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The impending bot backlash
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Rob LoCascio
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
Everyone seems to be jumping on the bot bandwagon. Chatbots are not only being touted as the end of apps, but also the next paradigm in human-computer interaction — and, if you believe the hype, the end of many customer service jobs, too. But bots are unlikely to live up to these outsized expectations anytime soon. The fact is that the AI technology used to power chatbots simply isn’t mature enough to come close to replacing humans for anything but the most trivial tasks — the same ones that are already well-suited to apps. With expectations set so high, be prepared to see a lot of frustration and disappointment as reality sets in. We increasingly expect brands to adapt to our lifestyles and engage on our terms. That includes embracing messaging as a first-class communications channel. Conversational user interfaces and B2C messaging have the potential to radically evolve consumer interactions, but if brands rush to hand off their customer interactions to algorithms, they’ll be making a costly mistake. Conversational interfaces are only as good as the communicator on the other end. If bots are only serving as text-based substitutes for automated phone systems, then we’re just providing consumers with another channel for frustration. They’ll learn to immediately type the chat equivalent of dialing “0” to get a human. Meanwhile, customer care executives will be disappointed when the promised savings and efficiencies fail to materialize. This is unfortunate, because a negative consumer reaction to bots threatens to tarnish the perception of conversational interfaces and B2C messaging as a whole, similar to how 800 numbers have become associated with ineffective IVR systems and long hold times. The medium is the message, and if messaging a brand means providing a bot that can’t understand consumers, you are basically saying to consumers “we don’t care.” Bots purport to be a paradigm shift in consumer communication, combining cutting-edge AI and deep learning with the ability to integrate into existing messaging platforms. But the AI powering these bots is already available in other implementations — and it just doesn’t work reliably yet. We’ve all experienced this in the form of both virtual assistants (Siri, Cortana, etc.), as well as the ubiquitous and frustrating automated systems used in telephone customer service. While they have their uses, most of us are painfully aware of the limitations of both. Sure, bots eliminate the voice recognition and voice synthesis steps, but those aren’t where the real challenges lie. Understanding (and speaking) the words isn’t hard; it’s understanding the meaning that’s the challenge. It doesn’t take long to realize that these technologies can’t really comprehend what we’re saying. They primarily listen for keywords. While researchers have made significant progress in areas like natural language processing and context awareness, those advances don’t necessarily offer more practical utility in the implementations that are available today. In real-world use, even mildly complex sentences don’t register. Try asking Siri for the weather in a friend’s city. It doesn’t work, even if that friend’s address is in your contacts. The second problem is access to information. Even if an AI algorithm can understand the question, it doesn’t necessarily have the answer. This information is often stored in massive legacy databases that are configured to handle specific queries. Bots aren’t plug and play, and making this information accessible will take significant engineering work. At present, the bots that are even remotely useful at non-trivial tasks are largely . While the industry continues to promote bots as a panacea for everything from app development to reducing headcount, companies are quietly employing human labor to buy time while developers attempt to implement AI solutions that can work autonomously and scale as promised. The software is supposedly learning with every interaction, but whether or not these bots ever graduate to real utility remains to be seen. Bots can respond to simple questions like balance inquiries, but they’re handing off the heavy lifting to people, as will be the case for the foreseeable future. In this respect, bots offer some utility — acting as a front-line receptionist for customer care professionals by regurgitating basic information, while triaging everything else. As a tool in the customer engagement arsenal, bots have value, but right now, they don’t come close to living up to the hype. Nevertheless, the more information our automated apprentices have to learn from, the better. So brands that want to leverage bots tomorrow should begin by building rich archives of conversational data today. Even in this more realistic hybrid scenario, the devil is in the details of the implementation. Right now bots aren’t very smart and — the worst of both worlds. Waiting for a response from a human is, if not enjoyable, at least understandable. But waiting for something that’s advertised as a computer seems absurd, and infinitely more frustrating. Avoiding the disconcerting uncanny valley that emerges when machines try to mimic humans is a delicate balance. Bots will need to queue and distribute requests seamlessly to their corporeal counterparts without the conversation feeling schizophrenic. We don’t expect traditional apps to care or exhibit empathy, but if software acts human, then consumers are going to hold it to the same standard as humans. By setting the bar so high, anything less than perfect execution stands to be a huge disappointment — and brands can’t afford to shirk responsibility for the customer experience by adding a “beta” label, regardless of the technology behind it. Using messaging as a playground for experimental AI is a good way to alienate consumers at a time when meaningful connections are an increasingly scarce and valuable commodity. Hopefully bots evolve enough that human agents can be freed up to spend their time helping the people who need it most. In the meantime, brands would be wise to treat those interactions as precious opportunities for engagement rather than rushing to hand them over to bots.
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You can now use Apple Pay to pay for Seamless and Grubhub deliveries
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
Delivery fiends rejoice, you can now use Apple Pay to get your food delivered even faster. Grubhub just rolled out an update to the Grubhub and Seamless iOS apps that let customers check out using Apple Pay. Considering the company did $2.4 billion in food sales last year, and 60 percent of this was via mobile ordering, the integration is a major score for the Apple Pay platform. So what benefit will this bring customers? Mainly the ability to shave even more time off their order. While the shift to mobile has already let customers escape the inevitably clunky and repetitive desktop checking process, mobile order still takes some time — whether it is selecting a payment option, entering a new address or just selecting which credit card you want to use. Apple Pay gets rid of most of these issues, making the ordering process faster and generally more pleasant, which helps increase conversion rates for businesses. While there are no stats yet from Grubhub’s rollout, Instacart’s checkout process is now 58 percent faster for customers who use Apple Pay compared to those using other payment methods, saving them about a minute each time they order. Apple has been working hard to onboard retailers, banks and even countries to the platform — and the results are showing. One million new iOS users are using Apple Pay each week, and the platform is processing 5X the transaction volume as a year ago. The new and update can be downloaded from the iOS App Store now.
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Tribune Publishing rebrands as tronc, terrible puns ensue
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
Tribune Publishing, owner of newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, just that starting on June 20 it will rebrand as tronc*, Inc. — short for “tribune online content.” The company is pitching this as part of its broader move to digital, which also includes the development of troncX*, a “content curation and monetization engine” that also uses artificial intelligence. In a similar vein, the company will be launching , which will serve as “a visual content portal” across all of the company’s titles. Quit trying to make tronc happen. — M.G. Siegler (@mgsiegler) Along with the rebranding, tronc is moving from the New York Stock Exchange to NASDAQ, where it will trade under the ticker symbol “TRNC.” “Our industry requires an innovative approach and a fundamentally different way of operating,” said Chairman Michael Ferro in the press release. “Our transformation strategy — which has attracted over $114 million in growth capital — is focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the user experience and better monetize our world-class content in order to deliver personalized content to our 60 million monthly users and drive value for all of our stakeholders. Our rebranding to tronc represents the manner in which we will pool our technology and content resources to execute on our strategy.” — Brian Heater (@bheater) Tribune Publishing back in 2014. *Not a typo, somehow. HOLD THE TRUNK
HOLD THR TRUNK
HOLD TRUNK
TRONC — Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff)
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Facebook kills off Notify news app
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Josh Constine
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
Facebook’s attempt at a real-time, notification-based news app is shutting down. Today Facebook sent an alert to users telling them “Thanks for using . We’re transitioning parts of Notify into other Facebook products, and the app will no longer be supported.” in November, allowing users to select from over 70 publishers that they wanted to send them news notifications. People would receive short summaries they could click through to view full news articles. But within days, it seemed like most people had forgotten about the app, and Facebook never really talked about it again. Facebook now tells me that: “Starting , we will begin integrating Notify functionality into other Facebook products, like Messenger, and will be removing Notify from the App Store. Since launching Notify, we’ve learned a lot about how to make notifications as timely and relevant as possible and we heard from people using the app that Notify helped them stay informed about things they cared about throughout the day. With more than 900 million people using Messenger each month, we think there is a great opportunity for publishers to reach even more people interested in real-time updates from their favorite sources.” Publishers that were on Notify are desperately blasting their followers, pushing them to Like their Facebook Pages to stay connected. These numbers are unconfirmed, but mobile intelligence startup estimates that Notify only had 63,000 downloads. Perhaps the coolest part of Notify was the ability to set up granular alerts about sub-topics. Instead of subscribing to all NBA basketball news from CBS Sports, you could just get notifications about the Golden State Warriors or other teams. Instead of being bombarded with Bloomberg financial news, you could just configure Notify to tell you about certain companies. This level of control is hopefully what Facebook will port over to other products. I’ve written about by overrunning the chat app and sending you unwanted spam that makes you less likely to open the app or messages from friends. Notify’s granular alerts could keep chatbot noise down while giving you only relevant information. Notify’s categorized publisher discovery tool could also benefit chatbots. Rather than combing through a massive list, you could just see outlets related to business, fashion, gaming and other verticals. With Facebook saying more than for Messenger, a more organized discovery tool could come in handy. With Facebook Paper no longer getting updates, and Notify in the can, it might seem like Twitter has more open runway to control real-time news. But as in the past, Facebook typically uses standalone apps to experiment with ideas where it won’t piss off its 1.65 billion users. It brought to its main app filters from Facebook Camera, designs for Instant Articles from Facebook Paper and drawing tools from Slingshot. Notify may be no more, but Facebook’s sure to take its organs and transplant them elsewhere to make its other news products feel more alive.
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Uber accused of wage stealing in new lawsuit from New York drivers
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Sarah Buhr
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
The (NYTWA) and 10 Uber drivers have filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing Uber of stealing wages. The group representing 5,000 Uber drivers in New York filed the new claims today and says the rideshare giant unfairly skims driver wages without offering the added protections they’d get as employees. The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan and represents a total of 19,000 New York taxi, black car and Uber drivers. The group filed separately with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming Uber was illegally preventing drivers from bringing class action suits against the company. This latest legal drama for Uber is just one of many suits the company now faces throughout the country over the classification of workers as independent contractors and is part of a larger issue facing the company worldwide with competition in Asia, India and legal battles in Europe and elsewhere. It may also be cause to delay a much-anticipated IPO. CEO has repeatedly said Uber would not be going public any time soon and the company’s increasing troubles would be a reason to hold off on doing so. Instead, Uber recently added a — its largest funding sum ever — to continue to fill its coffers. Uber agreed to settle a suit over worker classification for hundreds of thousands of drivers in San Francisco in April and pay out up to $100 million to 385,000 drivers. The proposed terms would continue to allow Uber to classify drivers as independent contractors. Angry Uber drivers showed up at San Francisco’s Federal District Court for a hearing today of the agreement. Uber contends most drivers are not seeking full-time employment and are happy as independent workers, and told TechCrunch earlier today it believes the settlement agreement with drivers in San Francisco to be reasonable. “Nearly 90 percent of drivers say the main reason they use Uber is because they love being their own boss,” Uber spokesperson Matt Wing said. “As employees, drivers would have set shifts, earn a fixed hourly wage, and lose the ability to drive with other ridesharing apps — as well as the personal flexibility they most value.” There are at least eight other claims pending in other states over the classification of Uber drivers. Uber rival Lyft has also faced legal issues over classification of its drivers as independent contractors.
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Apple App Store goes down
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Jordan Crook
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
It appears that the Apple App Store, on both mobile and desktop, is experiencing some technical difficulty. The outage to have started around 3:30pm ET, and Apple’s Support site . At first, it was only the App Store that was malfunctioning, not allowing users to download new apps or search through the store. Users attempting to surf the App Store are immediately told that “The iTunes Store is unable to process purchases at this time.” Folks have also reported that Apple Music iCloud functionality is down. Now, however, it appears that a number of other Apple services are experiencing trouble, including Apple Music, Photos, Apple TV, Find My iPhone and iTunes in the Cloud, among a number of iCloud services (Backup, Bookmarks & Tabs, Calendar, Contacts, Drive, Keychain, Notes, Reminders and more). In other words, now might not be the time to do any heavy lifting (software updates, resets, backups) on your computer or iPhone. Based , the most widespread issue seems to relate to the App Store and Apple Music. Apple Support tweeted that they are aware of the issue: We’re aware of this issue and are currently investigating. To check the status click here: — Apple Support (@AppleSupport) We’ve reached out to Apple and will update this story as things progress. Update 5:30pm ET: Some of Apple’s services are back up. The App Store, however, is still down. Update 7:45pm ET: The App Store seems to be back up.
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Wype will come clean your car where it sits
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
Recently, I wrote about , the Tinder of car shopping. That prompted Andy Kim, co-founder of , to contact me. His business is one letter off from Wyper, after all, so in the interest of disambiguation, here’s the scoop on the car-detailing company that is more like Uber than Tinder in the app comparison game. Wype is based in Southern California, where cars are shiny and water is scarce. Wype detailers arrive at your car armed with non-toxic, plant-based proprietary cleaning products that require no additional water — no hoses, no puddles. According to Kim, the car wash industry wastes 300 million gallons of water, or 38 gallons per car, each day. ( estimates that car washes use between 35 and 120 gallons per vehicle, depending on wash type.) Wype was founded in 2014 in Orange County by Kim, Kevin Dawson and former LA Laker Jordan Farmar (who’s currently with the Memphis Grizzlies). Most customers are not pro basketball players, though; they’re males with above-average income and soccer-mom types, all between the ages of 24 and 40. Interestingly, the men tend to call for their cars to be cleaned on weekends, while three-quarters of women request a car detail on weekdays. No matter the demographic, there are three levels of Wype: the Quickie, which only cleans the exterior and doesn’t require you to give the keys to the detailer; the Standard, which gets the interior and exterior clean; and the Swanky, which adds wax. When they clean the interior, they’ll take out the trash, organize your stuff that isn’t trash and leave you a mint. They also take before and after pictures. Kim said in an email that no car has yet been too dirty for Wype to handle. “Our process safely and effectively cleans surfaces that haven’t been washed for months,” he wrote. “Now, we’re also lucky that there aren’t too many off-roaders in the areas we service.” So that Jeep in the picture may be a challenge. Wype’s service area is still small, and the mobile web version will roll out in the next couple of weeks. (The iOS app is out there already; there is not an Android app.) So to recap: Wype will clean your car. Wyper will help you shop for a car. The URLs for Wipe.com and Wiper.com, as far as I can tell, are up for grabs.
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Want your app to be #1 on the App Store? Just give away a free sandwich
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
Chick-fil-A Chick-fil-A One, their new app that offers mobile payments, order ahead, a rewards program and more. Specifically, customers will be able to customize their order on the app before heading into the restaurant, so they can skip the line upon arrival. And the rewards system will surprise users with different menu items based on previous orders, the progress of which can be tracked in the app. Cool stuff, but not exactly enough to make it the most popular iPhone app in America right now, especially considering there are stores in the country (compared to almost 15,000 McDonald’s locations). So why is the app currently sitting atop the app store? Because the company is offering a free sandwich to anyone who downloads and signs up for the program. Get a free Chicken Sandwich when you download and join today. Offer ends 6/11. — Chick-fil-A, Inc. (@ChickfilA) In fact, the update has been live since late May, but the app hadn’t even broken the top 100 — that is until earlier today, when it unveiled the free sandwich deal. The app immediately shot up almost 500 spots, presumably fueled by hungry Chick-fil-A fans around the country. But is this a sustainable solution? Certainly not. how almost one in four people abandon mobile apps after just one use. No matter how great their app is, Chick-fil-A will likely see similar a similar trend, especially after customers claim their free sandwich. Anyways, while the fast food company enjoys their 15 minutes of App Store fame, you might as well cash in and go get a free sandwich. The app can be downloaded from the and .
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Samsung debuts truly wireless exercise earbuds and a new version of the Gear Fit
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
The field is getting mighty crowded, but Samsung’s not backing down from its big fitness push. Today the company is unveiling two new wearables — an update to its Gear Fit activity tracker and the IconX, a pair of completely wireless earbuds aimed at runners. The company kicked off a pre-briefing with a little marketing information, detailing the fact that fitness bands currently comprise more than 50 percent of the wrist-worn device market. That’s an important bit of information for the company as it justifies keeping a devoted fitness device around as it continues to build up its smartwatch offerings. Like the Gear S2, the Fit2 is designed for all-day wear. Thankfully, Samsung’s gone a long ways toward making the wearable more — you know, wearable. This is in part because of a thinner design and a more curved 1.5-inch Super AMOLED display that does a better job conforming to the wrist. Samsung’s also offering up the tracking in two different sizes in an attempt to appeal to male and female users alike. Even after a brief demo, I can confirm that it is indeed more comfortable than the last generation. Whether that extends to wearing the thing all day and night, however, is another question entirely, but I’ve been assured by Samsung that we’ll be getting our hands on a full-fledge review model in the not too distant future. And speaking of wearing the thing all day and night, Samsung’s promising three to four days of use on a charge. The Fit2 has a built-in heart-rate monitor and GPS, so wearers can track their route even when not tethered to a smartphone. There’s also 4GB of built-in storage designed to store music offline like one of those old-fashioned iPod dealies. The company has also made a deal with Spotify to offer playlists built to fit the small screen — though there’s no offline caching there yet, even if a company spokesperson did make it sound like the feature is in the works. There’s also auto multi-sport and sleep tracking, dropping the need to tap a start button when you want to track a specific task. No word on iOS compatibility, but it’ll work with phones running Android 4.4 and above. It’s up for pre-sales tomorrow, priced at $179, with in-store availability starting on the 10 . The IconX is arguably the more compelling of the two new pieces of hardware. In fact, the headphone caused a bit of a stir when renders surfaced well ahead of the official announcement. After all, up to now, fully wireless earbuds have been something of a niche device. Cutting the tether between them means having to have separate radios and batteries for each ear. And that, naturally, entails some sacrifice. In the case of the IconX, that means some dismal battery life, at around an hour and a half when connected and playing music, according to Samsung’s numbers. That’s likely a big part of the reason the company is positioning it as workout-only. The IconX are designed to head to the gym with you and then swap out with a standard pair of headphones when you get home. In other words, Samsung’s first truly wireless Bluetooth earbuds are niche products by design. They’re compelling none the less. They feature built-in heart-rate monitoring and are capable of tracking distance and speed. They also come with a wireless charging case, which, in theory, will make them tougher to lose. They’re actually pretty comfortable and stay in nicely. I had a little trouble getting them connected and synced, and the sound isn’t exactly great, but it should do the trick for people looking for a bit of “Eye of Tiger.” [gallery ids="1330777,1330778,1330779,1330782"] The headphones also feature 4GB of storage, so, as with the Fit2, you can take them on a run without the phone. The IconX will be priced at $199 and are set to start shipping in Q3 of this year.
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Commerce at Twitter is not dead
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Josh Constine
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 |
The reports of commerce’s death at Twitter have been greatly exaggerated, according to a by Nathan Hubbard, Twitter’s head of commerce. Last month BuzzFeed reported that had put Buy Buttons, product pages and other commerce efforts on the “back-burner,” and the commerce team was shifted into other divisions. But now Hubbard writes: “commerce is alive and well at Twitter :) Our commerce work has always been much broader than just buy buttons,” “Industry is just in the phases of parsing product/market fit for the Buy Button concept across products, services and platforms,” and “As such, rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated :).” Hubbard explains that Twitter learned a lot from Buy buttons and he expects they’ll come back, but, in the meantime, it’s concentrating on the success of dynamically personalized product ads and using customer service conversations as jumping off points for commerce. Facebook came to a similar conclusion, finding to be a hit. These ads use retargeting and other info about a user to select which of an advertiser’s products they’re most likely to buy and show those front and center in the ad. Facebook recently . How dynamic product ads work, via It’s important to note that last month that Hubbard is set to leave the company, so his statements should be taken with a grain of salt. But Hubbard’s tweets do mesh with Twitter’s official statement to BuzzFeed that contradicted its report: “We made a change 3 months ago to INCREASE our investment in commerce by moving fully into Dynamic Product Ads after seeing the great early results (2x the CTR, 2x the conversion rates) we talked about in our Q1 earnings call. We have more product, engineering and business focus on commerce as a result of focusing on DPAs. The bottom line is DPAs work for advertisers and we will continue to invest in that product.” You can see Hubbard’s full tweetstorm below: 1) Mary Meeker's awesome slides yesterday reminded me that our work on Buy Buttons at Twitter was featured in her presentation last year. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 2) Recent reports about decisions made last year to pivot our focus have hastened a narrative about the future of social commerce. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 3) Btw, commerce is alive and well at Twitter :) Our commerce work has always been much broader than just buy buttons. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 4) We learned a ton from our experiment that we will use in all kinds of ways, and I bet Twitter comes back to buy buttons down the road. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 5) Our partners like and are also still believers in where this is all going. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 6) But one thing we learned is that behavior inherent to the platform is a great starting point for commerce. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 7) And customer service is a major current use case for Twitter. Those conversations are starting points for commerce! It's our advantage. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 8) We also learned that Dynamic Product Ads are *really* working for Twitter, which has been talked about publicly. This is a big focus. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 9) So naturally last fall we put the bulk of our commerce resources against these commerce initiatives that were near term opportunities. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 10) I'd be careful not to judge this as an indication of the future potential of transactions within social messaging (and other) platforms. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 11) The idea behind Buy Buttons is to meet consumers in places where they spend time, on canvases that are the home screens for their lives. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 12) This could be any number of platforms we are seeing emerge today – bots, messaging, other AI interfaces, voice/speech like Alexa. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 13) The point in all cases is to be there in a moment of need or discovery, and collapse the funnel from discovery to transaction. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 14) This is part of the ongoing quest in digital commerce and advertising to eliminate friction and compel purchase decision. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 15) As Mary showed us yesterday, we're still at the beginning of mobile commerce. Internet only ~10% of retail, mobile only ~20% of that. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 16) So with all these platforms being overwhelmingly mobile (or something else), *of course* transaction volumes are just getting going. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 17) The point is to build the infrastructure now to keep pace with rapidly shifting consumer behavior. To be where they are when they move. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 18) Companies will either build that infrastructure now, or play catch up. It's not a debate whether consumer behavior will shift. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 19) What *is* a debate is what transactions can port well into other platforms and UIs, especially for everyday goods and services. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 20) e.g. What exactly is the benefit of getting an Uber from Facebook Messenger vs Uber app? Is the experience worse, comparable or better? — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 21) Because if the intent is new customer acquisition, then these kinds of integrations are really just app install ads. That's cool. But… — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 22) Beyond meeting a consumer in the moment, what is it about these platforms that can *enhance* the purchase decision? — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 23) "Buy Buttons" for some products/services will be a natural evolution of direct response ads and will increase conversion and engagement. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 24) But most interesting is whether they can leverage the platforms they appear on to enhance the experience vs normal in-app transactions. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 25) Industry is just in the *first* phases of parsing product/market fit for the Buy Button concept across products, services and platforms. — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard) 26) As such, rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated :) — Nathan Hubbard (@NathanCHubbard)
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Grab adds Alipay support to its taxi on-demand service in Southeast Asia
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Jon Russell
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Grab, the billion-dollar company rivaling Uber in Southeast Asia, just made a move to tap into Chinese tourism after it added support for Alipay, China’s largest digital payment service. Grab only began this year — it started out resolutely cash only — so it makes sense that it is now moving quickly to tap Alipay, particularly since . Visitors from China made Southeast Asia the world’s fastest growing tourism region, , and Grab’s move mirrors the efforts of Alibaba and other Chinese consumer companies who want to follow the money into Southeast Asia. The addition of Alipay is unlikely to make a huge impact on Grab’s business initially, however, since the app is very much localized in each of its six countries in Southeast Asia. That’s to say that it is difficult to use in Thailand, where I am based, for example, unless you are able converse with a driver in Thai or luck out and get a driver who speaks basic English. That’s a huge roadblock for Chinese tourists, particularly when Uber sells itself as an easy international option. However, as part of its alliance with Ola, Lyft and Didi Chuxing, Grab is working to link its service with that of Didi. The company already supports ‘roaming’ to the U.S. with Lyft, and once it has a similar arrangement with Didi — which will include in-app translation — then the service and Alipay support will have a lot more potential for Chinese travelers. We understand that an integration between Didi and Grab is expected before the end of this year. Grab, which has from investors including SoftBank and Didi, is initially making Alipay available for users in Singapore and Thailand, two hugely popular destinations for Chinese tourists, but it plans to expand it across its other markets.
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Dartmouth graduated more women than men in engineering this year
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Sarah Buhr
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Dartmouth just became the first national research university to graduate more women than men in the engineering department. More women have been going into engineering in the last several years, according to the , and women made up 37 percent of the class in Dartmouth’s engineering school in 2015. But women tipped the scales this year at a whopping 54 percent at Dartmouth — 34 percent higher than the . Dartmouth’s culture encourages students to take technology and applied science courses, but dean of engineering Joseph Helble attributes the dramatic rise not only to providing students across disciplines with entry-level engineering courses but also to “building a diverse population of role models” within the school. The move helped female students relate to successful mentors in the department and encouraged them to consider a career in engineering. “We’ve been able to attract more students, and , by letting them use engineering to solve real-world challenges,” Helble said. “They quickly learn how their creativity and engineering skills can make a real difference.” Women in Dartmouth’s engineering program also tackled many unique projects, including improving medical devices, smartphone technology and new ways to .
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Walmart sells Yihaodian, its Chinese e-commerce marketplace, to Alibaba rival JD.com
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Jon Russell
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Walmart is partnering with China’s second largest e-commerce firm, JD.com, as it aims to take a larger bite out of the world’s most populous country. , the U.S. retail giant said it has sold Yihaodian, its online commerce marketplace, to JD.com. Walmart will retain the Yihaodian direct sales business, but rather than operate its own online store entirely, it will become a retailer inside Yihaodian. It is also bringing its Sam’s Club membership service to JD.com, while Walmart’s physical stores will be listed on JD.com’s O2O JV Dada delivery platform. On the financial side of things, Walmart is buying a five-percent stake in NASDAQ-listed JD.com, which is slowly increasing its marketshare and closing the gap on Alibaba. That investment is worth around $1.5 billion right now based on JD.com’s share price. Walmart first invested in Yihaodian, which specializes in grocery and items focused on affluent female consumers — and it : so why is it cutting a deal to get out of the business less than a year later? The U.S. giant seems to have fully realized that the Chinese market is dominated by two major players, and it is seriously cutthroat. Data from iResearch suggests that Yihaodian accounts for less than two percent of China’s e-commerce spending — Alibaba and JD.com are collectively over 80 percent — although Walmart claims the service is strongest in eastern and southern China. Based on that, it makes sense to lean on JD.com as the distribution partner to help grow its business in China. that one-third of the $482.1 billion in annual sales that Walmart makes outside the U.S. market comes from China, so the country is clearly still hugely important. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how it fares with JD.com, which differentiates itself from Alibaba by owning its own logistics and specializing in fast delivery and fresh goods. It isn’t uncommon to see e-commerce players sell on rival platforms. on Alibaba’s Taobao mall last year, for example. “JD.com shares similar values in making the lives of customers better. It also has a very complementary business and is an ideal partner that will help us offer compelling new experiences that can reach significantly more customers,” Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart, said in a statement.
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Crunch Report | Tumblr Launches Live Video
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Tito Hamze, Jason Kopeck
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski
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Analog computing and biological simulations get a boost from new MIT compiler
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
And more often than not, that way is analog, not digital. Even the impulse-like action potentials in the brain are more complex than computers’ 1s and 0s — and digital simulations of cells and systems struggle to take that into account. Analog electronic circuits are a powerful tool to bring to bear on these difficult problems — and makes programming them much, much easier. An analog circuit doesn’t pass on a binary signal, but rather involve the interactions of inputs with an effectively infinite variety of values. And they’re uniquely suited to the question of simulating cells, in which there are many such interdependent values — chemical concentrations, pH, temperature and the like. These complex relationship are often modeled by scientists in differential equations, which of course can be solved digitally — but a digital computer would have to perform the same work thousands or millions of times sequentially; the thinner it slices the data, the better its results. An analog circuit, however, correctly configured with certain voltages corresponding to the equations’ values, each affecting this or that current and so on, will solve itself simply because the laws of electrodynamics require it. A complete and continuous solution is found quickly and easily — but figuring out how those circuits must be configured is far from trivial. In fact, it seems to be surpassingly difficult, and more so as complexity increases. grad student , along with her professor and adviser and Dartmouth’s Rahul Sarpeshkar, have created a compiler called Arco that essentially turns human-readable digital code into a configuration for analog computing circuits. Example of a diagram describing an analog circuit. “With a few transistors, cytomorphic analog circuits can solve complicated differential equations — including the effects of noise — that would take millions of digital transistors and millions of digital clock cycles,” said Sarpeshkar in a MIT news release. Cytomorphic means cell-resembling, by the way. The compiler looks at the equations involved and creates circuits that produce correct results — taking between 14 and 40 seconds per equation, which is a big improvement over human-provided solutions. And it’s not just a time improvement; the analog circuit arrangements can scale to larger sizes than any human could possibly hope to work out a solution for — an entire organ or organism rather than a single cell, for instance. You probably won’t be seeing any analog computers firsthand unless you work in a bioinformatics lab, but improved simulations of biological processes is an end of its own as well as a means to further research in medical fields. describing the new compiler was presented at an Association for Computing Machinery conference last week.
