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Crowdsourcing Startup CrowdFlower Says Its Contributors Have Completed 1 Billion 'Judgments'
Jul 13, 1:46AM
CrowdFlower, which helps businesses manage crowdsourced tasks, announced that contributors have completed 1 billion "judgments" (which is the basic unit of work on the platform). The company says those judgments are "the crux of microtasking", with businesses asking CrowdFlower contributors to do things like judge whether an image is appropriate or whether an address record in a marketing database is complete. The billionth judgment was made by someone in Cariacica, Brazil, who was verifying database details about an Australian small business for a US company.Health Scanner Scanadu Scout Breaks Indiegogo's Crowdfunding Record
Jul 12, 11:36PM
Today the Indiegogo campaign for Scanadu Scout became the highest funded in the site’s five year history. At over $1,378,545 and counting, Scanadu has broken the $1,370,461 record set by Let’s Build A Goddamn Tesla Museum. The Scanadu is a small, round scanner that takes a person’s vital signs and sends them wirelessly to his or her smartphone. It seems to have hit on an unserved consumer need for medical empowerment. Right out of the gate, the campaign met its initial goal of $100,000 in less than two hours and doubled it in five. With eight days left and 7,000 funders from 100 countries already invested, it’s hard to say how much higher that number will climb. In the time it took me to write this article, it raised another $4,000 or so. Scanadu Scout and the Tesla Museum are two of four Indiegogo projects to exceed $1 million. They are also two of a select handful to receive permission to extend their campaigns. Danae Ringelman, the co-founder and Chief Customer Officer of Indiegogo, said the site places fewer restrictions on campaigns in order to allow them to fully test their market and lower their risk of failure when they enter the market. Owners can add perks to see what features might sell, adjust pricing, and see if their project has the critical consumer mass to work in the real world. Indiegogo does not feature any campaigns on the homepage in an effort to keep the market meritocratic. Still, this doesn’t explain why Scanadu Scout, which had almost certainly validated its market before its extension date, was granted extra time. In Indiegogo’s meritocracy, this would mean opening all campaigns up to the possibility of extensions. For campaigns that have already seen a great deal of interest, this would function as an incubator for fine-tuning the product, interacting with consumers, raising still more money, and advertising. For those that haven’t taken off, an extension might simply be a waste of time. It’s not clear that this is a particularly good or bad thing, but it does change the nature of what crowdsourcing means, at least on Indiegogo. Scanadu creator Walter De Brouwer told us that the scanner had been developed almost entirely in a vacuum without consumer testing and that he initially had reservations about crowdsourcing the project. But it was ultimately the best way to gauge consumer interest. The nextTrademark Dispute Brewing Between Flipboard And Flowboard
Jul 12, 10:33PM
Looks like Flipboard is unhappy with Flowboard, the new "interactive storytelling" app from Treemo — specifically with the app's name. In response to Flipboard's complaints that the Flowboard name could be confusing and infringe its trademark, Treemo filed a complaint asking for a "declaratory judgment of non-infringement of trademark rights" — i.e., it wants a court to say that no trademark infringement is taking place.Ask A VC: NEA's Jon Sakoda On Why The Venture Firm Makes Seed Investments And More
Jul 12, 9:40PM
In this week's episode of Ask A VC, NEA's Jon Sakoda joined us in the studio to discuss his views on big data, seed investing and more. For background, Sakoda joined NEA in 2006 and focuses on investments in SaaS, infrastructure software, and big data applications. His investments include Blue Jeans Network, Desire2Learn, Hearsay Social, OPOWER, ScienceLogic, Suniva, and WibiData. Sakoda also co-manages NEA's seed investment program.AddThis Launches Smart Layers, Giving Websites Social And Personalization Tools That Adapt To Mobile
Jul 12, 9:38PM
AddThis has released a new platform called Smart Layers, which it says can improve traffic and engagement by just adding a single line of code. President and CEO Ramsey McGrory told me that Smart Layers both improves on the publisher tools that AddThis was already offering and introduces some new ones.AT&T To Acquire Leap Wireless (Cricket) For Around $1.2B
Jul 12, 9:33PM
Hey, Cricket customers! You're about to become AT&T customers. AT&T has just announced that they've agreed to acquire Leap Wireless, the parent company behind Cricket Wireless.This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Nokia's Not-So-Secret Lumia 1020 And A Brand New Microsoft
Jul 12, 7:01PM
Nokia has apparently reinvented zoom with the newest addition to the Lumia family, the Windows Phone 8-powered Lumia 1020, with a 41-megapixel PureView camera. It lets you zoom after the fact and still see ultra high resolution detail and sharpness. Meanwhile, Microsoft underwent a huge reorganization moving most of the company's high-ranking leadership into new positions. Is the Lumia 1020 worthy of its $299 price tag? Are we excited Microsoft is streamlining its leadership and services?Why Immigration Reform May Fail, In 4 Charts
Jul 12, 6:39PM
