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Public Lab's Crowdfunded Infragram Cameras Let People See Plants In A Different Light
May 28, 1:00AM
There's no shortage of novel Kickstarter projects that aim to change how we think about the environment, but here's one that could literally change how we look at it. Infragram, created by the civic science-minded folks at Public Lab, puts low-cost infrared cameras into people's hands so they can better understand the health of the plants around them.Video Discovery Service Matcha Disappears, Co-Founder Promises 'Something Better' In The Future
May 28, 12:30AM
Over the last few days, the website for video discovery website Matcha.tv has gone dark, and those who have downloaded the company's mobile app report that it's no longer working. Co-founder and CEO Guy Piekarz says that the company is going in a new direction, and that it will have "something better" in the future.Open Source Blogging Platform WordPress Turns Ten, And Its Community Gets To Blow The Candles Out
May 28, 12:00AM
Ten years ago today, WordPress, the open source blogging software, was born. It's amazing to think that it's been that long, but considering it had all of the elements that other startups and projects have tried to emulate over the past 10 years, then it makes sense. When speaking with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, you'd think that he was only a small part of the movement that attempted to empower anyone and everyone to self-publish. While that might be partially true, Mullenweg has taken all of his learnings over the years and poured them into the for-profit arm, Automattic.Coinbase Leads Charge In Bitcoin's Consumerization
May 27, 11:07PM
Because why do anything other than try out hot technologies on Memorial Day, I just bought some Bitcoin. I might finally play Dots and maybe 3D-print an ear later this afternoon. I would not have bought my .1 ($13.17) in Bitcoin if it weren't for a startup called Coinbase, which is "one of the places that looked less sketchy" according to TechCrunch editor and Bitcoin bug John Biggs. "It's one of the ones I would tell my Mom to use," Biggs insisted. Indeed, if your mom knows how to link a bank account to a Fidelity or Charles Schwab account and buy mutual funds, buying Bitcoin through Coinbase is a similar deal. Just input her account and routing number, verify a couple of small transactions and your mom will be one step closer to Silk Road.Listening To The Future With A 3D-Printed Ear
May 27, 10:00PM
The campus of Washington State University in Southeast Washington's agricultural region looks like a typical land-grant university. The connected mix of art-deco, modern and post-modern buildings that collectively house the College of Engineering and Architecture hide a strange and incredible secret: that the researchers inside are close to making human-compatible ceramic bone grafts and custom-made prostheses and implants. In short, they're building cyborgs in Palouse. Welcome to the future of 3D-printed body hacks. Dr. Susmita Bose and Dr. Amit Bandyopadhyay have been waiting for you.Ooga Labs Takes A Ground-Up Approach To Generate Growth And Network Effects For Startups
May 27, 8:00PM
One of the biggest challenges many entreprenuers face is finding the right technical partner when building a company. Some startups can have a single leader, but more often than not, there is a balanced team behind every successful business. Ooga Labs founders Stan Chudnovsky and James Currier began their partnership when Currier moved Emode, the business he started with BranchOut founder Rick Marini, to San Francisco in 2000. A recent business school grad, Currier realized very quickly that he needed an engineering leader to help him grow the company. August Capital partner David Hornik (then-partner Andrew Ankur had just invested in the company) set Chudnovsky, a talented engineer, and Currier up on a quasi-blind date at the Penn Dragon Cafe in Hayes Valley in 2001, and soon after Chudnovsky joined Currier and Marini on their journey to create an online testing company.Apple's Problem Isn't Skeuomorphism, It's Services
May 27, 6:00PM
So iOS 7, it seems, is going to do away with much of the skeuomorphic design that has crept into the operating system and its utilities. Jony Ive, rumor has it, has done away with all the textures and real-world analogs in iOS 7 and has switched to a flat design instead. Good for him, but if that's all that is new in iOS 7, Apple has a real problem. It's not the design of iOS, but rather the fact that its own service offerings like Siri, iCloud and iTunes aren't all that great when compared to what its competitors in Mountain View (and may startups) are working on.The Mood Ring Gets Its Quantified-Self Update With The W/Me Wristband
May 27, 5:55PM