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The changing trade secret and patent equilibrium
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Manny Schecter
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
It is no secret that trade secrets are essential to the success of many businesses. Nearly all of us are aware of examples of highly treasured trade secrets, such as the recipe for Coca-Cola, the formula for WD-40 and the methodology for creating the nooks and crannies in Thomas’ English Muffins. Less-known is the growing importance of trade secrets and the role they play in our economy, including their impact on the patent system. Trade secrets are by definition valued by their owners. Secrecy preserves a source of competitive advantage that generally cannot be recovered once secrecy is lost. Although secrecy may be lost inadvertently through carelessness, disclosure is often the result of wrong-doing and sometimes even the actions of sophisticated international industrial espionage. Trade-secret laws allow for the recovery of monetary damages from, or even criminal penalties against, those that steal trade secrets. Annual losses to the U.S. economy from international theft of trade secrets has been to exceed $300 billion. An effective system protecting trade secrets thus enhances the economy and promotes national security. Our government recently enacted the , a milestone for trade-secret protection. The DTSA creates a federal civil cause of action so that companies will no longer need to navigate a maze of state laws to enforce their rights when their trade secrets are stolen. In addition, the DTSA enhances remedies available to victims — in particular by providing for seizure orders under appropriate circumstances to limit further disclosure of the trade secrets. The DTSA is a great achievement that should both deter potential wrongdoers and ease the burden of enforcement on those that have been wronged. The DTSA is also a “wake-up call” to companies that value and protect their intellectual property as trade secrets. Companies now have increased incentive to identify, capture, inventory and protect their potential trade secret information. Failure to do so now could forego the ability to leverage the DTSA downstream. Technology and markets also are trending toward increasing importance of trade secrets. The commoditization of computer hardware drives innovation into computer-implemented software. The implications extend well beyond the computer and information technology industry because, in addition to being directly incorporated in devices such as medical diagnostics and automobiles, computer software technology is used in the development and design of virtually everything today — from computational biology to 3D printing to computer-aided design. More and more innovation is moving behind the “firewall,” meaning that it is invisible to the public (e.g. digital 3D designs now most often reside out of reach in the cloud instead of on a local disk drive [and subject to reverse engineering]). Ironically, while this trend toward reliance on secrecy is rational behavior, without changes to our patent system, it may have the unintended consequence of slowing the overall pace of innovation. Trade secrets and patents are different forms of intellectual property, both of which play an important role in a comprehensive intellectual property strategy. Secrecy protects innovation by reducing the likelihood that others possess it. On the other hand, patent protection requires the publication of a complete written description of a patented invention, thereby enhancing public knowledge and reducing the need to “reinvent the wheel.” Unfortunately, have dramatically narrowed the eligibility of computer-implemented inventions for patenting. As a result, companies developing software-centric solutions are likely to rely more heavily on trade secrets to protect product innovations that can no longer be patented. Companies may even to market their innovations in a way that favors trade-secret protection, i.e. by delivering innovations as services rather than products to avoid bringing the innovations out from behind their firewall (e.g. Google search services that do not reveal search algorithms or software delivered as a service). The combination of technology and market trends and recent court decisions on patent eligibility has altered the trade secret and patent equilibrium. Enhancement of trade-secret protection via the DTSA helps offset patent system contraction for innovators, and is likely to lead to increased focus on protecting innovation through trade secrets and a reduction in patent applications. The consequences for our innovation economy as a whole are significant. The relative shift will reduce innovation sharing and is likely to lead to reduced investment in technologies currently deemed ineligible for patent protection and which cannot be maintained in secrecy when commercialized. Notwithstanding the rational behavior of our government to enhance trade-secret protection and our businesses to use this protection, the contraction of the patent system undermines our innovation economy, especially for less-flexible industries. Trade secrets and patents are not mutually exclusive — each can be of value. The DTSA improves trade-secret protection. Now that the DTSA is in place, we should turn our attention toward achieving a better innovation ecosystem by reversing or legislating away recent harmful court patent decisions so we restore the proper balance between trade secrets and patents. To best promote innovation, we need strong trade-secret protection and strong patent protection going forward.
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Former Postmates COO Peter Hazlehurst is back with his own seed-funded startup
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Connie Loizos
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
In April of last year, made news when he left his position as COO of Postmates just after joining the on-demand delivery company. He said at the time he was looking for more responsibility and possibly to . Now Hazlehurst — who previously spent seven years as the chief product officer of Yodlee and another two-and-a-half years as a Google executive focused on its consumer payments initiatives — has formed that startup, a crowdfunding platform for scholarships called . It’s an interesting outfit, one that encompasses both a nonprofit and a for-profit company that’s been structured as a B Corp, which basically means it’s committed to balancing its social mission and profit. How it works: AngelScholars allows so-called angels (which can be anyone) to support students’ education by creating a “scholarship” — say, to buy uniforms for a certain school, or to help defray costs for students attending summer school at New York University. As with AngelList, each person spearheading a particular campaign is responsible for drumming up the interest of others to make it successful. Unlike GoFundMe campaigns, which are typically designed around individuals, every campaign on AngelScholars has a broader community in mind. One current campaign invites young women who live in the Chicago area and whose families earn less than $50,000 to apply for scholarship money to that can further their personal and professional development. Donors may not know exactly who they’ll be funding in advance, but that doesn’t mean the students are anonymous. Instead, students who want funding register with the site and provide some information about themselves. Doing so allows donors to track their progress, says Hazlehurst. But the students are also motivated to include as much about themselves as possible because, once on the platform, they might find themselves eligible for more than one giving campaign. In a related twist that some donors may like (and others might deem onerous), all funds are transferred to custom debit cards, so donors can track where and when the money they’ve donated is being spent. AngelScholars keeps about 10 percent of every donation to keep the lights on and pay salaries. (That’s compared with some nonprofits.) Where it starts looking like a more traditional startup is in its for-profit division, which will ultimately become a recruiting business if things go as planned. The big idea is that once AngelScholars gets enough kids on the platform and they start graduating, it can connect that pool of job seekers with companies, particularly those interested in doing a better job at diversifying their employee base. Indeed, as with LinkedIn and other jobs platforms, recruiters will pay AngelScholars for access, though Hazlehurst says how much hasn’t been worked out quite yet. The company’s first challenge, of course, is getting both donors and students on the platform. Hazlehurst expects that the donor network will build through word of mouth. He suggests that raising student awareness will be trickier at first, saying his current staff of 10 full-time employees and four contractors will help find students who are the appropriate fit for various campaigns. The company launched the platform last Tuesday, but already some early investors like the idea enough that they’ve given AngelScholars north of $1 million in seed funding in a round that’s expected to close soon. is leading the financing. also earlier raised a smaller, pre-seed round provided by , a longtime VC with Institutional Venture Partners. (Phelps met Hazlehurst many years ago as a board member of Yodlee, a hub for financial apps. It was , shortly after going public.) Asked what inspired Hazlehurst to start the company, which would seem to have little in common with his previous roles, he says that he set up a scholarship several years ago to help tech-minded students at his Australian high school pay for college. When a senior at the school was more recently accepted into Stanford and couldn’t afford to go without major assistance, Hazlehurst realized there might be a broader opportunity to help him and students like him. “It wasn’t going to work if I was going to write him a check for $250,000 to go to Stanford, but I thought there was maybe a crowdfunding model that might.” He couldn’t find quite the right solution, so he built it.
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A tronc is born
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
The best satire is indistinguishable from the subject matter it addresses. And sometimes the subject matter is indistinguishable from satire. For the foreseeable future, the absurd rebranding of tronc and will exemplify the latter. I’m still not entirely sure this isn’t some absolutely brilliant hoax. If it is, well done. If not, that doesn’t make it any less funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeo1V-47BBw Let’s just run through some of the highlights. The hasty addition of the second meaning for tronc is a great way to undercut the idea that there’s any meaning at all. What started as merely a clumsy abbreviation becomes a concept beyond definition and beyond explanation. One gets the feeling that the “pooling of resources” line was ad-libbed and they forgot to edit it out because they could no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy. What really sets this one off — apart from being risible to begin with, considering that’s like saying having peanut butter meet a kick to the groin — is that the the company posted starts with an offscreen voiceover saying: 😂 (Presumably survival is “the fun part.”) I added quotes around “tronc team”‘ because I feel like she did air quotes and they cut to the solar system visualization to prevent anyone from seeing it. I didn’t get the same feeling about “feed it into a funnel,” though. I think there may be a literal funnel somewhere and they think it optimizes things. Leaving aside the entirely spurious namecheck of machine learning, is that even grammar? One way to resolve this syntax is to accept that “maximizing” is an idea independent of any metric or measurement — no numbers are necessary, at tronc, they merely maximize. Alternatively, if it is time they are maximizing, the man implies that they no longer will only maximize just a part of it. All time is to be maximized. Still, what does that even mean? Immediately followed by: There’s no reason for the editor to juxtapose those two statements unless they meant to have them annihilate each other, like a proton and antiproton. There are a couple of whoppers in the other video, too. What does that mean? Is he high? Am I? Whose idea was it to phrase their pitch in the form of a tongue twister? There’s no way that wasn’t deliberate. Try saying it fast. I wonder how many takes it took the VO guy. This is the second mention of light, too. Really, it’s too much for a company to take credit for a cosmic constant. Lastly, there are the dueling slogans: and It’s hard to pick. They’re both so good! #transformation Substantive, insightful discussion of this subject was . Change can be terrifying, but we know what happens if we do nothing. — tronc (@tronc)
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Tripstir helps you find friends while you’re traveling
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
is a new app that helps you share travel plans and tips with your friends. Think of it as a way to avoid those exasperating moments when you come back from a trip and you realize that one of your friends was in the same place at the same time — but you’re only finding out when it’s too late. Basically, you use Tripstir by entering information about upcoming trips. Once you’ve got trips in the system, you can see other users who live in a given city, and the ones who are going to be visiting at the same time. You can also see people who’ve been to that city in the past, because hey, that might still be a good source of recommendations. You can watch me do a quick walkthrough of the Tripstir app in the video above.
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Tim Cook to host fundraiser for Paul Ryan
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Kate Conger
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Tim Cook is scheduled to hold a fundraiser for House Speaker Paul Ryan, just weeks after Apple reportedly pulled its support from the Republican National Convention. Cook will co-host the breakfast fundraiser with Apple’s treasurer, Gary Wipfler, according to . The money raised at the June 28 breakfast will benefit Ryan and other Republican members of the House. Cook is outspoken on a number of , including LGBT rights and anti-discrimination legislation. It’s likely that several of the policies proposed by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump raised eyebrows at Apple HQ and prompted the company to from the convention (Apple has supported both the Democratic and Republican conventions in years past). Although Ryan has backed Trump’s presidential bid, he seems to still have misgivings about the candidate, referring to him as “ .” “It’s no secret that he and I have our differences,” Ryan wrote of Trump in his . “I won’t pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I’ll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement.” Cook is no stranger to political giving, and, like , he donates to politicians in both parties. According to FEC records, Cook gave money to President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and has donated to both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.
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mRelief is helping ensure low-income kids get access to meals this summer
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Megan Rose Dickey
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
During the school year, 22 million children in the U.S. receive free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches, but during the summer, four out of five of those children can no longer count on a meal every day. Today, is launching a new web and text messaging tool for low-income families to easily figure out where and when they can receive free or discounted meals this summer for their children. Those without access to the internet can text their zip code to 1-844-877-6111. The offering, which is live in 42 states, provides information about where low-income people who do not qualify for food stamps can go for free or discounted meals. Every year, there is $11 billion in unclaimed food stamps because people who are eligible either didn’t know or didn’t have access to applications. Through mRelief, low-income people can easily figure out if they qualify for resources like food stamps, as well as other much-needed social services. If you find out that you’re not eligible for food stamps and you have children 18 years of age or younger, mRelief will now help you find the nearest summer meal site. [gallery ids="1340044,1340045"] If you don’t have children, mRelief will refer you to the nearest food pantry, like the SF-Marin Food Bank, for example. This new service is thanks to the United States Department of Agriculture’s . “The USDA has really been an awesome agency on the government end that is becoming more transparent every day and making eligibility data more transparent to organizations like ours,” mRelief co-founder Rose Afriyie told me. “Since we’re built on Twilio’s platform, we’ve been able to move a lot more quickly. It’s things like that that make accessible tech more possible because we’re able to get those resources and pass those benefits to families who don’t have access to the internet.” Since launching in September 2014, mRelief has helped 30,000 families determine which social services they qualify for. In the near future, mRelief wants to help people with figuring out the documents they need, as well submitting those documents. “We are trying to go deeper with families,” Afriyie said. “But I think the major thing that has been really alarming is the amount of money that families who are already struggling have to pay when they are trying to produce copies of their required documents.” mRelief also wants to track how much cost is associated with obtaining and providing the paperwork necessary, and would ultimately like to make that cost zero, mRelief CTO Genevieve Nielsen said. Backed by Y Combinator, , which is offered to government assistance programs throughout the country to automatically generate eligibility screens based on an organization’s pre-set criteria. Ultimately, mRelief wants to fulfill its vision of enabling anyone to access social services in a way that does not contribute to the stress that already comes along with living in poverty.
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One of the industry’s earliest VCs, David Morgenthaler, has passed away
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Connie Loizos
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
David Morgenthaler, one of the industry’s earliest venture capitalists, passed away on Friday in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, at age 96. Morgenthaler founded the firm in 1968, well before venture capital could yet be considered an industry, even a small one. According to Morgenthaler Ventures, he was also “instrumental” in helping change the U.S. capital gains tax rate from 49 percent to 28 percent in 1978, as well as in amending legislation that allowed pension funds to begin investing in venture capital beginning in 1979. During his career, Morgenthaler served as director, president or chairman of more than 30 companies. He is survived by his wife of 71 years, as well as his children — including son Gary, who is also a venture capitalist — grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Morgenthaler Ventures began winding itself down in 2013, when Gary Morgenthaler, Garry Little and Rebecca Lynn, all partners with the firm, raised a $175 million fund under a new brand, Canvas Venture Fund. Two previous GPs from Morgenthaler did not continue with the new fund, including Bob Pavey, who is now an active angel investor in Cleveland, and Mark Goines, who worked briefly for the firm and is today the chief strategy officer and chief marketing officer of Personal Capital, the digital wealth management startup. The National Venture Capital Association, on whose board Morgenthaler once served, published a statement a bit ago calling Morgenthaler an “icon of venture capital, titan of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and champion of innovation.” NVCA president Bobby Franklin suggested that he’d worked actively with Morgenthaler during his tenure over the last three years, adding that Morgenthaler “will be greatly missed by me and the many others from the venture community.”
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Taylor Swift and other big names join the music industry’s campaign against YouTube
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
The music industry is ramping up its campaign against YouTube. Musicians, , sent a petition earlier this year to the U.S. Copyright Office to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now there’s an open letter to Congress signed by stars like Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift and U2 expressing a similar sentiment. Music labels like Sony Music and Universal Music Group have also endorsed the letter, which will be featured in ads on political websites like Politico and The Hill. While the letter’s wording focuses on the DMCA, the industry has one big platform in mind, namely YouTube, as made clear in (who organized the letter). The gist of the debate is that musicians and record labels feel that the law allows YouTube to host and monetize their songs without compensating the artists and labels fairly. YouTube, in contrast, notes the tools it has introduced to help the industry identify unlicensed content and it has paid out. Here’s the full text of the letter: DEAR CONGRESS: THE DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT (DMCA) IS BROKEN AND NO LONGER WORKS FOR CREATORS
As songwriters and artists who are a vital contributing force to the U.S. and to American exports around the world, we are writing to express our concern about the ability of the next generation of creators to earn a living. The existing laws threaten the continued viability of songwriters and recording artists to survive from the creation of music. Aspiring creators shouldn’t have to decide between making music and making a living. Please protect them. One of the biggest problems confronting songwriters and recording artists today is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law was written and passed in an era that is technologically out-of-date compared to the era in which we live. It has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish. Music consumption has skyrocketed, but the monies earned by individual writers and artists for that consumption has plummeted. The DMCA simply doesn’t work. It’s impossible for tens of thousands of individual songwriters and artists to muster the resources necessary to comply with its application. The tech companies who benefit from the DMCA today were not the intended protectorate when it was signed into law nearly two decades ago. We ask you to enact sensible reform that balances the interests of creators with the interests of the companies who exploit music for their financial enrichment. It’s only then that consumers will truly benefit. An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified performing rights organization BMI as a music label.
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More cars than phones were connected to cell service in Q1
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Kristen Hall-Geisler
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Millions of people in the United States have mobile phones, and we’ve had them for years. We may upgrade phones or change plans, but cell phones and plans are generally sold to people who already have devices. But cellular services aren’t out of new devices to connect—now they’ve got cars. In the first quarter of 2016, connected cars accounted for a third of all new cellular devices. Mobile-industry consultants at noted that there were more cars added to networks than phones and fewer tablets than previously. According to analysts, smartphone penetration is at 84% in the United States, and new customer revenue is approaching zero. But connected cars are still new to the market, so as they roll off assembly lines and into garages, they’ll need to be hooked up to a network. has 8 million cars on its network, “probably the highest of any mobile operator in the world,” the report said, and it’s adding more cars than all other operators combined. The company provides communications for everything from vehicle-to-vehicle capabilities, telematics, entertainment apps, over-the-air updates, and 4G LTE hotspots built into the vehicle. Not that people necessarily know their cars are connected at all. A survey of 3,700 drivers in Europe by and the BearingPoint Institute this spring found that 4 in 10 were unaware that the cars they owned already had connectivity features on board. The other 6 of those 10 people said that connected features influenced their decision to buy a particular vehicle. Connectivity was rated “an important criteria at purchase” by 32% of respondents. So it seems that either buyers are searching for connected cars, or they don’t know anything about the technology, even if its baked right into their new cars. The TNS study also showed that while about half of the respondents were shown how the technology worked at the dealership when they were considering purchasing a vehicle, there were complaints that buyers seemed to know as much as the salespeople when it came to connected features. In its analysis of the study, TNS called in-car education “critical to the uptake and use of connectivity”—especially for those 4 in 10 who aren’t even aware of what their car can do.
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China beats China with world’s fastest supercomputer
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
The world’s previous fastest supercomputer, Tianhe-2, has been unseated by the Sunway TaihuLight. The Chinese supercomputer will be located at the National Supercomputer Center at Wuxi. Supercomputers are frequently benchmarked with the Linpack benchmark. The Sunway TaihuLight . The closest U.S. competitor sits in third place, at 17 petaflops. Ninety-three petaflops is equivalent to 93 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (FLOP). An iPad 2, for reference, can achieve about , or 1.6 billion flops. This means the Sunway TaihuLight can execute about 58 million times more processes per second than an iPad 2. The supercomputer was government-funded and cost $270 million, according to Jack Dongarra’s . According to the same report, the computer’s creators took extra steps to ensure energy efficiency. The 15 Climaveneta water-cooled chillers equipped with magnetic levitation lower the facilities power consumption by 45 percent. Supercomputers like the Sunway TaihuLight are often used to solve complex systems problems of non-linear dynamics. These problems can include weather projections, financial modeling and modeling neural activity. Generally, any problem with extreme quantities of data and a sizable number of variables requires specialized computing power.
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Is enterprise genomics good enough yet?
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Mark Kaganovich
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Genomics will make the dream of targeted therapies a reality, which will have a massive health and economic impact. Yet most large life science enterprises, from pharma to providers, have yet to fully adopt genomics as part of their toolkit for clinical trials, development, commercialization and diagnostics. When will these organizations adopt genomics? Is genomics good enough yet to be deployed at this kind of scale? The answer lies in part on when the Genomics Tech Stack becomes modular. is often called the — it sits at the core of any genomics application and, like the processor, has led to rapid innovation in both hardware and software that use it. Illumina’s success has enabled a diverse set of genomics applications: prenatal testing, agriculture, drug development, clinical trial recruitment, oncology, nutrition and fitness, and many more yet to be invented. Yet the key difference here is that while you build genomics applications without being Illumina machine “compatible,” you can not build Intel software without supporting Intel architecture. Illumina does not sell an engineering building block, but rather a mechanism to measure aspects of the observable world. Software built to use Intel processors has to be strictly compatible with Intel chip architecture, whereas the particulars of Illumina’s chemistry for capturing the state of one’s genome are largely irrelevant when building an application that uses DNA sequencing. (Caveat: Sequencing errors often occur in non-random ways as a consequence of the chemistry used in the sequencing process, so sometimes it is useful to understand the assay.) This means that Illumina may not have as deep a moat to defend its business: It is largely only as good as its latest product. Intel, of course, has benefited from increasing returns to scale in the form of network effects connecting Intel chips, the computers that use them and the software built to be compatible with them. For Illumina, those effects are less obvious. To be clear, this has nothing to do with Illumina’s technology or strategy, but simply the difference between science and engineering: There are many independent ways to measure a natural phenomenon and usually fewer ways to build something that you invented and no one else knows about. All this may not be good for the long-term enterprise value of any sequencing technology (though Illumina is doing ok, their market cap is between $20 billion and $30 billion), but it is really good for pharma and diagnostic enterprises deploying genomics. The full control, independent of the sequencing provider, of what you do with the DNA data once you sequence it allows companies to more tightly architect how they use genomics technology and potentially capture more value than the sequencers. The problem with using genomics to develop targeted therapies, companion diagnostics or other valuable applications involves more than just setting up a sequencer and pressing play. DNA sequencing “reads,” the raw output of a sequencing machine, need to be processed to properly identify variants that are the representative variable differences among genomes and the focus of any further application or study. That’s the first step. Then the variants must be filtered and interpreted based on all the context-specific information from studies, reports and experiments that you can get your hands on. In an academic context, much of this has been done by clinical labs and researchers. In the enterprise, all of these tasks, including the human-driven interpretation and assessment, must be deployed in scalable, reproducible processes. There’s more: The processes have to be run in a and secure computational environment. The question facing many life sciences enterprises is whether the Genomics Tech Stack is at the “good enough stage” where modular components can be swapped in and out to build scalable workflows, or can enterprises only trust fully integrated, vertically assembled systems? Going “full stack” versus employing a modular system is an age-old argument, especially in tech. until : When products become good enough for the market, integrated systems actually overserve most customers and modular products become cheaper to produce and distribute because each part of the supply chain becomes standardized and optimized. Apple obviously did well by controlling everything from hardware to software to distribution, but Microsoft did perhaps better in the enterprise context by focusing on a very valuable slice of the modular IT ecosystem and letting other modular systems develop in the value network adjacent to them. The argument becomes somewhat pointless at the extremes: No company is actually “full stack” if you define that broadly enough. Harry’s owns a factory to make razors, but unless there’s a very big new funding round in the works they are unlikely to roll their own aluminum mines, ships and planes to really control the full supply chain that affects the customer experience. And companies don’t make their own operating systems, processors or computers. Nonetheless, for a business, it is crucial to evaluate the ROI of vertically integrated solutions versus modular external substitutes. Clearly, there are advantages to both. Internally there is more control and customization, but external tools benefit from scale: AWS is such a great resource for its customers because Amazon achieves greater scale than its customers would individually. Like any business that survives and grows, it has increasing returns to scale, meaning it is more efficient or profitable at scale, which translates to a better customer experience and product offering. Image: Iaremenko Sergii/Shutterstock Genomics is showing signs of becoming more modular. Each component of the stack can be integrated with upstream and downstream components. The enablers are sequencing machines that are agnostic as to the downstream processes, cloud computing which allows for the deployment of interconnected software solutions and APIs that allow for software solutions to integrate and transmit data. An enterprise deploying a scalable, secure genomics solution in 2016 can now choose from an array of cutting edge tools that are compatible with each other. They can integrate their sequencers and lab automation systems with cloud providers, like AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft to run variant calling algorithms like DNAnexus, SevenBridges or RealTimeGenomics. They can use algorithms to filter variants based on reference data using software like Omicia, Bina and Ingenuity. As the history of tech shows, modularity in the industry value network makes development easier, faster and cheaper. If the Genomics Tech Stack becomes modular, where components can be plugged in and swapped out, 2016 may be the year that large pharma companies, biotech, CROs and health providers deploy genomics at internet scale. Already there are initiatives to sequence , and . Access to pipelines that work at scale is no small feat, and a major barrier to rapid innovation. Regulation and compliance are must-haves and software and data systems must be reproducible to be relevant. Reproducibility and automation are especially difficult for homespun systems whose components are open source, unsupported and/or non-existent. Once large enterprises in life sciences are given the tools to deploy genomics at scale, the pace of R&D will dramatically increase and the results could change the industry and medicine as a whole. Genomics will re-invent and re-invigorate pharma and biotech business and has the promise of significantly improving healthcare. The first step is reproducible and validated software systems — and a modular Genomics Tech Stack is getting us there.
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HTC exec: exclusives are a bad idea for VR
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
Last week at E3, we had a chance to speak with some of the biggest names in VR, from to — but that list that wouldn’t be complete without some input from HTC. The smartphone maker was, perhaps, something of a dark horse in the space, but its Vive headset has scored high rankings among industry stalwarts, positioning the Taiwanese for something of a renaissance at the dawn of a new age of computing. Joel Breton, HTC’s Vice President VR Content, who formerly served as studio head at Bethesda Softworks, sat down with us at the big ole gaming show to discuss how the company plans to set itself apart in the ever more crowded space. “What we’ve done from day one is launch the complete package we feel offers full immersion to the user,” said Breton. “We’ve placed the user right in the action, with full 360-degree movement, including the ability to user your hands in a natural way, to interact with your environment.” The executive also addressed growing concern around the issue of exclusive titles. “We’re not actively seeking exclusives at all,” he told TechCrunch. “We think that’s a bad idea for VR. It’s not good for consumers, because consumers are being blocked out of content. It’s not good for developers, because what happens is, if they’re locked out of 75- or 80-percent of commercial viability, that’s a horrible thing for their long term business goals. It’s trading short-term cash for long term viability.” Breton, who has been in the industry since the mid-90s, added that while gaming certainly looks to be the first major push for the format, he believes that it will ultimately comprise a fraction of VR’s ultimate use. “Gaming is a very important use for VR, and of course the game developers love virtual reality,” explains Breton. “But what we’re seeing on the content side is about 12 different categories – education is one, live video, social apps, healthcare, design. In all of these different areas, there are companies working to figure out the best way to bring those different applications into VR. We’re supporting those folks as much as we can, because we believe that while games are the leading charge, down the road, these other categories will come in and dwarf games in terms of their size, scope and reach.”
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 6 | 2 | null |
Microsoft Flow, a tool for managing workflows, launches on iOS
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
, the company’s recently launched workflow management tool, has now arrived on mobile in the form of an iOS application. Essentially a direct competitor to IFTTT, Microsoft Flow on the web, offering an interface that lets you mash up up two or more cloud services in order to create workflows – like those that let you automate file synchronization, alerting, data organization and more. Competing services, including IFTTT and Zapier, have been around longer and offer a larger list of supported connections. Microsoft Flow, meanwhile, is more focused on integrations with Microsoft’s own business tools, like Office 365, Dynamics CRM, PowerApps, and Yammer, as well as those that are used in organizations, like MailChip, GitHub, Salesforce, Slack, and others. However, you can use Microsoft Flow to automate a number of common scenarios, like getting a text message whenever your boss emails you, saving the results of a Twitter search to an Excel file, copying files from OneDrive to SharePoint, copying photos from Instagram to Dropbox, and many more. With the new iOS application, you can now manage your previously created “flows” from your smartphone. That means you can switch them on or off, view their properties, or check out run history reports to make sure they are performing properly and haven’t had any errors. The app also includes an Activity Feed which is where you can see all your recent Flow actions, including whether any of the flow require attention. You can search this feed or filter it, then drill down into the individual results to view more details on the given workflow. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN5FpyAhbc0?list=PL8nfc9haGeb55I9wL9QnWyHp3ctU2_ThF] For flows that are mission-critical, you can configure the app to send you push notifications when something goes wrong so you can launch the app then triage the issue in real-time. This can be useful, too, for getting alerts when an important flow is running, as an alternative to having the workflow alert you in another way – like via SMS, for example. The company says the capabilities of the app will be expanded in time, most notably to include flow creation on mobile, as well as support for things like triggering, remediation, approvals and even flows that take advantage of your mobile device signals, says Microsoft. An Android application is also in the works. Like IFTTT, workflow creation apps like Microsoft Flow have niche appeal – it’s the sort of thing power users love, but aren’t necessarily popular with the mainstream. That said, as part of a larger business tools offering, something like Flow makes more sense as it could attract a core following among those with more technical expertise or inclinations, as well as business users who have a need to manage data across multiple apps. Microsoft Flow is .
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VR is the future of porn, and it’s a creepy future indeed
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
This got real weird, real fast. And not just because I was demoing the technology in the middle of the E3 floor, surrounded by fellow show-goers. It’s just — well, even after all the explainers in the world, it’s hard to sufficiently brace your mind for all that virtual reality porn entails. It occupied a small space, tucked in the rear of the LA Convention Center, but Naughty America may just have had the one booth capable of rivaling Nintendo’s for sheer show buzz. We must have walked by the thing a dozen times during our three days on the floor, and there was always a small army of show-goers lined up to take it for a spin. Much like, say, your standard first-person shooter, the technology is built around a POV (point-of-view) shot, putting the viewer in the place of the camera. The effect is already a bit jolting (and, at times nausea-inducing) in standard VR, but all of that really goes next level when you look down and you’ve swapped your bits and bobs with someone else’s. The company’s demo cycles through a few short clips, in which the scenery, scenarios and co-stars change, but, well, the view pretty much stays the same. It’s hard to say how much of the initial shock is due to the newness of the technology and how much is firmly entrenched in the uncanny valley, though the company told me that many attendees enjoyed the demo, strange setting and all. Once you get past the somewhat off-putting nature of swapping nether regions with a professional, VR porn does offer an interesting way forward for an industry that, like many others, has been hard hit by the prevalence of free online content. “The adult industry has been under siege by tube sites,” the company’s CIO Ian Paul told TechCrunch. “[With VR], we can raise the bar and get people to subscribe to porn again. “ Welcome to the future, everyone. It’s super weird here.
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Alternative lenders aren’t going away, they’re just misunderstood
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Charles Birnbaum
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 |
What a difference a year makes. In 2015, was a marketplace-lending leader with a $7 billion market cap, and the media was heralding the . Now, with Lending Club and OnDeck Capital’s shares getting pummeled by public market investors, news outlets are asking . The same pundits who once lauded the potential of newcomers to are now declaring that those alternative lenders As we at Bessemer Venture Partners have evaluated these businesses as potential venture investments over the past several years, we struggled across a few key fronts when trying to justify the lofty valuations of these tech-enabled, non-bank lenders. Now, with regulators worried that and journalists racing to point out the , we wonder if the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Ultimately, we feel that many of these businesses were simply evaluated under the wrong valuation lens. For more than a decade, the shifting environment in what we like to refer to as the tech-enabled lending space has driven much of the industry’s excitement and our own investment thesis for the category. We remain enthusiastic about many of the businesses created in this space, beginning with companies like our own portfolio company , a pioneer in the category that launched in the U.K. in 2005, and Lending Club and shortly thereafter in the U.S. Since then, we have seen an explosion of startup activity by many talented entrepreneurs attacking every element of the lending markets, from student debt, to small business loans, residential mortgages, commercial real-estate, payday lending and more. These markets, historically built upon legacy systems and stale underwriting practices, continue to be ripe for disruption, and we still firmly believe that software-enabled, data-driven companies will lead the way. While the favorable fixed income market conditions and historically low interest rates over the past several years certainly can and will change, there are a number of other market developments that are here to stay. This group of alternative lending startups has seen phenomenal growth and has leveraged software and better data to disrupt large markets. But at the same time, these new originators shouldn’t continue to be valued off of the same metrics and lofty valuation multiples as SaaS businesses or online marketplaces. Instead, these new lenders are more appropriately evaluated within the context of the financial services companies they are trying to displace. When you approach alternative lending in this way, you can see that the former hype and current disillusionment with the category are both off base. To better understand the true value these emerging lenders bring to the industry, here is a simple matrix we have used that can be applied across the non-bank, alternative-lending industry: In other words, these businesses are similar to existing banks and specialty finance companies, albeit with certain benefits (leveraging technology, capital-lite structure) and disadvantages (no sticky, cheap deposits or permanent access to capital). The clear parallels suggest that, in the end, these newcomers are still primarily finance companies and should be valued accordingly. We remain excited about the transformation of the lending landscape. While we’re currently experiencing some soberness after years of froth in the space, this current negative sentiment may now lead to overly depressed valuations and overlooked opportunities. We are confident that many great companies will be built as entrepreneurs bring more software, data-driven underwriting practices and innovative origination models to improve the market for borrowers and enhance capital market efficiency in the years ahead, and we look forward to meeting you.
