they will plug into will reach much further. So although the SVIP is a small initiative, its heart is definitely in the right place. And its impact might hopefully end up being greater than the sum of its inaugural parts.

Dots Updates iPad App For Improved Full-Screen Gaming

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 05:54 AM PDT

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It was but two weeks ago that Dots, the highly addictive connect-the-dots-style betaworks-backed game, migrated the app to the iPad and added multiplayer support. Today, however, the company has a brand new update that may address some of your woes on the iPad.

The update lets users zoom to 1.5X or 3X the game view, so that the gameboard and the dots fill out more, or all, of the screen real estate on the bigger iPad.

“When we first pushed the iPad app, we thought that people would want to play the game at the same size that it was on the iPhone,” said Patrick Moberg, co-founder. “But we soon realized that our users had been playing Dots for iPhone at 2X mode (zoomed) on the iPad, and that they wanted the same blown-up experience with the iPad version of the app.”

Clearly, the Dots/betaworks team is ready to iterate as quickly as possible to keep up momentum.

When the app first launched on May 1st, I called it the most beautiful mobile game I’d ever seen. Matt joined in the chorus, and in a week’s time, a million other people had downloaded the app too.

And just as Paul Murphy explains in the interview, Dots cares much more about engagement than user acquisition, which is good news considering the app has seen well over 300 million games played.

And surely acquisition, as well as engagement, must be growing as the gamemaker introduced multiplayer mode. However, that’s not to say the new multiplayer functionality is without its flaws. As it stands now, users must pass and play from a single device. Both users play the exact same board, as opposed to leaving anything to the luck of the draw.

As Greg points out in his post, this alone makes the game that much more competitive and addictive, but there’s still room to grow. Moberg didn’t go into too much detail, but did explain that the team is thinking more and more about how to improve multiplayer mode in a way that doesn’t just copy other games out there, but does it in an entirely different way.

The update is available now on the App Store.

If Office Hits The iPad, Even Fewer People Would Buy A Surface

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 05:45 AM PDT

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Remember this ad? The ad where Microsoft attempts to position the iPad as a chopstick-playing toy and the Surface as a PowerPoint-editing machine?

Yeah, that’s why we can’t have nice things.

Microsoft just released Office the the iPhone. It lets users edit any Word, Excel or PowerPoint document. As the oh-so-catchy name states, Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers is Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers only, meaning the app is essentially $100 a year. It’s not “Office for iOS.” It’s just a way to open and partially edit Office files for those saps paying for Microsoft’s pricey cloud platform.

Judging from the screenshots, it looks like a quality application. It supports rich media content like charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. And since it works through MS’ cloud service, all changes saved on the phone updates the original, too.

But forget about a native iPad app. Microsoft can’t kill the only legitimate selling point of its struggling Surface tablet.

Microsoft might have moved enough Surface tablets to not call it a flop, but the tablet was far from a blockbuster hit. Ever since launch, Microsoft has supported it with constant ad campaigns touting the tablet’s productivity chops. The latest TV spot pits the Surface RT against the iPad, deeming its offering as the superior choice for those that need to get any work done. However, in Microsoft’s world “work” equals editing a PowerPoint deck. This is something you can do quite handily on the iPad using Keynote and, in fact, I suspect Keynote users are well aware of the benefits of their superior platform.

Middle manager infighting must be rampant at Microsoft. One on hand, the company has to properly support its Windows 8 ecosystem and that means position its tablet offering as the only MS Office solution. But then, likewise, a true mobile version of MS Office would better help fight Google Docs. In this case the Office team lost, relegating Office to just the iPhone and in a truncated version at that. Windows 8 wins, the Surface stays slightly more interesting, and everybody in Redmond wins.

Only the consumer loses.

Songbird Sings Its Last Tune As Music Service Runs Out Of Money And Plans To Shut Down June 28

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 05:35 AM PDT

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Songbird, an early digital music service that aimed to compete against the iTunes, Pandoras and Spotifies of this world with an open source platform, is shutting down on June 28, after running out of money and failing to find a buyer. The startup, backed by Sequoia, Atlas Venture and Phillips, had raised at least $11 million and is planning to formally announce the news on its own site later today.

“Unfortunately, the company has found ourselves unable to fund further business operations and as of June 28, 2013 all of Songbird’s operations and associated services will be discontinued,” CEO Eric Wittman wrote in an email to TechCrunch. A post in Digital Trends on the closure notes that a sale of the company had fallen through at the last minute.

Songbird is the flagship product launched back in 2007 by Pioneers of the Inevitable, first as a desktop open source alternative to iTunes, and more recently as an online, Android and iPhone app that also offers ways to stream music, incorporating different audio formats and making an especially strong emphasis on higher-quality audio FLAC files, and offering YouTube-powered access to playlists. The online social music service, songbird.me, was attracting over one million users each month, Wittman says.

