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Watch This Author Use A Google Document To Write And Edit A Book In Real-Time
Sep 18, 7:07AM
I can't imagine someone being able to watch every keystroke as I write a post like this, but author Silvia Hartmann is writing a novel, and is welcoming you to watch her progress. Live and in real-time. Using a public Google Document, Hartmann is typing away on "The Dragon Lords", and the whole idea absolutely fascinates me. It's unlikely that I'll sit at my computer and watch her type, but I'll probably check in from time to time on how she's doing.Class2Go: Stanford's New Open-Source Platform For Online Education
Sep 18, 6:17AM
The cost of higher education in the U.S. today is ridiculous. Student debt shot north of $1 trillion earlier this year, for example. It's not surprising, then, that we're seeing growing adoption of online learning platforms and tools. MOOCs, or massive online open courses, have been the stars of a new educational model, thanks to their potential to offer quality, affordable education at a scale that just wasn't possible five years ago. While some say that MOOCs will fundamentally change higher education and distance learning, others have seen these platforms as having more of a supporting role, offering certificates or flair rather than diplomas. That doesn't really matter right now. The experimentation at this early stage is what's important. To their credit, many universities have begun to support and/or develop MOOC platforms (like EdX), but probably not have taken such an active role in developing these new models as Stanford has.SAP: The Client/Server Is Back And It Is Cloud
Sep 18, 5:20AM
SAP is having a blogger and analyst event this week that is an education in how a big company can one day be exciting and another offer a reminder of how different it is from the startups of the world. That was pretty well summed up today when SAP's Sethu Meenakshisundaram said the client/server is back and it is cloud. It's such a curious analogy and a vexing one for most of the people I know and talk to every day. But on a practical level it shows how SAP is trying to bridge two worlds by using the client/server metaphor as a comparison to today's modern services that the company is trying to embrace.Data-Focused Online Merchant Lender Kabbage Raises $30M From UPS, SV Angel And Others
Sep 18, 4:26AM
Kabbage, which provides working capital to online merchants, has raised $30 million in Series C financing led by Thomvest Ventures, the venture capital arm of Peter Thomson, the founder and managing director of Thomvest Ventures and a director of Thomson Reuters. UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, Mohr Davidow Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, Warren Stephens, and David Bonderman participated in the round. In addition, SV Angel also recently invested in the company. Kabbage has received a total of $56 million in funding to date. The Atlanta-based company is essentially a way for online merchants and sellers on marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon to get capital they otherwise wouldn't qualify for at a bank. Many small businesses and online merchants can't receive financing from traditional banks and don't want to risk using personal assets like a house to qualify for business loans. Kabbage is disrupting this space by providing a painless way to help these sellers access cash quickly and easily.Reminder: The Taipei Mini-Meetup Is On At 8pm At OnTap Bar
Sep 18, 3:25AM
Just a quick reminder that the Taipei Mini-Meetup is Tuesday, September 18, 2012, at about 8pm at OnTap Taipei, which is located at No 21, Alley 11, Lane 216, Zhongxiao East Road. I'll be there - just look for the sweating American guy - as will Richard Lai of Engadget who graciously agreed to go as my chaperone.Startups: Here's A Calculator For Funding And Equity, Courtesy Of SmartAsset
Sep 18, 2:12AM
If you're a first-time entrepreneur, there can be a lot of confusing financial jargon to deal with — especially when you're raising funding. If you don't want to get screwed, some things are probably worth fighting over so that you don't get screwed, but others probably won't make a difference. Which is which? You can find plenty of viewpoints online, but now Y Combinator-backed startup SmartAsset has released a Startup Economics calculator that shows you exactly how each financial decision can affect the money you make when you sell to Google (or, you know, whatever). The calculator basically takes you through each event that can affect the division of a company's equity. First you start with the founding -- entering the total number of shares, each founder, and the equity that they receive. Then you enter employees and advisors and their equity. You can add multiple funding events and their details, and the eventual exit.SAP: Patent Turmoil Will Help Give Windows 8 Tablet The Number 2 Spot In Enterprise
Sep 18, 1:28AM