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For more diversity in the workplace, start with technical roles
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Elizabeth Ames
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
The lack of diversity in terms of gender, race, ethnicity and age is well documented in the technology industry. Public data shared by major tech employers show that women only represent 25 to 45 percent of their entire workforce. The disparity gets worse in technical roles — for the past five years, women have been stuck at , based on data from the Anita Borg Institute’s survey. Other underrepresented groups face similarly discouraging participation levels. Hispanic employees hold, at best, 11 percent of jobs, while black workers only account for 2 to 8 percent of jobs at technology companies. Again, representation is even lower in technical roles, with Hispanic workers at 2 to 8 percent and black employees at 1 to 7 percent, according to public diversity data from technology companies. Women fill many roles in marketing, HR, finance and other departments in the tech industry. This is a positive trend, but it’s never going to be enough to close the gender gap in the industry. Why? Because the biggest job growth at nearly all companies is happening in technical roles. If we continue to discourage women from pursuing technical roles, the gap will only get wider. Today, every company is a tech company, and every industry relies on tech to drive efficiency and innovation. Financial institutions, retailers and media companies have growing technical workforces, and across industries, non-technical departments like marketing, HR and finance increasingly demand technical expertise. Technology’s expansion into all business areas isn’t likely to stop anytime soon, so it’s critical for organizations to focus on recruiting, retaining and advancing diverse and talented people in their technical workforces. The simple fact is that technical roles present greater and higher-paying job opportunities than other areas. Getting more women and underrepresented groups into technical roles is the key to closing the gap. Why is the technical workforce in particular so important? To illustrate, let’s look at a well-known technology player in Silicon Valley, Intel, which released its earlier this year. As of 2015, women make up 24.8 percent of the company’s overall U.S. workforce. By contrast, women make up only 20.1 percent of Intel’s U.S.-based technical workforce. For context, technical roles make up a whopping 86 percent of Intel’s entire U.S. workforce. Because technical roles represent a vast majority of job opportunities at Intel, the company must focus its diversity efforts in that area first. If Intel’s technical workforce had equal representation of men and woman, gender parity at the company would be a reality today. Unless companies focus their diversity strategies on technical roles specifically, equal representation of women and men across the organization will remain a pipe dream. Women struggle to land jobs in the technology field, but it doesn’t get easier as they ascend the ladder. The bar is set much higher for their participation, and there is a stubborn perception that women are less skilled at math and science. To see evidence of this, look no further than the made by Sequoia Capital investor Michael Moritz, who suggested that if more talented women in tech existed, they would be hired, but he wasn’t prepared to “lower his standards” to hire for diversity. But what are those “standards”? For women, they involve a degree in CS or engineering, but apparently this standard doesn’t apply to Mr. Moritz, who has a history degree. This prevailing attitude, and the resulting lack of women in tech, is discouraging. But despite these challenges, we must recognize the great strides women have made in business, leadership and society. For instance, this year, more than half the finalists for Intel’s Science Talent Search were women, and two of the three winners were female. Women represent half of the world’s intellectual capital and their participation can substantially expand economic growth. Ignoring this fact can be disastrous for organizations. To succeed in a fast-paced, hyper-competitive global marketplace, companies must innovate continuously. And nothing drives innovation like diversity. Recruiting, retaining and advancing women technologists isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s the smart thing to do.
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VR skateboarding at E3
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
I’ve been skateboarding for longer than I care mention, and I still had to hold onto the damn railings. I’m going to blame it on the screwy sense of orientation one experiences in virtual reality, but it probably owes just as much to my fear of falling off a mechanical skateboard simulator in the middle of the crowded E3 show floor. The exhibit was created by D-Box to promote Samsung’s Gear VR headset, utilizing the Canada hardware company’s mechanical system to simulate a downhill longboard experience. “Basically what you have underneath are electromechanical actuators that are synced with content that give you all of the texture of the road, all the curves,” D-Box’s VP Sales Yannick Gemme told TechCrunch. “All of those cues are being generated by D-Box in real time to make you part of the action.” It’s hard feeling fully immersed on the floor of a show like E3, but the company did a good job matching the video to the interactive experience, right down to the vibrating bumps of the gravel road. It’s an impressive experience, but one still cost prohibitive for those of us who don’t, say, own a fleet of cars, private jet, or have a line of steaks named after us. “D-Box is working on bringing a product to the consumer level,” adds Gemme. “With the introduction of VR into the living room, having a D-Box makes sense, whether you’re watching a movie or playing a game. You throw on your headset and become part of your own world.” In the meantime, you’ll have to go to an amusement or show like E3 to experience it for yourself.
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Contact CI’s Exotendon system brings touch to VR
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
Sometimes the coolest demos at a convention are tucked away in the back corners, far from the bright lights and big booths industry stalwarts. One of the hidden gems of this year’s E3 arrives courtesy Contact CI. The small Cincinnati-based startup was showing of its developer kit for the first time at the event, featuring a complex glove designed to offer more lifelike VR interactons. “What we have developed is a glove that uses an Exotendon system for motion capture, so it’s completely different from what’s been present in a motion capture glove before,” explains co-founder Craig Douglass. “It captures all of your movements in real time, mimicking them back to the game engine that you’re using for your headset. And it also has haptic feedback, through five actuators in the fingertips that give you a buzz interaction, so when you’re picking up an item, you can feel yourself grabbing it, and when you’re letting go, you can feel it leaving your hand.” This is still pretty early days, and sadly the prototype on-display didn’t offer any of the promised haptic feedback when I took it for a quick spin. There’s also the matter of calibration, still a fairly complicated process that takes around five to 10 minutes to complete. As such, the company wouldn’t recalibrate it for every demo. Different hand sizes have a big impact on the efficacy of the system, and as such, my own demo was a bit frustrating. I’m already not great at shooting basketballs, so lending a lack of calibration to my lack of coordination made for a bit of a mess – even picking up the ball proved difficult. But the company still got its point across. Contact Ci will begin shipping dev kits this fall, priced at $470 for a pair or $250 for an individual (the pair, naturally, makes for a better experience). The company’s hoping to knock the price down to $299 for a pair by the time the peripheral starts shipping.
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Will the next Siri be empathetic?
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Rupa Chaturvedi
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
AI assistants are having their moment. Just a week ago, , an AI capable of carrying on an “ongoing two-way dialog.” It joins a field crowded with Apple’s , Amazon’s , Microsoft’s , Facebook’s , the unreleased and a whole host of others. But right now, while these assistants can book a meeting, tell you the weather or give you directions to a coffee shop, they still feel a bit cold. They don’t react to changes in mood, circumstances or personal context — or anything else. In other words, they lack empathy. What does that really mean? Humans have forever personified their technologies. We engage emotionally, have expectations and establish a trust-based association with our technology. If you’ve ever gotten irate at an automated phone menu or thanked your mobile phone for reminding you about an important meeting, this is a feeling with which you’re well acquainted. The point is, technologies that are truly important to our well-being and happiness transcend their status as just “stuff.” Instead, we engage with them emotionally. The late Stanford professor went as far as to claim the human/computer interaction is fundamentally social in its nature. In other words, if we have an emotional bond with our technology, wouldn’t it be smart to design systems that feel empathetic to our needs? If you’re a bit reticent to accept that people can have a truly personal, emotional connection with a machine, . Ellie is an AI psychologist that has primarily been used to treat military personnel suffering from PTSD. She uses verbal and nonverbal cues and engages in conversation like an AI assistant. The really interesting part here is that patients seemed to prefer talking to Ellie over a person. According to Albert Rizzo, one of the brains responsible for Ellie, the patients “didn’t feel judged, had lower interest in impression management and generally provided more information.” Of course, talking to a psychologist is different than talking to an assistant. But it’s notable that people felt more comfortable divulging their real personal hardships to a machine than to a person. And when we talk about designing an AI assistant, it’s worth keeping this lesson in mind. Users aren’t creeped out by technology that knows and understands them. Done well, it can be just the opposite. So how do we design an empathetic AI? How do we humanize our algorithms? We can start by freeing them from being so primarily backwards facing. Algorithms need tons of data to function of course, but they shouldn’t need to know everything about a user to help then book a plane flight. If we approach the problem as creating a more human (and thus more empathetic) AI, we need to imagine it interacting on a human, social level. When we meet a stranger, do we start by asking for all their data? What purchases they’ve made in the last year? What their email address and credit cards are? Predicting what you may like based on my purchases for the last six months is intelligence. We can do that now. But you knowing I just want to let my hair down today and chill is empathy. We need algorithms that make decisions in the moment, about individuals, not from the past about groups of individuals. One way to do this is by reimagining what we’re doing with speech recognition. AIs now can understand words, but they can’t really understand the emotion and tone behind them. This, of course, is what people do unconsciously, all the time. And if you look at a company like , which has analyzed millions of hours of conversation to find personality and mood cues, you can start to see the outlines of how we might do this. Which is to say those algorithms exist. It’s a matter of using them differently, designing for the user, not the tech. Instead of focusing on assistants that process what you say, we can also focus on assistants that understand how you say it. An AI that understands, in the moment, how a user feels, can behave empathetically. Imagine an AI that wouldn’t sass you when you’re sounding glum or one that would speed through an interaction when you’re sounding harried. In other words, an AI that modifies its behavior based on its user’s mood. Of course, there are other ways to go about creating an empathetic AI past speech analysis. Facial recognition programs are getting better at intuiting feelings. An AI assistant you kept in your family room that could tell you’d spent the last hour laughing your way through your favorite comedy or if you’d spent it arguing with your significant other should be able to tailor its behavior and interactions around your facial expression, as well as the tone of your voice. It would react to you in the moment, not your browser history or other users who share your consumer profile. Empathy is, fundamentally, about understanding individuals and how they feel. It’s also about realizing that people change constantly. We have good days and bad days, pick up new hobbies, change our patterns because we’re on a diet or are going on vacation or preparing for a big release at work. Every day is different, and every interaction is different, as well. An empathetic AI needs to understand that. Designing an AI assistant that can schedule a meeting on your calendar and notify you is intelligence. Knowing that you might have a “wrench in your day” and need to reschedule things on-the-fly is empathy. If you’re catching a pattern here, you’re right. To create an empathetic AI, it’s not about seeing users as a group, but seeing each user as an individual. It’s about designing a system that picks up on the same subtle clues humans do when we gauge each other’s state of mind and intent and learn from those reactions. It’s about creating something that evolves and changes its behavior in the moment, just like we do in every conversation we have. It’s about making a technology that views users as the unique people they actually are. And if the next AI is going be empathetic, that’s exactly what we’re going to need to do.
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Gillmor Gang: M & A
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Steve Gillmor
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, June 17, 2016. You’d think, and John Borthwick did, that this Gang would be all about WWDC and actionable notifications in iOS 10 and Apple TV’s deep link reboot of the set top box. We did get there by the very end, but not before the big acquisition news from Microsoft, Salesforce, Medium, and what may come next as the unicorn meltdown shakes up the messaging platforms. @stevegillmor, @borthwick, @kevinmarks, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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Flipping the office telepresence model
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Peter Hirst
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
What if I told you that you could visit three continents in one day without leaving your office and truly feel like you were there in person? That you could move down a hallway or across a stage, make eye contact and feel, well, more like a human being than just a face on a screen? Earlier this year, Paul McDonagh-Smith — my coworker at who is based in London — did just that with the help of “telepresence robotics.” First thing in the morning, he co-presented at a conference in Singapore alongside our colleague Cyndi Chan, then had a business meeting in Cape Town, South Africa and later that afternoon met with me and other team members on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If you haven’t encountered a telepresence robot before, they look surprisingly humble. There is some variety in appearance, but the basic elements are: a screen that functions as a “head,” a “leg” or a “neck” for turning the “head” and a set of gyroscopic wheels for traveling. The model we use is made by and is essentially an iPad on a leg with wheels. Though it may seem simple, the technology is quite remarkable in what it can do for bringing people together. In our office, telepresence robots are no longer a novelty, but an everyday tool we’ve been using to enable our remote team members to be more engaged. About two-thirds of our staff work remotely one to three days a week. Double’s robot units are available regularly for team meetings or one-on-one visits. Paul’s experience may be a bit extreme, and we don’t all use our Doubles quite like that every day. The majority of us are more like Colleen Berger, an Executive Education Program Director who lives on Cape Cod, which is about a three-hour commute from the office — on a good day. Colleen uses a telepresence robot regularly to join meetings and have conversations with colleagues on campus. I use the robots occasionally when traveling, and have even logged in from a plane once. What we all enjoy, however, is the ability to be truly present in our interactions with colleagues and clients — an experience that feels much more natural and personal than a phone call or a videoconference. The daily operations of the MIT Sloan Executive Education team fall into three major categories: developing and facilitating education programs; meeting with faculty, clients and members of the business community; and traveling the world for professional conferences and business meetings. Now that we’ve learned the best internal uses of the Double robots, we’ve been gradually — and strategically — expanding beyond our office walls. I mentioned , but bringing a robot into a classroom required a lot more thought than just figuring out the logistics for one or two people. MIT Sloan Executive Education programs are rooted in a shared learning experience — participants gather on campus to learn from our faculty and each other, build professional relationships and take part in the MIT ecosystem. We experiment with virtual delivery in select programs, but the underlying principle remains the same. How can we offer all the benefits of presence to remote participants without compromising the experience of learners co-located in our classrooms? Who would benefit from this technology the most? Offering it to people with distance and mobility challenges seemed like a good place to start. We wanted to make a selection of our programs available to people who may not even consider enrolling otherwise — even though they and everyone in the room would benefit from their participation. To help us find the right candidate for the pilot, we brought in disability diversity expert Sean Driscoll. Sean is the founder of , a consultancy that advises organizations on diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives. We have worked with Sean before in the context of our involvement with , a statewide network that aims to increase employment among individuals with disabilities in Massachusetts. Sean’s deep knowledge of the disability diversity issues and his wide professional network were instrumental in our experiment. With Sean’s help, we met Tom Hershey, an entertainment industry executive who lives and works in Los Angeles. Tom uses an electric wheelchair, so traveling across the country presents its own set of unique challenges for him. Tom attended a two-day executive education program, , led by one of our senior faculty members, Professor Steven Eppinger. Prior to the program, Tom had a couple of training and troubleshooting sessions with our staff, but other than that he was expected to participate just like everyone else in the room. He got the hang of operating the robot fairly quickly and was able to enjoy all aspects of the program. “Once it was all up and running, it was a lot of fun and I forgot the fact, honestly, that I was there remotely,” he says. “You get sort of caught up in the activities that are happening in the classroom — it was like being there.” Having attended MIT as an undergraduate student, Tom thought that his experience with the robot approximated the classroom experience quite well. Lucky for us, Tom’s long career in special-effects technology at Sony Pictures made him a savvy user and eager to try a cool new tech approach. He noted some areas of improvement, but his overall impression was very positive. “There was no sense of me being that remote physically,” he says. “It needs a bit more work, but I feel confident that it will be a good avenue.” Steven Eppinger was a little nervous about having a robot-enabled participant in his classroom. “My key concern was would Tom get as much out of the program as he should?” he says. “Even though I know it’s possible to interact with someone via this robot technology, I didn’t know how it would work in a classroom setting, but it actually worked quite smoothly. Tom was fully able to participate. In an open enrollment program of about 50 people, everybody should, if they want to, have an opportunity to speak in class and interact with others at their table, and he did exactly those things.” Steven Eppinger talks with Tom and Paul during a program break. (Photo: Bruce Hecht) Steven considers personal interaction an important part of the overall program experience. Although he has taught in various technology-enabled settings, including online and teleconferencing, synchronous delivery is still his preferred method. “I think you get a richer experience with synchronous,” he says. “And to be truly synchronous, we need to gather. We can do that physically at MIT or we can use various remote technologies. Comparing telepresence to conventional or even very good videoconferencing, this has more presence. For certain things, there is a big advantage in being synchronous and co-located. And this made it possible for us to break the co-location requirement.” As a bonus, Steven didn’t have to change a thing in how he teaches to make allowances for this technology. It was simple. However, teaching a room full of robots would be an entirely different matter, because if everyone in the room were present digitally, their sensing capability would be quite different and would require a dramatically different method of teaching. Professor JoAnne Yates agrees. “A room full of robots doesn’t make as much sense because the thing that the telepresence robot gives you is the physical presence that can interact with other human presences. If there’s no presence there, then why not have everyone on a screen?” JoAnne teaches in our program and studies dispersed teams and communications methods that make them effective. In her opinion, telepresence robotics offer important advantages over the more traditional collaboration tools in allowing a remote participant to join a co-located group. “The robot gives you much more flexibility than an audio phone connection or a videoconference,” she says. “The voice actually comes from the robot, so people treat the robot more as if it were a person. Usually, you don’t have the picture and the voice coming from the same point in space, and you do with the robot. And that’s a big advantage in allowing the robot to interact with people in a class or in a meeting.” Bruce Hecht attended the same program as Tom, only in person — or rather in his physical body. An electrical engineer at the Boston-based Analog Devices and a robotics enthusiast, Bruce was thrilled to have a co-participant attending via a telepresence robot. Although he wasn’t seated at the same table initially, he made a beeline for Tom as soon as he saw him. “When I heard where he was, I wanted to meet him because I wanted to see what the experience was like but also because I just like to sit with people at different tables and meet as many people as I can.” Bruce took every opportunity to talk to Tom during breaks, at lunch and in small-group projects. He describes the experience as not much different from working with someone who is there in their physical body. Bruce is a regular participant in MIT Sloan Executive Education programs. Building relationships with his co-learners is an important aspect of the program experience for him, and that is not something easily done with traditional audio or videoconference tools. “That wouldn’t really be possible on the phone. With so many people, you won’t even know what to ask, and you won’t know whom to ask,” he says. “In the room, there are a lot of people. But if you have so many people on a call, only one person can really have a conversation at a time.” The telepresence robots make it possible for the remote person to direct their attention in a more natural way. You may not be able to shake someone’s hand (yet!), but you can maintain eye contact as you talk, you can turn to look at someone else around the table and you have an actual seat in the room as you would physically. “When you are present at the table, you lower it [iPad] down, so you’re basically at the same position as if you’re seated. You can see people at the table eye to eye,” says Bruce. Adding to the robot’s natural feel is the ability for the remote person to move between communication styles. Here’s how our super-user Paul describes it. “We could be having a one-on-one conversation, but I can move quite naturally to another communication style where I might move the robot to a stage and I might present to a group of 10 or 50 or 100. And you can move from this one-to-one or one-to-a-few kind of collaboration to a broader communication style and back and forth very easily.” The robot’s agility to adjust to different communication modes was an important aspect for Tom, too. “Navigating between the spheres of communication: instructor to class, instructor to student, student to workgroup and student to student is a key benefit of the technology,” he says, adding that, as a user, he sees this area as “most ripe for evolutionary improvement.” This kind of natural ease just isn’t possible with more traditional collaboration tools like audio or videoconferencing. “There is a tendency to kind of round robin where people will take turns to speak,” Paul explains. “And sometimes you have to wait for the host to initiate the discussion with the remote user. This is a lot more egalitarian in the sense that if I participate by robot, I can actually very easily initiate a discussion. It’s not something that happens to me. It’s something that I am very much creating and actively participating in. Active participation is a key difference.” Paul also points out the similarity between the Double’s design and a face-to-face conversation. “The only thing visible on the iPad is the person’s head. It’s about 80 or 90 percent of the real estate. Which is very similar from the human interaction perspective, this is what we see when we interact physically.” However, eye contact is not the only human-like feature of the Double’s range of motion. Paul likens the unit’s slight oscillation to a person shifting their balance from one foot to another as they stand and talk. “I think that gives the sense of active presence, like a human embodiment,” he says. Another key aspect of telepresence robotics is the level of attention that’s required from the person participating remotely. You can’t multitask easily — and that is a good thing. Colleen explains, “I think that we all fall into the trap that if we’re just on the phone, we tend to multitask regularly and you don’t have that option with telepresence. You really do have to be present. It can be retraining yourself, if you will, to work in a different way, but in the end, the meetings are more productive, more collaborative. You participate more and add more value and probably receive more value out of it if you’re truly listening.” The heightened attention and focus are just as important in our classrooms. The experience of our executive education programs is intense and requires a full commitment of time and attention for the duration of each program. What telepresence technology has given us goes far beyond our initial plans to make meaningful technological accommodations for our remote workers. The popular proverb about necessity being the mother of invention is certainly true for us. Our motivation to try out this technology came during our office’s move to a physically remote space and in the middle of a major city construction project near campus that would make the notoriously frustrating Boston commute even more so. We thought long and hard about the most effective ways to accommodate flex work for our team members. Telepresence seemed like an intriguing addition, and has proven highly effective for our team. I’ve and extensively on what a boon our flexible working arrangements have been to employee morale, job satisfaction and productivity, and technologies such as telepresence robots are helping make this possible. Now that we’ve opened our classrooms to robot-enabled participants outside our own team and have learned from the experience, we will continue to look at different ways of using telepresence robotics on campus and beyond.
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Only in Norway: Fish food company wins startup pitch competition
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Haje Jan Kamps
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
Imagine for a moment that you are a tech journalist. You’re traveling to Norway, a country dear to your heart, and you want to come back reporting positive news about the startup scene there. You are invited, among other things, to the final round of . The winning company, MiniPro, doesn’t have an internet presence. At all. Its product? Baby food for baby fish. You won’t believe what happens next. Ingmar Høgøy, CEO of MiniPro, pitching his company (Image by Dan Taylor/Heisenberg Media) In any other country, the pitch would have been a joke. A parody of a company that somehow walked into the wrong room, and is finding itself pitching alongside companies launching apps to help children with speech impediments ( ) and service businesses complementing the AirBnB model ( ). I’ve sat through a of demo days and pitch events, and when MiniPro took the stage, I couldn’t help myself. “For the love of…”, I said to whomever was unfortunate enough to sit next to me. “Only in Norway would they put in the finals a startup competition”. Their patient answer was accompanied with a shrug. “Well, this is Norway”, came the reply. As the winner of the competition was announced — and yes, it was, of course, the fish-food company — I had to agree. Yes… This Norway. And that is important. 20 investors each invested 50,000 NOK (approximately $6k) each. Here, they’re trying to decide which company to award that investment to. (Image by Dan Taylor/Heisenberg Media) Something worth admiring about the Norwegian startup scene is that there appears to have been a conscious decision to not to become yet another clone of silicon valley. (Silicon Fjord, anyone?). This manifests itself in a few different ways; many of the startups in this ecosystem focus on industries where the country traditionally has been strong: Oil, gas, shipping and fish. That makes sense: this where the country’s expertise is. The entrepreneurs know where the problems are and have the skills to stake a claim to potential solutions. It’s also more straightforward to raise money for companies the investors can relate to. And, of course, it’s much easier to envision an exit in the shipping space in Norway than for, say, a home-brew Uber competitor. In winning the competition, MiniPro takes home a 1-million-Norwegian-kroner (around $120k) investment. As far as I can tell, the company doesn’t have a website or, indeed, any internet presence at all. I couldn’t find a single reference to them beyond . They make fish food. And they’re about as far removed from the startups I’m used to as you could get. Which brings us full circle — as I already mentioned, having a company making ‘baby food for baby fish’ win a startup pitching competition is a massive face-palm moment to me as a tech reporter (Norway, if you’re reading this, you’re making it easy to subject yourself to a relentless barrage of ridicule). And yet, the win very nicely illustrates why Norway is such a curious place. Objectively, by any standard, MiniPro was the best startup on stage that day. Even when seen against the backdrop of more conventional tech startups, the company is ticking all the key boxes for a startup: A strong team, comprehensive understanding of the target market, a patent-protected product, a crisp vision, a clear go-to-market strategy, huge potential for growth, solid profit margins, and a clear product-market fit. There’s no denying that the company inside out, and if MiniPro was in any other industry than aquaculture, I wouldn’t be surprised to find investors lining up around the block. And this, to me, was the biggest eye-opener of my time in Norway. Reporting on the country from the perspective of Silicon Valley simply doesn’t make sense — but that doesn’t mean that the Norwegian startup scene doesn’t have a bright entrepreneurial future ahead of it; but it is going to be facing some pretty unique challenges on the way.
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Learn deeply, but baby, don’t fear the Skynet
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Jon Evans
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
Who’s afraid of AlphaGo? Everyone who’s anyone, you might think. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking have all about the “existential threat” of AI, just as “deep learning” neural networks are revolutionizing the AI field. Should we be scared for our jobs? Or even our species? Fear not, I have answers! They are, respectively, “maybe,” and “don’t be ridiculous.” This discussion of AI lasted a full ten minutes before someone brought up the prospect of the eradication of the human species. Progress! — Jon Evans (@rezendi) It is right to describe recent AI developments as a “breakthrough,” as Frank Chen of Andreessen Horowitz does in which summarizes both the history and the state of the art. Chen ends with a bold call to action: All the serious applications from here on out need to have deep learning and AI inside … it’s just going to be a fundamental technique that we expect to see in all serious applications moving forward … as fundamental as mobile and cloud were in the last 5-10 years. And he’s right! But “deep learning” is not even remotely in the same galaxy as the “AI” that Musk, Hawking, and Gates are worried about it. It be — indeed, probably is — a step along that very long road. But what’s interesting and powerful about deep learning is not that it makes machines “smart” in a way that the word is used with relation to people or animals. What’s interesting about deep learning is that while there’s nothing magical or genie-like about it — as Geordie Wood , “it’s really just simple math executed on an enormous scale” — its “programs” are ultimately matrixes of values that have been , rather than lines of code which are (although many lines of traditional code go into the training, of course.) What’s powerful about it, what’s so exciting, is that it excels at whole of problems that are extremely difficult to solve using traditional software techniques: categorization, pattern recognition, pattern , etcetera. It’s not often that whole new of problems suddenly become amenable to better solutions. The last time it happened was when the smartphone ate the world. So deep learning really is an awesome and exciting new development. (As are other forms of AI research, albeit to a lesser extent. The loose taxonomy is that “deep learning” is part of “machine learning” which is part of “AI.”) Let me offer some primers, while I’m here: But just as deep learning is a good tool for many problems for which traditional programming is bad, it is also a bad (and extremely unwieldy) tool for many problems which traditional programming can solve. I give you, as an amusing example, this hilarious piece from Joel Grus: “ ,” in which he mockingly tries to use TensorFlow to solve the famously trivial “FizzBuzz” interview problem. Spoiler alert: it does not go well. Similarly, neural networks are very far from infallible. My favorite example is “ ” by Julia Evans. And with machine learning comes new concerns — such as all the complex tooling around training and using it, per of how “we’re still far away from a world where machine learning models can live without their human tutors,” and even the potential need for machine : So: AI (the research field) has benefited from a huge breakthrough, which is awesome and exciting and opens up whole new realms of newly accessible solutions that incumbents and startups alike can explore! This also means that jobs which consist largely of pattern recognition and responding to those patterns in fairly simple and predictable ways — like, say, driving — may be obsoleted with remarkable speed. But AI (as in the research field) is still nowhere near AI (as in artificial intelligence remotely comparable to ours) and this very cool breakthrough hasn’t really changed that. Worry not about Skynet. But, similarly, let us treat with the appropriate skepticism the clamor for deep-learning solutions to all human problems. Deep learning appears to be the new blockchain, in that people who don’t understand it suddenly want to solve all problems with it. I give you, for example, this call from the White House for “ .” There is, already, “ .” Any “improved” machine-learning system is, similarly, extremely likely to inherit the biases of its human tutors — cultural biases which will remain, for the foreseeable future, a problem no neural network can solve. Modern AI is no demon, but it’s no panacea either.