We reported yesterday that the most unproductive Congress in history may kill high-skilled immigration reform. Despite a comprehensive immigration bill being passed in the Senate, top Republicans in the House of Representatives say the Senate version is a “Pipe Dream” and they plan to aggressively pursue their own (right or wrong). Here’s why Republicans and Democrats could continue their unproductive, uncompromising ways, in four graphs. More Partisan, Less Productive Congress passes one-third the number of laws it did in the 20th century and is nearly twice as partisan, as measured by the ideological slant of each member’s voting record (data compiled from Norm Ornstein’s Vital Statistics at the Brookings Institute). Republicans Don’t Want Compromise Sixty-eight percent of Republicans would rather have a representative that “sticks to his or her principles” than one who “compromises to get things done” White Districts Oppose The Current Immigration Bill Republicans fear that voting for a bill with weak border security and a relatively easy path to citizenship will spell political suicide. “It would hurt Republicans, and I don't think you can make an argument otherwise," said Representative Steve King (CrunchGov Grade: C). BuzzFeed has a fun piece on just how white those districts are, especially of the most anti-immigration-reform Republicans. Here’s the demographic layout of Representative Steve King’s district in Iowa: They Keep Getting Elected Incumbent re-election has been steadily over 80 percent, despite the chaos: *Methodology notes: partisanship was calculated by finding the difference between ideological voting records of Democrats and Republicans in Vital Statistics, Table 8-10, subtracting column 4 from 3.Market For Spy-Proof Messaging Heats Up
Jul 12, 6:16PM
Now that the 4th Amendment is no longer a guarantee against broad government spying, the floodgates have opened for tech companies to give users their privacy back. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde's text-messaging app Heml.is already reached its funding goal, while the Skype-like Unsene platform launched its own Indiegogo campaign today.Lyft Sells Legacy Zimride Assets To Enterprise Holdings As It Focuses On Local Ride Sharing
Jul 12, 6:05PM
Lyft is announcing this morning that it has sold off its legacy ride-matching business Zimride to rental car giant Enterprise Holdings. The sale will allow Lyft to focus on its fast-growing on-demand ride-sharing business, while also adding to its war chest as the company expands into new markets and competes against the likes of Uber and SideCar.Houzz Founder Adi Tatarko To Join Us At Disrupt SF
Jul 12, 6:00PM
Home remodeling and inspiration platform Houzz is one of those secret gems of Silicon Valley that has avoided the hype cycle in favor of quietly building an innovative, compelling company. And the brains behind the idea and operation originate from co-founder Adi Tatarko, who started Houzz with her husband Alon Cohen, because of the design challenges they both faced renovating their own home. And we’re excited to have Tatarko join us on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF to tell us about how she is disrupting the $300 billion home remodeling market. Tickets are on sale now, with our extra early-bird discount going until July 15. Houzz provides homeowners with an inspiration platform for their projects and connects them with the designers, architects and contractors who can turn their ideas into reality. The startup just raised $35 million in new funding from all-star investors such as New Enterprise Associates, GGV Capital, Sequoia Capital, Comcast Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Yammer founder David Sacks. Tatarko will be joining a top list of industry leaders at Disrupt. We’ve already announced Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and distinguished investor Doug Leone. And we have lots more to come. The conference starts September 7 and runs until the 11 at our favorite location, the San Francisco Design Concourse. Stay tuned for more speaker announcements and a few surprises to be announced soon. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com. Adi Tatarko is the CEO and co-founder of Houzz, a platform for home remodeling, bringing together both professionals and homeowners via mobile, local and social tools. Adi and her husband and cofounder, Alon Cohen, started Houzz out of challenges that they faced during their own remodeling process. Tired of cutting pages out of magazines for their inspiration file and limited by word of mouth recommendations for professionals to help them with the renovation process, they decided to create an online photo database and gathering place for people in the process of building, remodeling and decorating. Today, millions of homeowners and more than 250,000 architects, designers, contractors and other remodeling professionals are connecting through Houzz.com and its mobile apps every month, sharing their photos, advice and product recommendations. Earlier in her career, Tatarko founded a software company which developed products and services for the high tech industry. She worked inHulu's Owners Say They're Not Selling, Will Invest Another $750M
Jul 12, 5:41PM
21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal, and The Walt Disney Company just announced that they're not selling online video site Hulu after all. They also said they're making "a commitment to recapitalize Hulu with $750 million in new funding for future growth." The final bidders for Hulu reportedly included DirecTV, a partnership between AT&T and Chernin Group, and private equity firm KKR. It seems, however, that none of them made a bid that satisfied the current owners, who previously tried to sell Hulu in 2011.SoundBrush, An App That Lets You Draw Music, Turns The Untrained Into Musicians
Jul 12, 5:36PM
![SoundBrush [img 1]](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/soundbrush-img-1.png?w=100&h=70&crop=1)
An iPad app called SoundBrush is out to make music composition accessible, even those who don't play an instrument. After releasing a MVP in April 2012 to test out the concept of drawing music on a tablet, SoundBrush released a more sophisticated second version last month along with a sharing and collaboration platform, Discover.We Want You (And Your Hardware) For Hardware Alley At Disrupt SF
