Home- Tweets
- Pics
- Facebooks
- Places I go
- Google+
- Blog
- Career
- Rocky
- The Next Web
- TechCrunch
- Contact
that drew
drew olanoff is a geek. he beat cancer...by blaming it. also brained up "Social Good", Gmail4Troops, BlogAbroad, and other stuffs.
-
Tweets
- This tweet will make you sad. https://t.co/bf5CVRvvpPMay 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @500Startups: So proud of @lovewithfood's big milestone: 100k meals donated to hungry children. #500strong #100kmeals http://t.co/8sTVC7…May 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Why Does Hollywood Hate The Future? http://t.co/nIDMO6ncE0 via @techcrunch
- RT @big_ben_clock: BONG BONG BONG BONGMay 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Microsoft's Cheap Shot At The iPad Actually Points Out Exactly Why Windows 8 Tabs Suck http://t.co/aV4NmMyi3s via @techcrunch
- RT @KIRO7Seattle: RT @gina_svh: North end of I-5 bridge over #Skagit River collapsed http://t.co/m6MLU2XFi7
- And... I'm sick. Ack.
- RT @big_ben_clock: BONGMay 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- I'm at AOL @TechCrunch HQ (San Francisco, CA) http://t.co/6Ia91RDxdt
- OH "Fix your shit."May 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- Report: Google Could Soon Face New FTC Antitrust Probe Into Its Display Ads Business http://t.co/UymKPD49Sl via @techcrunch
- the parse folks are still filling out paperwork. way to rally for a whiteboard, really smart stuff.May 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @ryanlawler: Ex-Googler Ben Ling Brings His Operations Experience To Khosla Ventures http://t.co/FTR36loiaz via @techcrunch
- RT @stevel: I like to think this was due to my kite flying shenanigans this weekend. http://t.co/SLvieJBbsq
- I'm at Facebook MPK 15 (Menlo Park, CA) http://t.co/vyCHP93F4V
- I'm at @Facebook HQ (Menlo Park, CA) w/ 9 others http://t.co/IGEWtR7AE5
- RT @LIVESTRONG: A challenge for today: Think about a time when you overcame something truly difficult. Share your experience in 3 words. #F…
- RT @Techmeme: Twitter Launches TV Ad Targeting And Twitter Amplify For Real-Time Videos In Stream … http://t.co/X5uMnl32le http://t.co/YM0J…
- @didierh dude.
-
Photos
-
Checkins
- AOL TechCrunch HQ410 Townsend St
- Facebook MPK 151601 Willow Rd
- Facebook HQ1601 Willow Rd
- AOL TechCrunch HQ410 Townsend St
- PetSmart3520 S El Camino Real
- Bel Mateo Bowl4330 Olympic Ave
- Santa Ramen1944 S El Camino Real
- Starbucks3790 S El Camino Real
- Antone's Cocktail Lounge32 37th Ave
- AOL TechCrunch HQ410 Townsend St
- Moscone West800 Howard St
- AOL TechCrunch HQ410 Townsend St
- Peet's Coffee & Tea370 4th St
- Moscone West800 Howard St
- Moscone West800 Howard St
- Fernando's Mexican Restaurant63 37th Ave
- AOL TechCrunch HQ410 Townsend St
- Moscone West800 Howard St
- Starbucks3790 S El Camino Real
-
Google+
- Drew on Google+
-
Posts
New Tumblr is nice on android.
- 0 plays
- Good gravy.
(No streaming audio available)0 plays - 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
- 0 plays
-
Info
- Summary
My name is Drew Olanoff, and I have over 10 years of marketing, PR, customer service and support, relationship building and management, product management, and technical support experience in multiple verticals. Online, including mobile.
I coined the phrase "Social Good" for online charitable movements, and invented the online "donation by action" charity model. I founded #BlameDrewsCancer
I pride myself on being a connector. Connecting people, stories, information. I have worked under some amazingly talented and gifted PR pros while working for startups as a "Director of Community", "Community Manager" and "Technology Evangelist". I have the knack of working stories both mainstream as well as online. Bridging that gap is my passion.