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As the smartphone wars reheat, the threat of chilling innovation looms
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G. Nagesh Rao
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
Bill Gates recently penned to the 2016 presidential candidates, imploring them to support something he hopes “every candidate will agree on in November: America’s unparalleled capacity for innovation.” Politics aside, it’s hard to argue with his call to action. From prolific inventors like George Washington Carver and Grace Hopper to today’s vibrant high-tech startup scene in Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston and the many other booming tech sectors from coast to coast, Americans have a profound disruptive entrepreneurial spirit hardwired into our DNA. Even our founding fathers demonstrated that spirit when they challenged the status quo of the British monarchy to “start up” our great country. For many decades, the U.S. patent system has carried a reputation as a global benchmark of prestige and technological success. Our intellectual property protections provide economic security by safeguarding investments from the proof of concept phase forward, sometimes leading to ground-breaking innovation. Our system protects the smallest big-thinking visionary in their developmental infancy and the multinational corporation alike — not to suggest the playing field is always even. But now our patent policies are being tested by increasingly complex products and technologies that evolve at the rapid pace of today and sometimes tomorrow. Many aspects of the intellectual property policy employed to govern and protect innovations were developed yesterday, the day before and sometimes more than 100 years ago. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has been working hard to ensure our intellectual property (IP) system operates toward a 21st century agile model, following and leading into the enactment of the American Invents Act (AIA). However, the PTO is not omnipotent, they are bound by legislation and more so by precedent established through federal court decisions. A timely example of the court’s influence in the system is the high-profile Apple versus Samsung design patent case, which represents an opportunity for critical clarity. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case and a ruling that raises questions regarding how to protect investment in product development, as well as the appropriate remedies when infringement is found. The case’s ultimate outcome could impact any company (small or large) that brings a product to market, and it provides a crucial opportunity for modernization in certain areas of the system. What makes the case interesting, other than the household names on both sides, are the implications it may have for companies ranging from Mom and Pop shops to general consumer goods and services that don’t own patents or that operate outside the technology industry. On June 2, Samsung submitted its in the Supreme Court case, stating that the ruling under review was “grossly overrewarding design patents.” Outside parties then submitted amicus briefs, which are designed to shed light on the outside impact of the ruling under review, so pretty much anyone other than the two companies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also submitted a about the ruling under review, which states that, “the patent system is supposed to offer fair reward for inventors, not excessive, unfair compensation that threatens our access to technology.” Most notably, perhaps, the U.S. Department of Justice weighed in on the case by submitting an amicus brief that recommended the Supreme Court send the case back to the lower court for a potential retrial. Though that brief wasn’t officially supporting Samsung or Apple’s side, Samsung “welcomed” the support and Apple declined to comment. At the center of the Apple versus Samsung case are design patents. Unlike utility patents, which cover “function,” design patents protect “ornamental appearance” (akin to a trade dress style of protection), a term not easily defined. And therein lies the problem. When design patent protections were first devised, more than 100 years ago, they were typically issued to protect entire objects or products from copying, wherein copyright law was not applicable, as utilitarian functionality is a premise for protection. Thus, a “total profit” remedy seemed equitable and logical and provided patentees with a vehicle for the lost profit restitution if they fell victim to unlawful copying of their products, often with decorative characteristics that set them apart from the other carpet, teapot or saddle. Today, design patents are typically applied for and issued covering singular features of a product’s design. In the Apple case, those designs are the rounded rectangle casing of the phone, a grid of icons on the screen and a bezel. Under a previous court ruling, Samsung was ordered to pay Apple the total profits it received from the smartphones that infringed these patents. Though it is unlikely consumers were confused or duped into buying (or even motivated to buy) a Samsung phone based on these designs, the design infringement remedy remains unchanged. This massive award for such minor design features runs counter to logic and how the system was viewed prior to the award to Apple. Simply put, most design patent assertions are to combat counterfeiting, but this decision can open up a wave of litigation based on infringement of minor patents in which the IP owner seeks total profit disgorgement. Over time we have transformed from consumers of teapots to consumers of sophisticated Wi-Fi-enabled pocket computers, capable of streaming content from programs like “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS, which can foster an appreciation for . The smartphone in our pockets is comprised of thousands of components and of individual patents owned by a wide array of patent holders. However, in cases of design patent infringement, like the smartphone case, all other contributions are essentially voided and the and gridded screen of icons reign supreme. If the ruling stands, Samsung won’t be the only company footing the bill. The outcome of the case carries especially high stakes for America’s high-tech startups. Until recently, patent trolls have predominantly wielded utility patents, making infringement demands tied, albeit loosely, to the value of the technology or functional contribution to the product. Not anymore. Design patents offer a far more lucrative weapon for patent trolls, as they can threaten and potentially recover awards and settlements that account for more than just the value of their patents. And, of course, it comes as no surprise that even Apple isn’t safe from patent trolls, or at least patent asserters who don’t manufacture products. Late , Apple’s iPhone was found to be infringing on utility patents owned by the University of Wisconsin (which is funny, because this is not Apple’s first bout on being called out for infringement… hint, hint… Creative Zen and iPod product disputes). Apple now faces potential damage awards that could approach $1 billion. Even Apple’s Siri isn’t safe, or perhaps isn’t Apple’s at all if you ask my alma mater Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in upstate New York. RPI licensed its utility patent for “user interfaces that recognize natural language” to a company called Dynamic Advances, which some consider to be a troll. That company sued Apple when it released Siri in 2011. A few years later, RPI joined the suit. Apple for around $25 million. No word yet if our appropriately named RPI Engineers hockey team (Go Red!) should pack up its lockers for their new home at the “Siri Arena,” but let’s not hold our breath. Without the Supreme Court reversing the ruling and establishing modernizing precedent in which the remedy is more closely tied to patented design, this smartphone war/design patent ruling will enhance the performance of patent abusers, creating trolls on steroids. Despite Apple’s claim to several common shapes, they likely didn’t patent all of them, so the next time around Cupertino might have to fork over a lot more ransom funds for the safe return of Siri. Total profit awards could also be devastating for smaller companies. Patent trolls are a nuisance for big enterprises, but total profit-seeking trolls can be the grim reaper for small businesses and startups. And remember that any company that makes and sells anything is at risk of being accused of infringement, not just the tech companies. We are talking about common shapes — and the majority of products are a shape or contain a shape. Artisanal upstart pretzel slingers had to learn this the , but hopefully others will avoid straying from the standard knot shape, assuming Apple doesn’t own that one. But the threat of total profits and lack of clarity extend beyond the threat of potential trolls. The ambiguity for design patent infringement remedies can also impact innovators’ ability to secure funding for research and development that’s often necessary to potentially offer the next big thing or become the next American success story, like Facebook, Uber or clothing — all of which contribute to the economy and provide thousands of jobs to Americans, or the Chinese in the Trump example. According to a 2014 authored by Catherine Tucker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), patent trolls have cost U.S. startup entrepreneurs about $21.7 billion in venture capital funds in the five years preceding the report. A 2013 from Robin Feldman of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law revealed that 70 percent of the venture capitalists surveyed had portfolio companies that received patent demand letters, and roughly one in three startup companies reported receiving patent demands — the majority of which came from patent trolls. Mr. Gates calls American innovation our “secret weapon.” If we don’t take measures to protect American manufacturers and innovators from evolving threats like patent abuses, we will stunt our own growth. We must not uphold an outdated policy that stymies innovation and creates an uncertain environment for those with the ingenuity and courage to innovate. The U.S. Supreme Court should set a precedent for future cases that demonstrates to entrepreneurs, as well as would-be abusers, that America will protect its innovations from threats, whether they come from hackers and identity thieves, patent trolls or outdated patent policies that have been tarnished by time and innovative successes like the modern smartphone.
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Partech ends up raising $440 million for its growth fund
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Romain Dillet
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
You might remember that I covered a $240 million growth fund from Paris-based VC firm back in . As I noted at the time, it was just the first closing and other limited partners kept investing in this fund. The very same growth fund is now bigger at $440 million (€400 million). Everything I wrote a couple of years ago still holds true. Partech plans to invest tens of millions of dollars in a handful of companies every year. At the time, the team also told me that this fund wasn’t specifically focused on French startups. And it looks like this is exactly what’s happening as the VC firm has already made 5 investments using this fund in American, British and Finnish companies — Made.com, FreedomPop, Brandwatch, M-Files and RockYou. None of these companies are based in France. Given the size of the investments, you definitely have to expand your geographical focus in order not to miss out on promising deals. That’s why Partech is now competing with some of the biggest funds in Europe and even the U.S. As growth investment is something new for Partech, it’s too early to say whether this strategy will be successful. Some of the limited partners behind this growth fund are Bpifrance, CNP Assurances, AG2R La Mondiale, Carrefour, Ingenico Group, Renault and more. Partech also has a seed fund and a building in Paris where startups can rent some space, the . In the past, according to multiple sources, a startup was kicked out of this building after Partech couldn’t invest in this startup for various reasons. This isn’t a great precedent and let’s hope that Partech can become more startup-friendly in the future — I hope this was just a misstep. Don’t get me wrong, a French growth fund is great news. But having more money than anyone else is just one thing.
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New York has passed a bill legalizing daily fantasy sports
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 6 | 18 |
Early this morning, on the last day of the current session, The New York Assembly passed legislation legalizing daily fantasy sports throughout the state of New York. While the bill still needs to be signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, its passing is a big win for the entire industry. Due to the large concentration of daily fantasy sports players in the state ( ), New York has always been at the center of the country-wide fantasy sports debate, and is seen as a model for other states in the country. Plus, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was one of the first public officials to order DraftKings and FanDuel to cease-and-desist operations in the state, saying that daily fantasy sports . This was likely the impetus for similar notices from Attorneys General in other states like and . This cease-and-desist notice was followed by legal action from both sides. DraftKings and FanDuel jointly against Schneiderman then subsequently to continue operating in the state until the state’s supreme court made a final decision. But a legal battle was never the goal for the two companies. DraftKings and FanDuel knew that to permanently cement operations in New York (and other states), they would have to fight a legislative battle, getting new laws passed that explicitly legalized their operations and delineated it from sports gambling. So the companies (and related lobbyist organizations) took their battle to states’ capitals. And it worked. In March, Virginia became the and impose state-led oversight of the industry. This was in Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, and Colorado. And while some other states have declined to explicitly legalize the industry, New York’s actions may send a signal to these states that it is O.K to proceed with new legislation. The bill can be , but it essentially amends the state’s current gambling laws to include “regulated interactive fantasy sports contests with an entry fee”. Under the new legislation, providers will have to apply for registration with the state before being allowed to operate. But, in another win for DraftKings and FanDuel, companies that offered contests in NY before November 10th, 2015 (the day AG Schneiderman ordered them to cease-and-desist) will be allowed to operate in the interim until their application is approved or denied. The bill also establishes some safeguards protecting players in the state. These include: The most interesting restriction is probably the last one, and seems to be designed from having amateurs unknowingly enter contests with professionals, where they presumably have a much smaller chance of winning. This is important because it alludes to the fact that results are impacted by skill, something that differentiates it from luck-based gambling. The bill also requires operators to pay a 15% tax on gross revenue made from interactive sports contests in NY, which will go to the state lottery fund for education. These restrictions actually provide a good amount of consumer protection, and may serve as a guideline for future states looking to legalize the industry while providing safeguards to protect participants. While not yet signed into law, the bill is a promising development for daily fantasy sports operators both in NY and around the country. This bill will undoubtedly lead to similar actions in other states, and is a major win for companies like DraftKings and FanDuel. In a statement provided to TechCrunch, DraftKings’ CEO Jason Robins said:
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Disrupt 旧金山峰会邀请全球华人参会 (Announcing a Disrupt SF attendee-friendly for Chinese speakers）
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Ned Desmond
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 | null |
YCombinator makes every SimCity player’s dream reality with new research initiative
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
Ever wanted to design a city from scratch? All those years tinkering with SimCity and Legos are going to finally start paying dividends for a lucky few. is looking for to address everything from the creation of affordable housing to the design of public spaces in its new research undertaking. The buzz-word smart-city is rapidly becoming platitudinous but YC will be starting from the unique angle of entrepreneurship. Building new cities is the ultimate full-stack startup, in both complexity and ambition, and we need a lot of help figuring it out. — Adora Cheung (@nolimits) This is not the first time that YC has mixed existential questions of public service with startup acceleration. The accelerator is also working on to explore the repercussions of offering a universal basic income. YC is planning to spend nearly $1.5 million by giving select residents a basic income check. Those who receive money will be tracked next to a control group. One of YC’s most ambitious goals in its latest project is to challenge itself to fit all necessary municipal regulation within 100 pages. The project will bring goals of increased diversity and civic engagement side by side with data-driven analysis. At the state level, lawmakers have been working for years to push more data into policy. In 2007, Governor O’Malley of Maryland received attention for . The program was an effort to instill transparency by more deeply integrating key performance metrics into governance. Adora Cheung is going to be leading the project. Cheung previously led YCombinator backed Homejoy. but shutdown after facing legal difficulties in classifying its workers. The first phase of this will be a YC Research project. This has been a lifelong ambition and I'm excited to form and lead this team. — Adora Cheung (@nolimits) More forthcoming.
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 6 | 20 | null |
How the ancient art of origami is inspiring cutting-edge technology
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Don Basile
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
Long before the 3D printer, was the original genius at creating lifelike forms out of a flat surface. Folding brings with it the ability to collapse, flex and unfurl structures at will, which has huge potential for a variety of engineering applications. From digestible pills that could provide alternatives to invasive surgery to solar panels that could be tightly packed in an aircraft and deploy after launch, at the heart of ’s modern applications is its ability to transform. has been transforming ever since Buddhist monks carried paper from China to Japan in the 6th century. Because paper was expensive and not widely available, its first applications were for religious ceremonies. One of the first common shapes was the “Shide,” a series of zigzag folded and cut paper attached to either rope or wood to signify purification rituals. Next came the “Mecho” and “Ocho,” male and female butterflies that were attached to sake bottles at traditional Shinto weddings. By the 17th century, extended beyond its ceremonial origins to a popular form of recreation, thanks to the advent of mass-produced paper. Millions of paper cranes ensued. Forms stayed relatively stagnant until the 1950s, when the Japanese artist Akira Yoshizawa inspired a new generation of artists and scientists with his complex and lifelike renderings of animals. Then came physicist , who has been leading the charge in computational , uniting mathematical formulas with the of folding. Among Lang’s many practical -inspired applications has been improving the safety of airbags in automobiles. [ted id=321] This intersection of multiple disciplines has rich potential for solving a whole host of real world engineering problems, mainly because is a compliant mechanism. It gets its motion from bending and deflection rather than hinges or bearings, and the motion relies on the paper’s flexibility. If these principles of strength and flexibility are applied to materials more durable than paper, the possibilities are endless. Last year researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute how a series of folds to a DNA strand could result in better drug delivery methods. Through a series of folds, a complex computer design shaped like a rabbit can be assembled using manufactured DNA strands. Because the shape is multidimensional, the DNA strand is spread out on every of the structure. This method stems from a mathematical equation known as , and it allows circular DNA molecules to remain flexible while easily being folded. “We can now create structures that can be folded in, and remain viable in, physiological salt concentrations that are more suitable for biological applications of DNA nanostructures,” according to lead researcher . This breakthrough method has already led to smarter drug delivery to cancerous tumors. Meanwhile, researchers at MIT have developed a novel approach to treat a common ailment among children: swallowing batteries. Imagine being able to swallow a tiny pill that would then expand in your stomach and, with the help of a magnet, usher the battery out of your system. So far research has been successful on a , but no humans have been tested yet. The potential here for non-invasive surgery without the need for anesthesia is huge. MIT is also responsible for the world’s smallest (and creepiest) that can walk, dig, swim and then dissolve into nothing. At just 1.7 centimeters, these robots are made of magnets and PVC sandwiched between layers of laser cut paper or polystyrene. When placed on a heating element, the PVC contracts, making the pre-formed cuts, which, along with electromagnetic coils under the surface, “power” the robot to fold and move. Further research hopes to bring about even smaller autonomous robots with more sensors. Because these robots intend to completely dissolve, they could potentially be used to zap cancer cells or clear clogged arteries. ’s potential for aiding space research is vast, because of its ability to fold down for compact storage, and then expand upon deployment. Imagine orbiting solar panels that could beam down energy from outer space. Bigelow Aerospace Because solar panels depend on a large flat surface area, the challenge has always been how to get them into space. The answer? Clever folding. This is the theory behind NASA working on a that could be packed in a spacecraft to only take up 8.9 feet across, and then unfurl to an impressive 82 feet in diameter once deployed. Then there’s NASA’s new (BEAM), which looks like a giant airbag that can be inflated to expand the habitable area of a space station. This is the first time an expandable habitat has been deployed on a space station, and would be a huge breakthrough if successful over its next two years of testing at the ISS. Space shuttles need to be able to expand to larger than their size if human travel to Mars is to become a reality. So how does the of figure into the future of space exploration? To find out for yourself, NASA wants you to build your own . Be sure to follow the Ground Crew Procedures, and “Fold with precision and accuracy or risk a leak in your habitation module. Safety first.” has been around for centuries, but we’re only just starting to unlock its potential to change the world as we know it. As if drug delivering robots and unfurling space stations weren’t impressive enough, we also have to thank for innovations in architecture, medicine, robotics and more. Who knew folding could unlock so many new frontiers for engineering?
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Attention Asian startups: Apply for the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF!
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Samantha O'Keefe
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
Calling startups in Asia and across the world — for our Startup Battlefield competition at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco this September! Startups are at the core of what we do here at TechCrunch. Beyond writing about them every day on TechCrunch, they are a hugely important focus of our events whether it’s TechCrunch Shanghai, where our team is or Disrupt SF this September. The startup Battlefield competition at Disrupt showcases the most promising young companies that are coming through in the technology space. Over the years we’ve seen some incredible startups graduate our events and go on to make an impact, and we want to help more to do the same. Since 2007, have raised more than $6.1 billion combined after appearing on the TechCrunch stage, while 76 have exited through an acquisition or a public listing. Our alumni include household names like Fitbit, Venmo, Postmates and . Many founder may assume that Disrupt is only for U.S. startups but innovation comes from anywhere and our Battlefield companies do, too. Looking for examples from Asia? Fove, from Japan, participated Disrupt SF 2014. Following the Startup Battlefield, Fove continued to the Microsoft Accelerator, and has become one of the hottest startups in VR. Mailtime, a Chinese Battlefield company, recently graduated Y-Combinator. Startup Battlefield Alumni Disrupt SF will take place from September 12-14 at Pier 48. Selected companies also receive free demo space in Startup Alley, tickets to VIP events, a Battlefield-only reception and, of course, TechCrunch swag. Prior to the event, startups work with TechCrunch editors to hone and polish their pitches. All verticals are welcome, including (but not limited to) biotech, security, supercomputing, e-commerce, on-demand services, battery technology, mobile consumer, healthcare, bitcoin, hardware and the next big thing in dev tools. Full details on eligibility can be found . There are no fees to participate in the Startup Battlefield. Building a great company encompasses much more than strong launch but, in our humble opinion, it doesn’t hurt to come out of the gate strong, too. Applications are now open through June 23rd at 9pm PT. To apply, head on over to our .
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Airbnb sues San Francisco over new rental legislation
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Kate Conger
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
its beef with the city of San Francisco to court. The short-term rental company filed suit today over a new law that requires Airbnb to verify that its hosts have registered with the city before showing ads for their homes online. The suit aims to block the law from going into effect as scheduled on August 1. San Francisco legislators passed the law earlier this month in an effort to combat the housing crisis in the city, but Airbnb and technology advocacy groups argue that the new rules violate the Communications Decency Act. “This legislation ignores the reality that the system is not working and this new approach will harm thousands of everyday San Francisco residents who depend on Airbnb. It also violates federal law,” Airbnb said in a announcing the suit. “This is an unprecedented step for Airbnb, and one we do not take lightly, but we believe it’s the best way to protect our community of hosts and guests.” San Francisco already requires Airbnb hosts to go through a rigorous registration process that involves acquiring a business license, in-person registration, quarterly reports on when guests are sleeping in the home (as opposed to when the owners are), and a list of all the furnishings in the home that a guest might use, down to the sheets and towels. The process is intended to help the city weed out commercial renters who are taking their properties off the housing market and listing them exclusively on Airbnb. Doing so might earn a homeowner more money, but it also takes housing stock away from a city that desperately needs all the housing it can get. Understandably, many hosts opt not to go through the cumbersome registration process — and the new law puts Airbnb on the hook to make sure its hosts comply. The law requires Airbnb to make sure hosts register, and the company faces $1000 per day fines if it does not. Airbnb launched a asking its hometown to streamline the registration process, but the company is taking its fight to federal court, too. In documents filed this afternoon, Airbnb argues that the new law violates Section 230 of the CDA, which protects websites from being held liable for content provided by their users. Airbnb argues that the city should hold hosts accountable for registering instead. “Instead of punishing Airbnb for publishing unlawful listings, the City could enforce its short-term rental law directly against hosts who violate it,” Airbnb’s filing suggests. “Removing these listings would cause a substantial disruption to Airbnb’s business and have a significant detrimental effect on Airbnb’s goodwill and reputation among both hosts and guests, thus threatening irreparable injury to Airbnb’s business.” Advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Center for Democracy and Technology have agreed with Airbnb’s legal analysis. The legislation “clearly goes against what Section 230 states,” CDT policy counsel Gautam Hans wrote in a . However, the San Francisco City Attorney’s office argues that Airbnb is misinterpreting the CDA. “Nothing in San Francisco’s pending ordinance punishes hosting platforms for their users’ content. In fact, it’s not regulating user content at all — it’s regulating the business activity of the hosting platform itself,” City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey said. “It’s simply a duty to verify information that’s already required of a regulated business activity.” The CDA protects YouTube from liability when users upload violent content and eBay when sellers use the platform to trade illegal goods, but the City Attorney argues that Airbnb is less of an online business and more of a physical one. “It’s the same principle for online vendors of alcohol and cigarettes. Businesses that sell those products have a legal duty to verify the age of their customers, whether it’s online or at the corner store, so they don’t sell alcohol and cigarettes to children. They, too, are required to verify information that’s already required for their regulated business activity,” Dorsey added. In addition to the alleged CDA Section 230 violation, Airbnb also claims that San Francisco shouldn’t require the company to turn over information about its users without a subpoena. Airbnb argues that the city’s requirement to disclose users’ registration data also violates the Stored Communications Act.
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Writing aid for the blind provides a case study for “compassionate engineering” at Carnegie Mellon
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
New mobile games and robot butlers are all well and good, but there are also many applications for the latest technology in poverty-stricken school districts and in the service of the disabled. A Carnegie Mellon project that targets both of those things is creators as an exercise in what they call “compassionate engineering.” led the project, an electronic tutor for reading braille that the team tested this last summer at the Mathru School for the Blind in Bangalore, India. The device itself is not brand new — it won an award from the Center for Braille Innovation back in 2014 — but the university just recently put out a series of videos documenting it and the philosophy behind it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMX5qCW-vPo , totaling about half an hour — they describe the ideas the team has worked out much better than I ever could. Compassionate engineering is more of a mindset, it seems, learning to put the people before the technology and let the device or service evolve organically, even (perhaps especially) if it’s in unexpected directions. It’s an inspiring series well worth watching (or showing your students!) — and highlights ideas and perspectives that should be more common in the tech world.
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Pocket Tripod is a credit-card-sized phone holder that fits in your wallet
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Haje Jan Kamps
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
The is repeating its crowdfunding success from a few years ago, creating an updated, universal version of its incredibly popular credit-card-sized tripod that fits in your wallet. Now available for pre-order for Android users and people who like to stick cases on their phones, it’s a tremendously useful piece of kit for smartphone photographers on the move. For as long as photography has been around, a tripod has been the No. 1 accessory for photographers. With good reason — keeping the camera steady is one of the best things you can do for better, cleaner images. That’s true for any type of camera, including the one on your cell phone — but very few of us would lug around a 15-pound tripod in case we want to take a photo. What if there was a tripod that fits in your wallet? That’s the brainwave delivered by ‘s Rambod Radmard. Doing pretty well so far There’s an excellent reason why the photography industry is shivering in its boots: A tremendous number of photos are taken with smartphones these days, and the trend is showing no signs of slowing down. The explanation is simple: If you’re out and about and you see something cool, are you going to run back home to get your fancy SLR camera, or do you fish your smartphone out of your pocket? I know, I know, it’s a silly question, but it illustrates the point that the best camera is the one you always carry with you. Because of the explosion in smartphones, that means that suddenly there are billions of extra cameras in circulation. Following the same logic, the team behind Pocket Tripod created a tripod that’s small enough to always carry with you. The original product was launched in 2013, with a , but it had a few quirks. The Pocket Tripod didn’t fit if you had a case on your phone, and if you had anything other than an Apple device, you were out of luck. Back to the drawing board they went, and the company is back for more with a new Kickstarter campaign for the second generation of the product, which addresses these issues. Me, shooting a photo of my phone that’s running the front camera, in a Pocket Tripod. This has to be one of the most self-referential selfies ever taken. I’ve spent a couple of days with one of the Pocket Tripod prototypes, and It works fantastically well. I’ve taken some great shots using it, but I’m not going to lie: it always leaves me wanting. The product itself is great; well designed, high quality and works exactly as you’d expect. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I know how good it would have been to have my tripod with me, with full pan and tilt, and preferably around four or five feet tall. So Pocket Tripod guys; if you could design one of to fit in my wallet, that’d be sweet. Until then, I’ll keep carrying this one with me, fully with the knowledge that it’ll primarily serve as a reminder that the perfect solution to my problem already exists — in a drawer at home. Not a big fan of crowdfunding campaigns? Not to worry; hang tight ’till the end of the year and buy one in the shops. If you’re feeling Kickstarter-y, you can for another week or so.
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Thrive Market raises $111 million for its online organic grocery store
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Katie Roof
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
Thrive, which competes with similar online grocery services like , believes there is a significant market opportunity to make natural foods more accessible to consumers and they’ve been growing fast. Launched less than two years ago, the startup is on track for over $120 million in annual revenue, the team tells TechCrunch. Thrive cuts out the middleman and buys from brands directly, which is why the company is able to offer items that are at a lower price point than what you see at Whole Foods and other health food stores. While there is a $60 annual membership fee, the company promises that Thrive goods are available for up to 50% off standard retail prices. There are now more than 300,000 paying members. “The Thrive team has done an incredible job executing this innovative model and has consistently performed beyond our expectations,” said Dana Settle, co-founder and partner at Greycroft. “We are thrilled to continue to support them.”
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So, does anybody want Twitter?
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
Twitter is in trouble. In a move out of a middle school flag football game, to join its team. The sheer size of the transaction has reignited conversations about who will be picked next to join the super special circle of public mega-cap tech companies. Vultures have been circling Twitter for well over a year, but the company who have predicted an imminent sale. Though growth has slowed, Twitter is making ad revenue and producing valuable real-time data. Twitter’s most valuable content is produced by power users: politicians, authors, academics and celebrities generate the content that drives internet traffic to Twitter. Twitter must increase the value of non-users by both boosting the number of times they visit the site and the amount of time they spend once there. Unfortunately, despite progress, Twitter stock is performing abysmally. Twitter has undergone significant corporate restructuring, but confidence is still lacking. This has all happened during a year where more tech companies have exited public markets than entered. [graphiq id=”b1KHEoj1A7X” title=”Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Stock Price” width=”600″ height=”625″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/b1KHEoj1A7X” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/445483/Twitter-Inc-in-San-Francisco-CA” link_text=”Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Stock Price | FindTheCompany”] Despite what seems like déjà vu, one can only keep asking if Twitter is next. Wall Street gossip (which has never EVER been wrong before) says Twitter is going to sell and it is going to sell in 2017 no matter what. “If Jack Dorsey has not made progress in a year, I think the business will be put up for sale,” said Victor Anthony of Axiom Capital Management. “If he fixes it, Twitter is an even more attractive target.” On that note, let’s meet the lucky bachelors. The following list was narrowed down with the help of Wall Street Twitter analysts James Cakmak of Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., and Victor Anthony of Axiom Capital Management. Google already has significant Twitter integration. Tweets results and the company recently partnered with Google to sell promoted tweets Google has tried twice to succeed in social media, most recently with the failed Google+. Twitter gets Google back in the game and leaves enough to be fixed that Google could make it their own. Google makes most of its money on advertising. Twitter offers extensive real-time data. Right now, , Google, and others have access to the Twitter firehose. A Google takeover of Twitter would give the company greater control over who has access to the data and what specifically they can access. Potential anti-trust concerns around Google’s size. Google exists to index the information of the internet, the company is already able to index Twitter but has been . Twitter also . This is what private equity does best. Twitter would get a refocused management team and streamlined work force. Once advertising growth was back on a sustainable path, the company could easily be relaunched on the market. The marching orders would be to create a lean, mean advertising machine with a focus on growing audience rather than tweeters. Twitter might not be a great fit for PE. Anthony noted that Twitter is unprofitable and a buyout would potentially put too much pressure on increasing operating income. Microsoft demonstrated it’s hungry for data with its . Twitter has tons of real-time data. Much of the same justification from Google works here. Microsoft launched its own social network So.cl in 2011 with a focus on A revitalization effort is a thought-provoking longshot. Microsoft has its hands full with LinkedIn. The company has shown interest in moving into the social networking space but seems to be maintaining a focus on the office. A telecom-Twitter combo would create the potential for a strong advertising play. There is precedent for telecoms gobbling up content, added Anthony. [Disclosure: AOL owns TechCrunch]. Verizon and AT&T are battling for Yahoo. Verizon recently announced plans for a . Simultaneously, Twitter is moving more and more toward offering real-time content. All the major telecoms already have gigantic customer bases. Twitter is also somewhat outside the comfort zones of companies like AT&T and Verizon. Twitter would integrate well with the Facebook app portfolio. Instagram and Messenger function well separately; Twitter would likely be no different. Facebook has already replicated many of Twitter’s most attractive features, like trending and hashtags. Amazon could potentially connect Twitter with its media-delivery services. The company launched to make it easier for customers to merge their e-commerce and social media experiences. Amazon is already squarely focused on retail, logistics and Amazon Web Services. There might be more creativity for Amazon to exercise here, but I’m not seeing it. Twitter is already integrated well with iOS and MacOS. If Apple purchased Twitter, it could be a strong social media play to give the company a new market. Apple has a TON of cash to burn. The company is currently waging a war against Spotify for the mobile streaming market and yet. There isn’t really a direct platform connection for Apple to leverage. Two weeks ago I might have proposed that Apple could integrate Siri and repackage Twitter similarly to Amazon Echo. Unfortunately, Apple already opened that door with the . Back in 2013, it was speculated that Apple might try to use Twitter data to improve app recommendations. Apple purchased but then let the company die. Twitter might arguably be a better fit for News Corp. than MySpace because of its growing presence as an information consumption platform. Ask yourself how many friends have used Twitter to organize an event in the last week, then ask yourself how many times you have heard Twitter referenced in the 2016 presidential campaign. The shift is real. The company already tried to enter the social media space with MySpace and ended up selling off the company. MySpace lost 94 percent of its value between the day News Corp. purchased it and the day it unloaded it. Twitter users would generally be upset that a publisher would threaten the openness and freedom of the platform, added Cakmak.
