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With Cinematique's 'Touch-Enabled', Shoppable Videos, Product Placement Might Not Be So Bad
Jul 15, 1:36AM
In time, we're all going to want to interact and shop from our favorite online — at least, that's what Randy Ross, co-founder and CEO of startup called Cinematique, argues, and he's hoping to enable those interactions with Cinematique's new MTEVideo platform. When you watch content enriched by Cinematique, small dots appear on the screen, signaling items that you can click on with your mouse or just tap with your finger (depending on the device). The screen will be overlaid with some basic information about whatever you tapped, and when you're done with the video, you can tap on the Cinematique icon below the video and bring up more details about everything you selected. You can also share the listing with friends or buy the product in question.It's Not A Bird, Plane Or Taco-Copter. This Wedding Has A Ring-Dropping Quadcopter
Jul 15, 12:25AM
Sadly, Tacocopter was not a reality. But maybe quadcopters could disrupt the near-dominant hold that children have on ring-bearing at weddings. Otavio Good, creator of Word Lens, the app that translates written words while you’re traveling in foreign countries, used a quadcopter to deliver his wedding rings by air yesterday. When the marriage official asked him for the ring, Good shrugged. Then a harpist strummed up the James Bond theme, while a quadcopter emerged out of the nearby Pulgas Water Temple in Redwood City, flew across a pond and landed in Good’s hands. He untied a ribbon, carrying the two wedding rings and then set the quadcopter free like a dove and it flew away into the distance. Good’s brother, Kevin, who also serves as the “Director of Flying Robot Arts” at a Washington D.C.-area drone group, commandeered the quadcopter. No one is really sure whose idea it was between, Good, his brother and Good’s now wife and cancer researcher Zinaida Tebaykina. Commercial and recreational quadcopters have been used to film mountain climbing, concerts and monitor oil pipelines for environmental hazards. It’s not even actually the first time they’ve been used to deliver rings to a wedding (maybe it’s the second) or propose to a woman. “It was kind of an excuse to buy a quadcopter,” Otavio Good said. “We just modded it and brought it out here.”Fly Or Die: Ploom ModelTwo E-Cig Vaporizer
Jul 15, 12:00AM
It’s been a couple weeks since I reviewed the Ploom ModelTwo e-cig vaporizer, but we thought it fair to have someone else weigh in on the tobacco vaporizer as well. That said, Engadget’s Brian Heater steps up this week (to fill in for John Biggs) and shares his thoughts on the ModelTwo. Ploom has been focused on revolutionizing vaporizers for a while, notably with the Pax loose-leaf botanical vaporizer and now with the ModelTwo. What makes the ModelTwo different from other vaporizers is that it’s not using a synthetic tobacco substitute, but rather heats up small pods of tobacco into vapor. This offers the same rich taste as a real cigarette without all the danger. It also means that you enjoy your smoke break the same way you would for a cigarette, as the tobacco pods aren’t meant to be toked a few times and then revisited later. Each pod takes about ten minutes to finish. All in all, we think the $39 device is a solid option if you’re in the market for a vaporizer. Brian took some convincing, but at the end of the day: Two flies.What Games Are: The Culture Gap In Mobile Games
Jul 14, 9:00PM
While other formats gain huge swathes of coverage in the gaming press, the talk in mobile is almost always just about process, business models and money. The absence of a cultural layer is notable, and a potential gap is emerging for someone to become a critical influencer in that market. What might that look like?Facebook Engineer Fires Back At BuzzFeed: Users Don't Care How Many People View Their Posts
Jul 14, 8:42PM
"The Number Facebook Doesn't Want You To See", an article from Thursday by BuzzFeed claimed Facebook is hiding the number of people who see your posts so you don't feel bad that most people don't Like or comment. This morning, a Facebook engineer wrote a retort claiming that is "just plain wrong", and that Facebook's testing showed most users are more interested in feedback than total views.Why Pens Are Popular On Kickstarter And What It Means For Crowdfunders
Jul 14, 7:16PM
This morning brought news of the RETRAKT pen hitting $72,000 on Kickstarter. RETRAKT is a nice-looking pen made of aluminum that looks a little bit like a part that fell off of a space ship. But $72,000 raised? For a pen? What gives?Only 16% Of Republicans and 29% of Democrats Want Increased Immigration
Jul 14, 7:10PM
Despite the international heritage of the United States, Americans are not eager for more immigrants. A new Gallup poll finds that only 16 percent of Republicans and 29 percent of Democrats think that immigration "should be increased." The good news is that this paltry support is a record high and continues to grow. "Support for increasing immigration remains the minority view, but one that has steadily gained support, not only from Democrats and nonwhites, but among whites and across the political spectrum," writes Gallup.Google Explains Why Its Cloud Service Is Different When It Comes To Lock-In
Jul 14, 7:00PM