A lot of the gadgets that help people monitor and track their physical health focus on providing feedback related to physical activity for use with tracking workout data and energy expenditure during the day. Now, a new Kickstarter projected called the W/Me band wants to leverage similar data sources, but with the goal of providing a more holistic picture of wellness.Ticketea Raises $4 Million To Beat Ticketmaster And Eventbrite At The Spanish Box Office
May 27, 4:04PM
Spanish startup Ticketea, the leading DIY ticketing platform in Spain, has raised $4 million in a Series B round of funding. The investment is being led by newly-established Spanish VC Seaya Ventures, and will be used by the company to consolidate its position in Spain through new m-commerce products, as well as for international expansion with a specific focus on emerging markets. Latin America is name-checked, which makes sense given Ticketea's Spanish roots.Nextpeer, Which Has Added Multiplayer Mode To 1,000 Mobile Games, Comes to Android
May 27, 3:58PM
Nextpeer, the mobile gaming network that adds multi-player mode to indie titles, is entering private beta on the Android platform. Although the platform launched about two years ago, it only started picking up momentum in the last few months, growing to 1,000 live games from 100 back in January. They’ve also 10X-ed the number of monthly active users in the network, reaching 8 million from 800,000 at the beginning of the year. Those 8 million users have actually used Nextpeer’s tournaments; the actual reach of the games in the company’s network is much larger at somewhere between 20 to 30 million monthly actives, according to CEO Shai Magizmof. Nextpeer adds multiplayer mode to mobile games. When gamers launch an app, they can tap an online tournaments or multi-player button inside the game, sign in directly or through Facebook, and then join a live table. You can see an example in the video above and developers can sign up here. The idea is that multiplayer makes games much stickier and more engaging as players actually compete with each other in real-time. The platform offers both asynchronous multi-player and synchronous multi-player modes. So you can either play with people in real-time, or with different people even if they’re not playing at the same time as you. The company will also give developers the ability to customize the multi-player screen, so that it feels more native and natural to the game. Nextpeer has raised almost $2 million in funding from investors including OurCrowd and Wolfson Group, along with other private individuals.Minecraft Creator's New Game 'Scrolls' Gets A Trailer, Arrives June 3 In Beta
May 27, 3:00PM
Mojang, the creative force behind Minecraft, is releasing its next title to the public a week from today on June 3rd. The new game is a digital collectible card game, similar in concept to Magic: The Gathering, and therefore a very different beast from the free-form world-building and exploration sim Minecraft. Like Minecraft, it'll allow users to access the software very early, inviting them to become a key part of the development process. But can lightning strike twice for Mojang?Expect Facebook To Turbocharge 'Notes' Into A True Tumblr Competitor
May 27, 2:34PM
Facebook used to have a blogging feature called Notes. It still does, but it got buried by the Timeline redesign and widely forgotten. Facebook needs to overhaul Notes, and signs say a refresh may already be in the works. It could help people express themselves, make Notes a legitimate competitor to Tumblr, and soften the blow of Facebook reportedly failing to buy Yahoo’s new baby. Back in March, Facebook acqui-hired the team from Storylane, a sort of blogging platform its founders described as the "the home for personal thoughts and stories that go deeper than a quick Facebook or Twitter update.” It illustrated the rift between Facebook and Tumblr. Twitter is defined by its simplicity, so we’ll leave it out of this discussion. When it comes down to it, Facebook is more limiting but consistent and easy for the masses. Tumblr gives you more freedom and control. Facebook’s brevity is sufficient for some, but others crave a more customizable presence on the web that’s separate from reports about their day-to-day life. If Facebook wants to house our whole digital lives, it may need to get serious about blogging. It’d be a big undertaking for the social network that could take a while to come to fruition. But better Notes could fill it with high-quality content, pull in ad views, and box out competitors trying to pick away at the Facebook empire. Updates Vs Blogs: The Difference Matters On Facebook, you write ‘status updates’ — short descriptions of your current life to keep your friends in the loop. They’re typically concocted for the news feed, rather than your Timeline, and have to adhere to Facebook’s style and format standards. They don’t have a home you’d be proud to show off. Tumblr blogs feel like you’re writing for yourself. Strange, longer-f0rm dives into niche ideas that might weird out your Facebook friends fit naturally on your own blog alongside quick hits of images and content you’ve stumbled across or created. Tumblrs reach a like-minded audience of those who seek them out, rather than being forced on your social graph. There’s an emphasis on reblogging — lending your audience to content you appreciate. On Facebook there’s not much of a re-sharing culture. You just ‘Like”, which nets creators much less added influence. When Notes launched in 2006, Facebook’s user base may not have needed it. It was around the same time the siteBreaking: Company Study Shows That Company Is Totally In the Right Business
