tech now |
- Google Is Reportedly Working On A Service To Help You Share Your Gadgets, Clothes And Other Stuff With Friends
- Cross-Network Ad Startup AdStage Acquires Semply, Raises An Additional $100K
- Amazon Video Games Store Xbox One And PlayStation 4 Pre-Orders Top 2,500 Per Minute Following E3
- Intuit Buys Elastic Intelligence, Will Use Connection Cloud To Help SMEs Build Apps
- Twitter Said To Be Preparing Location-Based Ads For Clicks And Bricks
- 3D Printing Arbitrage Is The New Hotness
- From The Makers Of Everyme, Origami Launches Its Private Sharing Service For Families
- HTC Courts Bully #2 From Weird Science For A Much-Needed Marketing Boost
- FAA Takes Further Steps To Abolish In-Flight Electronics Ban
- iFetch Is The Perfect Balm To Soothe The Conscience Of The Lazy Dog Owner
- Cheetah-Cub Is A Cat-Like Quadruped That's The Fastest Bot Of Its Size
- European Startups! Six More Days To Apply For The Disrupt Europe Battlefield
- Snowden Invited To Iceland By Founder Of Payment Provider DataCell
- New NSA Warrantless Tactics Reveal Little Room For Presumption Of Innocence
- Poshly Gets Serious About Becoming A Data Resource For Beauty Brands
- Line Expands Its Mobile Messaging Empire On Android With Third-Party App Downloads Incentivised By Line Coin
- Analytics Firm Adeven Raises $4.3M To Continue To Push Beyond The Mobile Install Metric
- Tencent, Naspers JV Ibibo Buys Redbus To Grow Its Online Travel Empire In India
- Tesla Shows Off A 90-Second Battery Swap System, Wants It At Supercharging Stations By Year's End
- Mud-slinging Behind The Scenes As Malaysia's Taxi Apps Duke It Out
| Posted: 21 Jun 2013 09:04 AM PDT  So here is one of the weirder rumors coming out of Mountain View we’ve seen in a while: as Google Operating System’s Alex Chitu reports, Google is apparently working on an app called Google Mine that is meant to help you share your real-world items like CDs, cars, bikes, gadgets or clothes with your friends. The service, which is apparently closely integrated with Google+ is said to be in private beta testing within Google right now. According to Chitu, the service also allows you to catalog your belongings, review them (which could be cool for purchases) and send requests to borrow stuff from friends. There also seems to be something akin to a wish list and a feature that will allow you to share a list of items you don’t want to share but just want to give away. All of this sharing, of course, happens on Google+. The service, the report say, is available on the Web and through an Android app. The app also supposedly includes a 3D viewer that’ll show you your objects, though it’s not clear how you would get these models into the app. Google is obviously not the only company interested in this kind of real-world tracking. Mine, a startup that launched last December and that probably doesn’t have the exact same name by coincidence, is also working on giving its users the ability to track the things they own, but with a focus on what they’ve bought online. This service, though, seems to be more focused on e-commerce than on the sharing economy. We have contacted Google for a response and will update this post once we hear more (though chances are, the answer will be some variation of “we don’t comment on rumors”). |
| Cross-Network Ad Startup AdStage Acquires Semply, Raises An Additional $100K Posted: 21 Jun 2013 09:01 AM PDT  AdStage, a startup promising to make it easy for small businesses and other advertisers to run campaigns across multiple ad networks, is announcing today that it has acquired Semply, an AdWords reporting app for the iPad. The startup was one of the more popular presenters at the Launch conference earlier this year, where it demonstrated a dashboard from which advertisers can run campaigns on Google, Bing, Facebook and LinkedIn. The platform optimizes ad spending across networks and includes recommendations based on data from similar and competitive companies — in today’s press release, co-founder and CEO Sahil Jain said his goal is to “make online advertising easy and accessible to the masses.” AdStage says it has raised an additional $100,000 from the Launch Fund, which was created by Yammer founder David Sacks and Launch founder Jason Calacanis to invest in the best startups at the conference. With the new funding, the company has raised a total of $1.53 million. AdStage describes Semply as “the world's first full-featured Google AdWords reporting application for iPad,” and it says that during the app’s first month, it was reporting on more than $110 million of ad spending for more than 1,500 advertisers. It was developed by a former member of Google’s AdWords team, Tom Chokel, who’s joining AdStage as a software engineer. (Sam Mazaheri, who’s also from the AdWords team, has joined as director of marketing and product.) The financial terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but the app itself has already been rebranded as “AdStage -Your Analytics Dashboard for Google AdWords,” and the company says it will continue to offer the app for free. As for its main product, AdStage Express, the company continues to bring more businesses into the beta program. |
| Amazon Video Games Store Xbox One And PlayStation 4 Pre-Orders Top 2,500 Per Minute Following E3 Posted: 21 Jun 2013 08:46 AM PDT  Amazon has seen a significant amount of interest in upcoming next-generation consoles, with pre-orders for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 skyrocketing in the wake of E3 and their initial availability on the site. The pre-order volume broke records for the Amazon Video Games store, resulting in a 4,000 percent year-over-year increase vs. console pre-orders during E3 last year. In just the first day of pre-orders alone, the Xbox One and PS4 managed to rack up nearly twice the value of total sales made via the video game store on Amazon throughout all of Black Friday in 2012, which is traditionally the top shopping day of the year in the U.S. Demand for the two new consoles was so strong that at peak volume, orders were coming through at a rate in excess of 2,500 units per minute, Amazon tells us. In typical Amazon fashion, the company isn’t revealing specifics about how many total pre-orders have been processed so far, but the company is saying in no uncertain terms that there’s ample demand. The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 occupy two of the top three spots in the Amazon Best Sellers list for Video Games, for instance (critical smash hit The Last of Us occupies spot two). Additionally, retail store pre-orders of the consoles appear to be strong, too, with some locations selling out of the Xbox One quickly following Microsoft’s decision to reverse its position on used games and DRM. Relative increases and high order per minute are all well and good, but the real story will be how many of these things actually ship. Nintendo had strong initial sales of the Wii U, but sales quickly tapered off after the holiday season and are basically on life support. But at least based on these figures, there’s still plenty of juice left in the old console market for now. |