The open-source code behind Songbird was used as the basis for other services that could then customize the look and features (and subsequent monetization) around it. That code is still available to download, but it’s not sure for how long, and it’s also the basis of a service, Nightingale, that Wittman and Songbird are now recommending as an alternative to Songbird’s users.

It looks like POTI will close along with the demise of Songbird. It is unclear how many employees will be affected. We have reached out to the company, as well as its investors, and will update this post as we learn more.

You can see how it may have been hard for a company like Songbird, which lost its founder Rob Lord back in 2009 amid a bid to improve its monetization, to compete and get enough scale in the margin-squeezed world of digital music.

On the download side, companies like Apple’s iTunes and Amazon are oversized players. Meanwhile, mindshare (and marketshare) in streaming music services go to Spotify, Pandora and to a lesser extent companies like Rdio and Deezer; and there are yet more, well-backed names wading into the game every day, including Apple’s iTunes Radio and Twitter Music.

Update: that announcement is now live, and Wittman has also answered some of our questions. He says that plans for Songbird now are to work on placing the team members to, “do our best to transition customers and to find a buyer for the assets. We’ll be working hard to do all of this over the next few weeks.”

He notes that the company, after a restructure in 2012, had 11 employees. “These folks were rock stars in their respective areas and loved working together as a team and did so very well.” It was during the restructure in 2012 that Wittman, who had been SVP of product, became CEO. He’s been with the company since June 2011.

“We currently have enough [cash] to sustain minimal operations through end of the month,” he adds. The company had been in the middle of pivoting the business from being one primarily focused on licensing our Desktop product to 3rd parties to one focused on offering premium features such as remote music collection access; music in HD formats like FLAC; and advertising. “Sadly we were unable to make this transition in time before cash ran out.”

Microsoft Releases Free Office For iPhone App, But Only For Office 365 Subscribers

Posted: 14 Jun 2013 04:28 AM PDT

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Microsoft Office has finally arrived on iOS in an official app released by Microsoft itself, and it’s free to download, but to use it there’s a considerable catch: you need to be an Office 365 subscriber. Microsoft’s Office 365 costs $99.99 for a one year subscription, and Redmond has really been pushing the SaaS-style version of its desktop productivity suite lately, so the iPhone app is a natural way for it to sweeten the deal for prospective buyers.

Microsoft calls the app its “official Office companion optimized for your iPhone,” and the software provides Word, Excel and PowerPoint viewing, editing and creation. Documents are stored in the cloud on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro or Sharepoint servers, making them easy to access again from the desktop or other sources, and the app works together with Office 365 to show you your most recently-opened documents on your computer automatically. The app also lets you look at and edit documents attached to emails on your iPhone on the go.

Microsoft doesn’t look to have skipped many corners building this app, with support for charts, animations, shapes and SmartArt graphics built-in, as well as a resume feature to pick up editing exactly where you left off on your desktop. There’s offline functionality that commits changes back to the original once you find a connection, and comment sharing and review for collaborative editing.

Office for iPhone isn’t optimized for iPad yet, thought it’s hard to imagine that isn’t close behind. And while you require an Office 365 subscription, you don’t actually have to have the desktop version installed anywhere to use this mobile edition, so it is a fairly standalone product. You will need at least an iPhone 4, or a 5th generation iPod touch, running iOS 6.1 or higher, however. And the subscription requirement is sure to be a bummer for many, but the counterpoint of that is that the mobile version is completely free otherwise.

Lastly, this is U.S. only for now, but should roll out to other countries over the next little while, according to Microsoft, so if you are geoblocked, just have a little patience.

Online Banking Startup Simple Finally Makes It Easier To Move Money Into Your Account

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 07:58 PM PDT

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Simple has made some serious strides since it opened up to the public last year, but there’s one thing the service has just never been that great at: transferring money from one bank account to another. According to a post on the official Simple blog, those days are finally over — users can link their Simple accounts to existing bank accounts to move their money around.

Frankly, it’s about time.

Let’s back up a minute here first: why is this such a big deal? To answer that, we have to look at how the Simple onboarding process works. When you first set up a Simple account, you’re given the chance to make one initial funds transfer from your old bank account — that’s it. Before the external accounts feature was added, users who wanted to subsequently transfer funds from their existing bank account to a Simple account had to come up with some clever workarounds to get the job done.

My personal favorite: if you linked a Square account to a Simple bank account, you could swipe a transaction to the tune of however much money you wanted to move using your own debit card (and in case you were wondering, yes, I’ve done this a few times).

Last November, Simple made that process just a little easier by adding a mobile check deposit feature to its apps — then you could just write yourself a check and deposit it directly into your Simple account. Better, yes, but it still wasn’t as seamless as it should have been.

Now, at long last, the process is finally as simple as the company’s name implies. You’re prompted to punch in your account and routing number (you can do this for up to three accounts), after which you’ll have to keeps your eyes peeled for two small transactions to confirm that everything was copacetic. Once all that’s squared away, it’s all the fee-free fund transfers you can handle. Implementing the feature isn’t just a savvy move, it’s a downright necessary one. Simple has spent the few years trying to convince people that it’s a friendlier, more direct way for them to manage their money, and the company has so far managed to win over more than 35,000 users.