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How digital marketers can get better results with less capital
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Vishal Agarwal
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
There has been much talk of late about the and what will happen to when everyone is forced to spend more wisely. Spending wisely should always be an objective regardless of the economic conditions. But this is especially true for who control a large share of the budget at many companies — and who are the most at risk for wasting money. The lessons below are based on my experience as CMO of an online shopping destination. As we grew, our executive team learned that startups have two choices when it comes to growth. The first is to grow quickly by spending a lot on marketing. The second is focus on long-term sustainable growth with marketing spend. And sometimes, particularly during difficult economic times, it’s necessary to transition from one to the other; that is, to increase marketing efficiency. Initially, when our company was in rapid growth mode, we had a particular target ROAS (return on ad spend), which we calculated by dividing the tracked revenue generated from a particular campaign by the amount we spent on that campaign. We assumed that any money we could spend above this target ROAS was good, since we would then hit our revenue and marketing efficiency goals. However, as we learned, ROAS will decrease as you scale up your marketing. In other words: you cannot generate the same ROAS at a million-dollar spend that you generate at $100,000 spend; the ROAS will definitely be higher at lower levels. Let me demonstrate this using the below table and graph. For this example’s sake, we will start by spending $1,000 per day and keep ramping up to see where we hit the peak in terms of ROAS. We keep scaling up by $1,000 per day and realize we continue to increase the ROAS, and we hit the peak at $5,000 with a 2x ROAS. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume the ROAS keeps falling by 0.10 for every $1,000 increase in spend. Spend ROAS Return Spend differential Return differential ROAS on differentials $1,000 1.60 $1,600 $2,000 1.70 $3,400 $1,000 $1,800 1.8 $3,000 1.80 $5,400 $1,000 $2,000 2.0 $4,000 1.90 $7,600 $1,000 $2,200 2.2 $5,000 2.00 $10,000 $1,000 $2,400 2.4 $6,000 1.90 $11,400 $1,000 $1,400 1.4 $7,000 1.80 $12,600 $1,000 $1,200 1.2 $8,000 1.70 $13,600 $1,000 $1,000 1.0 $9,000 1.60 $14,400 $1,000 $800 0.8 $10,000 1.50 $15,000 $1,000 $600 0.6 $11,000 1.40 $15,400 $1,000 $400 0.4 $12,000 1.30 $15,600 $1,000 $200 0.2 $13,000 1.20 $15,600 $1,000 $0 0.0 $14,000 1.10 $15,400 $1,000 -$200 -0.2 $15,000 1.00 $15,000 $1,000 -$400 -0.4 $16,000 0.90 $14,400 $1,000 -$600 -0.6 $17,000 0.80 $13,600 $1,000 -$800 -0.8 $18,000 0.70 $12,600 $1,000 -$1,000 -1.0 Let us assume the target ROAS for a company is 1x, so the company continue to spend in marketing at any spend level that brings it a return of above 1x. In this case, the company could continue to spend $15,000 in marketing as it is generating $15,000 in returns and it is meeting its goal. But is that efficient? Here is how this chart looks when we graph it: We clearly tell by the chart above it is not efficient to spend the maximum amount. As you see, there is a point where the incremental spend does not bring you incremental returns—that is, where the “Return” graph starts declining and dips below the spend line. In this case, we clearly see the level is $12,000. At this level of spend, the ROAS on differential is still positive, which means we continue to generate a positive return in this bucket than we were in the previous bucket. If you look at this simplified graph, we will actually be generating the same amount of money at $13,000 than we will at $12,000. Why spend the extra $1,000 at all then? And then the gap just keeps getting wider after that; it shows we will generate the same amount of return at $14,000 than we were at $11,000, and so on. Early on, we learned we had to cut off spending at the right inflection point, or we could end up wasting thousands of dollars a month with no marginal benefit. In this fictional example, a $12,000 spend with 1.3x return seems to be the best strategy for our example company. Don’t just look at the overall goal and targets and continue to spend at those levels without digging in each campaign and determining what is our inflection point. But this table is not as simple as it seems. To really increase marketing efficiency, it’s important to look at the ROAS differentials, which tell us how much incremental revenue we are getting out of the additional spend. Specifically, note the inflection point of $8,000. At this level, we are still generating an additional $1,000 for every additional $1,000 spent. In the above case, at $12,000 level, we were generating only $200 for every $1,000 spent — but when calculated on an overall level, we were still generating 1.3x return. If the company’s strategy is to be more conservative, we could look at the $8,000 level and realize that after this level, for every $1,000 we spend we will actually be generating than the spend. We could also determine that our optimal spend level is at $8,000 with 1.7x return — not the $12,000 level, which only generates 1.3x return. While this is a simple example, the underlying principle is substantiated by data my team has accumulated over the last three years. Many companies will have this data, but it’s my goal with this post to encourage them to study that data from a new perspective.
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Cryptography pioneer Marty Hellman calls for compassion in personal, cyber, and international threats
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Devin Coldewey
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
It’s been a long time since Marty Hellman and his collaborator Whitfield Diffie ushered in a new era of private communication with their invention of public key cryptography — but better late than never when it comes to , referred to by some as the Nobel Prize for technology. The two shared the 2015 award, only recently presented to them, along with the million dollar prize (Google sponsored the fourfold increase last year) that now accompanies it. I got to speak with Hellman shortly before he left for the ceremony. He characterized his work on encryption as serendipitous: unexpectedly stubbing his toe on something, cursing it at first, then realizing it was a gold nugget. But, he lamented, things have grown far more complex since the late ’70s. “Whit Diffie once said, and I agree with him, that we solved the easy problem,” Hellman said. Not easy in that it took no work, of course — but the problems faced today in computer security don’t have an elegant mathematical solution. “Back in the 80s, when I was working on cryptography, I could see that we would want it even if we were buying a loaf of bread. Back then, before we had the concept of a debit card, I said ‘with an electronic funds transfer’ even though at that point EFTs were only for million-dollar transactions between banks,” he recalls. “I couldn’t foresee everything, for sure, but we had ARPAnet and email probably 10, 20 years before most people so we could better see some of these things coming.” “Plus, he added, “I’m a fool. I’m a world-class fool in the best case of the word. When I started working in cryptography my colleagues uniformly told me crazy — and for very good reasons that had validity! But in hindsight it was wise to do something so foolish.” Hellman no longer does crypto research, though he retains a position at Stanford; instead, he has been advocating for changes in policy that acknowledge the new, more interconnected global community. “I see cyberweapons as very similar to nuclear weapons,” he said. “Early on we had a monopoly on nuclear weapons so we thought they were the greatest thing going. But unlike a nuclear weapon, a cyberweapon doesn’t destroy itself, so like with Stuxnet, our adversaries were able to take it apart and figure out how it works. We need to start thinking this through more carefully.” “So many of the problems we face are global problems — national security is becoming an oxymoron in an age of nuclear weapons and cyberweapons. We need to work towards security that works for everyone,” he continued. These days, of course, international cooperation is perhaps just as much of an oxymoron. But Hellman thinks that’s a problem of perspective as much as it is one of economics, politics, and so on. His new book, recounts a change in philosophy that he credits with saving his marriage, but which he thinks is also applicable on the world stage. “The first place I started to see these things was with my wife,” he said. “I had the model people often have, which is that if she has power, then I don’t. But the ‘power over’ model doesn’t work in a marriage and, increasingly, in the world. “If we take the attitude that we won’t do anything until everyone else does, it’s the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ and we all end up with a suboptimal outcome!” (He cautioned, however, against living your life by the rules of game theory.) Hellman is using his portion of the Turing Award prize money to finish the creation and promotion of the book. Although he acknowledges it’s “an uphill battle” to get the average person to care about nuclear deterrence, military intervention, and so on, Hellman hopes to help start a more compassionate conversation around those topics. “At dinner last night I was talking with the woman next to me, and she said she couldn’t see how the world could change, even though it’s changed tremendously over the last few hundred years” he recounted. “But the changes we are talking about now have not happened yet, so she couldn’t envision them.” “If you can see, as my wife and I were able to, inconceivable changes occurring in your personal relationships, you will be open to and be a much better advocate for change at a global level.”
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Iris Automation is bringing eyes, and situational awareness, to drones
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
New in the U.S. ostensibly make it easier for companies to put flying robots to work whether that’s in media, construction or agriculture. But drones are still limited to flying within the “line of sight,” or the range where a human operator can see them. So we can’t have pizzas, or prescriptions, delivered by drones as a going concern, yet. And businesses can’t send drones to do far away inspections of oil rigs or forest fires. The limitations set by the Federal Aviation Administration and Department Of Transportation make sense by and large. The last thing anyone needs is for commercial, unmanned aerial systems to crash into structures, or worse, people below causing property damage, injuries or a fatality. Enter The one-year-old startup is building a collision avoidance system that it hopes will be so effective it can move the entire industry forward, says CEO and co-founder Alex Harmsen. Basically, Iris Automation brings situational awareness to drones, and acts as the machine eyes on board any given UAV. “It’s a visual world, so drones need sight,” the CEO said. The company’s first product is a combination of off-the-shelf chips and other components, and proprietary software that can learn and tell a drone’s autopilot system when there’s any obstacle nearby, and how to make adjustments instantly to avoid it. Harmsen said the company’s systems are already in use in test flights with select partners including Iris aims to build “agnostically,” Harmsen said, so its systems can be added to drones and auto pilot “black boxes” made by any manufacturer for the commercial market, such as: DJI, Flirety, PrecisionHawk, or Micropilot and Airware. Iris Automation has so far raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding from and . Y Combinator Partner Geoff Ralston said, “To do real work with drones you gotta get out of the line of sight, and prove to the FAA or the Transportation board in Canada that drones can co-exist with other passenger aircraft, and that the probability of a collision is something like that of a jet airplane if not better.” If the threat of drone crashes sounds like a bit of fear mongering consider just last week, a drone actually did fall onto a woman’s head at a , seriously injuring her and sparking an investigation by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. And last year a commercial drone crashed at the Louis Armstrong Stadium during tennis tournament, causing debris to hit and injure While many drone accidents have been blamed on hobbyist, not professional operators, these still represent the risk of using drones over populated areas. Iris Automation’s system is built to process visual data in real time, so it can see structures that suddenly appear, like a plane, flock of birds or another drone – not just static objects and waypoints that might be mapped using older technologies like GPS, Harmsen points out. Originally founded in 2015 in Vancouver, Iris Automation plans to relocate or at least establish a R&D and business office in California, Harmsen said.
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Google for Education partners with TES to expand the reach of VR Expeditions content in classrooms
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Lucas Matney
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
Next-gen edtech and virtual reality are both high-stakes platforms that have quite a bit of potential when it comes to defining our near-future. The marriage of the platforms may be far from ready for primetime, but there is a lot of flirtation happening in the space right now thanks to some major players. Today, Google for Education announced that it will be adding integration of Google Expeditions and Google Classrooms with , a service that millions of teachers have used to find digital assets and lesson plans to use in their classes. Now, teachers that are interested in the education training services and lessons that Google offers can take a look and easily download free content from the Google portal within TES. The Google Expeditions initiative has been giving kids more immersive experiences with their lesson content via 360 media content viewed on the Google Cardboard platform. Students are able to dive into environments and get a clearer image of topics than 2D textbooks can offer. “We’re excited to launch this integration with tes.com. The new portal offers TES users a seamless experience with Google’s suite of tools,” Emma Fish of Education Partnerships for Google for Education said in a statement. “Teachers can now find lesson plans compatible with Google Apps for Education, share those lesson plans using Classroom, access free training on Google tools, and even take their classes on immersive virtual journeys to bring their lessons to life with Google Expeditions and the TES portal.” With this partnership, Google is inserting its services into a more accessible vein of online education portals. The issues related to teachers adopting new tech often has just about as much to do with accessibility as it does with relevancy. VR has a long way to go in proving itself a worthy integration, for now it’s mostly about jogging imaginations, but soon high-powered tech may give students the ability to discover their own takeaways inside environments a bit more dynamic than a room with desks and chairs.
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Google Earth and Maps get sharper satellite imagery with new update
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
, Google engineers figured out a way to stitch together satellite imagery to remove clouds, giving Google Earth and Google Maps users a better and more comprehensive view of the ground below. Today, the company has repeated the process, but this time with newer, crisper imagery from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Landsat 8 satellite. When Google first unveiled its techniques for eliminating from Google Earth images striped artifacts, clouds and other atmospheric effects, it was using imagery from Landsat 7. However, the images Landsat 7 captured after 2003 were affected by a that resulted in diagonal gaps of missing data. This was still the best imagery available at the time, though, which forced Google to come up with a means of removing those gaps from Google Earth. It did so by analyzing a large number of images, similar to how it produced of the earth. [gallery ids="1344413,1344416,1344415,1344412,1344417"] Now Google has updated Google Earth with the imagery from Landsat 8, launched in 2013. The new satellite is able to capture images with “greater detail, truer colors, and at an unprecedented frequency — capturing twice as many images as Landsat 7 does every day,” Google on its Google Maps blog this afternoon. As before, the new Google Earth imagery is also cloud-free, thanks to mining nearly a petabyte of data. That’s more than 700 trillion pixels, the company notes, or 7,000 times more pixels than the number of estimated stars in the Milky Way, it adds, having fun with the numbers. The result is sharper and more current images on Google Earth than before. Where things were blurry, they’re now crisp — for example, when you look down on New York City, you can now see details like skyscrapers, building shadows and baseball fields in Central Park, thanks to Landsat 8. , which has been in operation since 1972 to track changes to the earth over time, makes its data open and accessible, which is how Google is able to update its maps products as new imagery becomes available. The updated maps are live now in both and when viewing the layer in Google Maps.
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Facebook rolls out Slideshow movie-maker to compete with Google and Apple
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Josh Constine
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
Most people can’t shoot compelling videos, and static photos are boring. That’s why the tech giants are all pushing their own versions of automatic movie makers based on your media. This month, coming to iOS 10 Photos, already has its Movies Assistant and today Facebook is rolling out Slideshow to all iOS users around the world. Originally launched in August as part of Facebook’s photo-sharing companion app Moments, began testing with some users as part of the Facebook app’s status composer in December. Now if you’ve taken more than five photos or videos in the last 24 hours and go to post a status, Facebook will suggest you create a Slideshow. It may also give you the option to “Try It” when viewing a friend’s Slideshow. Each Slideshow is automatically composed for you, combining photos and videos with themed music and transitions. You can edit it to add or remove images, and change the theme to one of 10, including Nostalgic, Playful, Night Out, Birthday, Epic, Thankful, Tropical, Bollywood and Amped. While these are created from your stored media, they could help Facebook compete with Snapchat’s Stories, which show the last 24 hours of stuff you’ve posted in a chronological narrative. Facebook explains that “We all know that people love to snap photos and share what they’ve been up to on the weekends, whether it’s a family gathering, a road trip with friends, or even an epic brunch, and this fun new feature will let you stitch together those special photos into a format that captures the spirit of the event. Facebook has reportedly seen a g over the past few years as links to news articles began to dominate the News Feed. Meanwhile, a lot of that off-the-cuff lifecasting has slid over to Snapchat. Facebook wants that unique, irreplaceable sharing to live on its social network, and Slideshow will make that easier. Typically, you might only select the one best photo or video from an adventure to post on Facebook. Its algorithmically ranked feed preferences this style over rapid-fire posting like on Twitter. But the Slideshow music, movement and transitions jazz up your less eye-catching images and turns them into something worth watching.
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Fujifilm finally updates its smartphone photo printer
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
It’s been a long time coming, but Fujifilm’s finally ready to offer up the sequel to its Instax Share Smartphone Printer SP-1. Two-and-a-half years after debuting the peripheral at CES, the company returns this week with the fittingly named , which promises some key improvements over its warmly received predecessor. Chief among the updates is a bump in speed, knocking the 16-second Wi-Fi print time for a credit-card sized photo down to a more manageable 10 seconds, freeing up valuable time to finally finish the novel you’ve been working on for the better part of a decade. The photos also feature improved resolution, bumping it up to 320 DPI, along with a higher contrast. Speaking of which, the custom filter lets users adjust contrast, brightness, saturation and the like, and the collage template makes it possible to combine multiple images into one, just as the name implies. The product’s design has also gotten a bit of an overhaul for a more “sophisticated appearance” that’s available in gold and silver – the most sophisticated of colors. The SP-2 also features a built-in battery rechargeable via microUSB. It’s arriving next month for $199, with a double pack of the compatible instant film running $20.
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Meet the team hacking Sundar Pichai and Channing Tatum
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Kate Conger
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
If you follow tech executives or famous actors on Twitter, you’ve probably seen references to something called OurMine several times over the last few weeks. That’s because a group of three hackers called OurMine have been finding their way into accounts belonging to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and “Magic Mike” star Channing Tatum. In a series of messages, an OurMine member told TechCrunch that he or she is part of a three-person team of teenagers and explained that the group is going after the high-profile accounts in an effort to promote better security practices. Although compromised Twitter accounts usually start tweeting out porn bot promotions or racist screeds, OurMine uses the opportunity to tweet fairly innocuous promotions of its services. Last night, the group got access to Pichai’s Quora account and used it to publish to his Twitter timeline. They posted a question, “Is it possible to force my android app users of all version [sic] to update the app?” and a promotion for their website. OurMine claimed that they were able to access the Quora account through a vulnerability in the site, not by . “We hacked his quora with a vulnerability on quora,” an OurMine member said. “We are confident that Sundar Pichai’s account was not accessed via a vulnerability in Quora’s systems,” Quora said in a . “This is consistent with past reports where OurMine exploited previous password leaks on other services to gain access to accounts on Twitter or Facebook. We also have no record of a report by OurMine pointing to a vulnerability.” In the case of Vogels, OurMine claimed to have his password, but said it wasn’t reused from another breach. However, OurMine wouldn’t clarify how it obtained Vogels’ password. OurMine sells its services, claiming that the group will scan the security of social media accounts and websites in exchange for a fee. An OurMine member told TechCrunch that the group has 34 customers so far. The group dropped the price of social media scanning today from $99 to $30, “because it was too expensive.” (The promise of securing your account may be tempting, but TechCrunch does not advise giving your credit card or payment information to hackers.) Although a hacker to Saudi Arabia, an OurMine member denied being from Saudi Arabia in a message to TechCrunch. “I can confirm that we don’t have any members from Saudi Arabia or Russia,” the individual said. OurMine also went after Vox reporter Matthew Yglesias, who has yet to delete the promotional tweet the group posted on his account: https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/746573769515405313 If you don’t want to end up tweeting an ad for OurMine anytime soon, there are several basic steps you can take to make your accounts more secure. Don’t reuse passwords across websites, enable two-factor authentication where available and review the the third-party apps that have direct access to your Twitter account (go into your account se ttings and click “Apps”). It appears that entrepreneur and investor Vinod Khosla is the latest tech figure to fall victim to an OurMine hack.
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Google opens up its Virtual Reality field trips for all, debuts new apps and services for teachers
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
On the heels of Google this morning also unveiled aimed at expanding use of Google products and technologies in the classroom setting. At the today, the company introduced a number of new tools for educators, ranging from a to an expansion of its Google Cardboard-assisted “Expeditions” program, plus several new tools and services for the classroom involving Google Docs, Chromebooks and Google Cast. The Expeditions program as way to take students on “virtual reality field trips.” That is, using a Google Cardboard viewer, and an accompanying , students can be transported to far-away locales, whether that’s exploring the ancient ruins at Machu Picchu, natural wonders like the rainforest, or places you would likely never otherwise be able to visit, like Antarctica. Since its launch, over a million students in 11 countries have gone on these virtual trips, Google now says. And its collections of destinations has grown to over 200, including also those made by established educational providers, like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and soon, Pearson. Today, Google says that its making the Expeditions program available to everyone – all they’ll need are Google Cardboard devices and smartphones, or tablets in 2D full-screen mode. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MQ9yG_QfDA] The Expeditions app, which works on Android today, will have an iOS counterpart in the near future, too, notes Google. In addition, will also now be making Expeditions kits available for schools to purchase which include a tablet, the virtual reality viewers, and a router. These can be pre-ordered for the upcoming school year. The company additionally announced a free Chrome app called , which works with the service in order to move audio and video across school networks, while also offering built-in controls for teachers. The app runs on the teacher’s computer, so there’s no additional hardware needs as with the Chromecast devices. Teachers run the Cast for Education app, and students can also share their screens using the existing “Cast” feature in the Chrome browser. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07KFD5fGq_4] In classrooms where Chromebooks are used, there’s a trio of new apps making their debut. Interactive whiteboard , music and podcast maker , and video project tool are creative apps built by partners that are now offered at a discounted rate to schools when purchased together – whether that’s alongside Chromebooks or as standalone subscriptions. Google says it collaborated with on this collection of apps. Finally, the company announced a new feature in which lets teachers automatically grade multiple choice tests and checkbox questions. Teachers can also add review materials like explanations, supplemental websites or review videos, instead of just marking answers as wrong. Teachers can also now disable a setting that lets students send themselves a copy of their responses which was highly requested. ( offers something similar to the quiz tool, but this is more of a standalone offering.) Google is demoing the new tools at the ISTE event in Denver, and will also publish more details on its this week.
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UK surveillance bill’s logging of web activity a huge risk to privacy, peers warn
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Natasha Lomas
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 |
A former senior chief in the U.K.’s Met Police and now a Lib Dem peer in the House of Lords has warned about major risks to the privacy of web users’ personal data from a provision in the that would require ISPs to retain information on the websites and services accessed by their users for a full 12 months — so called (ICRs). Lord Paddick noted that the provision is not being requested by the security services, who have additional investigatory tools to obtain the data they need, so is purely a power on the police’s wish-list — going on to argue that the catch-all nature of ICRs is disproportionate given the warrantless access the bill affords police to this personal data on all U.K. web users. “Unless there is no other means of achieving the objective, intrusion into innocent people’s privacy should not be allowed — other than in exceptional circumstances,” he argued. “Even then it should be subject to the highest levels of oversight. Innocent people’s privacy should not otherwise be put at risk, let alone be intruded into. “Internet Connection Records, the only virgin territory in the bill, are going to intrude into innocent people’s privacy.” Paddick, who at one time was the highest ranking openly gay police officer in the U.K., invoked his own experience of previously being married to a woman at a time when he thought he might be gay to illustrate the potential risks to personal privacy from the cache of web access data required to be logged under the proposed legislation. “What if someone today was in that position and wanted to research using the internet to get some help and guidance for fear of talking to anyone and letting the cat out of the bag? Like I was in those days,” he said. “This bill requires ISPs to record every website, everyone in the U.K. visits. To store that data for 12 months and reveal those details to the police without a warrant, if they suspect someone of a crime.” Any “reasonably high-profile individual” could be at risk of being accused of a crime they did not commit — resulting in their entire personal web access history being handed over to the police, Paddick went on to argue. “It would not be too far a stretch to think I had better not seek confidential advice on the internet — in case it did become public,” he added. Paddick said that although he supports many of the provisions in the bill, he has yet to be convinced of the necessity and proportionality of ICRs. He further noted that the security services are “duty bound” to help the police in serious crime matters — once again pointing out that these agencies have other powers at their disposal, making ICRs redundant. The Lib Dem peer was speaking during the second reading of the Investigatory Powers bill in the U.K.’s second chamber, the House of Lords, after the draft legislation passed the House of Commons with the help of the main opposition Labour party. The latter lent the government its support after trumpeting winning some concessions from the Home Secretary — including that an overarching privacy clause be baked into the legislation. However, digital and privacy rights organizations remain hugely critical of the proposals, even with the additional tweaks. And another parliamentary committee warned specifically on the data security threats of ICRs. The draft bill has still to go through committee and report stages, so is certain to be subject to further amendments. And given the government’s tight timetable to legislate by the end of this year — not to mention the possibility that a post- General Election might well be called as the domestic political landscape is rapidly reconfigured by the U.K.’s referendum vote to leave the EU — peers in the House of Lords could well play a significant role in tempering some of the bill’s more controversial elements via some well-thought-through amendments. Lib Dem peers are certainly mounting a concerted effort to tackle some of the more controversial elements of the bill, with Lord Strasburger also speaking out against ICRs during today’s debate, noting that a similar move was abandoned in Denmark in 2014 and warning the bill creates a “new theft risk” for internet users. The Labour party also has voiced concerns about ICRs, but only over the threshold whereby law enforcement would be allowed to access the records — wanting this raised from “any” to only “serious” crimes. The party has not opposed collecting the data in the first place, leaving it up to peers to tackle this issue. “Internet Connection Records are highly intrusive, difficult and expensive to implement, and of no interest whatsoever to security services,” argued Strasburger, adding: “It’s my view that ICRs need to be deleted from this bill.” He also argued that amendments agreed in the House of Commons ostensibly aiming to add a “privacy backbone” to the bill do not go far enough, noting that the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee — one of multiple highly critical committees that have scrutinized the bill — has called for these clauses to be made clearer. Strasburger also warned on the ongoing “threat to encryption” from the vague wording in the bill — something other parliamentary committees . Other elements concerning the Lib Dem peers at this stage include threats to privileged communications, such as between lawyers and their clients; so-called “request filters,” which imply a behind the scenes attempt by the government to build a searchable database of citizen data (including pulling in data from ICRs); the “vexed question” (as Strasburger put it) of bulk powers — currently under independent review by QC David Anderson, which was another concession pushed for by the Labour party; inconsistencies in authorization mechanisms for intercept warrants; and the need to ensure judicial commissioners, who are set to approve and review warrants, are rigorously independent of the government that appoints them. Strasburger also pointed to the current turmoil in the U.K. political landscape following the Brexit vote, noting “how quickly ruthless politicians can replace leaders” and warning of associated risks to freedom and democracy if such intrusive legislation passes onto the statute books unamended. “In the hands of an extreme government the IP bill is a toolkit for tyranny,” he warned.
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Watch this short Sci-Fi movie with a script written by an AI
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Haje Jan Kamps
| 2,016 | 6 | 11 |
You know when you just keep pressing the predictive text button on your mobile phone and the sentence just starts making less and less sense? Well, that type of functionality isn’t just for absurdist poetry, you know; the team behind Sunspring used the same technology — an LSTM Neural network, to be precise — to write a screenplay. That is pretty funny in and of itself, of course, but then the team had an even better idea… What if they rounded up some actors (including Thomas Middleditch, who plays Pied Piper’s Richard Hendricks in Silicon Valley) and turned it into a real movie? The team fed a ton of Sci-Fi movies into an AI… Then fed it some hallucinogenics and asked it to pen a screenplay. And so they did. And it is absolutely, gloriously, intensely, bizarrely, completely fascinating. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it good (or even, in the traditional sense of the word, ), but if you’ve spent any time around AIs — or if you’ve let your mobile phone write your text messages for you — you’ll recognize some of the blind alleys the AI scriptwriter works itself into from time to time. What really makes the film, though, is watching the actors deliver lines that just. make. no. sense. It’s an instant cult classic for all the same reasons you would expect. Just watch it.
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Google, Baidu and the race for an edge in the global speech recognition market
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Daniel Faggella
| 2,016 | 6 | 11 |
Speech recognition technology has been around for more than half a decade, though the — like voice dialing or desktop dictation — certainly don’t seem as sexy as today’s burgeoning virtual agents or smart home devices. If you’ve been following the market for any length of time, you know that a slew of significant players emerged on the scene about six years ago, including Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft (in a brief search, I counted 26 U.S.-based companies developing speech recognition technology). Since that time, the biggest tech trend setters in the world have been picking up speed and setting new benchmarks in a growing field, with Google recently providing . While Google certainly seems to have the current edge in the market after substantial investments in machine learning systems over the past couple of years, the tech giant may yet have a potential Achilles’ heel in owning an important segment of the global market — lack of access to China. The six-year ban on Google in China is a well-known fact, and aside from the , the block seems relatively immutable for the foreseeable future. With the world’s highest population to date, China also has more mobile users than anywhere in the world, and a majority use voice-to-text capabilities to initiate search queries and navigate their way through the digital landscape. Google may be missing out on reams of Mandarin audio data, but hasn’t missed the opportunity to take advantage. As China’s largest search engine, Baidu has collected thousands of hours of voice-based data in Mandarin, which was fed to its latest speech recognition engine . The system independently learned how to translate some Mandarin to English (and vice versa) entirely on its own using deep learning algorithms. The Baidu team that developed Deep Speech 2 was primarily based in its Sunnyvale AI Lab. Impressively, the research scientists involved were not fluent in Mandarin and knew very little of the language. and are two other key players in the Chinese market developing speech recognition technology. Though both use deep learning platforms, neither company has gained the level of publicity and coverage of Baidu’s Deep Speech 2. Despite its Mandarin prowess, Deep Speech 2 wasn’t originally trained to understand Chinese at all. “We developed the system in English, but because it’s all deep learning-based it mostly depends on data, so we were able to pretty quickly replace it with Mandarin data and train up a very strong Mandarin engine,” stated , director of Baidu USA’s AI Lab. When Deep Speech 2 was first released in December 2015, Andrew Ng, the chief scientist at Baidu, , , Microsoft’s Bing Speech, and Apple’s Dictation by more than 10 percent in word error rate. According to Baidu, as of February of this year, Deep Speech 2’s most recently published for short phrases, while Google has a stated as of about one year ago (to its credit, Google did reduce its error rate by 15 percent over the course of a year). Coates called Deep Speech 2’s “basically superhuman,” able to translate short queries more accurately than a native Mandarin Chinese speaker. In addition, the system is capable of “hybrid speech,” something that many Mandarin speakers use when they combine English and Mandarin. “Because the system is entirely data-driven, it actually learns to do hybrid transcription on its own,” said Coates. This is a feature that could allow Baidu’s system to transition well when applied across languages. Since Baidu’s initial breakthrough, Google has rebuilt its speech recognition system. The newly introduced Cloud Speech API offers developers the ability to speech-to-text translation into any app. The Cloud Speech API is described as working in a variety of noisy environments, and is able to recognize more than 80 languages and dialects. Image analysis is another touted advantage that Google is using to help attract attention over similar services offered by Amazon and Microsoft. Baidu released via GitHub back in January 2016 the AI software that powers its Deep Speech 2 system, but has yet to release a similar API platform. Baidu is a bit hush-hush about much of its technology in development, and it’s difficult to say what specific advancements they’ve made since their introduction of Deep Speech 2 in December 2015. However, their continued progress and potential impact in the speech recognition market may show itself through the partnerships formed in rolling out its technology through other products and services. Baidu recently tapped into the smart home market with an , which offers a popular voice-based, universal remote app for smartphones and tablets. , including Google Home, a voice-activated product that allows users to manage appliances and entertainment systems with voice commands, and which draws on the speech recognition technology in its announced “Google Assistant” (the product is scheduled to be released later this year). In my recent interview with Coates, he also expressed Baidu’s intense interest and behind-the-scenes exploration of developing all manner of AI assistants; perhaps introduction of the “Baidu Assistant” is on the horizon. Google has some of the best scientists worldwide and a massive technology budget, often putting them ahead of the curve. But Baidu’s achievements and talented team of researchers seems to have the potential needed to significantly impact the technology and gain a foothold in the lucrative . That being said, Google did take a minority stake last year in the , which is focused on voice recognition technology for mobile devices. With its speech recognition technology well under way, perhaps Google will find inroads that allow it to bypass other U.S.- and Chinese-based players and access the gigantic Chinese market after all.
