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Mud-slinging Behind The Scenes As Malaysia's Taxi Apps Duke It Out
Jun 21, 1:00AM
There is an ongoing land grab for taxi drivers in Malaysia, with taxi app startups aggressively targeting the handful of taxi drivers keen to jump on a digital platform. Two year-old taxi booking startup, MyTeksi has been busy recruiting cab drivers over to its service. When I visited its offices two weeks ago, Aaron Gill, MyTeksi’s product and marketing head, said the company ramped up its efforts over the past six months to convince drivers to get smartphones and data plans. It’s had to sell the benefits of getting hooked up to a service that allows drivers to receive jobs, rather than have to drive around looking for passengers by the side of the road. So far, MyTeksi has recruited about 2,500 drivers covering the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, as well as Putrajaya, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. The platform receives one booking every eight seconds, or 10,000 per day, which nets the company about $3,100 (10,000 MYR) daily. Several competitors have joined the fray: Hopcab and TaxiMonger launched last year. But things really started heating up in the past month, when Rocket Internet debuted its Easytaxi service in the country. Since Easytaxi’s launch, there have been rumors of its staff approaching cabs with MyTeksi decals and getting them to hop over to Easytaxi instead. Sources close to the companies said that Easytaxi’s staff have also helped delete the MyTeksi app from drivers’ handsets, instead replacing them with Easytaxi’s app. Joon Chan, managing director at Rocket Internet did little to deny the rumors. “Drivers are free to use any app they want on their phones. It’s only fair since they pay for their own phones and data plans,” he said. He added that only about 10 to 15 percent of the drivers in the country have smartphones, indicating that the addressable pool of drivers is even smaller. But MyTeksi may be deploying its own anti-competitive tactics. Chan produced a photo of the MyTeksi app apparently prompting the driver to remove the Easytaxi app. Chan said Easytaxi started driver acquisition on the 12th of May, and has been putting up kiosks at gas stations to recruit drivers. The startup is expanding quickly—in the past month, it’s added five new employees each week, he said. Gill of MyTeksi, commenting on Rocket’s entrance in its space, said: “They’ve made us better and sharper. We are growing our fleet at a faster pace now,Cameron And Tyler Winklevoss Tell Us Why They're So Bullish On Bitcoin [TCTV]
Jun 20, 10:27PM
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss first emerged as household names in the tech world because of their contentious relationship with that major social networking company and its famous founder. But these days, their focus has shifted onto a new area of the tech industry that's very different (though no less controversial): Bitcoin.Highland Capital Partners Commits To Invest $25 Million In Leap Motion Developers
Jun 20, 10:21PM
Highland Capital Partners, which is already an investor in Leap Motion, has committed another $25 million to back the young startup. To do so, it's established the Leap Fund, which is designed to find and put money into innovative startups who are building new applications that take advantage of its 3-D gesture control.Automation Is The Driving Theme In Six Cloud Startup Presentations At GigaOM Structure
Jun 20, 8:36PM
I am here at the GigaOm Structure conference where this morning, six startups presented before a three-judge panel of venture capitalists: Luis Robles, a partner with Sequoia Capital; Bipul Sinha, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners; and Ann Winblad, managing director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. SaltStack, a new DevOps platform, won the overall prize, and Factor.io won the people's choice.App Infrastructure Startup Firebase Raises $5.6M From Union Square And Flybridge
Jun 20, 8:01PM
Firebase, a Y Combinator-backed startup that offers infrastructure for real-time apps, is taking the stage today at GigaOm's Structure conference, where it's announcing that it has raised a $5.6 million Series A from Union Square Ventures and Flybridge Capital Partners. As CEO and co-founder James Tamplin first explained a year ago, Firebase aims to enable developers to create web and mobile apps "really, really fast without worrying about servers or writing server code" — you just write front-end code and let Firebase handle the backend. In the past few months, the company has opened the platform to all developers, released a software development kit for iOS, and launched its first module, Firepad (a real-time text editor).Instagram, Technology's Window To The Soul
Jun 20, 7:44PM
Today Instagram revealed a new mission statement that reflects its true purpose. At our best, we don't share photos or videos to brag or get 'Likes'. We share to let others see through our eyes. Facebook has "To make the world more open and connected". Now, alongside the launch of video, Instagram has its own guiding words. "To capture and share the world's moments"Video Ad Buying Platform TubeMogul Hires Google Media Platforms Head Chip Scovic As CRO
Jun 20, 7:30PM