| Intuit Buys Elastic Intelligence, Will Use Connection Cloud To Help SMEs Build Apps Posted: 21 Jun 2013 08:38 AM PDT  Some consolidation in the area of cloud services for enterprises: Intuit, the business services company that targets SMEs, is buying Elastic Intelligence, creators of Connection Cloud, a product that helps SMEs create DIY cloud-based apps. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Elastic Intelligence was founded by Roger Sippl, the serial entrepreneur who also founded Informix (sold to IBM for $1 billion), Vantive (now a part of Oracle) and Visigenic. He’s also an investor in IFTT, among other things. Sippl is joining Intuit as part of the deal. Intuit says that it plans to integrate the Connection Cloud technology with Intuit QuickBase, web database software platform. The idea, says Sippl, will be to attract more SMBs to the platform with the promise that apps will be easy for them to develop, “without the need for expensive developers or complex API programming.” Indeed, this move underscores a wider trend, which follows the larger one of the consumerization of IT, to make services like cloud computing more accessible to the common person — in this case the average SMB user, who will not be an IT professional per se and will be less likely to have the resources to hire engineers for jobs like these. “The Connection Cloud product is a breakthrough solution that makes it much easier to access and share data in the cloud,” Allison Mnookin, VP and GM Intuit, notes in a blog post. “Through this acquisition, we'll help solve a huge pain point: building applications that integrate and access data across multiple systems without having to custom code to increasingly fragmented APIs.” Sippl additionally hints that there will be more on the cards going forward. “The team is excited about what the future holds for us,” he says. “Together we'll be on the leading edge of cloud computing, offering a platform where resourceful employees can easily create customized SaaS applications that access and share the data in their other business systems to drive productivity.” There have been a number of other companies emerging that are trying to help take ideas like big data, cloud services and apps and create products that help make them more accessible to users less au fait with IT. Looker, for example, raised $2 million earlier this year from First Round and PivotNorth for their “sequel to SQL” to make business intelligence down to ground level. And GoDaddy, which also approaches the SME market but from another angle, bought mDot this year to offer those taking domains with GoDaddy an easy way to take those sites to mobile platforms. Prior to this, Elastic Intelligence had raised $3.4 million in funding from Alsop Louie Partners and |
| Twitter Said To Be Preparing Location-Based Ads For Clicks And Bricks Posted: 21 Jun 2013 07:44 AM PDT  Twitter is reportedly working on geolocated promoted tweets to help retailers target specifically consumers within spitting distance of their stores, according to AdAge. The location-based ads might be ready to launch as soon as later this year, the report claims, and would be the perfect means of delivery for spot deals designed to drive foot traffic to brick-and-mortar retailers and other businesses to nearby shoppers. This is an area where Twitter lags behind Facebook in terms of giving its advertisers access to targeting tools. Facebook has been doing zip code targeting for a couple of years now, while Twitter has yet to introduce anything along those lines. Lately, the 140 character-based social network has been rolling out a lot of new ad programs, however, and geo-targeted tweets are a natural fit for Twitter, which has an incredibly strong mobile user base and which already displays trending topics based on broad geographic categories. More companies are looking around for a why to take the rising interest in mobile devices and ecommerce to drive business back to traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. eBay just launched its own inaugural window shopping project in NYC, for instance. Location-based offers are something that a few different companies have been trying for years now, too, so it’s hardly risky territory for Twitter to enter. Twitter doing more hyperlocal targeting has potential beyond just bringing more foot traffic to stores, however. For a company with strong mobile traction, it’s a way to make discovery even more relevant, by surfacing trending topics at the level of the neighborhood for instance. That could offer even more refinement to tailored trends, which offers different tags based on a user’s habits and general location, to surface not only relevant ad content but things like relevant events as well. Specificity can only help with recommended content when it comes to location, across all verticals. Still, the appeal for advertisers will likely be the biggest part of the puzzle, especially as Twitter continues to grow its revenue engine. The question will be whether tweets or FB ads prove a better sales conversion tool for brands to leverage when it comes to getting people into local shops and stores. |
| 3D Printing Arbitrage Is The New Hotness Posted: 21 Jun 2013 07:40 AM PDT  As the 3D printing space heats up and home printers gain ground, there’s a new breed of startup that aims to grab the transactional costs associated with connecting printers and people. The first one I saw (and used), MakeXYZ.com, launched last February. Now the space is about to be inundated with competitors. 3D printers are still expensive. Like early laser printers, they are a major investment and their operation is sometimes fiddly. However, the value of a printer goes up immensely when owners are connected with people who need things printed, just as early users of Brøderbund’s Print Shop would soon become the desktop publishers of the 1990s. My own experience in the market has been enlightening. First, I’m on the first page for “3D printing Brooklyn” in Google, making me a go-to source for one-off prints. I’ve already printed a number of eyeglass frames for an artist in Williamsburg and even spent a night printing a huge architectural model for a student who needed a quick turnaround. It hasn’t made me much money, but it was fun. That last sentence, however, should give the folks trying to enter the 3D printer arbitrage space pause. Companies like Disrupt favorite 3dlt, Cuboyo, and a new offering from Printchomp are offering a method for customers to connect with printers. However, the potential for revenue is capped by the number of printers in the world and, what’s more, once printers and customers are connected these services soon become redundant. As much as I’ve tried, for example, to keep MakeXYZ in the transaction sometimes it has been hard. I suspect it’s the same problem that eBay had early on and solved, ultimately, by owning its own payment platform. “Shapeways is focused on being a vertically integrated printed owning all of the process and equipment. This method is inherently flawed, because a great deal of their current capital investments is focused around machinery that will essentially be dated very quickly,” said Joseph Puopolo, founder of Printchomp. “3D printing reminds me of the early days of the PC. While some people are so focused on