I am a leader AND a team player, and strive for nothing short of success. My life motto is "failure is not an option".
Specialties: podcasting, videoblogging ,blogging, community management, social networking, technology evangelist, tech, technology, marketing, pr, outreach, customer service, social media, product development, UI, UX, mobile, user acquisition, technology trendsExperience- Sept 2012 - PresentCommunity Director / TechCrunch
- May 2009 - PresentFounder / BlameDrewsCancer.com
During my personal fight with Hodgkins Lymphoma, I created a website that leveraged tweets to raise money for charity. During my treatment, I was able to:
- Participated in official LIVESTRONG events as a Global Envoy
- Appeared on both national and local news (CNN, Fox Philadelphia) to talk about our mission
- Held a 24 hour livestreamed marathon to raise money for LIVESTRONG
- Worked with Drew Carey to raise money by auctioning off the Twitter handle @drew
Additional Information-
Websites:
-
Interests:travel, music, creativity, technology, gadgets, games, management, training, mentoring, leading, new media
-
Tweets
- Moneyball got robbed. So gonna kick that artsy fartsy dog's ass.
- Happy anniversary @thatdrew and @Melbellie. I promise I won't tell anyone who my favorite is. If it makes you feel any better, it's close.
- Running for president.
- I'm thankful for whipped cream from @starbucks. Oh and for @Melbellie @thatdrew too. And @adrianbellie I guess.
- @Alyssa_Milano right back atcha! <3
- I'm dog tired. Long flight. But I got some bacon!
- Why does @Melbellie and @thatdrew get to pick pumpkins? I like pumpkins. Jerks.
- Sorry @thatdrew. I'm so damn cute, I make everyone want to talk to you. If it helps any, they're dumb.
- I get to fly and see @Melbellie tomorrow. Not a happy visit though :(
- Both of my parents work from home. This sucks. Can't even lick my junk in privacy anymore. I need a break. #rufflife
- Fan of @bifnaked's music even though I don't understand the words. Well, I don't understand ANY persons words really.
- I want to move to Ohio.
- Where the frig am I. What is this Ohio????
- you should feel how soft I am right now.
- sometimesmytweetsdonthavespacescuzigotnothumbs.
- oh and don't forget to do number one AND number two, even if the ground is wet. #hurricaneirene #wooftip
- to all of my furry friends out there on the right coast, please stay safe and take care of your people #hurricaneirene #woof
- come home @adrianbellie :(
-
Posts
- May 24, 13
Billed as an “anti to-do list” application, today sees the launch of Mentor for iOS, which aims to become your platform of choice for keeping track of what you want to do (as opposed to what you have to do).
It wants to achieve that by using what the Factory Berlin startup behind the app says is the same “failproof mechanic” that makes us meet our deadlines and be on time at work: social context.
Mentor basically aims to help people achieve whatever they choose to achieve, whether that means adopting a healthier diet, reading more books, exercising more often or picking up a new language.
The service harnesses social context for personal goals by creating a community of people that ‘mentor’ one another.
While users keep track of their various activities and share their progress, others can engage and make sure they reach their goals.
A team of six has been building the Mentor app, which is similar to the services offered by US-based rivals like Lift and Everest, since January 2012 and gathered over a thousand testers from 22 countries to date.
During the three-month beta phase, Mentor says its community created over 600 different activities, which were accomplished over 5,000 times and ‘applauded’ with more than 30,000 likes and 5,000 comments.
The iOS app is today making its formal debut in the App Store, backed by a six-figure seed funding round from investors such as Felix Petersen (Plazes, Amen), Matthias Spiess (Spreadshirt), JMES Investments and others.
Is it an app you can see yourself using? Why (not)?
Image credit: Thinkstock
- May 24, 13
Yahoo gave its photo hosting site Flickr a major revamp this past Monday, but already — four days later — the service has suffered its first significant outage after going down at 22:00 PDT, 06:00 BST (though one Twitter user suggests the site has been down for an additional two hours).