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Congrats to former TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis on graduating from Stanford
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,016 | 6 | 11 |
Today, the former co-editor of TechCrunch, Alexia Tsotsis, is graduating from at the Graduate School of Business. She’s coming away with a Master of Science degree in business — and she did it in a year. I’ll always remember her as a fantastic work partner who was the yin to my yang. A person who would not hold back from telling you difficult truths, but who would also go to bat for you when the world came down on your shoulders. I talked to lots of potential workplaces before I came to TC and Alexia (and Eric Eldon) were the only people who drove three hours to my home town just to chat and have dinner — months before . That achievement is just a piece of paper, telling her that she can do the things that all of us at TechCrunch already knew she was capable of. But we’re proud of her anyway. The whole TechCrunch team knows Alexia as a with a and a worldview that is , allowing her to see things in a way that no one else could. Ambitious, strong and self-made — and now a graduate of Stanford. I look forward to her time as the CEO of Verizon. Congrats, Alexia.
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FFS, Facebook
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Jon Evans
| 2,016 | 6 | 11 |
For your convenience. For your security. To better serve you. To offer you the best experience. To better fit our future plans. To comply with regulations. To optimize our resources. These are the blandly vicious lies that companies proffer when they want to take something away from you. I thought I was used to this game, but this week I was actually upset by it again. Et tu, Facebook? As of this week, I can, by , no longer send or receive Facebook messages on the mobile browser in my phone. And neither can you. You must install the Messenger app instead — or, as I intend to, abandon that functionality entirely. The advantages to Facebook are obvious: It’s much better for a company to have an installed app than a mere web page accessed via browser. And certainly it’s not the most questionable thing Facebook has ever done. It , however, the most breathtakingly hypocritical. “ ” Oh, the bleakly funny irony. This move flies in the face of that so-called mission statement. It quite literally strips us all of a currently existing way to share and connect, and drives us from the open interconnected Web into a walled — and locked — garden. So if you ever believed in that mission statement, you can stop now. Facebook’s objective is to grow until it is globally ubiquitous. If it happens to accidentally make the world more shared, open and connected while doing so, I’m sure Facebook’s brain trust will welcome this as a pleasant side effect, but it is hardly their mission. Their mission is to become wealthier and more powerful. (In case anyone actually believes this change is to preserve the quality of the user experience: Don’t be ridiculous. Our phones nowadays are pocket supercomputers. If it works on your widescreen browser, it can work just fine on your mobile browser, too.) Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame Zuck. Every growing corporation reaches a point at which many of its internal factions and fiefdoms become, from an incentive perspective, parasites more interested in perpetuating themselves on the corpus of their host, rather than part of a single entity with a coherent vision and policy. If you look carefully you can see second- and third-order symptoms of that kind of corporate decay. It seems clear to me that this is one of them. This decision isn’t going to hurt Facebook in any meaningful way, of course. Network effects mean never having to say you’re sorry. But I strongly suspect that it’s a sign that bit rot is setting in at One Hacker Way. Remember how for most of a decade Google could do no wrong, and then, circa 2010, its halo finally began to slip? There were little signs that led up to that — signs like this one. So keep a close eye on Facebook over the next year or two. I predict more misses, more missteps, more clumsy communication, more execution failures, more decisions that seem completely baffling to impartial observers not privy to the internal politics. I also predict falling morale and a creeping sense, among engineers, that it’s no longer quite the top-tier place to work that it once was. In the interim, I for one will stubbornly and pointlessly resist this attempt to encroach on my phone. If you want to message me on Facebook, you’ll have to wait for a reply until I reach my laptop. Perhaps you can pass the time by contemplating how much more open and connected the world is becoming.
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Investment opportunities in the autonomous vehicle space
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Rob Toews
| 2,016 | 6 | 11 |
As companies race to bring autonomous vehicles (AVs) to market, investment activity in the space is heating up. General Motors made headlines in March when it . A few weeks later leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz entered the space, announcing investments in two early-stage autonomous startups, and . Most recently, , making it Silicon Valley’s newest unicorn. These and other recent deals point to a growing investment frenzy as AVs get closer to mainstream commercialization. The AV investment landscape is complex. It includes both hardware and software players and features competitors ranging from early-stage startups to large publicly traded corporations. This article will provide a primer for those interested in the rapidly evolving AV space. The first and most obvious layer of the AV ecosystem is the vehicle itself. The capital investment and manufacturing expertise required to produce vehicles at scale largely preclude early-stage entrants from being active here. Even large, deep-pocketed technology companies investing heavily in an autonomous future — e.g. Google and Uber — seem unwilling and unlikely to become car manufacturers themselves. The most probable outcome therefore seems to be that traditional car manufacturers will continue to mass-produce vehicles in the autonomous age. It is unclear whether this manufacturing role will continue to be as profitable for these companies as it has in the past. As value creation in transportation shifts toward high-tech components and software, manufacturers of the cars themselves may become an increasingly commoditized, low-margin business. Virtually every traditional car manufacturer has by now begun to invest in autonomous vehicle capabilities. Those with particularly interesting autonomous programs include GM, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz. (While Tesla manufactures cars, it is more appropriately considered a technology company.) Lidar is one of several types of specialized sensors that allow AVs to interpret their environment. Lidar sensors give the vehicle a precise three-dimensional awareness of its surroundings by projecting lasers in all directions and measuring the time they take to rebound, a process analogous to radar (the word Lidar is a portmanteau of “light” and “radar”). Given how critical these components are for overall AV functionality, the market for Lidar sensors will be enormous. A handful of startups have recently emerged that specialize in their production. Two key dimensions of these sensors are their size and their cost; the company that can harness Moore’s Law to drive both of these down the fastest will have a huge advantage. The Lidar sensors that Google used for its initial AV prototypes , an impracticable price point for the mass market. The current market leader in Lidar production, , . Velodyne, a privately held company based in California, has yet to take any venture funding. Another California-based Lidar startup that has attracted positive attention recently is . Quanergy has announced that its sensors will cost only $250 and have no moving parts. The company has established relationships with a handful of large OEMs but has yet to bring a product to market. Like Lidar sensors, cameras help AVs understand their environment and maneuver accordingly. Though less precise than Lidar, cameras offer the significant advantage of being able to detect color—important when, for instance, identifying traffic lights and signs. The dominant player in AV camera production is a publicly traded Israeli company named . Mobileye has high-profile supplier contracts with a number of auto manufacturers including Tesla. Perhaps the most important piece of AV hardware is the computer chip that serves as the vehicle’s “brains.” These chips take inputs from the vehicle’s various sensors and, based on complex software algorithms (discussed further below), enable the vehicle to operate autonomously. As with microprocessors in personal computers, these components sit at the very center of the overall system’s functionality. Given the enormous computing power demanded, AVs will require state-of-the-art microprocessors. The established chipmakers that have long dominated the microprocessor market — Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel — seem poised to leverage their existing expertise to succeed with AV chips. All three companies have signaled that autonomous technology will be a strategic priority moving forward. Of the three, Nvidia is arguably taking this opportunity seriously and . Investors have taken notice, with the company’s stock trading near an all-time high. While the hardware described above is essential, AVs are able to act intelligently, or autonomously, because of their software. There are several different key types of AV software to be aware of. It is worth noting that the divide between hardware and software companies, while helpful as a framework, is not entirely clean. Some hardware companies — e.g Mobileye — also provide software to analyze their sensor data. Likewise, some companies classified below as software players also offer hardware as part of an end-to-end autonomous solution. The first category of software critical to AVs is . In order to effectively navigate, an AV must have a detailed and up-to-date map of its surroundings and must know where on that map it is located. Creating and continually updating such a map database is a . The two biggest players specializing in digital worldwide map database creation are HERE and TomTom. Each of these companies has attracted significant investment attention — no surprise, given that maps will be a key strategic asset for the AV industry. A coalition of German automakers including Audi, BMW and Daimler (outbidding Uber, among others). TomTom, a publicly traded company based in Amsterdam, has faced acquisition rumors for years by suitors including Apple; to date the company remains independent. Apple, Uber and Bosch all have partnerships to use TomTom’s data. Meanwhile, other AV players — notably Google and — are seeking to build mapping capabilities themselves, while a handful of smaller startups are also tackling this challenge. As vehicles become increasingly connected to the Internet, other vehicles and surrounding infrastructure, cybersecurity will become an increasingly prominent concern. In an important warning of the potential dangers of connected vehicles, white-hat hackers last year and cut its transmission. Entrepreneurs and investors are becoming active in AV cybersecurity. As examples, Tel Aviv-based Argus Cyber Security raised $26 million in Series B funding last year, in March, and newcomer in April. More competitors will no doubt emerge soon. As the autonomous age dawns, many predict that private car ownership will become obsolete, replaced by shared AV fleets that individuals summon only when needed. The task of managing these fleets and optimizing their routes will be an immense challenge requiring complex software solutions. Startups already beginning to tackle this challenge include , which in early April . Given its strategic positioning and its commitment to autonomous technology, it seems safe to assume that Uber will invest and compete vigorously here. The central technological breakthrough at the core of the entire AV concept is the vehicle’s ability to conduct advanced and adaptive decision-making itself based on all the data at its disposal. Artificial intelligence software enabling vehicles to “think” in this way is the most important and technically demanding AV technology category of all. A handful of companies are seeking to build such solutions. Some of these companies focus solely on software; to go to market, they will look to partner with, or be acquired by, hardware manufacturers. One prominent example is , which recently announced a to deploy driverless taxis there by 2018. nuTonomy, an MIT spinout, in May. Other companies are building machine-learning software integrated with hardware in order to offer a comprehensive autonomous system. Included in this group are auto manufacturers such as Tesla but also many promising startups. Cruise Automation, recently acquired by GM, is one well-known example. Another noteworthy startup is George Hotz’s Comma.ai. Comma.ai is building aftermarket “kits” consisting of sensors, computers and software that allow customers to convert existing cars into AVs. The company aims to . Other startups tackling this ambitious challenge include Zoox, (focused specifically on long-haul trucking fleets) and , among many others currently in “stealth mode.” The landscape of AV companies in these early days of the technology is fluid and fast-changing. Established auto manufacturers, large technology companies and scrappy start-ups are all fiercely competing to win in the AV ecosystem. A wave of M&A activity, partnerships and consolidation seems likely as AVs move toward commercial availability. One thing is certain: There will be massive opportunity for profit as the autonomous vehicle market takes off in the coming years. In the words of angel investor Tikhon Bernstam, one of Cruise’s earliest backers: “You’d be hard-pressed to lose money investing in this space right now because there is going to be tens or even hundreds of billions in M&A and IPOs going forward. Cruise at $1 billion may look very cheap one day.”
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Line’s beauty and fashion portal rolls out its Persian carpet
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Amir Bozorgzadeh
| 2,016 | 6 | 11 |
, a designed to deliver the latest news on , and lifestyle, debuted in Iran this May. , the tech giant well-known for popular messaging app, is backing the foray into the destination site space in the Islamic Republic. The will offer daily content produced by a team of local Iranian staff writers and a forum where users are encouraged to share and discuss the topics that matter most to them. LINE has done homework. Iran’s tech and startup scene has been bubbling with activity and press during the past year as the country enters a post-sanctioned era that is inviting a renaissance of direct foreign investment. And they have entered it from an angle that leverages both their tech and social media expertise while addressing a deep demand they have discovered amongst the female population, in particular. Iran is 39 million women strong (49 percent of the population). Sixty percent of them are younger than 30; to put that into perspective, Iran has the highest share of 15-29-year-olds in the world relative to overall population. Now here’s one key to understanding women in Iran: Islamic dress codes. Women are required to cover their hair and wear modest clothing. This reality enables you to appreciate the Iranian parliament’s research center’s lofty $4 billion estimate of the and cosmetics industry in the country. The open territory of women’s faces and hands becomes essential real estate to express their individuality. But don’t forget . In the bustling streets of northern Tehran lie the latest seasonal collections of top international brands. You can find the trendiest new lineups readily available at boutique shops scattered around this affluent district of Iran’s capital. On the online front, is the most popular social network, with more than half of Iranians using the photo-sharing platform to follow trends. Enter the heavy-hitters. Iran reportedly has 3 million high-net-worth individuals and a luxury market that represents about 2 percent of the $1 trillion global luxury goods market, by Exane BNP Paribas Analyst, Luca Solca. The female share of that is considerable. However, the market is also rife with counterfeits, which has festered in past years because of a lack of enforcement of international trademark protection agreements. This will change soon as the big brands step in. is the deal recently signed by Italy’s industry during a two-day visit by Prime Minister in order to build better ties with Iran. Roberto Cavalli opened their first boutique in Iran this past February. Sephora is set to open up shop in Autumn in partnership with leading regional luxury retailer, Chalhoub Group. Versace is reportedly gearing up to open flagship boutique in Tehran soon. Yes, Europe’s biggest luxury brands are eying the second biggest market in the Middle East and stepping in, which will set in motion the process of encouraging increased trademark protection and decreasing demand for the knock-offs. Most, if not all, of these foreign brands establish relationships with local partners; LINE is no exception. They developed Benita in coordination with , a digital agency based in Dubai that is well reputed in the region for developing best-of-class portals and apps. “Iranians aren’t light users when it comes to tech,” says Hossein Jalali, Managing Partner at Edoramedia. “They are the most advanced audience in the region, and demand the best user experience and offering that any top brand can offer.” What usually happens next is that alongside the entry and evolution of portals like Benita, a flood of adjacent startups and solutions will emerge. They will rally to compete and support digitization of this female-dominant industry as the sophistication of the platforms and tools finally begins to match that of an already well-versed audience. “The retail scene is rapidly changing but the lack of proper retail space makes e-commerce the only choice for new players looking to enter,” says Ehsan Golabgir, CEO of , a popular e-commerce in the country.
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Why there will never be an Uber for healthcare
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Tom Valenti
| 2,016 | 6 | 11 |
You should walk away from anyone who says there can be an “Uber for healthcare.” It is the equivalent of someone saying they “have a bridge to sell you.” Or, more precisely, it shows a complete lack of understanding for how healthcare works and how positive health outcomes are actually achieved. Generally, when one says “Uber for X,Y or Z,” what one really means is making something . Uber is an incredibly convenient service. “On-demand” services like Uber and Netflix have reached mainstream status, while entrepreneurs are cranking out new on-demand businesses for nearly every type of goods or service that touches our lives. Today, I can watch more than 15,000 different streaming titles on Netflix while my personal chauffeur from Uber drives me around. The Jetsons could never do that! Meanwhile, with healthcare, we have a very outdated and inconvenient system: We need to for an appointment, and then talk to a doctor for while he types away on a laptop, only occasionally making eye contact with us. And, all of this for . Thus, the U.S. healthcare system seems like the antithesis of easy and convenient. To us Average Joes who must deal with this unending frustration, we are begging to have healthcare “Uberized.” Unfortunately, our desire to Uberize healthcare demonstrates a hole in our overall thinking. What do I mean? Uber and Netflix are successful because they have streamlined the time it takes to get a job done. Say you need a ride to the airport — no need to find a neighbor to drive you or hail a cab, just pull out your phone and someone will pick you up. In a sense, the friction or pain necessary to complete a transaction is removed. On-demand services like these work great for individual transactions. Therein lies the problem: Healthcare is not a transaction business; it is a relationship business. One cannot “get healthy” with a one-time, immediate transaction. Instead, positive health outcomes are achieved over a long time period through a treatment plan developed in conjunction with a trained physician with whom a patient has a strong relationship. For comparison, healthcare is more similar to education or a sports team than it is to getting a ride or renting a movie. One cannot “get healthy” on-demand, just like one cannot “get smart” or become a championship-winning athlete on-demand. As the research of the highly regarded from Johns Hopkins proved, what matters to good health is the . Similarly, what matters to learning outcomes in the education field is . Again, I don’t know of a single successful sports team that did not have a relatively decent coach, and a good coach cannot simply show up to one practice per season, snap his fingers and expect a team to be successful. Now, would someone ever try to build an “Uber for a football team”? What about an “Uber for Third Grade”? Then what makes one think that an “Uber for healthcare” is a good idea? Naturally, we desire convenience. That is why telemedicine and urgent care clinics are growing rapidly. In addition, standalone ERs, not tied to a specific hospital, . One could say these businesses are trying to be Uber for healthcare because they focus on easy and convenient transactions — simply walk in or make a call, get in the queue and finish with a prescription. Overall, such businesses are great for the occasional sniffle and sprain — health conditions that are typically treated with transaction-like care. But these business will not actually improve our healthcare cost and poor health outcome problems because they focus on transactions and not relationships. In fact, a recent, highly respected study found that . If we want ease and convenience along with lower cost and better health, we must fix the root of our healthcare problem. Instead of trying to create the Uber of healthcare by implementing services that overlay some aspect of our existing dysfunctional healthcare system (e.g. telemedicine, urgent care, care coordination), we should be working to fix the root of the problem by removing the barriers between patients and the front-door of the U.S. healthcare system — primary care. If we really want ease, convenience, lower cost and better health, rather than saying, “I want to be able to call a doctor, therefore I will build an app to call a doctor,” we instead should focus on ways to break down the barriers between patients and their very own, local primary care physicians. Why does it take so long to get an appointment? Why do we wait in waiting rooms? Why can’t we text with our own doctor? Addressing how we deliver and pay for primary care will remove these barriers, and that requires us to examine how the U.S. insurance-based healthcare system pays for primary care and how primary care physicians are required to deliver care in order to receive such payment. Therefore, we come full circle: The reason these barriers between patients and primary care physicians exist is because the U.S. healthcare system has been treating healthcare as a transaction business, not a relationship business, all along. How do insurance, Medicare and Medicaid pay primary care physicians? They pay physicians to perform transactions — to “do stuff.” The more patients primary care physicians see, the more they get paid. Hence, primary care physicians see 25+ patients per day as quickly as possible, while insurance, Medicare and Medicaid mandate an incredible level of administrative work in order to make primary care physicians justify payment for each transaction. Furthermore, primary care physicians are paid little to nothing for anything outside of the typical face-to-face office visit; no payment for phone calls, emails, texts or any other technology that could enhance the patient-physician relationship. So let’s stop with the constant talk about the Uber of healthcare and the continual focus on healthcare as a transaction business. Instead, let’s figure out ways to free-up primary care physicians from insurance-based coding, paperwork, payment and mandates. As consumers, patients and employers, we need to stop paying primary care physicians to perform transactions and start demanding strong relationships with primary care physicians (as visionary primary care providers and have proven with outstanding results). Doing so will open up incredible opportunities: (1) physicians will have the time and financial freedom to innovate and experiment with new, easy and convenient ways to create strong patient-physician relationships, (2) it will allow us as patients the ability to form strong relationships with our own doctors, on our terms and in ways that leverage the latest technology to conveniently fit in to our busy daily lives and (3) most importantly to Silicon Valley, it will open up the door to entrepreneurs to build new tools and technologies that will enhance patient-physician relationships, not undermine them. And, strong research shows, .
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Hacker takes over Oculus CEO’s Twitter account, announces new CEO
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Lucas Matney
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe had his Twitter account hacked Wednesday; the hacker took the opportunity to promptly announce a new CEO for the virtual reality company. This is just the latest in a string of tech CEO’s having their Twitter accounts compromised, this attack does not appear to be from the same hacker group responsible for the hacks on the accounts of Travis Kalanick, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg and Dick Costolo. Late Wednesday night, Iribe’s Twitter bio temporarily read, “hey its @Lid… im not testing ya security im just havin a laugh.” The hacker told me in a Twitter DM that he accessed the password via , he also said that he also would’ve managed to access Iribe’s email account had he not had two-factor authentication enabled. This hacker also does not appear to be a fan of this particular publication.
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Ayesha Curry launches a new food-delivery startup
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Want to eat like Steph Curry? Now you can. Ayesha Curry, the wife of NBA all-star Stephen Curry, has a new food delivery startup. The company is called , and will deliver ingredients and recipes directly to your door on a weekly basis. sign up now for updates on my meal-kit delivery! Let's GATHER together and cook! — Ayesha Curry (@ayeshacurry) For now, the site is just a landing page (and clever gamified referral leaderboard), but promises delivery of seasonal ingredients and recipes created by Ayesha Curry herself. The recipes will be inspired by meals she cooks for her family, including home-cooked baby food. It’s not yet clear if the startup will serve customers nationwide or just in San Francisco to start. While incumbents like Plated and Blue Apron deliver nationwide, they benefit from hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising and expensive fulfillment centers across the U.S. While Gather hasn’t announced its cost structure, competitors in the space typically charge between $9 – $12 per meal – a low cost that the big companies achieve by using economies of scale to order ingredients in bulk. And cost aside, the ingredient and recipe delivery model isn’t exactly new – but Ayesha’s celebrity status may help Gather stand out from its competitors. This definitely isn’t Ayesha’s first foray into cooking. Earlier this month, the chef with celebrity chef Michael Mina to open a pop-up restaurant in San Francisco. She also has a and a with cooking demos. And while Gather hasn’t said what types of recipes will be delivered, Ayesha her heritage includes Jamaican, Chinese, Polish and African-American – all backgrounds that contribute to her diverse cooking style. Gather hasn’t launched yet, but you can sign up for its waiting list . Oh, and if her new startup doesn’t work out, Ayesha can always go back to making music videos in the kitchen with Steph.
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Watch Microsoft Accelerator’s London Demo Day here
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Samantha O'Keefe
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
TechCrunch is pleased to bring you Microsoft Accelerator’s London Demo Day on June 30th from 7:30-10:00am PT, 3:30-6pm GMT. The Microsoft Accelerator is an immersive three- to six-month program aimed at helping entrepreneurs get through the challenges of building a company, finding customers and scaling to global markets. There are seven accelerators located around the world, from Seattle to Beijing, from Berlin to Tel-Aviv. Programs have a focus on enterprise startups; this event in London showcases financial services, fitness, education and more. Investors and press will hear pitches from 11 companies starting at 7:30am PT. Each team will have two minutes to present their business followed by questions from the moderator and then a question from the audience. You can watch it right here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OhRyFK1HlE – Enables SMEs and their trusted advisors to find, compare and select the right lenders in under three minutes. – Enables the issuance, execution and administration of complex financial products. They change the dealflow economics, allowing investment and wholesale banks to make smaller deals more profitable, for example EMTNs. They help banks increase their profits and allow them to engage with the clients they care about at an earlier stage. – A mobile coaching app, that makes the journey to becoming fit and healthy more simple by offering the user a digital personal trainer, nutritionist and life coach all in one app. – Moving diagnostics from the bench to the bedside. SIME’s unique technology, combined with user conscious design, empowers healthcare teams to confidently carry out diagnostics at the point of care. – Streamlines the request for proposals (RFP) process for companies, and is already working with large clients around the globe. – A management tool that empowers insurers, brokers and MGAs to build and launch any insurance product within unprecedented timescales, and then distribute and selfmanage it online, globally. – Makes project oversight and communications easy, integrating with existing project management tools to provide a high level overview to share with stakeholders, and gather insight through reporting and analytics to work smarter with those stakeholders. Customers include Microsoft, LinkedIn, National Grid, Cancer Research and Staffordshire. – Accelerates the adoption and integration of drone technology into businesses by empowering manufacturers to access reliable, authoritative realtime data sources that help drones and their operators make better decisions about where and how to fly. – A UK company offering a unique technology and service for companies that need to acquire and retain high value clients. Apprecie facilitates better face-to-face engagement and is built with the sensitivities of high-value clients at its core. – A social learning platform designed to enable teachers, students and parents to access outstanding, inspirational learning content from channel partners, and blend this content into their own teaching and learning experiences. – Makes presentations interactive, and gathers data at live events. By livesharing PowerPoint slides to audience smartphones, and engaging them with integrated Q&A, polling and social media feeds, they turn any presentation into an opportunity to capture information, feedback and leads. – Mention is Google Alerts on steroids. We monitor over 1 billion sources daily, which let’s you to monitor your brand, track competitors, manage crises, and generate leads.
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IBM demos an employee hack for gathering live video data via drone
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
The system, which started as a pet project for Trice, is able to gather and transmit data in real-time, offering up such useful contextual information as precise location (latitude, longitude, altitude), compass heading, and the pitch of the camera. “Think of an insurance adjuster,” says Trice. “You want to use the aircraft to get aerial imagery that otherwise could have been a lot harder to obtain. If they’ve have an accident or a flood, it can be documented in the air. Previously they would have to go to an aerial photographer. It could be months before they got the footage back and it could cost a fair amount.” Along with such relatively straightforward contextual data, the system also utilizes OpenWhisk to access Watson’s Visual Recognition, identifying elements from the photo in real-time, a tool that could prove useful for surveillance drones tasked with recording a large amount of video over long stretches.
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Sarah Perez
| 2,016 | 6 | 27 | null |
The rise of the overbanked and the opportunity to serve them
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Brian Buckingham
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Meet Alvin, a Silicon Valley executive in his late-30s. Alvin has accounts with three banks, an online brokerage account and has borrowed from no less than nine lenders in the past five years. In today’s world, why wouldn’t he? Quick and easy enrollment processes, fee-free offers, mobile apps to keep on top of things and competitive shopping information make finding and maintaining several open accounts with multiple financial institutions free and easy for Alvin. Financially literate, technologically savvy and affluent, Alvin is a member of the . The o are consumers who hold open deposit accounts with three or more financial institutions. According to Dennis Chira, an Oliver Wyman survey in January 2016 showed the o account for ~10 percent of the banking population, have an annual household income of ~$170,000 and hold household assets of ~$900,000. Alvin, and the millions of o like him, consumes financial services in a wholly new way. Fueled by technological advances that allow for unprecedented access and choice, the o mix-n-match offerings from various providers to create a customized, bespoke portfolio of financial services. For checking, the consumer typically holds a primary account with a larger institution that offers convenience and scale. When it comes to savings, there are multiple accounts — a basic savings held alongside the checking to as a holding tank prior to transfers, and usually two or three high-yield online accounts with money shifting between institutions to capture the highest available interest rates. And there is usually an investment account with an online brokerage like , and perhaps one with an innovative fintech startup like or . This may not sound extreme in an app-driven world characterized by daily interactions with a multitude of service providers. However, the o consumer’s eager willingness to leverage multiple service providers to customize their financial picture will challenge the as of yet largely undisrupted domain of traditional banks. While the o may be viewed as an interesting footnote in the current environment, this will change. The expansion of more online banks like , and , and the expected in U.S. interest rates, will both play a role in increasing the ranks of the o and raise its profile as an important customer segment. Online banks will be an accelerant. When interest rates , these challengers will aggressively court the o with more attractive rates, better incentives and seamless experiences — all in an environment where consumers are increasingly open to online and mobile banking. New players are eyeing the market, from the likes of , to lending platforms like that have expressed desires to be a consumer bank, to traditional banks that are considering online-only arms to gather deposits in areas where they don’t operate branches. Online banks and upstart lenders have understandable reasons to be deposit-hungry, based on the relative value of these funds to their institutions. Today’s online banks have positioned themselves to deploy deposits into high-margin and highly profitable offerings like credit cards, auto loans or mortgages. Additionally, these entities tend not to be as “blue chip” as traditional banks, and lower credit ratings translate to higher overall costs of borrowing if funds are sourced from capital markets. Both of these factors can easily result in a higher value placed on customer deposits, as well as a willingness to offer highly competitive interest rates that might be scoffed at by a traditional, branch-laden bank. These economic incentives, pent-up consumer appetites for better rates and the increasing openness to banking with multiple institutions will propel online banks further into the mainstream. Another condition supporting the of the o : transferring money has never been cheaper, easier or faster. Bank-to-bank transfers via an Automated Clearing House (ACH) take two business days and cost nothing. New transfer services like and let users link bank accounts and transfer money in one business day, using only their emails or phone numbers. Setting up an account from a new bank to receive a transfer typically takes only one’s username and password from that bank, and is instantly verified. Banks like , formerly ING Direct and today one of Canada’s largest online banks, are taking this further with new banking relationships that begin with just a scanned check from a traditional bank. Technology has empowered the o in dramatic ways. The availability of information, fueled by social media and comparison-shopping websites like and , has transformed a previously labor-intensive shopping effort in an opaque world. Additionally, aggregators like , with more than 10 million users, have stepped up to help the o manage the bespoke, mix-n-match model of financial services by collecting myriad data from bank accounts, credit card companies and retirement accounts to give a dashboard view of their financial life. More service providers will emerge with innovative approaches aimed at greasing the wheels of what has previously been complex and cumbersome. The o will find the gymnastics they may have been willing to undertake in managing their finances are simply no longer necessary. While it has been tempting for and investors like to predict the demise of traditional banking, this doesn’t appear likely in the near term. Banking is an incredibly complex business where long-standing players have a tremendous advantage in both structure and human capital. With that said, segments of the population like the o , blending consumer expectations fueled by technological advancement and a very real potential impact to bank profits, represent the next frontier of where these banks will need to focus. The o consumer will test the banking industry’s ability and willingness to adapt to a customer-centric future. The o expects from their banks more than a small shift in focus toward technology and personalization. In addition to better mobile banking apps, these consumers also demand compelling incentives in exchange for their business. They expect their bank to find ways to add value to their lives, to anticipate their evolving financial services needs and to make relevant suggestions in much the same way Amazon and Netflix have done with retail goods and movies, respectively. Until traditional banks can move from a culture of incremental improvement based on the competitive landscape and available technology to a model that places the customer and their needs at the center of a culture of innovation, the unraveling of relationship banking will continue, and likely accelerate. Buzzwords, I know — but we cannot lose sight of how in the past 20 years, the traditional bank has found itself slowly losing exclusivity over their customers’ financial lives. In exactly that same period, Amazon.com has found a way to optimize the whole customer relationship, expertly and skillfully seducing its customers into buying from its website everything from eggs to electronics to designer shoes. Soon consumers will have compelling economic reasons to care about where they keep their deposits. Banks that win in this competitive environment are the ones that can develop an intimate understanding of their customers’ expectations, and have the capabilities to meet those needs in a more personalized manner. This is not just about pleasing customers. More importantly, it is about the ability to make economically efficient decisions about which products to offer, at what price, through which channels and to which customer. In much the same way that Amazon and Netflix have done, banks will have to make investments to better understand emerging customer segments like the o , and work to find ways to capture relevant components of the relationship on economically attractive terms.