That’s not too shabby considering how carefully the team has been handling the invitation process, but if Simple really wants to win over the masses, it has to more effectively blur the line between what it can do and what more traditional banks can do. After all, Simple is still a startup — a smart, well-funded one with the support of a major bank, but a startup nonetheless. With this external accounts feature, Simple isn’t just giving a users a way an easier way to get started, it’s giving them an easier way to bail out if the service just isn’t right for them. Consider it a safety net for those wary of diving into the strange new world of app-centric banking.

For what it’s worth, this whole thing just about has me ready to take the plunge. Since launch I’ve been shunting a few bucks out of each paycheck into my Simple account for random geeky purchases, but now I’m seriously thinking of ditching my old bank entirely. Of course, this is exactly what Simple wants since it makes money in the form of interest margin — if more people get comfortable transferring all their money into their Simple accounts because the process is now so much easier, Simple may soon be laughing all the way to the bank.

Makerbot Updates Their Design Software And Firmware To Make 3D Printing Easier

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 07:51 PM PDT

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Makerbot, besides making a darn nice printer, offers some amazing software for laying out and printing objects. Their product, Makerware, is free to download and use and supports some other 3D printers including the FlashForge. The new software adds some interesting features to the package including improved support structures and rafts.

For example, some objects require support material to maintain stability while printing. Before, Makerware would dump lots and lots of plastic over the face of an object to maintain support. Now, however, it only adds supports where they are needed, reducing the amount of plastic needed. The software has also added improved “rafts” that help keep the objects steady on the platform during printing.

While this update is only useful for folks who use Makerbot it does point to one of the company’s great strengths: excellent software that works amazingly well with the hardware they sell. Form Labs, the creators of Form One, offer a similar software that also helps prints come out of the machine with a little more efficiency. These hardware plus software marriages ensure that the experience is far more streamlined and professional than it was in the past. Plus, you can print little kittens on the inside of your objects with this new software.

The firmware update to Makerbot printers adds a percentage left/time left readout to the printer and adds the ability to change filament colors during printing.

CenturyLink Acquiring AppFog To Move Into Platform-As-A-Service Market

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 07:22 PM PDT

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According to a source within the company, CenturyLink is acquiring AppFog, a platform-as-a-service company. Terms of the deal were not revealed.

AppFog will become part of Savvis, a Century Link company that offers cloud infrastructure and hosted IT services.  Savvis did not reply to requests for comment about the acquisition. AppFog Co-Founder and CEO Lucas Carlson would also not comment about the deal.

AppFog is a Platform as a Service that can be integrated on-premise into a company’s data center. It is also available as a public service. The company was originally founded as PHPFog before changing its name early in 2011 after receiving $8 million in funding.  In August of last year, AppFog acquired Nodester, a Node.js platform. Since last year, the company began focusing more on a private PaaS strategy. AppFog competes in a crowded market that includes Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry, Red Hat’s OpenShift, ActiveState’s Stackato and Apprenda.  Heroku and Engine Yard are two of the leaders in the public PaaS market.

For Savvis, the AppFog deal is a move to extend beyond being a pure infrastructure play. AppFog will help the company move its offerings higher up the stack, differentiating by appealing to enterprise developer teams who have increasing buying power in the booming app economy.

The deal makes sense, considering that earlier this week, a Savvis spokesperson sent me a pitch asserting that Savvis would be making a major PaaS announcement next week at GigaOm’s Structure conference. The email from the spokesperson said the news would “shake up the cloud industry.”

I’m not so certain about that shake up.  AppFog is a smaller PaaS player and Savvis faces tough competition from Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure and a number of other companies including AT&T, Terremark and Sungard.

Inside The Storenvy Pop-Up Shop, Where E-Commerce Meets Brick And Mortar [TCTV]

Posted: 13 Jun 2013 06:20 PM PDT

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Some people are afraid that online shopping will lead to the death of brick and mortar retail (and a spate of empty storefronts on our streets.) But Storenvy, the online marketplace that lets independent merchants sell their wares in their own digital storefronts, is one of a number of web companies that’s making a reverse commute of sorts — bringing their web businesses into meatspace.

Storenvy opened its pop-up shop in San Francisco with the intention that it would be a temporary 30-day thing. Four months later, it’s become a pretty popular destination, and the company’s CEO Jon Crawford now says that he is looking at opening more brick and mortar locations elsewhere in the U.S. in the months ahead. In a way, the pop-up store is an extension of the online experience — transactions are still done through the web, not with a traditional register, and each vendor is completely in control of his or her own spot.

It’s a cool thing to see in person, so we brought along the TechCrunch TV cameras to get a look at how Storenvy has translated its online vibe into the real world and talk to Crawford a bit about the company’s strategy. Check it all out in the video above.
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