Jul 12, 5:25PM
Every year I'm given the best job a guy could ever want: planning hardware alley, a one day extravaganza of some of the best hardware I've ever seen. This event, which happens on the last day of Disrupt, is a crowd favorite and I'd love to feature your gear.eBay Is Latest To Join 3D Printing Craze With New App For Customizable Goods, eBay Exact
Jul 12, 5:07PM
Ebay is hopping on the 3D printing bandwagon. This morning, the company announced the debut of a new iPhone application called eBay Exact which allows users to browse and buy customizable print-on-demand merchandise from three top 3D printing companies: newly acquired MakerBot, Sculpteo, and Hot Pop Factory.CrunchBase And AngelList Have A Partnership
Jul 12, 4:17PM
It used to be that you had to pay a bunch of money to get basic information about private tech companies, like how much they've raised and who they've acquired. CrunchBase made that free. And it used to be that you had to spend lots of time and money trying to network your way into some angel investor money. AngelList made that free. Now, the two have a deal.The Djoclate II Is A Portable Music Mixer That Lets You DJ Tunes From Friends' Devices
Jul 12, 3:50PM
The Djoclate II is a portable, near pocket-sized music mixer. The idea is to enable the would-be DJ who brings it to a house party to pull tunes into the mix from any music storage device in the room, whether that's a laptop, phone, MP3 player or tablet. Every partygoer's music collection can potentially become part of the audio pool.Rovio To Launch "Angry Birds Star Wars" Sequel (Or Prequel?) On Monday
Jul 12, 3:49PM
Rovio this morning teased the launch of its next gaming title due to arrive on Monday - a game that appears to be a sequel to the current Angry Birds Star Wars. An image accompanying the announcement features a bird dressed like young Anakin Skywalker, wearing racing gear, as in the 1999 prequel Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. It's not too hard to then draw the conclusion that this is the direction Rovio is headed, especially after announcing an expanded licensing agreement with toy maker Hasbro, which will ship new toys and games based on the Angry Birds Star Wars lineup and a racing game called Angry Birds Go later this year.An Interview With Bryan Biniak, The Man Aiming To Bring Instagram To Nokia's Windows Phones
Jul 12, 2:58PM
Nokia's Bryan Biniak has a tough job — he's the guy who forges partnerships with all the hottest apps to bring them aboard Nokia devices, which now means Windows Phone 8. However, even with it's steady growth, the Windows Phone platform only accounts for around 5 percent of the global market, behind second-place iOS and ever-growing Android. For small, lean startups (like Instagram once was, for example), developing for an entirely new platform with comparatively limited reach, it's a reasonably tough sell. But it's Bryan's job, and today he absolutely nailed it (with one very obvious shortcoming). Path has joined Windows Phone 8 with an app specially tailored to the Lumia 1020's 41-megapixel capabilities, alongside a new CNN iReporter app, Hipstamatic app, Oggl Pro, Yelp, foursquare, and promise of a Vine app later on.Epicurator Launches A Restaurant Review App To Create A Network For Dish Reviews And Pictures
Jul 12, 2:53PM
Looking for the perfect foodgasm? Epicurator, a new iPhone app, thinks it has what it takes to satisfy your needs. In the sea of online customer reviews, ratings and what people now know as “foodstagrams,” one more food-driven app has just launched in the market. Epicurator users review food on a dish-by-dish basis, which are then aggregated into an average restaurant rating. User images are sorted into small thumbnails, with a 5-star rating system from “Blech” to “Foodgasm” and a simple explanation. Co-founder Buzzy Sklar says the format provides easy access to quick but comprehensive reviews. To add a bit of competition, the more posts a reviewer has, the higher up he or she is on Epicurator’s leader board. Epicurator allows users to filter reviews by friends, for more personal, trustworthy feedback. The app connects directly to Facebook and Instagram to link you into your existing social network. Users can also search by type of food and location. At this point, it seems like it’s all been done before: Yelp, Zagat, Foodspotting, Urbanspoon and Dish.fm are just several of varying platforms to find the best place to dine. But Sklar and other co-founder Jonathan Smyth tell TechCrunch they believe there’s room to outperform the others, by combining all the best features into one app. With $300,000 in funding from Miami-based Bright Ahead, Epicurator is trying to emphasize social networking in the customer review process. “What we’ve found by using the app so far, people feel its okay to comment on a dish if it looks good. So it’s creating a different level of social interaction, and potentially a way to follow more people and make new friends,” Smyth tells me. Sklar says the co-founders are in the process of monetizing the app by offering target advertising to restaurants. Addressing Yelp criticisms of business biases, he says app managers cannot edit or filter reviews. Restaurants that want to advertise on Epicurator will pay per impression. With the sheer amount of food photos on the web, there’s potential to cash in on the market. The new app’s success will depend largely on a smooth format and developed personal network, to set it apart from already established review sites. That’s also assuming that restaurants won’t continue to ban taking pictures during dinner. Because apparently, it’s getting pretty annoying. Epicurator is available for free download at the Mac App Store. The app for Android is stillIf 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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