the hardware elements of it, it is more about the software and making that hardware accessible to people. The crucial part is the connection component to speed adoption to the mainstream.” Can arbitrage rake in the big bucks? I’m not certain, at least not yet. Given the number of home 3D printers available – Makerbot, for example, has sold an estimated 22,000 units since its founding in 2009 – the opportunities are slim to scrape off the transactional fees associated with connecting makers to customers. Given that companies like Tesco and Staples are also looking into 3D printing in stores, the window on capitalizing on home 3D printers could be quite small. That’s not to say that this space isn’t important. I’ve learned lots about engineering and design in the few months I’ve been Brooklyn’s own 3D printing Gepetto and these services empower makers by creating demand for their products. Home 3D printers are far faster and far cheaper than the professional-grade machines used by services like Shapeways and they’re a great way to spur innovation in the 3D printing space by turning all of us into potential manufacturers. Additionally, 3D printers have enabled a new type of manufacturer to thrive. For example, Square Helper is a little piece of plastic that holds Square card readers in place when they’re plugged into iPads and iPhones. The creator, Chris Milnes, has a number of machines going all day and night to print these little lumps of plastic and is making quite a bit of cash. Hardware manufacturers needed brokers to connect them with clients. But this arbitrage breaks down when you’re not talking about 100,000 cellphones and instead are talking about a 3D printed crown for a cake shop. These connectors are important to the industry, I’m just worried about how long they can stay vital. |
| From The Makers Of Everyme, Origami Launches Its Private Sharing Service For Families Posted: 21 Jun 2013 07:20 AM PDT  Origami, the new family-focused product from Y Combinator-backed mobile social network Everyme, has now arrived after nearly a year of development. A spin-off of sorts, Origami takes some of the original inspiration behind Everyme – that people are looking for new ways to share outside of larger, more open social networks like Facebook – and tweaks the formula to address the needs of parents and families, specifically. “What we saw pretty early on was that probably 50 percent of the usage on Everyme is families,” explains Origami co-founder Vibhu Norby. “And that’s 50 percent of total Circles [Everyme's groups], but in terms of actual usage, it was almost 100 percent of people using it with their families,” he says. “We felt like we found the market, but the product itself wasn’t really intended for that.” Sustained by its $2.15 million A round, the company has been focused on Origami, a new product build from the ground up, since August 2012. Like Everyme, Origami offers both a web and mobile platform that allows families to connect with each other in a private group, and share photos. But the service goes further, too, offering tools for sharing videos, creating albums, and adding text-based entries for posting stories, recipes, or other notes. Launched into private beta this February, 90 percent of the families on Origami today are new parents. “They take the most photos, they share the most photos, and they have the biggest desire for privacy,” says Norby. “We really want to work with the parents’ workload – the idea that they take photos all day long, they take a lot of photos on weekends especially, and they don’t have time to share every single photo in real-time. They want to sit down when the kids are in bed, and think about sharing them then,” he says. With the new service, parents can set up a homepage for their family, and even grab a custom domain which Origami acquires on their behalf. (e.g. “JonesFamily.com,” “JonesFamilyPics.com,” etc.) The site itself, like Everyme, is beautifully designed and simple to understand. Buttons on the right side of the homepage direct users to share a photo, video or story, and another feature called “Family Request” lets users prompt other family members to share photos, videos, or stories of their own. Another section of the site lets users create photo albums, and allows for import from your computer as well as a number of other photo-sharing sites including Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, and SmugMug. These collections can also be shared via email, or back out to Facebook and Twitter. At launch, Origami also has apps available for iPhone and Android, understanding that not all family members may be using the same mobile platform. Here, users can also post and view the moments and photos albums, plus receive notifications when new content has been added. The service still has some kinks to work out – not bugs, necessarily, but places where the experience could be a little smoother. For example, if you go to upload from social services, there’s no way to retrieve the photos y0u haven’t already put into albums; it also can’t access those photos you’ve been auto-uploading from your phone to Facebook, Google or Dropbox (the latter two of which are not supported), and in some places on mobile, it’s missing multi-upload. But the product is still in development, and many of these features are still in the works. For example, the multi-upload function is just two weeks away. Overall, the site fills a niche that many other mobile-only or mobile-first startups have ignored: that parents may want more of fully-fledged social experience, rather that just an app. Often, new parents (and especially moms) turn to standard blogging platforms these days instead of traditional “baby books” to record those early memories, but Origami offers another option for that kind of sharing with a service that falls somewhere in between a Tumblr for parents and a private social network. Norby says the company’s vision is to re-create the experience of “home,” and that’s something which the real domain names it gives its users’ websites provides. “Facebook is not a home, let’s be honest – it feels like another person’s service,” he says. “[Origami] is private. It’s its own place somewhere on the Internet.” Origami is not free, but its pricing, like the service itself, is simple. There’s only one tier: after a free 30-day trial, it’s $5 per month (discounted to $50 per year, if billed annually) for unlimited photos, videos, members, and the custom domain. Really my only problem here is that I have to figure out how to import all the content I have spread out across all those other family-focused and private social services - Path, Notabli, Kidfolio, 23snaps, Tweekaboo, Hubble, Famil.io, Familiar, and others. Being an early adopting parent can be tough. |