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MoneyLion brings traditional banking ever closer to obsolescence
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John Mannes
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
The lingo of personal finance is rapidly changing. Mint has replaced our nagging parents and significant others who think our spending is out of control. Wealthfront and Betterment took away our personal wealth managers. Heck, we don’t even have to go to a bank anymore to get a loan with SoFi or Lending Club. Since 2013, CEO Diwakar Choubey and his team have been developing to combine personal loans with credit monitoring and personalized financial nudges. The way something is presented is often more important than what is being presented. MoneyLion wants to get people spending better by presenting information differently. Users can simulate their future credit score in MoneyLion. Having a window into the future can help people counteract forces like hyperbolic discounting. For non-CogSci folks, this is how researchers explain why people can easily see the value in setting their alarm for 6am at night but find it hard in the morning to see the same inherent value and wind up smashing the snooze button 3 times. In a financial context, people are really bad at anticipating future frustration. If I buy an Apple Watch with my credit card now, my brain doesn’t want me to be able to imagine the bill in my mailbox. Customers check their credit score on MoneyLion an average of 3.9 times a month. This degree of transparency makes people sweat in the short-run but reduces the likelihood of bad decision making that induces long-term elevated stress. The platform also leverages data to recommend loans when they are most needed. If spending patterns appear incongruent with prior months, MoneyLion can suggest a small loan to smooth things over. A user can receive overdraft warnings within the app and take a $200 advance in about 15 minutes. Tim Hong, one of the key behavioral architects of the platform, wants MoneyLion to dream big. Many of the tedious financial tasks we all dread can be streamlined with readily available technology. How can we prevent fraud? Facial recognition of course. Need a verification photo for a loan application? Just take a selfie. “One of the problems we saw in consumer finance was that marketplace lenders were spending lots of money to acquire customers for one transaction,” said Choubey. MoneyLion uses rewards to incentivize users to stick with the platform. The idea of rewards is not new in banking, nearly every credit card offers benefits or cash back. A large variety of data enables MoneyLion to offer a wide breadth of rewards for building good financial habits. Reward redemptions on the platform have been growing at 39% month over month. MoneyLion recommends action-steps that it believes are correlated with lower default rates. The platform mines transaction data from users that link their bank accounts. This allows MoneyLion to recommend spending habits. How guilty would you feel if the app you used to manage your finances got on your case about all those Venti Pumpkin Spice Lattes you’ve been sneaking in after lunch. MoneyLion competes with the likes of SoFi and Lending Club but Choubey argues his company is going after a different customer. “SoFi has a handle on those with a 750 Fico and above, we want to focus on the middle 70 percent,” noted Choubey. Over 100,000 loans have been written on MoneyLion and 11 percent of those users have taken credit according to Choubey. Users can exercise a lot of freedom with loans. They can leverage endorsements from friends and family to lower interest rates and prepay loans at any time. Loan prepayment is often looked down upon by lending platforms because they eat away at revenue by truncating interest payments. “We don’t charge an origination fee like Lending Club,” added Choubey MoneyLion holds some of its loans on balance sheet and funds them through wholesale markets. Its loan business has been growing by 3X year over year in both originations and volume. MoneyLion is on the lookout to close additional partnerships. The company has already locked-down 25-30 partnerships and has plans to work with a wealth management platform like Wealthfront and Betterment to tackle the other side of the balance sheet.
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Global counter-terrorism database World-Check leaks online
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Lucia Maffei
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
At least one non-authorized person obtained sensitive information following the leak of global counter-terrorism database , owned by Thomson Reuters. Chris Vickery, a security researcher at the software company MacKeeper, that a copy of the World-Check database from mid-2014 had come into his possession. “No hacking was involved in my acquisition of this data,” Vickery pointed out. “I would call it more of a leak than anything, although not directly from Thomson Reuters.” Vickery described the database as a 2.2 million-record copy of “heightened-risk individuals and organizations.” World-Check provides banks, corporates, law enforcement, governments and intelligence agencies with security screenings about people and entities. “ , World-Check is updated by more than 350 research analysts based in 11 research centers across five continents. https://vimeo.com/132166180 Thomson Reuters spokesperson David Crundwell confirmed the leak to TechCrunch, adding that it was due to — as Vickery said — a “third party.” “Thomson Reuters was yesterday alerted to out-of-date information from the World-Check database that had been exposed by a third party,” the company said in a statement. “We are grateful to Chris Vickery for bringing this to our attention, and immediately took steps to contact the third party responsible. As a result, we can confirm that the third party has taken down the information. We have also spoken to the third party to ensure there will be no repetition of this unacceptable incident.” Reuters declined to answer further questions regarding what the leaked information was about and how the third-party let the leak happen. In an email to TechCrunch, Vickery revealed that the leak was due to a CouchDB instance that was “perhaps mistakenly” configured for public access. is an open source non-relational database software. The company that is likely responsible for the exposed CouchDB, according to Vickery, is SmartKYC, a London-based financial services firm. “Thomson Reuters did confirm to me early this morning that they have been working with SmartKYC to secure the data and it is believed to now be offline,” Vickery emailed TechCrunch. Vickery also declared he still has a copy of the database.
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HTC Vive announces $10 billion VR Venture Capital Alliance
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Lucas Matney
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
VR technologies are going to be requiring a shit ton of capital as they look to make the crossover from R&D phases to mass market adoption. HTC is certainly looking to do its part to make sure that the headset technologies it is building have a broader ecosystem to fall into. Today, at the in Shanghai, HTC Vive announced a $10 billion initiative to put the investment weight of much of the industry on the back of itself and its partners, which include a number of VR-centric VC houses, in addition to more staple firms like and . In all, there will be 27 firms joining HTC Vive in the (VRVCA). Alvin Wang Graylin, China Regional President of VR at HTC, will head up the “Alliance.” This is HTC’s most substantial show of leadership in VR investment to date. The company previously a $100 million Vive X accelerator fund in April of this year for startups in the virtual reality space. If that $10 billion number seems a bit staggering for a VR fund, good job at being skeptical. While the VRVCA will undoubtedly be dropping quite a bit of cash into portfolio companies, the $10 billion refers to the amount of “deployable capital” that the combined weight of the firms has at its disposal, not necessarily the amount they are strictly dedicating to VR investments. The VRVCA will be meeting every two months in SF and Beijing to hear from companies hoping to raise some funds to power their ideas. VR startups looking to get their piece of that $10 billion deployable pie can pitch decks to the VRVCA today for review. With such a wide breadth of VCs included in the group, it looks like the Alliance is looking to cast a rather wide net across industry verticals in the mixed, augmented and virtual reality spaces.
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This portable 200W “laser bazooka” is terrifying and unnecessary — and I want one
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Greg Kumparak
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Have you ever played with a laser pointer? Those usually cap out at around 0.005 watts. This guy built a “laser bazooka” that, at 200 watts, comes in at about 40,000 times stronger than that. While YouTuber styropyro built his bazooka out of materials torn from a bunch of broken DLP projectors and “a stack of lithium batteries,” this… isn’t something you should build at home. It’s fully capable of starting fires if you point it at the wrong thing, and would permanently wreck unprotected eyes (note his MASSIVE WELDING MASK) in no time flat. Says Styro, “… it feels like I’m holding a bolt of lightning in my hand.” Don’t want to burn your house down, but want to see more DIY laser insanity? Styropyro has a ton of it — )
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Tech’s real role in student debt
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Kate Conger
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Clinton announced her yesterday in front of a gathering of entrepreneurs and startup founders. Almost immediately, the proposal began to generate criticism. The controversial portion of Clinton’s proposal isn’t the section on encryption, net neutrality or any of the other divisive policy issues that plague the tech industry. Instead, it’s the section on student debt that’s drawn the strongest critique. During a conference call with reporters this morning, Clinton staffers attempted to clarify the tech agenda and quell concerns about the campaign offering a benefit to already-wealthy tech founders. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president plans to allow young entrepreneurs to defer their federal student loans for three years while they get their businesses up and running. Individuals who qualify won’t have to pay interest or principal on their loans during the deferment period, and Clinton says she is considering extending the benefit to the first 15-20 employees of new companies, as well. The agenda will also give young founders who are working in “distressed communities” or providing “measurable social impact and benefit” the chance to have up to $17,500 of their student loan debt forgiven after running their business for five years. During a conference call with reporters this morning, Clinton staffers clarified that the student debt portion of the agenda would be a part of Clinton’s plan for her first 100 days in office. The backlash was instant. Student debt is a delicate subject in the Democratic primary. Clinton has clashed with her nomination opponent Bernie Sanders over his plan to make higher education tuition- and debt-free, criticizing his plan as financially unviable and proposing tuition based on family income as an alternative. But the reaction to Clinton’s proposal has more to do with societal disgust for startup culture than the intricacies of higher education funding. The sexism, racism and unaccountability of Silicon Valley are exhausting, and people are understandably unhappy to hear about startup founders getting yet another leg up on the average person. Because Clinton’s announcement was packaged with her technology agenda, the debt deferment and forgiveness portion was perceived as a benefit for members of a vastly privileged and wealthy industry: tech founders who don’t need any more financial incentives than they already have. Clinton staffers clarified today that debt deferment would be made available to entrepreneurs across sectors of business, regardless of whether those founders would refer to their company as a “startup.” “The idea of the entrepreneur is somebody who starts a new venture under state law,” Clinton’s domestic policy adviser Sara Solow said. The entrepreneur could be starting her own farm or bookstore — and yes, even her own app. The policy is intended to foster business growth and is based on polling that shows young people want to start businesses but are afraid to take the risk because of their student debt, Solow explained. “The rates of entrepreneurship are down, even though when you ask people, 50 percent of them say they want to start their own business,” she said. Sarah Audelo, the campaign’s millennial vote director, said that Clinton isn’t trying to award a benefit to entrepreneurs that isn’t already available to students who enter the workforce. Audelo pointed to the , which grants debt forgiveness to former students who take jobs at nonprofits and in government and make 120 on-time loan payments, as an example. Solow also said that Clinton didn’t envision an age cutoff for participation in the debt deferment and forgiveness program, so that entrepreneurs who are 10 or even 20 years out of school could still participate. It’s certainly painful to imagine the founders of the next playing ping-pong in a trendy startup office and coasting on loan deferment while their less fortunate peers work minimum-wage jobs and scramble to make their loan payments. But it’s also worth remembering that have found black women are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the United States, and that this plan — if Clinton clinches the Democratic nomination, and then the general election — could benefit them, too. Criticizing Clinton’s plan because it could enable “tech bros” comes from valid anger about the industry’s culture. But since the campaign plans to provide deferment to entrepreneurs outside of tech, that critique seems a bit hollow. Yet, questions remain about Clinton’s to reform student debt. Trying to counteract student debt after graduation through deferment or forgiveness is a modest proposal, but the cycle of ever-rising tuition (and the ) needs to end. Clinton’s answer so far has been to invest $350 billion over the next decade into lowering the cost of education at state and community colleges. The plan relies on student and family contributions as well as Pell Grants to fund tuition, but it’s not yet clear how family contributions will be calculated. It’s also unclear where the $350 billion will come from — the Clinton campaign says it will be generated by “limiting certain tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers,” but hasn’t specified the particular tax expenditures or taxpayers to be targeted. Perhaps that’s where some of tech’s high-income taxpayers can help.
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Google-backed undersea cable between US and Japan goes online tonight
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Google started making investments in a number of undersea cables back in 2008, but one of its largest investments was in the $300 million between Japan and the U.S. West Coast. Back in 2014, Google that it was joining a consortium of six companies, including NEC, China Mobile, China Telecom, Global Transit and KDDI, to better connect the two countries. As the company announced today, this cable is going online tonight. The 9,000km six-fiber pair cable can deliver up to 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth — or as Google’s SVP of Technical Infrastructure Urs Holzle puts it, that’s “about 10 million times faster than your modem.” The cable will give Google dedicated access to 10 Tbps per second over its own pair of cables that will connect Chikura and Shima in Japan to (putting it relatively close to the company’s The Dalles data center in the state). It’s worth noting that Google also plans to launch its Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo later this year and the company notes that having this dedicated bandwidth for its operations will result “in faster data transfers and reduced latency as GCP customers deliver their applications and information to customers around the globe.” While the focus of Google’s announcement is mostly on the connection between the U.S. and Japan, it’s worth noting that the FASTER network will also connect Japan and Taiwan over two fiber pairs that will . This extension between Taiwan and the two landing sites in Japan is 100 percent owned by Google (through its wholly owned Google Cable Bermuda subsidiary).
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Impact Engine closes its accelerator and a $10 million impact fund
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
An accelerator that backed for-profit, for-good ventures, , is abandoning the bootcamp approach and shifting its focus to investing in these startups as a seed fund, according to CEO and Partner Jessica Droste Yagan. Based in Chicago’s , Impact Engine also closed a $10 million fund to support this pivot. The fund is its fourth, but now Impact Engine will operate without the accelerator model. The firm will invest $25,000 to $250,000 into startups that tie their financial performance to social and environmental impact, rather than treating do-good initiatives as a standalone, philanthropic arm or side project. The companies can be based in North America, and involved in almost any industry, Yagan said. For example, an educational tech company in Impact Engine’s portfolio, , has a goal of improving the reading and writing skills of students from elementary school through high school. If the company really improves literacy, Yagan explained, it tends to sell its content and software to more schools. Impact Engine partners Jessica Droste Yagan and Tasha Seitz. Impact Engine generally will not invest in fundraising platforms or businesses that use a buy-one-to-give-one model, as they still rely on charity to make a positive social or environmental impact, Yagan explained. The decision to ditch the accelerator model and become a pure impact fund will allow Impact Engine to be more opportunistic and proactive in deal making, Yagan said. “The accelerator required teams to be in Chicago for four months, and had a once-a-year application process,” she said. That meant the accelerator had to pass on backing entrepreneurs it would have liked to simply due to timing and location. Limited partners in Impact Engine IV included OpenTable founder and food-tech investor Chuck Templeton; OKCupid CEO Sam Yagan (who is married to Droste Yagan), Irene Pritzker, Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly and others. also serves as the Chairman and is on the investment committee at Impact Engine. Prior to shutting down its accelerator, Impact Engine invested about $700,000 in 23 for-profit, for-good companies. Alumni from the program have attracted $32.4 million in follow-on investments and $2.6 million in philanthropic funding.
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ProducePay raises $2.5M to bring cashflow to farmers
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
has raised $2.5 million to solve what CEO Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck said is a major issue for farmers — getting paid in a timely manner for their crops. Borquez Schwarzbeck explained that farmers usually have to cover the cost of not just growing the produce, but also shipping — and then they have to wait for it to get sold before they get paid themselves. And since harvesting crops is expensive, this makes it harder for the farmer to harvest as quickly and aggressively as would otherwise be possible. In contrast, ProducePay can pay the farmer for their produce the day after it’s shipped. “We essentially buy the produce at a 1 to 4 percent discount,” Borquez Schwarzbeck said. The company says it has financed $80 million worth of produce from growers in the United States, Mexico, Chile and Honduras since it launched in September. And again, according to Borquez Schwarzbeck, most of that money is getting reinvested in the farm. “Farming is becoming increasingly hard in the US, with the huge drought problems in California, and we have big companies buying a lot of farms,” he added. “Family farming is disappearing.” So in his view, ProducePay can help those farms stay competitive by “collateralizing assets you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.” The company has also been adding more features, like a marketplace for connecting growers and distributors. In addition to helping the grower, this is supposed to “de-risk” the ProducePay’s investment, allowing it to cover 80 percent of the produce’s value, not just 50 percent. The ultimate goal, Borquez Schwarzbeck said, is to create a “one-stop shop for everything farming,” where growers can also connect with vendors to buy supplies like fertilizer. The seed funding comes from Menlo Ventures, Arena Ventures, CoVenture, Red Bear Angels and Social Leverage.
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Move Loot, a YC-backed furniture resale marketplace, shuts down, sells customer list to Handy
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Ingrid Lunden
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
There’s some closure (literally and figuratively) for , the furniture resale marketplace that we wrote earlier this month . The startup — backed by nearly in funding from a list of top investors that included Y Combinator, GV, Index, Metamorphic and Sherpa — has shut down its business and sold access to its customer list to , the home services company that offers cleaning and repairs on demand. TechCrunch understands that no other assets or employees are a part of the deal. The news was made public in a letter sent to Move Loot customers earlier today. “We’re sorry to announce that as of today the Move Loot furniture marketplace is coming to an end and we have ceased operations,” the letter signed by co-founders Shruti Shah, Bill Bobbitt, Jenny Karin Morrill and Ryan Smith read in part. “We are partnering with Handy, the much-loved home services marketplace, to help our customers with all things home — from cleaning services to moving help to furniture assembly.” To be clear, Handy is automatically signing up Move Loot customers to Handy accounts. It offering Move Loot customers a free hour of services as an introduction. While that hour could be used for cleaning or any other service in the Handy umbrella, we understand Handy was interested in marketing to Move Loot’s customer base specifically because it is developing a new line of business in storage. (Possibly coincidental side note: It looks like at least some folks at Handy had their eyes on Move Loot before now.) Move Loot’s business was originally designed around selling furniture on consignment, meaning that it, too, once offered a kind of storage service of sorts. However, as Move Loot ran out of cash, it eventually pivoted to a peer-to-peer sales model. Prior to the deal, TechCrunch understands that Move Loot had been speaking to other companies to sell all or part of its assets. One company in the frame was New York-based , a YC alum from the same cohort at Move Loot, and also focused on reselling furniture and home decor through a peer-to-peer marketplace — but nothing came of that. “Over the past two years we’ve been focused on growth, operational excellence, and customer satisfaction with a primary focus on profitability,” AptDeco’s co-founder Kalam Dennis told TechCrunch. “We have spoken with Move Loot regarding their interest in an acquisition. Ultimately we’re only interested in opportunities that align with the previously mentioned strategic goals.” The bigger picture is that while there are some big juggernauts in the on-demand services market — from transportation companies like Uber and Lyft through to still-growing plays like delivery service Postmates — the space continues to be challenging because growth costs are high (partly because of marketing, partly because of the nature of some of these labor-intensive services) while margins are thin. As a result, we will likely see a lot more consolidation and closures as some startups run out of money, and others get snapped up in the bid for better economies of scale. For its part, Handy is one of the home services players that — like Thumbtack — is hoping to be one of the last men standing, so to speak. The startup has raised ; has acquired a couple of smaller competitors; and is now quietly and slowly building out a portfolio of services to bring in more users. Today, Handy’s mainstay remains cleaning, but it’s also trying out a business selling, delivering and assembling furniture; and this week it is changing how it lets customers order services. Users can now choose to request services from specific “Pros” — professionals on its books. This is one way to encourage more loyal customers, especially in services like cleaning where you might prefer to have the same person come to your home every week. The fast rush of funding that Move Loot raised since first opening for business in 2013 made it appear like one of the anointed in the fight to take on Craigslist in the sale of pre-owned furniture. And it had a great message: “keeping quality furniture in homes and out of landfills” as its founders described it. But a closer look at the company revealed a lot of problems, too. It grew fast and somewhat haphazardly, with to cities like Charlotte, Atlanta, New York and Chicago. Some complained that inexperienced management was a problem. And, more recently, Move Loot’s customers that the site was no longer accepting listings, that they couldn’t get items delivered and that deliveries were canceled with no explanation. The company’s customer support lines rang to voicemail. Promised refunds on cancellations didn’t materialize, forcing some customers to file disputes with their credit card company instead. It’s not clear how many customers Move Loot had in the end, but for those who are affected, Move Loot has listed some details about how to go about removing credits from your account and tying up other loose ends. We’re copying those below. And we’ll continue to keep an eye out to see if any other assets from Move Loot make an appearance.
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This is how anti-paparazzi clothing works
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Haje Jan Kamps
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
If paparazzi have a right to take photos ( ) and newspapers are allowed to print photos taken by paparazzi ( ), it stands to reason that those in the brief spotlight of an eager photographer’s flash have a right to fight back, too (they do). Anti-paparazzi clothing has been around for a while, and if you’ve ever wondered how it works, have you come to the right place. There are a few brands that offer anti-paparazzi clothing. Betabrand’s and , and the are some commercially available examples, but the basic technique has been in use for quite a while by camera-shy celebrities around the world. The trick is to use retro-reflective materials. These are textiles, plastics or metal that will reflect light back to its source. If you’ve ever driven down a road and seen your headlights illuminate road signs almost impossibly far away, or if you’ve seen so-called , you’ve seen it in action. Aaaaah! Most camera flashes (or “strobes,” if you will) used by paparazzi photographers are controlled by the camera, in a so-called “through the lens” or TTL automatic mode. It works like this: The five steps above take just fractions of a second — it’s so fast, in fact, that you’re unlikely to even realize that there were two light flashes rather than one. Imagine there was a way to trick the camera into thinking that the scene looks different than it actually does. If you were able to trick the camera into thinking the scene was much, much darker, it would tell the flash to increase its output. As a result, the image would be far too bright, and probably ruined. Reflective materials do the opposite; by reflecting a lot more light back at the camera than normal fabrics, the camera believes the scene is a lot brighter than it is and it reduces the flash output. In effect, the camera is exposing “correctly” for the reflective material, but incorrectly for everything else in the scene, probably ruining the photo. Allow me to illustrate with a high-viz jacket and a kitten. Ouf. If I sent this to my picture editor, I’d be fired on the spot. In this photo, you can see what it looks like when the camera is thrown for a loop by the reflective bands on this reflective jacket. Well done, kitten, you win this time. Unfortunately for celebrities everywhere, the clothing is far from foolproof, and there are many ways around the effects. One of the problems is that most reflective materials are designed to reflect light back in a relatively narrow cone, so if the photographer moves the source of the light (i.e. the flash) farther away from the lens, the effect diminishes. Unfortunately for unwilling subjects, a lot of photographers already move the flashes away from the lens, not to foil their clothing, but in part to get more natural-looking lighting, and in part to avoid another type of reflection: that can sometimes occur in photos. Another way around the issue is to simply shoot without a flash — it’s not always viable, but cameras these days are getting better and better results in near-perfect darkness. For an example of this, , which was shot just by the light of the moon. The imagery in the short may not be good enough for publication in your favorite tabloid, perhaps, but it’s better than no photos at all. Just turning off the flash and re-shooting the kitten resulted in this shot. Yes, it would have been crisper with a flash, but the result is obviously far better than the example above. Obvious, perhaps, but a quick-witted photographer can also avoid the problem by switching into fully manual mode on both the flash and the camera. If there are no electronics to fool, then there’s no problem. In theory. In practice, if the photographer is able to expose correctly for the person behind the reflective clothing by increasing the flash output or other camera tricks, the retro-reflective clothing will look extremely bright, and it’s unlikely that the images will come out looking particularly good. Finally, it’d be possible to fix the photos in Photoshop later on. Shooting in Raw, as many photographers do, means that you get a lot of leniency in terms of editing the photos after the fact, and even a woefully dark photo might be rescue-able. Hardly worth of a Pulitzer, but by tweaking the originally far-too-dark image in Adobe Lightroom, at least now the kitten would be recognizable in a line-up. Why anybody would need to do that will be left as an exercise to the reader. Anti-paparazzi clothing is interesting technology, for sure, but wearing it is no guarantee that your lovely face will stay out of the tabloids. You could try upping the ante further with , of course, or stick with the the tried and tested method of holding up a hand in front of the camera lens.
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It’s official: Kleiner just pulled off a $1.4 billion fundraise
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Connie Loizos
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
So much for losing its mojo. Despite and in recent years that have sometimes rivaled those of a telenovela, and even with its most famous member, John Doerr, , Kleiner Perkins has raised two new funds totaling $1.4 billion, show newly processed SEC filings. The firm’s digital growth fund — its third — has secured in commitments. The capital will be managed by Mary Meeker, Ted Schlein, Mood Rowghani and Noah Knauf, who very recently joined Kleiner from Warburg Pincus. Kleiner’s newest (17th!) early-stage fund, meanwhile, has closed with in commitments. As you’ve read here recently, Kleiner’s early-stage team now features five general partners: Schlein, Mike Abbott, Eric Feng, Beth Seidenberg and Wen Hsieh. For those keeping track, in addition to Doerr, Randy Komisar has also stepped back as a general partner. Feng, who we , explained to us that Komisar is now largely coaching Kleiner’s current crop of GPs.
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Here’s a big list of all the “Ok, Google” commands you’ve probably forgotten
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Greg Kumparak
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Voice commands! They’re the pinnacle of intuitivity, right? I mean, you’re just talking! Except when they aren’t intuitive at all. Like when a command you’re worked before… doesn’t, because you’re forgetting you used slightly different wording last time. It’s the challenge that invisible voice interfaces like Android’s “Ok, Google” and Apple’s Siri face — how do you show users what they can ask without throwing a massive, not-so-magical text list of commands at them? When the interface learns new commands, how are users supposed to know that? Alas, this can mean that most people (me!) end up remembering three or four commands that they use regularly — and everything else gathers dust. Does that sound like you? Bookmark this one: The aptly named is the big ol’ massive list of “Ok, Google” commands that Google is too proud to build right into Android. It’s gorgeous, it’s easy to navigate and it’s pretty much guaranteed to teach you one trick you didn’t know Google Now could handle. .
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Shasta Ventures is raising a $300 million fifth fund
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Connie Loizos
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
is raising up to $300 million for a fifth fund according to a new that lists managing director Jason Pressman and Rob Coneybeer (Coneybeer co-founded Shasta with fellow managing directors Tod Francis and Ravi Mohan in 2004; Pressman joined the following year). Shasta appears to be sticking with its knitting with its new fund. It saw an enormous return when its portfolio company Nest Labs sold to Google for $3.2 billion in early 2014. (Coneybeer talked with this reporter about how persistence paid off with that Nest bet.) Even still, its newest fund is targeting the same amount on which the firm closed . Its third fund, closed in 2011, was also roughly the same size: $265 million. Shasta, which focuses on early-stage opportunities, invests in enterprise, consumer and connected hardware companies. In addition to Nest, Shasta’s many high-profile portfolio companies include the personal finance service Mint ( in 2009); , the drone operating system startup; (the next generation Wi-Fi router company); and the razor-subscription service .
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Google.org, Omidyar Network backing Fast Forward, the accelerator for tech nonprofits
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Lora Kolodny
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
An accelerator that helps tech nonprofits develop their products and raise grant money, , has attracted $1.25 million in philanthropic funding of its own. Backers include big names in venture capital and tech. and donated the largest share, along with AT&T, The Nasiri Foundation and Rita Allen Foundation. Fast Forward will use the money over the next two years to back tech nonprofits in its accelerator, mainly, but also to run their own business. Besides the accelerator, and all the mentoring, recruiting and events that go along with it, Fast Forward maintains a of tech nonprofits. Generally, tech startups have an overwhelming number of resources when it comes to accelerators or investors willing to help them — as long as they are for-profit. But tech nonprofits face scant resources. began admitting nonprofits to its accelerator in 2013, but nonprofits are in a minority there. Then, there are niche incubators for nonprofit businesses, but they allow nonprofits that do good work through traditional services, and lack tech focus and expertise. That’s why Kevin Barenblat and Shannon Farley co-founded Fast Forward in January 2014, to bring tech nonprofits a program tailored to their needs. Fast Forward recently admitted its The entrepreneurs are aiming to end police violence, improve education, help foster children and more, with apps, data analytics and other technologies. Among applicants to its program, Barenblat said that this year there were many more tech nonprofits working on health, education and civic issues, but fewer working to solve environmental problems. Philanthropic organizations that would not invest grants under $1 million typically, or into early-stage tech nonprofits, are able to do so through Fast Forward. “They don’t and can’t allocate funds drop by drop, if they aim to invest hundreds of millions a year,” Farley explained. “It is also hard to find the tech startups that are nonprofits, and figure out what is potentially going to be successful in this space when your expertise is around ecology, education, or issues in your local community, but not tech.” Last year, Google.org donated to nonprofits more than $100 million in grants and $1 billion in technology resources, as well as 80,000 hours of Google employee volunteer services. Google.org principal Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink said when it comes to Fast Forward, “We are really hands off. We trust their choices. But of course, if they asked for it, we could provide help with due diligence review of nonprofit tech startups.” Asked why startups should use a nonprofit business model, rather than following in Google’s for-profit footsteps, Gosselink said: “Working in a nonprofit gives people a deeper permission to positively impact disadvantaged populations of the world. It can be hard to do that, while also hitting the kind of revenue and profitability goals investors may have for a startup otherwise.” Along with cash contributions to Fast Forward, donors including Google.org provide meeting spaces in the San Francisco Bay Area where nonprofit tech founders can convene, and where Fast Forward can conduct workshops and other events. To-date, Fast Forward have impacted 4.7 million lives, and raised $16 million in charitable funding after the accelerator. Interestingly, 79 percent of Fast Forward-backed nonprofits are founded by women and people of color. More than half of them set up a nonprofit to address a problem that impacts their lives, personally or professionally.
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A post-seed round is not a bridge
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Paul Martino
| 2,016 | 6 | 29 |
Every month I get emails from CEOs and investors that say something like this: “We are seeking a bridge for our company. Since we already raised our seed and you do post-seed, we thought you would be ideal to speak to about this.” My admittedly terse reply is always: “Bullpen does not do bridges.” Because I send this reply somewhat regularly, I have concluded there is a lot of confusion about how a post-seed round differs from a bridge round. Two years ago, no one knew what post-seed was. The term started to catch after TechCrunch published “ .” I believed, and still believe, that entrepreneurs need to understand the differences between pre-seed, seed and post-seed to minimize dilution and maximize survival. Most people now know about post-seed, but some still have the wrong idea. After recently opening one of these “bridge” emails, I decided to define these words in more detail. For the purposes of the chart below, is synonymous with , , , , or . As the chart shows, there are fundamental differences between a bridge and a post-seed round. A bridge, by definition, is a distressed round in which only those investors with existing financial interests in the company would consider committing more money. In these situations, the prior investment of time and money makes those investors “pot committed” to an incremental small bet. When a CEO says, “We’re looking for a six-month bridge to extend our runway,” that is not an attractive offer to a third-party investor. If a rock star said, “Hey, I need 300K for drug rehab. I’ll get back on stage and give you a stake in my next hit album once I’m clean,” would you front the money? When you ask NEW investors for a bridge, you’re pleading guilty to an unhealthy relationship with capital. (In some cases, new investors joining a bridge might make sense. For example, later-stage investors betting that the bridge will hit a key milestone might participate to get the inside track for leading a future round.) Some CEOs and investors try to disguise their hand, to run with our poker analogies. They position the bridge positively: “Everything is solid, and we just need six months of money to execute our plan.” The “tell” is that the bridge is a small fraction of the prior round. The post-seed round is non-trivially bigger. The intended use of capital is another tell. If the money will go toward product revisions and development salaries, the company doesn’t have product-market fit — that’s a bridge. A real post-seed round is the final seed money before a “super-sized” Series A round. Post-seed companies have product-market fit. They need money for sales and marketing, not a makeover. It doesn’t matter whether a round is priced or a convertible note. The form of the post-seed round is less important than the performance of the company. The important thing is that the company has prudently spent the prior invested capital to the point of showing high potential, but it has not yet achieved the metrics for a super-sized Series A. The post-seed round is a small raise that gives management a chance to drive quickly to a performance level that warrants a large round. Most of the newer generation of VCs don’t hide what they’re looking for. We put it right on the front page of our websites. I wrote this both for selfish reasons (my inbox) and for altruistic reasons — for the sake of entrepreneurs and investors who deal with enough adversity and being told “No” already. Consider this my post-seed PSA.