SAP's Sanjay Poonen said in a meeting of bloggers and analysts today that Windows 8 will rise to the No. 2 spot in the enterprise tablet market in part due to Samsung's patent lawsuit loss to Apple last month. While it's not the sole reason that CIOs cite, it certainly is the nail in the coffin for many. The roots of the shift date back to January of 2011 when Microsoft introduced the concept of Windows 8. It also helped that Microsoft committed to developing a common kernel across all of its platforms and backward compatibility to Windows 7. The kernel and the backward compatibility means that CIOs can use existing apps on the new Windows 8 tablets. Microsoft has an established developer ecosystem. CIOs also find appealing the whole new Metro UI and Microsoft's advancements in its touch-screen technology.Panasonic And Canon Factories Are Attacked By Chinese Demonstrators, Suspend Operations
Sep 18, 12:46AM
Aggressive demonstrations in and near Panasonic's and Canon's Chinese factories have forced the companies to temporarily suspend operations. According to the French news agency AFP, demonstrators are motivated by nationalistic reasons and events that occurred over the past few days. The Japanese Government bought a private yet critical archipelago in the East China Sea: the Japanese call it the Senkaku Islands, and the Chinese call it the Diaoyu Islands. The island group is just one of many islands responsible for the strained relationship between the two countries because of geostrategic motivations.Twitter Gives Muslims A Voice, A (Seriously) Funny Voice #MuslimRage
Sep 18, 12:14AM
Muslims found an unlikely opening to voice their opposition to mainstream stereotypes, exploiting a social media misstep by Newsweek's inflammatory cover on Muslim violence. In response to Newsweek's call to discuss the problem of violent muslim intolerance through the Twitter hashtag #muslimrage, clever users flooded the discussion with (hilarious) parodies, like this gem: "Lost your kid Jihad at the airport. Can't yell for him. #MuslimRage."Foursquare Turns Tomorrow's National Cheeseburger Day Into A Way To Generate Social Good
Sep 17, 11:01PM
Someone told me last week that National Cheeseburger Day was on the way. As far as I'm concerned, every single day could be National Cheeseburger Day, because they're yummy. Tomorrow is the official day, and foursquare has teamed up with KRAFT to generate some charitable giving based on your potential eating habits. It's all quite simple: check-in at Five Guys Burgers and Fries, and KRAFT will donate the equivalent to Feeding America.Video Mashup Pro ReelSurfer Lands $880K From YC, Executive Producer Of The Hangover
Sep 17, 10:52PM
ReelSurfer, which graduated from Y Combinator's most recent batch of startups, is a "tl;dr" for video. In other words, ReelSurfer was borne out of the frustration of trying to find quotes and scenes from their favorite movies on YouTube. Usually, these searches are fruitless. If you're lucky enough to find a video that contains the quote or clip you're looking for, you then have to download the video, convert it, clip the video around the scene, re-convert and upload it back to YouTube. But this is time-consuming and it, well, sucks. So, ReelSurfer developed technology that lets you clip any video from any website, allowing users to edit videos right from their browser simply by entering the URL on ReelSurfer's website or by using its bookmarklet. But don't let its simplicity or niche use case fool you, ReelSurfer has potential to transform everyday consumers into video creators and curators. Potential that has now been officially validated by investors, as ReelSurfer has raised $900K in seed funding to continue building out its product -- and team. Investors in the round include The Otto Group, TriplePoint Capital, Y Combinator and a number of angel investors, including William Fay, the executive producer of The Hangover, 300 and Independence Day.Keen On… Don Dodge: Why Indoor Location Is The Next Big Thing [TCTV]
Sep 17, 10:35PM
Don Dodge is well known to longtime TechCrunch readers. Dodge was the guy who Mike Arrington turned into a bit of a martyr after he got unceremoniously fired by Microsoft back in November 2009. Indeed, as Dodge told me last week backstage at Disrupt, it was Mike's very public attack on Microsoft which lead to Google immediately hiring Dodge as their developer evangelist, a position he still holds today. Microsoft's embarrassing loss was, of course, Google's gain and Dodge remains one of the most accessible and nicest guys in our industry. But he's not just a pretty face. Dodge's Next Big Thing blog is always an incisive read and, as he told me at Disrupt, he sees indoor location as the most exciting innovation on the horizon. Start-ups like WiFiSLAM and TheTapLab (both Dodge investments), he told me, are merging physical and e-commerce and enabling merchants to know the exact location of their customers. So the next time you are in the organic grocery department of your local store and an irresistible offer for organic broccoli pops up on your smartphone, thank Don Dodge.Lyft's Focus On Community And The Story Behind The Pink Mustache