| HTC Courts Bully #2 From Weird Science For A Much-Needed Marketing Boost Posted: 21 Jun 2013 06:59 AM PDT  Look, there’s no question that HTC’s in a bit of trouble, and it’s at least partially because of its marketing woes. While HTC just recently posted some weak quarterly financials, rivals like Samsung are flush with cash to pump into their marketing and ad budgets. That said, HTC is looking to make a big a splash as it can, and Bloomberg reports that the Taiwanese OEM has reportedly tapped none other than Robert Downey Jr. for a two year, $12 million smartphone ad campaign. Yes, really. And to be clear, they’ve reportedly inked a deal to feature RDJ’s likeness, not that of movie alter-egos like Tony Stark/Iron Man (though really, wouldn’t a tie-in like that make more sense?). Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan goes on to note that Downey will get final say over the ad campaign’s creative elements, which seems like it could go either way. He may be a gifted improvisor, but one could argue that the least thing HTC needs right now is yet another voice attempting to steer the company’s message. After all, HTC spent much of last year looking for a bold thinker to fill its CMO position, and went through two of the them before CEO Peter Chou decided to appoint someone from outside the company. That someone was Benjamin Ho who served as (among other things) CMO for Motorola’s Asia Pacific operations. Since he officially took over the job, he’s been talking up how HTC’s “quietly brilliant” days are over, noting to the Wall Street Journal back in March that a punchier approach was needed to stand out in a crowded sea of competitors and that the company planned to double its global marketing budget to do it. Naturally, HTC has never provided a hard number — last year the company said it spent a mere 1/6th of what Samsung does on marketing — so it’s tough to gauge just how much this $12 million deal could hurt if it flops. Here’s hoping RDJ doesn’t get embroiled in any new scandals any time soon. |
| FAA Takes Further Steps To Abolish In-Flight Electronics Ban Posted: 21 Jun 2013 06:58 AM PDT  In a move that’s sure to make gadgeteers cheer and worry worts grumble, the Federal Aviation Administration (lovingly called the FAA) is reportedly making plans to relax some of the rules put on passengers regarding in-flight use of electronics. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s not the first time we’ve seen promise of our Kindles during take-off, but it appears that the FAA is at the very least moving in the right direction. If you have miraculously managed to avoid commercial airline flight, the usual practice on a plane ride is to turn off all electronics during take-off and landing, usually during the climb to 10,000 feet. The rule was implemented in the sixties, when electronics more easily interfered with the electronic equipment in the plane’s cockpit, posing a clear threat to the safety of everyone on board. According to the WSJ, citing a draft by a high-level advisory panel to the agency, fliers will be able to use electronic devices during take-off and landing, but cell phone functionality is still banned. These amendments to the law are still up for modification, as they haven’t passed through the FAA yet, but it seems clear from the report that everyone agrees on one thing: the rules are highly outdated. The draft also cites that recent industry research shows that one third of passengers, at least once in their life, have forgotten to turn off electronic devices in the danger zone. It’s interesting to see the evolution of our technology enact grand-scale change to an industry that’s sometimes overly cautious. Especially when the transformation is relatively recent. It was only a year ago that the International Air Transport Association was claiming that gadgets in the sky are more dangerous than we expected. Still, it’s been a long time coming considering that iPads are used in cockpits and (as stated above) many fliers forget to turn off their electronics anyways. So who’s up for a game of Dots? |
| iFetch Is The Perfect Balm To Soothe The Conscience Of The Lazy Dog Owner Posted: 21 Jun 2013 06:30 AM PDT  A new Kickstarter project takes all the work out of playing fetch with your dog, replacing your throwing arm with a nifty gizmo and keeping your hands drool-free. It’s essentially a more basic pitching machine that requires no human intervention, but the iFetch looks like an incredibly useful tool for the play-obsessed pup, so long as it can learn the necessary trick to get the cycle started. At base the iFetch is a simple machine; dogs put a ball in one end, the iFetch winds up and launches it for retrieval. Once the dog figures out that all it has to do to get it to launch again is drop the ball in the big opening, the cycle is complete, and an infinite loop is theoretically created. From a dog’s perspective, we humans are merely flesh and bone prototype versions of the iFetch, ones that tire and grow weak. The iFetch needs only AC power, or 6 C batteries for portable use, not proteins, carbs and nutrients. It doesn’t get arm pain, isn’t squeamish about a dog’s mouth fluids or a little dirt, and, can throw balls at distances of either 10, 20 or 30 feet depending on how it’s set. The iFetch project creators, an Austin-based family called the Hamills (no apparent relation to Mark), suggest the iFetch for small or medium-sized dogs, likely because larger dogs might find the balls too small (could be a choking hazard for a Great Dane, for instance). In my extensive history of familiarity with dogs, I’ve also known some that don’t have any aptitude or interest at all in playing fetch, and it’s unlikely that the iFetch will change their mind on that score. But for those dogs that are fetch fans, there looks to be little not to love here, and the Hamills even suggest that you can use the iFetch with kids, too! That’s some hands-free parenting right there, and if you’ve got both dog and kid, the iFetch can instigate a ready-made Man vs. Beast competition at a moment’s notice. The iFetch has already met its funding goal, so there should be not that much standing in the way of the Hamill family shipping by their intended delivery date of November 2013. Pre-order backer amounts start at just $60, which includes the iFetch as well as 3 balls, and a plug-in AC adapter. One caveat if you do pick up one of these: never forget to leave it on if you have a dachshund that doesn’t know its limits and live in a hot climate, for instance. iFetch is tireless; your enthusiastic little dog is not. |