TubeMogul has come a long way since being founded in 2006. The company, which originally provided an analytics service for video distributors, moved into advertising a couple of years ago. With a platform that brand advertisers can use to systematically purchase online video inventory, it's gotten pretty big since then -- and it keeps getting bigger.Photoful Improves On iOS 7′s Photo Gallery With A More Open, Gesture-Based App
Jun 20, 7:20PM
Photoful, a new mobile application which is the rebranding and relaunch of the earlier app known as PhotoSocial, is hoping to attract iPhone users who want the Photos experience the new iOS 7 mobile operating system will offer…and then some. As with iOS 7′s re-imagined Photos app, Photoful will also sort your photo collection into smart groupings like iOS 7′s “Moments,” but it will allow users to do more, too, including photo tagging and advanced editing, printing, and sharing with several third-party services, as well as navigating through, selecting, and discarding photos using gestures. As with PhotoSocial, which somewhat mimicked the original Apple Photos app, but then added capabilities on top, Photoful takes its inspiration from the redesigned version of iOS. It has the iOS 7 look-and-feel, making it one of the first to transition to the new mobile experience Apple recently debuted at WWDC. Often, it’s apps like this that eventually blaze the trail for Apple’s own native applications, which is a precarious position for a startup. For this model to work, the company has to continually stay ahead of whatever Apple is building itself. (Case in point: the new iOS 7 Photos app has taken its own “inspiration” from a number of photo app makers, including Everpix, Moment.me, flayvr, Tracks, Cluster, Story, Flock and more.) That being said, Photoful establishes itself as a fairly robust alternative to the native Photos app. And with some of the options it will add in the near future – like support for other third-party services such as Flickr and Tumblr and photo printing – it will get even better. “You need to start with beating what they have today and rounding out the corners,” explains Photoful founder Jeff Bargmann. “[Apple's Photos app] is a closed ecosystem – that’s the big problem I see here. No other application can rope into this, and that’s a position that Apple isn’t really going to move from…That’s an opportunity for us.” Bargmann’s background is in designing utilities that augment the features and functions available on the native OS. He previously created Windows desktop utilities like Stardock’s Fences and ObjectDock, 1UP Industries’ Bins, and was project lead on Stardock’s Impulse, which later sold to GameStop. Afterwards, he wanted to expand his skill set, and learned iOS development to build PhotoSocial, now Photoful. Among the new app’s long list of extras, including Aviary-powered filtering and editing tools, a collage builder, a slideshow maker,Agawi Uses Its Cross-Platform Gaming Tech To Launch A Mobile Ad Unit That You Can Actually Play
Jun 20, 7:11PM
Pretty much everyone agrees that mobile advertising isn't very good (or outright sucks). Here's an interesting solution from Agawi — an ad unit for mobile games called AppGlimpse, which functions as a playable demo for the game. The startup, formerly known as iSwifter, has developed technology for virtualizing games and eventually other apps so that they can run on any platform. In this case, Agawi says that it can create a cloud version of any Android game that will run as an ad on both iOS and Android.Instagram Video Vs. Vine: What's The Difference?
Jun 20, 7:09PM
Instagram just launched video functionality. Glorious, 15-second, editable video functionality. Complete with image stabilization. So what does this mean for Vine?Hands-On With Instagram's New Video Feature
Jun 20, 7:08PM
We've just made our way out of Facebook's Headquarters in Menlo Park, where Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom took the stage to debut the app's new (and not un-Vinelike) video functionality.Samsung's Shape-Shifting Ativ Q Isn't Pretty, But Running Windows 8 And Android May Make It A Worthy Workhorse
Jun 20, 7:00PM
Samsung just pulled back the curtain on a new line of Ativ Windows notebooks, but perhaps the most interesting of the company's new Ativs is a 13.3-inch convertible tablet it hopes will appeal those prepping to head back to school. The shape-shifting Ativ Q sports a tablet mode, a video-friendly formfactor with the screen held near vertical, and a more traditional notebook configuration that reveals its built-in QWERTY keyboard, but it's got an even niftier trick up its sleeve.Hands-On With Samsung's Galaxy S4 Zoom, The Smartphone With A 10x Optical Zoom Lens
Jun 20, 7:00PM
Samsung's Galaxy S4 Zoom steers its Galaxy brand into slightly new territory, by creating a hybrid smartphone-cum-pocket-camera. Unlike pretty much every other cameraphone around, the Zoom has a 10x optical zoom lens protruding from its rear. In short, it's a phone with two faces: one pure Galaxy smartphone, the second resembling a classic point-and-shoot camera. It's an curious move that's likely to grab consumers' attention, but there's a bigger question here -- what's it like using it?Samsung's Galaxy NX Is A 4G Android Interchangeable Lens Camera That Lets You Post To Instagram
Jun 20, 6:35PM