A Google engineer concluded on his Google+ page last week that a cloud platform can’t be built without some form of lock-in. That’s evidently true but there really is one main reason for making such a point. Google wants to show that it is not much different from its competitors when it comes to this hot topic with cloud customers. The post by Google Engineering Director Peter Magnusson has to be read with a dash of skepticism. Magnusson does focus on the lock-in issue with Google App Engine (GAE), but he also uses the topic to show the difference between its managed services and the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) from a provider like AWS. He says without restrictions Google could not offer the service that it does. What they do try to do is offer alternatives such as from services like AppScale. Reading into what Magnusson says, it appears that some customers are not accustomed to the restrictions that come with Google App Engine: The run-time environment is different and customers can’t make systems calls, write directly to the file system, or choose their own operating system. In the end, Magnusson says that lock-in is inevitable for Google to offer the service that it does with GAE: You can't build an innovative platform without some measure of lock-in. For example, the Datastore is unlike any other NoSQL or NearSQL service or stack out there. It has multi-datacenter synchronous replication, cursors, distinct queries, projection queries, zigzag merge join, transactional tasks, automatic sharding/load balancing, managed secondary indexes, and multi-row and multi-machine transactions. Our developers don't want us to dumb down those features to some lowest common denominator; they want us to build more features that leverage the unique underlying software systems. GAE comparess to other PaaS providers such as Cloudbees, Heroku, and AppFog, acquired in June by CenturyLink. Google abstracts the actual hands-on work of managing the infrastructure that is a hallmark of other services. That means there are certain aspects of Google’s app service that have to be restricted. These restrictions allow Google to take responsibility for a customer’s firewall, most denial of service attacks, viruses — the list goes on. The upside, Magnusson argues, is that for most mobile and web apps, instances can be started quickly, allowing apps to scale fast. Google manages that scale and the problems that arise when, for example, an app has to be moved to another data center.Leaked Video Highlights Moto X Software Features, Including Always-On Voice Commands
Jul 14, 6:00PM
Motorola's secretive Moto X smartphone has been spotted in its fair share of photos (leaked and otherwise) this past week, but there are only so many thrills to be derived by looking at still images. The folks at Ausdroid got their collective hands on a short demo video from Canadian wireless carrier Rogers that affords us our best look yet at what Motorola's first post-acquisition phone brings to the table when it comes to software.As Dropbox Transforms From Utility To Platform, The Bulls And Bears Emerge
Jul 14, 5:00PM
Earlier this week, one of the Valley's most steady high-growth technology companies held its first-ever developer conference -- DBX -- marking a potentially historical turning point for an already large company with the potential to become even larger. The company -- Dropbox -- has all the ingredients for the breakout status it has earnestly earned. The founders are from MIT, the idea looked simple (perhaps, only a feature) that some of today's savviest investors passed on early, the company took root inside Y Combinator, perfectly timed its cloud storage offering, differentiated against incumbent solutions on speed and efficacy, fine-tuned and arbitraged a wickedly clever business model against declining storage fees and increasing rates of device obsolescence, famously spurned an acquisition offer by Steve Jobs, a multi-billion dollar valuation, and now, with a feature in WIRED and from 2013 looking ahead, is embarking on a path very few companies get the opportunity to experience: to potentially be a great, independent, standalone technology company.
Package Tracking Platform AfterShip Marks Its Public Launch With A New Track Button Plugin And Pricing
Jul 14, 2:29PM
AfterShip, the package tracking platform for small e-commerce merchants that we profiled back in January, is leaving beta mode today and launching to the public. The Hong Kong-based startup also debuted an easy-to-use Track Button widget for vendors that don't want to deal with an API. By inserting a simple short code (like the one for Facebook Like button plugins), an AfterShip Track button will appear next to tracking numbers on an e-commerce site and allow customers to view delivery information without leaving the page.Internet Killed The Magazine Star
Jul 14, 1:22PM
I've been musing on whether or not to weigh in on the demise of PC World, a computer "magazine" that was once printed on "paper." Founded after the acquisition of PC Magazine by Ziff-Davis publishing, PC World's story is so similar to the stories of the major blogs these days that it is worth a brief look.Why Behavior Change Apps Fail To Change Behavior
Jul 14, 4:00AM
Imagine walking into a busy mall when someone approaches you with an open hand. "Would you have some coins to take the bus, please?" he asks. But in this case, the person is not a panhandler. The beggar is a PhD. As part of a French study, researchers wanted to know if they could change how much money people gave to a total stranger using just a few specially encoded words. They discovered a technique so simple and effective it doubled how much people gave.Rating The Venture Capitalists
Jul 14, 1:00AM
For a profession full of business strategy experts, it's impressive how rarely and narrowly the venture capital industry is subjected to conventional competitive analysis. Ask yourself: who are the VC's customers? Limited partners (LPs) is probably the technically correct answer, but startups would certainly be the more fashionable one. It's a reasonable debate. Either way, one's the supplier and one's the customer. Hell, maybe they're both customers and VC's are some kind of glorified broker. But the fact that there isn't a popular consensus illustrates how impotent we've been at examining the industry.CrunchWeek: Nokia's Lumia 1020, Dropbox's Developer Conference, Hulu's Non-Sale
Jul 13, 10:01PM