| Cheetah-Cub Is A Cat-Like Quadruped That's The Fastest Bot Of Its Size Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:59 AM PDT  We’re still a ways away from electric sheep roaming the fields pretending to bleat but robotics researchers continue to look to nature for four-legged inspiration. Meet Cheetah-Cub, a European Commission-funded research project, out of Swiss University the École Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne‘s biorobotics lab, that’s about the size of a house cat. As its name suggests, Cheetah-Cub takes its cues from feline morphology with strings replacing tendons and actuators sited in the legs to do the work of muscles. The result is a robot that runs like a cat and is, according to its inventor Alex Sproewitz, the fastest robot for its size (under 30kg). To look at it’s like a miniature and less scary version of Boston Dynamic’s terrifying Big Dog bot. The latter is likely faster, being much taller, but for a bot with a mere 0.15m leg-length Cheetah-Cub can really go some — hitting a max of 1.42m/s or almost seven body lengths per second. The Cheetah-Cub researchers have been aiming for fast gait first, with the bot’s design, but do also plan to work on improving its rough terrain traversing capabilities — including Big Dog-style “stand-up capabilities” – as the work progresses, says Sproewitz. Building legged robots capable of dynamic locomotion in rough terrain is a big challenge on both “the mechatronic level, but also for control”, he adds. So as scary as these bots inevitably look as they scuttle about on their test walkabouts there’s no fear of us humans having to outrun any of them yet. There’s also no danger of Cheetah-Cub heading for any kind of commercial implementation any time soon, of course. It’s pure research. The road to a future infested with mechanical animals requires a lot more robotics researchers to put their heads together in the interdisciplinary areas of biomechanics and computational neurocontrol. On the question of the role biology plays when designing legged robots, Sproewitz said he distinguishes between bio-inspired robotics, which is what the Cheetah-Cub project is aiming for, and the more faithful copying of bio-mimicking robotics. Cheetah-Cub’s tri-segmented leg design is therefore a bio-inspired “blueprint”, rather than a direct mimicking of a cat. ”We tested a leg design with the proposed pantograph [three-segment] structure, and a second (even more successful) leg design where several additional features were merged into,” he says. This same blueprint approach is how the researchers are approaching the bot’s locomotion controls. “Our implementation of a mathematical model of a central pattern generator (CPG) is a simplified version of what was identified in vertebrate and invertebrate animals. A full copy of e.g. a spinal cord would not be feasible: complex networks of neurons with very different functionality exist in the spinal cord of larger animals,” he says. “Many researchers dedicate their entire career in identifying fragments of those networks. “Again, currently we apply relatively simple models of CPGs. We assume that CPG networks responsible for locomotion have evolved, but have been partially maintained from simpler vertebrates (like lampreys and salamanders) up to humans. Therefore: Cheetah-cub robot is a natural continuation of Biorob’s research with its Lamprey/Salamander robot, and the implemented CPG control.” [Image: Biorobotics Laboratory, EPFL] |
| European Startups! Six More Days To Apply For The Disrupt Europe Battlefield Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:57 AM PDT  We’re gearing up for Disrupt Europe this October in Berlin October 26-29 – the very first time that our flagship event is coming to this part of the world. And we want all the startups out there in Euroland to throw their hats into the ring to be a part of it, by applying for a place in the Battlefield — our on-stage competition to find the most promising startups, showering them with attention, and then awarding the best of the best a $50,000 prize. The deadline for the Battlefield is in one week, Friday the 28th of June. Part of the magic of Disrupt is that it is a celebration of the very best of the tech world: you get to hear from founders and investors at their very pinnacle of success; and at the same time you get to see launches of the hottest new tech startups. The meeting of two is like an electrical charge. Sparks happen. Disrupt Europe will bring a uniquely European flavour to the event (ahem, flavor for those of you in the U.S.). Just as our speaker lineup will span tech leaders from around the world, Battlefield judges will include investors and founders from both sides of the pond: this means unparalleled exposure for the small, new, talented startups over here to give their new products the attention they deserve. Are you ready to apply to be a part of the action? Since this is the first time we’re running a Battlefield in Europe, here are a few tips we like to give startup hopefuls:
We are looking forward to seeing your applications — and seeing you in Berlin. À bientôt et bisous, TechCrunch Image: Checkpoint Charlie, Flickr |
| Snowden Invited To Iceland By Founder Of Payment Provider DataCell Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:45 AM PDT  Reuters is reporting that Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson, founder of colocation service Datacell, is offering to fly NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden from Hong Kong to Reykjavik in a private jet should the country grant him asylum. “A private jet is in place in China and we could fly Snowden over tomorrow if we get positive reaction from the Interior Ministry. We need to get confirmation of asylum and that he will not be extradited to the U.S. We would most want him to get a citizenship as well,” Sigurvinsson said yesterday. The Icelandic has remained mum on Snowden’s chances at asylum and stated that the only way he could travel to the country would be by gaining citizenship. Snowden is currently in hiding and believed to be in Hong Kong. DataCell is most famous for its lawsuit to force credit card provers to allow Wikileaks process donations. Iceland has traditionally been a supporter of Internet freedom and the small country is working to expand its energy-efficient server business by courting forward-thinking and sometimes controversial clients. Datacell, for example, has a green data center that uses the island’s geothermal energy to power machines and cooling systems. The country had 256 asylum seekers in 2013 and processes them on a case-by-case basis. |
| New NSA Warrantless Tactics Reveal Little Room For Presumption Of Innocence Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:28 AM PDT  The Guardian released new details about the National Security Agency’s spying practices, which reveals how analysts can store vast sums of data without a warrant. Specifically, if the NSA “inadvertently” stumbles upon anything related to a potential crime, it can store the data for later investigations. Quite reasonably, the Supreme Court has declared that law enforcement can charge citizens with a crime if it’s being conducted in “plain sight“–e.g. if cops see pot sitting in the passenger seat of a car during a traffic stop. That is, the presumption of innocence doesn’t apply to if police inadvertent witness a crime. Unfortunately, the scope of the presumption of innocence gets tinier as the government’s eyes get bigger. According to the documents, the NSA is required to “minimize” any surveillance of U.S. citizens, which is beyond the jurisdiction of the foreign-enemy-facing agency. If communication between telephone records or internet addresses appear to be wholly within the United States or concerning U.S. citizens, data will be “promptly destroyed.” However, phone records and internet data can be kept if the communication