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Crunch Report | Magic Leap Brings Star Wars to Life
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Khaled "Tito" Hamze
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
Tito Hamze
Tito Hamze
Joe Zolnoski
Joe Zolnoski
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Why most of London’s tech sector believes Brexit will prove a disaster
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James Silver
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
A decision over the U.K.’s future membership in the European Union is now just days away, with indicating a race to the wire. Among the most fearful of a potential is big business, whose main lobby group, the Confederation of British Industry, which represents some 190,000 businesses, has of a “serious economic shock” should voters choose to quit the EU in the referendum on June 23. The other side of the argument, spearheaded by has also fought hard (though less convincingly) to claim it speaks for business, a list of 250 business leaders who argue that the EU has a stifling effect on British companies. In London’s tech and startup sector, however, few such divisions apparently exist. Many in the industry were quick to coalesce around vocal opposition to “Brexit.” A survey for , a campaign group, found that 87 percent of the 320 members it polled believe that EU membership benefits the U.K. economy, while 72 percent of those questioned in Silicon Valley Bank’s said that if the UK were to quit the EU, it would have a negative effect upon their business. From breathless early-stage startups to veteran investors, it appears that many in the tech industry, including many of its , foresee only downside should the U.K. opt to hand back its EU club card. Here’s why. According to Gary Stewart, the U.K. director of , a leading startup accelerator, many entrepreneurs come to the U.K. because it’s widely seen as the best place in Europe to start a company. “My concern [about Brexit] is that if people felt there was a better chance of exploiting the European market from a place like Berlin, they’ll just choose that or other locations instead,” he argues. “Startups will always go to places where they’ll have the best possibility of success.” Christian Hernandez, managing partner at , a VC firm based in London, New York and Montreal focused on seed- and Series A-stage companies, agrees. Specifically he worries that, after Brexit, talented European founders would stop coming to London to build their startups. “While there’s better access to capital in London, it might be less painful for [founders] to simply grow their company from Estonia or Stockholm or wherever they are — and have people like me fly out to find them,” he says. Meanwhile, Hussein Kanji, a partner at , a $40 million early-stage VC firm, whose signature investments include (cybersecurity) and (e-commerce solutions), reckons it will take another five or 10 years to know the true impact of Brexit on London’s status, partly because there isn’t a natural replacement. “Berlin is still too raw, Stockholm is too small, and the rest of Europe is still too fragmented, “ he says. “In some respects, Brexit would be as much of a setback for Europe as for London — it’s almost mutually assured destruction, in terms of taking out momentum from the whole ecosystem.” But London’s status as “the venture financial capital for Europe” would certainly take a hit, he adds. “Brexit puts that into question, because if it’s less easy to be able to do business from London into the continent, you might see local and regional European funds start to flourish again.” A key factor in London’s success is the (relative) availability of top-tier talent, which Mutaz Qubbaj, CEO of — a fintech startup which is part of WAYRA’s 2016 cohort — argues will almost certainly be, at least temporarily, impeded by Brexit. “What concerns me is that more than half of my developer team is not from the U.K., [but they are from EU member states],” he says. “Will Brexit make it more difficult for me to hire amazing talent regardless of its source?” Ofri Ben Porat, CEO of , also part of the current WAYRA crop, adds that extra red tape around hiring in a post-Brexit environment is the last thing startups need. “We need to be removing barriers,” he says, “not adding them.” That’s a theme echoed by Melinda Nicci — founder and CEO of London-based , an online resource and retail site for expectant and new mums — who doesn’t currently have any British talent working for her. “My tech team are Slovenian — a couple of them are still based there and come back and forth, and the other is based here — my chief operating officer is a Brazilian, who lived in the U.S., my editor is from the U.S. and our chairman is German,” she says. “Leaving the EU would obviously make finding talent even harder — applying for visas and work permits is the last thing you need as a startup. But if you want the best people you need to be able to draw from the largest pool of talent. And there is a massive shortage of British tech people.” For Tom Marsden, CEO of , a startup that uses data science and algorithms to predict the performance of potential hires, the U.K. suffers from a classic skills gap problem, which quitting the EU will only exacerbate. “It just so happens in some of the areas that are most critical for technology businesses, there is excellent talent available from European markets,” he says. “A significant part of that talent, in terms of developing, UX and product management comes from Spain, France and Eastern Europe and not having direct access to European talent would place significant constraint on the U.K.’s ability to really compete,” explains Marsden. A case in point is Saberr’s Lead UX Designer. Originally from Portugal, Marta Matos says that when she first came to London with a friend, looking for work, she had enough money to stay in the capital for a month. “If the U.K. hadn’t been a member of the EU, I probably wouldn’t have come here, I would have picked another European country,” she recalls. VCs interviewed for this article say Brexit, crucially, would plunge the U.K.’s future relationship with the , a major investor in European and U.K.-based VC funds, into doubt. Approached for a statement, the EIF was able to offer little by way of clarification. “It would be premature to speculate on the impact of any referendum result in favor of the U.K. leaving the EU, without clarity on the timing, circumstances and conditions of such a settlement,” it said. However, well-placed insiders ask why an institution set up to “foster EU objectives” would continue to support funds based in a non-EU country? Kanji argues that the biggest challenge surrounding Brexit is that it adds another layer of complexity for founders. “And whether it’s around hiring folks from Europe, or how trade agreements would work across the continent, [uncertainty] is something a startup doesn’t need,” he says. “No one really knows what the exact implications of Brexit are and because of that you end up with this situation where you don’t know what you don’t know. And that, says Elizabeth Varley, founder and CEO of — a global community of 750+ technology startups, headquartered in Shoreditch, East London — is inherently problematic. “The biggest concern is the damage caused by the uncertainty of the U.K.’s position following Brexit,” she says. “Although it is unquestionably the centre of the European technology startup ecosystem, London’s success is built partly on being a first place of expansion for European startups, and an English-language gateway to Europe for countries outside it. The potential consequence of Britain leaving the EU is that London could lose this role.” Over the past 10-15 years, London has become not just the nexus of venture capital in Europe, but the nexus of larger tech corporates too, says Kanji. “If you look at every major tech company, whether it’s Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon or Google, they all have London as their centre in Europe. With Brexit, I think that falls into question. And that has knock-on effects for the startup community. If that executive pool of middle-management talent disappears from London, it gets much harder for startups to scale, because those are the kinds of people you’re recruiting to your company, as you develop and mature.” The U.K. Government, which has been campaigning for “Remain,” voting to leave the EU could lead to “years of uncertainty and potential economic disruption,” as the U.K. unpicks its relationship with the EU and renegotiates trading agreements around the world. (Vote Leave, meanwhile, that a “Leave” vote will enable Britain, among other things, to “take back control of [its] borders,” save £350 million a week and “free [its] businesses from damaging EU laws and regulations.”) Uncertainty aside, the reality is that this is uncharted territory, and no one really knows what a post-Brexit business landscape would look like; educated guesses prevail. From a tech perspective, however, TechHub’s Varley argues that if the vote ends up being in favor of “Leave,” the government will quickly need to refocus on immigration policy, because engineering talent could dry up. “London’s uniquely diverse talent pool is a massive competitive advantage for its startup scene,” she says. “But [post-Brexit], engineering talent could become so expensive that startups get priced out of the market entirely, as the major banks and large tech firms scramble to replace many of the 100,000 engineers they currently employ [who might no longer be able to work automatically in the U.K.]. The government would have to work hard to rebuild its visa policy with the European nations.” For his part, Hernandez predicts a prolonged period of limbo in the event of a vote for “Leave.” He says: “Ultimately we don’t know what will happen, and how quickly — it will take years structurally for some of this stuff to be flushed out. Do we stumble for a couple of years trying to figure out what role the government plays and how it continues to support the ecosystem, while Berlin and Stockholm take off, while China continues to thrive and Silicon Valley just continues to be ‘The Valley’?” He leaves the question hanging, before adding, significantly: “Perhaps.”
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Liftoff delivers personalized ads that are designed to drive actions, not installs
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Anthony Ha
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
Mobile marketing startup pitches itself as a way for mobile advertisers to focus on what really matters — not installs, but rather purchases and other actions that result in revenue. It’s not a unique idea. After all, we’re seeing more platforms adopting ads designed for re-engagement — in fact, the format is supposed to be included as part of . But Liftoff offers a number of capabilities in this area, including the ability to target people who are similar to your most active users. And its advertisers pay Liftoff on a cost-per-action model, rather than cost-per-install. Now the company is taking the next step in that direction with the launch of its Dynamic Ads. The advertiser provides Liftoff with creative assets like photos and logos, and those assets are automatically transformed into ads. And as with other Liftoff features, the system is optimized to drive the most engagement after the app is installed — different variants are tested and then the most effective ones get pushed forward. Why would the design or wording of an ad make a difference in how people behave once they’ve actually installed the app? Well, CEO Mark Ellis said that the same data that allows Liftoff to target desirable users also helps it understand the kinds of messaging that might prompt those users to engage. On the e-commerce side, for example, the most effective ad would probably be the one that highlighted a product you’d actually want to buy. “We have, over time, developed a good perspective about people’s preferences in a mobile context,” Ellis said. “We have at this point over 2 billion of what we call user composites, 2 billion perspectives on users in a mobile context — things like demographics and behavioral data.” Liftoff says it has already been testing Dynamic Ads with customers, including Match Group and Ibotta, with post-install conversion rates rising between 150 percent and 400 percent on average.
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Gravitational waves have been detected for the second time in history
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Emily Calandrelli
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
For the second time in history, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves. And just like that, a new era of astronomy is underway. Like the gravitational wave detected, scientists believe that the signal was created by the collision of two black holes, albeit a completely different binary black hole system than the first. Both signals were detected at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory ( ). The LIGO team is made up of researchers from MIT and Caltech who led the design and construction and work together to operate the facility. After ruling out any other possible source for the detected ripple, the LIGO team determined that the wave matched a single scenario among a bank of hundreds of thousands of known waveform possibilities: the collision of two black holes colliding at half the speed of light, 1.4 billion light years away. “The first event was so beautiful that we almost couldn’t believe it. Now, the fact of having seen another gravitational wave proves that indeed we are observing a population of binary black holes in the universe. We know we’ll see many of these frequently enough to make interesting science out of them.” Salvatore Vitale, MIT research scientist and LIGO team member Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space and time throughout the universe and were theorized by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago. They’re caused by extreme, cataclysmic events that occur in outer space — like two black holes colliding into each other. Illustration of black holes merging / Image courtesy of LIGO/Caltech Directly detecting gravitational waves is a huge deal, because by doing so scientists are confirming Einstein’s theory of general relativity. With general relativity, Einstein explained the concept of gravity in an entirely new way. He theorized that massive objects in the universe distort the fabric of spacetime, which is felt as gravity. We can think of the universe as a giant sheet of rubber, similar to a large trampoline. If you placed a massive object on the trampoline of the universe, it would distort the nearby area around it, causing nearby objects to “gravitate” toward it. More massive objects will create even larger distortions. This is why larger, more massive objects in the universe garner a larger gravitational pull. Einstein’s explanation of gravity answered questions that Newton’s version of gravity could not. Newton described gravity as a constant, instantaneous force in which more massive objects will have a stronger pull than less massive objects. It was a concept that helped explain the inner workings of the universe. But there was one problem. When it came to exactly this force existed or how exactly this force was transferred from one object to another, Newton didn’t have an answer. Einstein’s theory better explained scientists’ observations of the universe, so it became the prevailing theory for gravity. And if gravity existed in the way Einstein theorized, then gravitational waves should exist and be able to be detected. Technically, any object can create gravitational waves, but only incredibly massive objects and extreme events can create ones large enough for us to measure. Until recently, scientists lacked the necessary tools to detect these ripples through the universe. That all changed with the creation of LIGO. LIGO by the numbers / Infographic courtesy of Adrian Apodaca and the National Science Foundation LIGO is an enormous facility that took more than $570 million and 40 years to design and develop. To date, it’s the largest scientific investment the National Science Foundation has ever made. The concept is fairly simple. Gravitational waves should stretch space in one direction and compress space in the other. If scientists could find an extremely accurate and sensitive way to measure space in an X-Y plane on the Earth, they could directly detect a gravitational wave. Stretching of spacetime by a gravitational wave / Image courtesy of Wikicommons It turns out, LIGO was that extremely accurate, sensitive tool. The facility has two main locations: one in Louisiana and the other in Washington. Each facility has an L-shaped tunnel with 4 kilometer (2.5 mile) legs perpendicular to one another. Laser beams are pulsed in the perpendicular legs and then LIGO scientists measure the time it takes for the laser beam to hit one end of a tunnel leg and return to its starting point. LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington Because we know the speed of light, a precise measurement for each tunnel leg’s length can be taken. With this information, scientists could determine if space was being compressed or stretched in either direction. Employing this strategy, LIGO made history with the first direct detection of gravitational waves in February of this year. The facility was able to detect a stretch the size of a in the LIGO legs. After announcing their findings, LIGO laboratory executive director David Reitze said, “This was a scientific moon shot. And we did it — we landed on the moon.” Now that same team has detected a second, completely separate gravitational wave that stretched the LIGO legs an even smaller amount than the first wave. LIGO is allowing scientists to view the universe through an entirely new lens. By studying gravitational waves, researchers can learn more about the frequency of black holes and how they merge. With LIGO, scientists have opened up an entirely new era of astronomy. “As you can imagine, for most of us, these detections have had a very strong impact on our lives, because we’d been waiting for this for a very long time. It’s been an incredible experience, the last few months.” Lisa Barsotti, principal research scientist at MIT and member of LIGO team
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Airbnb launches campaign to ease registration requirements for SF hosts
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Kate Conger
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
Airbnb is fighting back against new legislation in San Francisco that aims to hold the short-term rental company accountable for ensuring its hosts register with the city. The law, finalized on Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, requires Airbnb to verify that its San Francisco hosts have registered with the city and will penalize the company with $1,000-per-day fines and misdemeanor charges if it fails to comply. City supervisors have argued that host registration is a crucial step in combatting San Francisco’s historic housing crisis, while opponents claim the new law conflicts with federal legislation that protects websites from being held responsible for users’ posts. “This regulatory hammer is too heavy and it’s missing the nail,” executive director Mike Montgomery tells TechCrunch. CALinnovates lobbies on behalf of the tech industry and sent letters to city officials favoring Airbnb’s position in the fight. Although advocacy groups like CALinnovates have suggested that Airbnb could sue San Francisco to overturn the law, the company is currently taking a gentler approach. Airbnb has that asks the city to make it easier for hosts to comply with registration requirements. The city currently requires local hosts to acquire business licenses; register with the city in person; file quarterly reports to the city describing how many nights guests stayed in their home, as well as how many nights they themselves slept at home; and file an itemized list of every item in their home that a guest might use, including shampoo and cutlery. The requirements are undeniably insane, and even city supervisors who backed the law have agreed that registration should be easier. A diagram shows the process Airbnb hosts go through to register in San Francisco. “The process right now is quite cumbersome for many hosts, especially when you talk about hosts that are only engaging short-term rentals for a few days a year, or a week or two a year,” Supervisor Scott Wiener said during a hearing on the issue earlier this month. In its new campaign, Airbnb is asking the city to streamline the registration process in several key ways: Creating a one-stop, online permit application process Creating a grace period for new hosts to get registered Creating flexibility for hosts who rent out their space fewer than 14 nights a year Removing the business registration requirement for hosts who use like Airbnb to list their space Exempting hosts from the Assessor’s overly confusing business property tax inventory process (requiring a for hosts to figure out how to comply). This is the same exemption provided to other small properties in San Francisco Unsurprisingly, compliance with the requirements is low so far: roughly 1,300 of Airbnb’s estimated 7,000 hosts have tallied up their forks and toiletries to register with the city. The low compliance rate is why San Francisco wants Airbnb to boot unregistered hosts off the platform — and that’s where technology advocates say the city is violating federal law. CALinnovates argued that the amendment is a violation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 protects platforms from being held accountable for the content of their users’ posts. It’s what prevents YouTube from being held liable when someone uploads a copyrighted music video, or eBay when someone uses it to sell knockoff handbags. CALinnovates says that Airbnb should get the same protections from liability for the listings hosts upload to its site. “The Board of Supervisors got it wrong,” CALinnovates Montgomery said in a statement after the passage of the amendment. “This amendment fails to pass legal muster and is a dangerous precedent for not only the home sharing industry, but the entire tech industry. Instead of making decisions grounded in sound public policy, the Board instead moved forward with legally questionable legislation.” Whether San Francisco’s legislation will have broader impacts on the industry remains to be seen. But it does mean Airbnb is now at the familiar regulatory juncture where other sharing economy companies have struggled — Like Uber before it, Airbnb has dipped into a highly regulated industry of physical goods. Now that the regulatory hammer is coming down, Airbnb wants to seesaw out of the physical realm and insist that it’s just a platform and can’t be held responsible for what happens inside San Francisco hosts’ homes. But for now, Airbnb isn’t tangling with the legal issues raised by Section 230. Instead, the company is just pushing for overhaul of the registration system on its website. “The board acknowledged that the registration system is broken and, in order to help people to be able to stay in their homes, the city needs to fix it. We hope the Board will act to fix this broken registration system, and we are considering all options to stand up for our community and keep fighting for real reform,” an Airbnb spokesperson said in a statement.
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Peer-to-peer dress rental startup Curtsy lets you rent out your wardrobe
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Sarah Buhr
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
Consider yourself stylish? Those with good taste and a wardrobe to match could find themselves getting richer for it with a new peer-to-peer clothing rental platform from latest batch. Called , the startup began when one University of Mississippi sorority sister realized she could earn a living by renting out her closet full of dresses to the rest of Greek row. Curtsy is a bit like Rent-the-Runway, except you’re browsing for dresses from your neighbor’s wardrobe and then heading over to try them on and possibly wear one of them the same day. The concept soon became very popular across campus, picking up 3,000 mostly female users and spawning a number of side businesses, according to the team behind the platform. Mary Margaret Tardy, who joined when a sorority sister told her about the idea, was one of those women soon finding herself with a thriving dress rental business. “I have this one dress that I put up at the beginning of the startup, and it has been rented almost every week since then,” Tardy told me. “I jokingly call it my ‘greatest investment’ because I have made so much more money off of renting the dress than I actually paid for the dress.” Sara Kiparizoska, Curtsy’s original founder, has since gone on to medical school to become an OB/GYN, but left her startup in the hands of her friends, Eli Allen, William Ault and David Oates — three dudes who never imagined they’d end up in the dress business. But the three clearly saw the value in the idea. “I shop for clothes once a year,” explained Ault. “My girlfriend shops once a week.” Adding to that, Oates informed me the women in Curtsy’s initial college campus market need at least 20 dresses a year for events and formal occasions, particularly if they’re involved in the Greek system — 3,000 initial users in need of a dress at least 20 times a year seemed like a good opportunity to capitalize on. But there’s no mention of the founders, now all men, on the site for a reason — the target audience might conclude a bunch of guys wouldn’t get them or what they’re looking for. All the pictures and feature women, too. Ault assured me the original founder is still involved until this December and that his team hires plenty of women — they are hiring engineers right now — and he makes sure to get a lot of feedback from Curtsy’s female user base. “We’re actually outnumbered,” said Ault. Oates, for his part, has a background in on-demand delivery — he jokingly boasted to me he was in San Francisco last summer and once got to deliver to Sam Altman’s house. “I was just trying to keep it cool,” Oates said about knocking on his dream tech leader’s door. But he also pointed out the experience helped teach him about the two-sided local delivery business. However, there’s no delivery mechanism within Curtsy. Instead, all the college women looking for and renting out dresses are within a mile radius of each other so they can easily pop over to see the outfits available in person and take them home if they find something that works. The college route seems to be working for now — it took off at Ole Miss and the team is working on expanding as soon as possible to other college campuses nationwide. But the team will need to retain those users once they graduate — something hard for startups to do when just focusing on the college crowd. “We think winning that college market is going to put us in a really good spot to go up market, expand into cities and target our aging customer base,” Allen said about the next phase for the startup. Curtsy plans to focus on college women, particularly in the South, as its target market until next year. However, anyone (men included) can and download the app right now and start viewing local dresses — or start renting them out — in their area.
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Heads up Twitch, Facebook just hired gamer Snoopeh for its e-sports division
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Josh Constine
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
459,000 years. That’s how long Twitch users spent watching other people play video games last year, and Facebook wants a piece of the pie. It might sound weird, but e-sports are wildly popular, and Facebook is getting serious about owning those video views. A source tipped us off that Facebook has hired e-sports super-connector and former professional gamer Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis to build out a new team. As Facebook’s new e-sports strategic partnerships manager, he’ll be recruiting top game developers and players to bring their streaming content to the social network. Upon request for statement, Ellis deferred to Facebook PR, which told me, “We can confirm that Stephen Ellis recently started working at Facebook. Stephen is joining a collaborative effort between the sports and games partnership teams to support the eSports and gaming communities using our platform.” A source tells us Ellis will be operating under Guy Cross, Facebook’s head of games partnerships for North America. Ellis will work alongside Ginger Larson, who previously ran biz dev at game companies Storm8 and Digital Chocolate, and Pranay Desai, formerly of Ubisoft. Hired in May according to his LinkedIn, Ellis seems to have already been busy. He’s been traveling around the world speaking with Facebook’s gaming partners. And last week, Facebook announced , makers of World of Warcraft and new blockbuster first-person shooter Overwatch. Blizzard will build Facebook Live streaming capabilities and friend-findings into its games, starting with Overwatch. But with Ellis working with the team, that’s not going to be the last of Facebook’s e-sports partnerships. The business is huge. The average of e-sports per month last year. Twitch had 100 million monthly users as of January 2015, and you can bet it’s way bigger now after two years of support from acquirer Amazon. In 2015, Twitch peaked at just over 2 million concurrent viewers. Imagine what Facebook could do by throwing an audience of 1.65 billion people at game streaming? It could rack up huge view counts, time on site and revenue as businesses spend ad dollars to sell games and gaming culture to the lucrative audience. Ellis is the guy to make this happen. He’s respected by gamers for , League of Legends, from 2010 to 2014. He captained his team Evil Geniuses to third place in the world championships. He writes on LinkedIn that during the experience, he “Developed an extensive network throughout the eSports and gaming industry.” That soon went to use as he became the VP of global biz dev for e-sports betting company Unikrn. There he established partnerships, and negotiated contracts with influencers and third-parties. He also started advising Repable, which helps e-sports stars with financial management, and Vibby, which lets gamers annotate and share their best moments. Ellis recently co-founded the Esports Player Resource Center dedicated to educating gamers about their professional opportunities. That all seems like the perfect training to run e-sports partnerships at Facebook. Snoopeh understands what it’s like to be an e-sports star, the fame they seek, how their payment deals work and what they want to share. Stephen Ellis (second from right) celebrating with the Facebook partnerships team after its CEO Gaming Summit Facebook’s past forays into verticalized strategic partnerships have been incredibly successful. Its celebrity-focused team has gotten actors, musicians and athletes posting to Facebook and broadcasting on its new Live feature. It struck deals for Instant Articles through its news partnerships team. And it’s got all sorts of businesses building experiences for Messenger. Using the massive reach of its social network, Facebook and Ellis could lure in more game studios to build integrations with Live that give Facebook content while promoting the studio’s titles. When people watch an e-sports star playing a game, they want to buy it. Combined with the platform’s biographical data, it could be a powerful place for game companies to advertise. Meanwhile, Facebook could assist the stars themselves to gain a bigger audiences that earns them sponsorships, merch sales and a cross-platform following. In exchange, they could encourage their fan bases to stream them on Facebook. That could boost Facebook’s video view count, which was at 8 billion as of last November. Stephen Ellis helping Mark Cuban play like a pro Once upon a time, casual Zynga games like FarmVille drove huge amounts of engagement on Facebook’s desktop platform that racked up ad money and 30 percent taxes on in-game payments. But with the shift to mobile controlled by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, Facebook lost its grip on game hosting. Now as hardcore games like the League of Legends battle arenas and Call of Duty shooters hit the mainstream, and spectating has exploded, Facebook wants to muscle back in. Except this time around, instead of a few hundred million users, it has a fifth of the planet to dangle as a power-up for video game heroes and developers willing to join forces.
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Review: ExoLens’ Zeiss iPhone lenses turns your phone into a full-fledged camera
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Fitz Tepper
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
Anyone even remotely interested in cameras knows that lenses are the gold standard. But the 170-year-old company’s lenses can cost thousands of dollars each, making them pretty inaccessible for amateur photographers. But that is now changing, as the company has teamed up with the brand to release three Zeiss lenses for the iPhone 6/6s and Plus. The three lenses are wide-angle, telephoto and macro. The wide-angle is for $199.95; the other two will be on sale later this summer as standalone lenses. For now the product is exclusively available both online and in their retail stores. The kit comes with an ExoLens iPhone case, which is how you attach the lenses to the phone. The case is really well-made — the company says each one is machined from aluminum and has a soft interior liner to protect your phone. The case also has a standard screw-in tripod mount, as well as a “cold shoe” mount to attach an additional accessory like a light or microphone. We took an early look at all three lenses on an iPhone 6s, and you can see the results below. The wide-angle is the only lens currently on sale. When taking a photo, the first notable benefit of using the lens is that you can see almost double the content inside the frame. For example, if you’re taking a picture of a bedroom and can only see part of the room, the wide-angle lens should allow you to fit the whole room in the shot. It works similarly well in tight spaces — check out the below shot from inside a dog crate, taken from the same exact spot, with and without a lens. The lens opens up the whole inside of the crate and makes you feel like you are inside. Ultimately, for shots that aren’t space constricted there isn’t too much difference, but it’s still nice to shoot with the lens and get more content inside your shot. [gallery ids="1338512,1338511"] While not on sale yet, I found the macro lens to be pretty amazing. Know that issue where your iPhone will lose focus if you get up close with your subject? Yeah, this doesn’t happen when you use this lens. I kept moving the lens closer, literally to the point where the subject was touching the lens, and it stayed crystal clear the whole time. Check out the crazy difference between the two exact same shots below, one with the lens (left) and one without (right). [gallery ids="1338527,1338528"] The last lens lets you take telephoto shots without the loss in quality that occurs when you have to use iPhone’s digital zoom. The lens provides 2.0X magnification, and while not as breathtaking as the two previous lenses, it will probably come in handy in situations where you wish you were just a little closer to the action. [gallery ids="1338531,1338530"] As great as these pictures look, there are of course downsides in using these lenses — mainly the fact that you have to carry them around with you. But still, that’s a small price to pay to be able to get the quality typically reserved for DSLRs and cameras with larger lenses than the one built-in to the iPhone.
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Zeiss made a really premium Google Cardboard headset
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Brian Heater
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
Google Cardboard’s biggest appeal has always been its accessibility. Heck, they send the headsets out with the newspaper. Zeiss is taking things in a different direction with the One Plus (not to be confused with the less spacey OnePlus), a $129 VR headset for smartphones that features a premium build and, naturally, the company’s high-end optics. The wearable features a tray that accommodates smartphones between 4.7 and 5.5 inches, courtesy of an adjustable system that holds the handset in place. The One Plus also features a lot of padding, making it comfortable for long, battery draining sessions. The key, of course, are those lenses, which offer up a sharp image without requiring any focal adjustment. They also do a solid job of removing the distortion around the edges of the images that you often get with similar devices. It’s certainly one of the better Google Cardboard experiences I’ve had thus far. The headset ships with a cube that offers a neat augmented reality experience (which utilizes the phone’s unobstructed camera, serving as a sort of proof of concept for app developers). The One Plus is compatible with Android and iOS devices, and the company is talking up a DJI app that offers a first-person experience from the drone. The company is also working on compatibility with Google’s Daydream. It’ll hit retail in August.
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A device called the Remo spots a market for automating wall mount air conditioners
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Jay Donovan
| 2,016 | 6 | 16 |
I’m usually cautious about Kickstarter campaigns, but when the data looks right I’m encouraged to peer deeper. Haruumi Shiode reached out to me with his (which remotely controls wall unit air conditioners), and I have to admit the numbers looked interesting even though this is a business model I would have never considered. Living here in the Midwest amidst routine central air conditioning and heating, it’s easy to forget that this may not be the experience everyone has. In fact, according to Shiode, there are fully 1 billion portable air conditioners in the world for room cooling. There are 70 million in the USA and 130 million in Japan. There are 6 million in New York City alone. Therefore his company, called —which strives to bring harmony between nature and human-made devices—is approaching the air conditioning market with a device to automate wall mount AC use for convenience, monetary savings and environmental benefits. It’s been a while since I bought a wall unit AC, but apparently these days most have an infrared remote control (like a TV). The Remo device syncs with the AC unit remote and then essentially becomes a web-connected, location-aware interpreter between the air conditioner and the Remo smartphone app. A special plug is coming soon for legacy AC units that may not have a remote. The gist of how it works is simple enough; when you are not in your house or apartment, the Remo turns your AC unit off. If you are in your abode (or approaching it) it turns it on. Bingo. Rooms in your house are cooled down. You can also remotely change cooling settings and they have built in demand management/peak shaving capabilities so utility companies can get involved. Shiode and his cofounder and CTO Mash Ohtsuka did not reveal planned pricing but say it should be competitive. I should also mention that Nature plans to provide IFTTT (If This, Then That), and Amazon Alexa integrations.
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