May 27, 1:00PM
I have some really big news, you guys! It turns out that if you ask people whether they want to leave their wallets at home, 83 percent of them will say yes! And sometimes, people won't have cash with them, so they can't make a purchase — in fact, that's what happened to a whopping 75 percent of Canadians! What a crazy, backwards world we live in! Even more astounding: If you buy a meal for a friend, it's possible that they won't pay you back! Shockingly, 54 percent of Americans say that they've been "stiffed" at some point in their lives!New Workout App For Pebble Shows Why Your Wrist Might Be The New Hot Spot For Mobile Devs
May 27, 12:01PM
A new app created by Toronto-based developer and entrepreneur Alex Kennberg uses the Pebble to take users through a standard 7-minute workout (made popular through media coverage at outlets including the New York Times Magazine), and does so using only the tech on your wrist. It's a great example of where standalone smart watch app development could take that gadget category beyond the boundaries of just being a smartphone companion.Next On Deck For Khan Academy: Better Diagnostics And Internationalization
May 27, 10:40AM
Even though Sal Khan is now running a platform that serves 6 million students and people a month, he’s still churning out a couple videos a week. What’s been most recently on deck? World War I. To make a video, Khan says he’ll front-load several books worth of reading on everything from the Armistice Day to the sinking of the Lusitania. Then he’ll start to make videos once he feels he has a decent grasp on the subject material. “If I’m hanging out waiting for the dentist, I’ll just start reading something about World War I,” he said in a recent interview. From the original tutoring calls he’d arrange to help out relatives, to the initial YouTube channel he started, Khan Academy has grown to reach 75 million users to date, with 230 million lessons delivered and 1 billion problems answered in 30,000 classrooms throughout the world. Naturally, there’s been quite a bit of hype (with both its good and bad consequences). Khan Academy has the reach but it’s still proving out the data to show that its lessons measurably affect learning outcomes beyond the handful of pilots the non-profit has tried. “Teachers are rightfully skeptical, I think. They’re overworked. They have a million things to do,” Khan said. “It’s an incredibly tiring job and you’re throwing a new thing at them, even if they intellectually recognize the benefit of it.” Two of the top things on Khan’s priority list for the next fall are internationalization and diagnostics. The Khan Academy has pioneered ways of measuring progress, to help ensure that students don’t develop a “Swiss Cheese”-like base of knowledge with different weak areas. But he acknowledged the site isn’t as good at telling students where they should begin. What if they’re competent at certain things like logarithms but terribly behind in trigonometry? “One of the biggest complaints we get is that people don’t know where to start. By this August, we should have good diagnostics where people can figure out where they stand,” he said. He’s personally interested in Carol Dweck’s theories around fostering a growth-centered mentality in children and students. Her research is the basis for a series of media stories and discussions around how much you should praise children and whether you should attribute their success to persistence or innate capabilities. She’s found that children who internalize not innate talent, but rather diligence, tend to do betterTurn The Raspberry Pi Microcomputer Into A Low-Cost Laptop With This Atrix Dock Hack
May 27, 9:00AM
The $35/$25 Raspberry Pi microcomputer is being used by hardware hackers to power all sorts of creative projects. Including this Raspberry Pi powered laptop, which ties in the Motorola Atrix laptop dock to turn the microcomputer into a portable computer. Which surely must be the coolest use of that piece of kit to date.Collabspot's Mentor Joins It, Pumps In $79,000 Of His Own Money
May 27, 7:55AM