In other words, if the NSA stumbles upon evidence that could stop a crime, they should keep it. But, applying this logic to digital information is quite different, because it allows police the ability to put eyes everyone. Indeed a ruling in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals warned that extending plain sight to digital evidence, “creates a serious risk that every warrant for electronic information will become, in effect, a general warrant, rendering the Fourth Amendment irrelevant”. Of course, the legal justification for the NSA spying is all top-secret, so we have no idea what specific precedent they’re using to justify the warrantless exceptions. Details aside, the lesson is clear: there are consequences to monitoring data broadly, even when if its well-intentioned. How we will square new technologies with the constitution is something we’ll have to grapple with as a society–if we could ever see the legal justifications, that is. |
| Poshly Gets Serious About Becoming A Data Resource For Beauty Brands Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:13 AM PDT  After a soft launch one year ago with no marketing campaign, the beauty data collection site Poshly has redesigned and is looking to pick up steam on its B2B offerings before beginning to raise its seed round in the fall. Poshly works like this: users take a short quiz to enter beauty product giveaways, answering questions like “Do you use eye cream?” and “My natural eyelash color is…”. The same question is never asked twice, creating a detailed “portrait” (Poshly’s term) of the user’s habits and physical characteristics. This data moves into Poshly’s B2B offerings, which is where they’re monetizing. Beauty companies pay for access to real time market data and can create micro-targeted sampling campaigns for their products through Poshly. It’s like a personalized sample subscription: the brand sends a product to a specific swath of Poshly users with characteristics relevant to that product. Pore minimizing cream for women who have said they have large pores, for instance. In the last year, the site has picked up 50,000 registered users and seen over 1 million questions answered, with an average of 65 data points per user. According to CEO and founder Doreen Bloch, that’s 7 times the personal attributes gleaned from a standard industry survey. For a company that initially only planned to keep its site up for a month to gather real consumer data for algorithm creation purposes, Poshly is taking steps to establish itself in the beauty industry. Poshly has landed its first big deal with a major beauty brand on its data insight tool, and although Bloch wouldn’t say who it was yet, it’s on par with Estee Lauder, Avon, and L’Oreal. An ecommerce feature is also in Poshly’s future, so when that quiz data gets funneled back at the user, they’ll be able to start monetizing on the B2C side. “It’s very compelling for brands because they’re used to a traditional market space that’s hard to customize and slow moving,” said Bloch. “One thing pointed out by brand managers is that there are really no market research companies focused exclusively on beauty. We’re able to profile people at a very specific level… African American women who buff their nails at least once a week and go to Sephora once.” Bloch said they are at work on a subscription portal that gives brands access to real time aggregated data and enables them to add in questions for consumers. User data is not presented on an individual basis, but rather collective and anonymous. For consumers, the redesign means mobile and tablet optimization, a clearer quiz progress bar, and an indicator of how many entries a giveaway has received to encourage gamification (users can already enter multiple times by answering more questions). They will also be able to enter their mailing address to opt in for free samples from beauty companies. So Poshly seems like a pretty smart company. But here’s where they really hit the nail on the head: targeting the online beauty community in the first place. Since they took to the web, beauty consumers have grown into an intensely passionate and vocal bunch. While some professional makeup artists create popular YouTube tutorials, it’s the everyday beauty fanatics that are voicing their likes and dislikes all day, every day. They’re always on the hunt for the next best thing, snapping up products at Sephora after work, testing them out, and projecting their opinions to the eager void. These women and men want to share every last nitty-gritty detail of their beauty routines. The website Into The Gloss is known for its extensive beauty rundowns from celebs, designers, and models, while YouTube is inundated with makeup tutorials that get as personal as young women taking viewers through their process for covering cystic acne. When Poshly asks its users if they have acne scarring or dandruff, they’ll be more than happy to answer, especially when the reward is beauty freebies. Frankly, I think they’d do it even if a giveaway wasn’t on the line. Moving forward into the fall, Bloch said the team is looking to connect with investors interested in personalization in the beauty sector. She declined to say how much they are planning to raise or how much they bootstrapped Poshly with, but did note that they are self-sufficient and growing for the time being. We’ll see who their big beauty brand deal is with, but if the redesign and new feature roll out goes well, they could be in a very good place come fall. |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2013 03:37 AM PDT  The new breed of mobile messaging apps — Japan’s Line and China’s WeChat, to name two — are already siphoning off social energy by adding features traditionally associated with full-fat social networking such as in-app walls where their users can post status updates and photos. Line has also been pushing to become an entertainment hub in its own right, by adding richer content such as apps that extend its brand into areas like gaming. Today, it’s pushing its Android app ecosystem even further by adding an incentivised third party app discovery feature. The new feature is called Line Free Coin, and is aimed at allowing Line to promote third party apps to its 170 million+ user-base — with downloads incentivised by virtual currency which users get when they install one of these apps. The virtual currency can then be used within Line’s ecosystem to pay for other goods, like its paid for stickers (“stamps”), thereby keeping them even more engaged within its ecosystem. Here’s how Line describes the workings of the new feature:
Line is partnering with Japanese ad network startup Metaps, which raised an $11 million Series B back in March, for the initiative. Metaps provides an SDK to Android developers so they can incorporate offers into their apps designed to increase engagement and improve app monetisation. Today the pair said they will become “global sales partners”, with Metaps providing the apps that will be listed on Line’s platform as part of the Line Free Coin push. It’s unlikely this feature will be coming to Line’s iOS app. Last month Line pulled a feature from that app that had allowed users to gift paid-stickers to other users by purchasing virtual currency to pay for the stickers. The virtual currency component had evidently fallen foul of Apple’s in-app payment rules which require transactions to be conducted through its store, allowing it to take a cut. On Android, of course, there’s no barrier to Line expanding its empire with virtual currency incentivised downloads — as it is now doing.