Sep 17, 10:25PM
You ask for a ride, it rolls up, you get into the front seat and you give the driver a fist bump. This sounds like something you do when your best friend picks you up, and that's exactly the experience that super-hot ride-sharing service Lyft wants to emulate. I sat down with Lyft's co-founder, John Zimmer, today, to discuss the company's approach to community and to this ever-growing transportation vertical we have going on here in San Francisco.Kairos Lands $500K To Bring Facial Recognition Tech To Employee Time Clocks
Sep 17, 10:16PM
Kairos, a startup that launched earlier this year out of the Spring 2012 class of the NewMe Accelerator, has landed $500,000 in seed funding from a group of angel backers. The money will be put toward launching Kairos' flagship app TimeClock, which launches in beta today. TimeClock uses facial recognition technology to identify employees paid on an hourly basis when they clock in on the job. This is aimed at eliminating "buddy punching," which is when people clock in on behalf of their coworkers for time they did not actually work.Oracle Buys SelectMinds For Using Facebook And Social Networks To Recruit Employees
Sep 17, 10:14PM
Oracle has acquired SelectMinds, a provider of cloud-based, social talent sourcing apps that allow companies to use social networks such as Facebook to recruit employees. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It is Oracle's year for buying companies in the human capital management market (HCM). Earlier this year it acquired Taleo for $1.92 billion. Taleo's solutions help customers attract, motivate, and retain employees.iRobot Acquires Evolution Robotics, Makers Of The Mint Robot Vacuum, For $74 Million
Sep 17, 9:24PM
Home (and military) robot maker iRobot has just acquired Evolution Robotics, the makers of the Mint floor-cleaning robot with an R&D shop focused on navigational tools. The Mint cleaner will join iRobot's Roomba line. In a press release that touts the move as an expansion of iRobot's "position as global robotic floor care market-leader," the company announced that it paid cash for Evolution out of its own reserves.Leica Drops Five New Cameras, Each (Not Surprisingly) Both Gorgeous And Pricey
Sep 17, 9:02PM
Leica has long been a high-water mark in photography, and its digital offerings are no exception. Today, the company took the covers off of four new models in its lineup, owing to Photokina getting underway tomorrow. The D-LUX 6, V-LUX 4, M, M-E and S are all going to be on display at the show, and each boasts not only Leica's signature killer looks, but also enhanced internals to match. What you might notice if you're a fan of Leica's line is that the naming on the M and S-series shooters seem out of step with past versions, since they don't include a number to indicate their relative place in the overall line. That's because Leica's taken a page out of Apple's iPad naming conventions book, dropping the sequence and merely iterating on the hardware itself.Meet AcceleratorHK, Hong Kong's First Startup Accelerator Program
Sep 17, 9:02PM
Even though Hong Kong is an important Asian city, technology entrepreneurship is still nascent. The infrastructure in place does not foster competitiveness. That is why Stephen Forte and TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 Hackathon winner Paul Orlando decided to create AcceleratorHK, the first accelerator program in Hong Kong. The three-month program offers $15,000 in seed capital, mentorship and co-working space. It is now accepting applications for its first batch.Google Brings OAuth 2.0 Support To Gmail And Google Talk To Make Third-Party Apps More Secure
Sep 17, 8:45PM
Virtually all of Google's APIs currently support OAuth 2.0, a framework for allowing third-party apps limited access to your data from other services, as their standard authentication mechanism. Starting today, Google is taking its OAuth 2.0 support a step further by bringing it to IMAP/SMTP and XMPP, the protocols that allow third-party access to Google services like Gmail and Google Talk. This move, says Google's Ryan Troll, will allow developers to give users "tighter control over what data clients have access to, and clients never see a user's password, making it much harder for a password to be stolen." With OAuth 2.0 support, users will simply be able to revoke a client's access to a service like Gmail without any impact to other apps that access the same data.Foursquare Offers Up A Shortcut To The "Explore" Tab For Android Users
Sep 17, 8:40PM
While this isn't a major feature update by any means, foursquare is definitely pushing its Explore functionality forward by making it more prominent in its mobile apps, site and now by letting you add a shortcut directly to the tab on your Android device. In a quick post today, the company talked about the thoughts behind the move.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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