Collabspot, an email CRM startup, has just received $79,000 (S$100,000) from a former mentor, Laurent Gasser, who also joins the company as director of business development. Collabspot provides a service that layers CRM (customer relationship management) software into Gmail. It’s targeted at the SME crowd, and promises to simplify data entry by letting workers save emails into the company CRM without having to manually enter details in. It was founded in Singapore last year, and relies on a team of developers in the Philippines. The company went through JFDI. Asia‘s 100-day bootcamp program in February, and received $20,000 (S$25,000) in angel funding from the accelerator. During the program, it was mentored by Gasser. Gasser is the co-founder of Google Apps reseller, Revevol, which he started in France in 2007. He was an early reseller of Google Apps outside of the US. Revevol operates in 10 countries now. There has been a growing pulse of activity around email CRM. Tylr Mobile just launched an email inbox connected to CRM giant, Salesforce.com. Two months ago, Washington, D.C.-based Contactually, closed $1 million in seed funding for its lightweight email CRM tool. Jeremi Joslin, founder and CEO of Collabspot, said the company has about 500 paying customers now, and has a churn rate of 2 percent. Its revenue covers its overheads, and he plans to raise a seed round soon in order to set up a stronger marketing team in the US. His focus on the US is underscored by 60 percent of its customer base coming from the US right now. 25 percent are in Europe, and 15 percent are in the Asia-Pacific, he said. Collabspot just signed three resellers in North America, to add to three more outside of the region. Collabspot will present its product at JFDI’s demo day on 3rd June. JFDI’s next batch of startups will begin the program in August 2013.Bio-Hackers, Get Ready
May 27, 6:50AM
When I speak to technical founders, they often look back with fondness to days of tinkering with a Commodore 64 or Hypercard. But perhaps tomorrow’s founders will experiment with a very different kind of code — the genetic code that underlies how everything from one-celled organisms to humans develop and behave. A pair of companies in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood and Tel Aviv are positioning themselves as the “Wintel” of the bio-hacking era. One company, called Genome Compiler, builds software for designing synthetic life forms, while the other, Cambrian Genomics, is experimenting with ways to cheaply laser print DNA. Like the old Microsoft-Intel relationship of the PC era, they believe they have the symbiotic relationship necessary to usher in a new era where anybody can inexpensively create their own life forms. Genome Compiler is backed with $3 million in funding, including $2 million from Autodesk. Cambrian is funded by Founders Fund, Felicis Ventures and Draper Associates. “We are democratizing creation,” said Genome Compiler co-founder Omri Amirav-Drory. “Cells are nothing more than a computer, running a program and the program is the genetic code. The code is DNA. The software are the chromosomes. The hardware is the wetware.” Using Drory’s software, a person can load up existing sequences for different life forms like plants and then manipulate them by inserting or taking out various genes. It corrects the code for basic errors like not having three codes for an amino acid or having a stop and a start code in the wrong place. “Wouldn’t it be nice in the future if someone could just load up a tree’s genetic code, drag another app from a file and make it glow in the dark?” said Amirav-Drory, who was a post-doc at Stanford University after completing a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Tel Aviv University in Israel. In theory they could eventually build an app store where a Genome Compiler user could buy access to genetic code that might make a plant sells like a banana. One Kickstarter project which I wrote about last month is already using the software to create a glow-in-the-dark plant. The seemingly far-fetched aspiration is to eventually replace street lights with the more renewable solution of glowing trees. Environmental considerations were what originally drew Amirav-Drory toward starting Genome Compiler. “We live in a civilization that is totally dependent on finite resources like oil and coal to produce everything aroundSamsung Briefly Posts Galaxy S4 Mini On Its Apps Site, Adding New Credence To A Summer Release
May 27, 2:19AM
Samsung has yet to officially confirm the Galaxy S4 mini, but the smartphone's brief appearance on the company's app store earlier today backs up rumors of a summer launch. The listing was spotted and screencapped by TGspot (link via Google Translate) before it was removed.Paul Graham: 37 Y Combinator Companies Have Valuations Of Or Sold For At Least $40M
May 27, 2:02AM
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham just tweeted an interesting data point about the valuations of YC startups. As of now, Graham says that 37 Y Combinator companies, out of 511 startups, have valuations of or sold for at least $40 million. Currently the total valuation for the 511 startups is $11.5 billion, as Graham writes on Hacker News.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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