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| Analytics Firm Adeven Raises $4.3M To Continue To Push Beyond The Mobile Install Metric Posted: 21 Jun 2013 02:00 AM PDT  Berlin-based mobile ad and app analytics startup adeven today announced that it has raised a $4.3 million Series B funding round, provided by Capnamic Ventures, Iris Capital and existing investor Target Partners. The company plans to use the funding to help it continue to expand its product offerings, with the ultimate goal of focusing on the new metrics dealing with long-term engagement and customer retention that go beyond the once all-important install numbers. Another goal for adeven, which has done much in the past year including launching two products, adjust.io (an app tracking tool and KPI analytics platform), as well as apptrace (iOS app and publisher metric platform), adding on over 80 million daily active users during the most recent month, and tracking 500 million sessions in May (which is 300 percent growth month-to-month). Right now, the team is heads down on the adjust.io launch, but there’s plenty more in the pipeline, including continued international market growth, hence the new round. “The first phase of mobile advertising was really focusing on downloads, so were you could basically buy the cheapest downloads,” adeven co-founder and CEO Christian Henschel explained in an interview, describing adeven’s focus. “What we see now is that a lot of clients of ours are really starting to focus on what actually happens after a download; do the users ever open an app, what do they do within an app, and how long does it take before they first make an in-app purchase. Those kinds of metrics are very, very important.” Henschel says that a lot of customers these days, especially those in ecommerce, don’t care at all about cost per download anymore. After, if you’re paying less than a dollar per download, but those customers end up not even opening the app, then you’re not building a business; much better to pay more, say $5 or $6 per download, and land someone who’ll not only actually open your app, but keep coming back to it to spend money. Adeven’s product focus is on helping publishers identify and enable that kind of long-tail activity. Where adeven can help with this more than its competitors is in the background of the founding team, Henschel says. Most other companies in this space come from an affiliate marketing or advertising background, while the adeven co-founders, especially Paul Muller and Manuel Kniep, have a background more on the product side and lots of experience actually building mobile apps. That’s what positions them better in terms of understanding the needs of their customers, Henschel says. Going forward, adeven will be setting up its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco beginning in September or October, and is also looking into France and other new markets. It’s also putting more resources into its sales force and tech team on the hiring side, and has some big plans on the product side to help simplify the lives of developers who currently have to log into multiple different dashboards and integrate various SDKs to track all the metrics they want to watch. Adeven hopes to eventually deliver a single SDK, with a single dashboard to help its clients focus on the right KPIs, and will continue to build towards that goal. |
| Tencent, Naspers JV Ibibo Buys Redbus To Grow Its Online Travel Empire In India Posted: 21 Jun 2013 12:46 AM PDT  China’s internet giant Tencent and South Africa’s media powerhouse Naspers are doubling down on tech in India. TechCrunch has just found out that Ibibo, their domestic joint venture, has acquired redBus.in, a Bangalore-based online bus ticketing company that has become a dominant and disruptive force in how people travel in the country. Ibibo’s CEO and founder, Ashish Kashyap, tells us that the terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but there have been rumors of an acquisition in the works for some time, with prices in the region of around $135 million. The acquisition is interesting not only because it signals more activity for Ibibo, which is 80 percent owned by Naspers and 20 percent by Tencent, but also raises questions of whether the two plan to take Redbus’s platform and business model to new markets, like China for example. Kashyap confirmed to TechCrunch that the company will keep Redbus running independently and operating as a separate business. It plans to bring Redbus into its existing travel portfolio which includes a B2C travel aggregator, Goibibo.com, and TravelBoutiqueOnline, a B2B travel agency platform. He also reiterated that Phanindra Sama, the co-founder and CEO of Redbus, will be staying on and running the business under the new owner. “Yes. Absolutely. He is going to continue to participate with me and continue his role as the CEO of Redbus.” Rumors have been swirling for the past week on Redbus’ acquisition, since a NextBigWhat report quoted a source saying a buy-out was on the cards for an estimated $135 million (800 crores). Again, we don’t have details on the final sale price, but there are a number of signs of the company growing fast. Since the company's founding in 2006, Redbus has shot past the 2 million user mark, and last year hit 10 million in ticket sales, using a combination of online reservations with confirmations delivered via SMS, usable across handsets in this feature-phone-dominated market. It employs more than 600 staff, and sells more than a million tickets each month, across daily listings of 228,000 seats. It takes a commission from bus operators upon successful transactions. If the $135m figure is accurate, it looks like a healthy exit for the copany. Bangalore-based Pilani Soft Labs, the formal name of the holding company that owns Redbus, raised a Series A round from Seedfund of $1 million. A Series B from Seedfund and Inventus Capital Partners in 2009 was for $2.5 million, and in 2011, Helion Venture Partners led a Series C to raise $6.5 million. Invenus and Seedfund came in for that latest round, as well. As Drew pointed out when he visited Redbus in February, the company has been one to watch. Its chief product officer, Alok Goel, is an ex-Googler who approaches the business of organizing how people find and pay for bus tickets to a new level of big data. You can see how this model could be subsequently applied to the same situation further afield, or to different problems altogether. If that is a problem that ambitious Redbus—and now its ambitious owners Tencent and Naspers—want to tackle, it could be some time before that happens. “The Indian online bus market itself is under penetrated at less than 6 percent,” Kashyap told TechCrunch. That means more room to grow at home first. There is also the case with platforms. For now the majority of Redbus busines is online; the company only really started to make a push on mobile in February. With India as one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets at the moment, this could present a new spurt of growth and opportunity for the company. IDC estimated that only 2.5 percent of mobile phones in the country were smartphones in 2012. Tencent has also been keen to get in the Indian market. In July last year, it launched its mobile messaging app, WeChat, in India through Ibibo. When I visited its offices in Shenzhen earlier this year, the company spoke about how it conquered the domestic social networking scene, and its plans on expanding to more Asian countries. It’s started releasing TV ad campaigns in some of the countries in the region, and we can expect the company to continue to push its products in India. Ibibo is owned by Naspers’ online media arm, MIH. Last year, MIH led a Series D round of $150 million in funding in Bangalore-based e-commerce company, Flipkart. MIH also won a board seat on Flipkart as a result of the funding. Flipkart sells a wide variety of consumer products such as books and apparel. The acquisition of Redbus could have it start cross-selling bus tickets on the site to the growing numbers of Internet-connected Indians. Naspers has also declared it will up the ante on e-commerce, as online businesses grow for it in its home country of South Africa and abroad. Naspers chairman, Ton Vosloo, said during the company’s November 2012 earnings call that it is starting to place increasing focus on selling online. Last year, it acquired a majority stake in eMag, one of the biggest e-commerce sites in Romania. It also has a minority stake in Souq.com, an e-commerce portal in the Middle East, and bought 70 percent of Turkish shopping site, markafoni, in 2011. |