After a week off, CrunchWeek is back. Regulars Leena and Colleen were out of the office, but Greg Kumparak, Billy Gallagher, and I still got together to talk about the big tech stories from the past seven days. We start our discussion with an overview of the new phone that Nokia announced this week, the Lumia 2010, which attracted attention for its 41-megapixel camera — something that prompted TechCrunch's John Biggs to scoff that regular consumers aren't interested in high-megapixel phones.Sweat Equity: From Co-Founders To Co-Investors, Freestyle.VC Invests More Than Just Cash
Jul 13, 6:00PM
When Freestyle.VC co-founder and investor Josh Felser walked into the TechCrunch office a few weeks ago, you could tell something was on his mind. He was in the midst of sorting through a hiccup one of his portfolio startups was having with the Apple App Store. As we sat down, he excused himself for a few minutes to reach out to his contacts to figure out what could be done. I don’t usually find investors this consumed with tactical issues, particularly when it’s for seed-stage startups. But that’s what makes Felser and his partner in crime, Dave Samuel, distinct in the ever-growing sea of angel and seed investors. Felser and Samuel are part of an elite group of co-founders who have not only started multiple companies together but have also seen successful exits for these companies. Together, the duo started Spinner (acquired by Aol for $320 million), and Grouper (acquired by Sony for $65 million). While Samuel and Felser had been making angel investments for some time, they announced a formal $27 million fund in 2011, Freestyle Capital, which makes investments in early-stage startups. What makes Samuel and Felser so intriguing is that they are truly entrepreneurs at heart. They are open about the fact that if they had the bandwidth, they would start another company together. But with family commitments and such, digging into a startup is difficult. So the next best thing, they say, is to help other entrepreneurs, especially at the beginning stages of building a product and business. A Lasting Partnership Felser first met Samuel at a conference in 1996. At the time, Samuel, who is an MIT grad and engineer at heart, wanted to reimagine personalized radio online through Spinner. As Samuel explains, he needed to have someone on the team with more business and sales experience, and he immediately connected with Felser. Not soon after Felser joined Samuel in 1997, their relationship was tested. An unnamed investor came between them and attempted to oust Felser from the company. As they tell the story, this investor would tell Samuel that Felser wasn’t performing, but would say the opposite to Felser himself. But as bad as the investor’s experience was in pitting Samuel and Felser against each other, they were able to move forward and keep the company’s leadership as is. Despite this hardship, this was a turning point for Samuel and Felser’s personal and professional relationships,Gillmor Gang: Batteries Not Included
Jul 13, 5:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — talked Microsoft reorg and the chance it might make a difference. No one is underestimating the power of the Windows giant, but rearranging the deck chairs may not move the needle enough to matter. With Office subsumed in one group and Windows in another, Steve Ballmer has traded one fiefdom for a more amorphous one in which to launder the move to the cloud.Your App Is Slow Because Our World Is Ending
Jul 13, 1:00PM
The meatiest article I ran across on the Internet this week was also--maybe--a harbinger of doom for life as we know it. I mean Drew Crawford's superb piece Why mobile web apps are slow. It's long, and somewhat dense, but definitely worth reading if you're technical enough to follow along. Its upshot: HTML5 apps will be vastly inferior to native apps not just for the next year or two, but for the next 5-10 years, because of fundamental technical limitations inherent to mobile platforms.Z Vector Takes Live Kinect Feeds To Create Stunning Video Art
Jul 13, 4:01AM
This is a bit of a niche product, but it’s still interesting nonetheless. Artist Julius Tuomisto believes that VJs are the next DJs. Just in the same way that a DJ shepherds music lovers through a thoughtful selection of tracks, video artists can guide audiences through live visualizations that respond to music. He and his Helsinki-based firm Delicode have created a new software platform, called Z Vector, that can take data from a Kinect or the PrimeSense Carmine to create live video feeds and visualizations that rotate around 3D forms and people captured by the camera. It’s a tool for live performances, not for programming. You can see how it works in this music video he created with the band, Phantom. Z Vector takes the raw 3D data from the Kinect and puts effects or filters on it like different geometric textures and lines (like in the Phantom video). Or it also can put in distortion fields like in the video below (or particle trails and gradients, too). They’ve used it during live dance performances to broadcast visualizations behind troupes of modern dancers who have recently demoed it at the Venice Biennale, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and SXSW. The beta is free, but it’s a possibility that Tuomisto might charge down the line. The feed from Z Vector can also be broadcast into other devices, even ones like the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset that has hardcore gamers salivating and that recently picked up funding in a round led by Spark Capital.In The Cloud OS Debate, OpenStack's Success Inspires Backlash
Jul 13, 4:00AM
In God we trust. All others bring data. This quote, widely attributed to total quality management pioneer W. Edwards Deming, came to mind this morning as I read an anonymous Tumblr post taking me to task for my "State of the Stack" presentation. Specifically, the author took issue with the analysis concluding that OpenStack has won the open source cloud wars.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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