Samsung continues to push its Galaxy brand into new devices' types and categories, a strategy aimed at extending the success it's had with the brand in smartphones. Today the Korean giant has added the Galaxy badge to its high end camera range, with the launch of a digital mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC) called the Galaxy NX: its first interchangeable lens camera to run Android.Samsung Reveals The Ativ Q, A Convertible Windows 8 Tablet That Runs Android, Too
Jun 20, 6:25PM
Samsung has just kicked off its Premiere event at Earls Court in London, and decided to lead with one particularly curious device -- in addition to the ability to transform from a 2.8-pound tablet to a notebook with QWERTY keyboard, the company's shape-shifting Ativ Q convertible also gives users a taste of the Android ecosystem.I/O Ventures VC Paul Bragiel Goes On Hiatus To Train For The Winter Olympics
Jun 20, 5:30PM
Some VCs are into kite-surfing. Some do triathlons. Then there’s i/o Ventures managing director Paul Bragiel, who has spent the last two and a half months in the Nordics, either cross-country skiing for two to four hours per day or doing “swamp training,” where he runs through bogs for several hours. His dream? To compete in the Winter Olympics, which are just eight months away in Sochi, Russia. “I want to walk into the Olympic Stadium with people from all 192 countries. This is what’s awesome about the world. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 11 and watching the 1988 Seoul Olympics on TV,” he said in an interview from Austria, where he just relocated to train for a month. “I kind of gave up the dream when I was 14 and became a computer nerd. But that’s a whole different story.” The U.S. team only has about four slots and is one of the most competitive countries in the world, Bragiel said. So he’s in talks with various South American and Sub-Saharan African countries to get dual citizenship to compete on their behalf. Because he also co-founded the Tanzania and Kenya-focused Savannah Fund and advises other countries on how to grow startup communities, he believes citizenship won’t be that big a hurdle. “This is an honor. Someone giving you citizenship? I’m going to wear that country’s flag proudly,” he said. Picking a sport was a long process. One of the first sports he looked at was curling. He even visited a curling center in Minnesota, but then he realized that there wasn’t a team that would let him join on less than a year’s notice. Then he looked at bobsledding, and traveled to Latvia to look for a team. “The costs ended up being very prohibitive. It can cost millions of dollars and you have to ship a bobsled internationally,” he said. He also would have needed to find a driver. “If I did it, I would probably flip over and die,” he said. Then the luge terrified him, and he didn’t think he could get used to downhill skiing as a longtime snowboarder. So that left cross-country skiing. He reached out to friends like Trulia co-founder and competitive triathlete Sami Inkinen and others, who helped him find a coach. Then Bragiel bought a one-way ticket to Finland a little over two months ago and began training.Instagram Launches Cinema, Its Fix For The iPhone's Shaky Camera
Jun 20, 5:29PM
Instagram today finally unveiled its anticipated video service and served it with a kicker, great for those of us with shaky hands. It launched Cinema: a way to stabilize the video captured with the iPhone. Right now this is an iPhone-only app. And for good reason. Since the launch of the iPhone 5, Android phone makers have embraced higher quality cameras than Apple with many flagship devices already featuring superior image stabilization.Instagram Launches 15-Second Video Sharing Feature, With 13 Filters And Editing
Jun 20, 5:17PM
Instagram, the immensely popular photo-sharing app that was acquired by Facebook in a $1 billion deal last year, is not just for photos anymore. At a press event at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters, Instagram's co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom debuted a new feature called, simply, "Video On Instagram." This lets people create 15-second videos to share on the service. The feature includes simple editing capabilities as well as 13 new filters, which were specially created for video. "What we did to photos, we just did to video," Systrom said.Instagram Crosses 130 Million Users, With 16 Billion Photos And Over 1 Billion Likes Per Day
Jun 20, 5:16PM
On stage at Facebook's big mystery event, Instagram's Kevin Systrom has just shared some new growth statistics for the photo-sharing platform. Instagram now boasts over 130 million active monthly users. And that's not all — there are over 16 billion photos on the service altogether, with over 1 billion likes given to users each day.Instagram Now Hosts 16B Photos For 130M People Who Have Interacted With 1B Likes
Jun 20, 5:15PM
Instagram's Kevin Systrom told us today how people "come together to share the world in real time" as the company planned to unveil Instagram's video service -- which we first reported earlier this week. And he also revealed new stats: Instagram now hosts 16 billion photos for 130 million users, who have interacted on the network with 1 billion likes.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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