| Tesla Shows Off A 90-Second Battery Swap System, Wants It At Supercharging Stations By Year's End Posted: 20 Jun 2013 11:27 PM PDT  Tesla teased electric motorheads earlier this week by announcing an event that would show off its curious battery swapping system, and it wound up being even more impressive than most of us imagined. Long story short, Tesla can swap a Model S’s battery in just 90 seconds (that’s less time than it takes to fuel up a regular car), and you won’t even have to get out of your seat to do it. “We designed Model S from the beginning to be capable of swapping out the battery pack faster than you can fill a gas tank,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the company’s Hawthorne design studio earlier this evening. It’s not exactly a secret that the Model S’s battery pack can be switched out as needed, but the company saw fit to keep the details under wraps until today. For the process to run that quickly, you’d expect some technical wizardry to come into play and Tesla certainly delivers. Once a Model S owner parks the car on a designated spot, a platform raises from the ground to disconnect and grab hold of the depleted battery. The platform then descends back into the ground, dumps the battery, retrieves a fresh one, and rises once more to connect it to the car. Really, it’s one of those things you need to see: Frenzied drivers will still have to do some work though — they’ll have to drop off the battery on the return leg of their journey and pay an unspecified “transport fee”, though they can also choose to keep the battery and pony up the difference between the price between of the old and new batteries. The first swap-capable locations will be at supercharger stations located along California’s I-5, thought the company plans to bring them online at east coast superchargers in short order. Judging from the videos pouring out of the event the overall tone of the presentation was exuberant, and it’s hard not to see why: the company is looking at hot-swappable batteries for its electric vehicles as a way to put them on even footing with traditional gas-powered cars. Of course, that’s not to say that bringing those changeable batteries to the masses is going to be easy. Tesla has spent the over a year constructing supercharger stations along the east and west coasts in a bid to give their electric cars the juice to complete your average languorous summer roadtrip. Outfitting each of those stations with the ability to quickly replace batteries and get motorists back on the road presents quite a logistics problem. There’s the cost to consider — Tesla expects each battery swap station to cost about $500,000 to build, to say nothing of the maintenance and infrastructure costs that will come now that someone presumably has stop by each station and replace worn-down batteries. Still, Tesla already has plans to triple the size of its supercharger network — if every one of them is slated to get battery swapping stations, the prospect of trying to cruise the country in an electric car just got a lot less sketchy. UPDATE: Tesla has posted an official version of the video with a bigger focus on how darned fast the process is, check it out. |
| Mud-slinging Behind The Scenes As Malaysia's Taxi Apps Duke It Out Posted: 20 Jun 2013 06:00 PM PDT  There is an ongoing land grab for taxi drivers in Malaysia, with taxi app startups aggressively targeting the handful of taxi drivers keen to jump on a digital platform. Two year-old taxi booking startup, MyTeksi has been busy recruiting cab drivers over to its service. When I visited its offices two weeks ago, Aaron Gill, MyTeksi’s product and marketing head, said the company ramped up its efforts over the past six months to convince drivers to get smartphones and data plans. It’s had to sell the benefits of getting hooked up to a service that allows drivers to receive jobs, rather than have to drive around looking for passengers by the side of the road. So far, MyTeksi has recruited about 2,500 drivers covering the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, as well as Putrajaya, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. The platform receives one booking every eight seconds, or 10,000 per day, which nets the company about $3,100 (10,000 MYR) daily. Several competitors have joined the fray: Hopcab and TaxiMonger launched last year. But things really started heating up in the past month, when Rocket Internet debuted its Easytaxi service in the country. Since Easytaxi’s launch, there have been rumors of its staff approaching cabs with MyTeksi decals and getting them to hop over to Easytaxi instead. Sources close to the companies said that Easytaxi’s staff have also helped delete the MyTeksi app from drivers’ handsets, instead replacing them with Easytaxi’s app. Joon Chan, managing director at Rocket Internet did little to deny the rumors. “Drivers are free to use any app they want on their phones. It’s only fair since they pay for their own phones and data plans,” he said. He added that only about 10 to 15 percent of the drivers in the country have smartphones, indicating that the addressable pool of drivers is even smaller. But MyTeksi may be deploying its own anti-competitive tactics. Chan produced a photo of the MyTeksi app apparently prompting the driver to remove the Easytaxi app. Chan said Easytaxi started driver acquisition on the 12th of May, and has been putting up kiosks at gas stations to recruit drivers. The startup is expanding quickly—in the past month, it’s added five new employees each week, he said. Gill of MyTeksi, commenting on Rocket’s entrance in its space, said: “They’ve made us better and sharper. We are growing our fleet at a faster pace now, enhancing our service levels and will continue to work hard to maintain our edge. “We must be doing something right if a well-funded and experienced organization such as Rocket Internet finds this space worth their time and investment.” MyTeksi is in the midst of raising its Series A, and has just expanded to Manila. Under Rocket Internet, the Easytaxi service is in 10 different countries now. The App Gap For Booking Taxis An old 2008 survey by The Expat ranked Malaysia’s taxis the worst in the world. And other accounts of errant behavior continue to pop up in the media, suggesting this hasn’t changed since. When I was there two weeks ago, most of the taxis I flagged insisted on charging a flat (and significantly higher) fee, refusing to use the official meter for the ride. Some of the locals said being cheated or even robbed by cab drivers was still an issue in the country. Gill said taxi apps have been helping to regulate drivers by registering them to the service, and allowing them to be tracked as they travel. Another factor contributing to the opportunity is the lack of competition with any large taxi company in Malaysia. In Singapore, for example, the main cab operator, ComfortDelGro, produces an app for its fleet which covers more than 50 percent of the local market. The majority of cabs in Malaysia, however, still rely on radio transmission for job calls. The only cab operator that has produced an app appears to be Sunlight Taxi, but it only has about 10 percent market share. Its app was released this year. |
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