UPDATE: Bye bye Panda, Flickr is back and working as usual after suffering four hours of down time.
The redesigned Flickr sports an entirely overhauled user interface, has a new Android app and — perhaps most notably – 1TB of free storage was made available for all users. But it seems there was more, as Yahoo also introduced a Fail Panda (it’s twist on Twitter’s famous Fail Whale?) which is making its first public public appearance for today’s outage.
The cute photo (below) actually comes courtesy of Flickr user toyokazu, but that doesn’t wash over the fact that the site is already experiencing issues keeping itself online, which could well be down to its users taking advantage of the gigantic storage options on offer.
Given that Yahoo has moved away from the freemium model, it is now competing more evenly with Facebook and others for your photos, so keeping the service online is an absolute must.
While Flickr holds a key advantage, in that it stores photos at their original resolution (sans compression), thist doesn’t amount to much if users can’t get into the service for sustained periods of time.
Hopefully these are just early teething problems that don’t manifest into anything regular.
We reached out to Flickr to see if the company can provide more details beyond this tweet:
Experiencing slowness or having trouble accessing the site? We’re on it, and are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible. #badpanda
— Flickr (@Flickr) May 24, 2013
The fact that Flickr is actively promoting a hastag (#badpanda) that highlights its own downtime is interesting. Most companies would prefer to avoid mention of their failings, but Yahoo/Flickr is embracing it.
Headline image via Getty Images
- May 24, 13
Google will reportedly use Samsung’s organic light-emitting diode technology (OLED) in Google Glass – a wearable computer that should be available for consumers by the end of this year.
A Korea Times report cited sources as saying that the company’s top management recently approved a proposal by Samsung Display, which would enable the South Korean company’s OLED displays to be used on Google Glass.
“Samsung will supply its high-end OLED screens for Google Glass. This is a really big thing because its means that Google shares confidential data with Samsung on its futuristic projects,” an executive at one of Samsung Display’s local parts suppliers said in the report.
Google CEO Larry Page is said to have recently inspected Samsung Display’s OLED production lines in Tangjeong and received a brief about details of the business.
In a key note speech on Thursday at the Society for Information Display forum in Canada, Samsung Display CEO Kim Ki-nam also hinted that OLED on silicon could be used for glasses-type, augmented-reality devices much like Google Glass, according to the report.
There have been reports that Google is concerned over Samsung’s dominance, but that was dismissed by Sundar Pichai, the new head of Android. Samsung’s Galaxy S4 recently passed 10 million channel sales within one month of its launch, becoming the company’s fastest-selling phone ever.
Earlier this month, a report by Strategy Analytics said Samsung was the “undisputed king of the global Android smartphone industry” for now, and that it believed Samsung generates more revenue and profit from the Android platform than Google.
In a sign of closer cooperation, Google recently took the step of announcing a new version of S4 running stock Android (version 4.2.2), which will be available on Google Play starting June 26. Google’s Nexus 10 tablet is also manufactured by Samsung.
Image Credit: Justin Sullivan via Getty Images
- May 24, 13
Sony posted its first positive financial results since 2008 this month, and next stage of its financial rebuilding sees it seek to raise 150 billion yen (around $1.5 billion) in order to pay off maturing debts and invest in technology and equipment.
The electronics and entertainment giant aims to raise the capital by selling bonds to Japanese retail investors. The bonds have a five-year maturity rate and are priced to to yield 0.8 percent to 1.4 percent growth over the period, according to a filing [PDF] and details reported by Bloomberg.
The bonds will be issued on June 19 in what is the first time that Sony has targeted individual investors. The initiative follows a similar strategy from operator SoftBank, which is raising capital as it waits to close out a deal to acquire Sprint in the US. Both strategies are aimed at capitalizing on favorable exchange rates.
Sony raised the same amount — 150 billion yen — when it last sold notes in November 2012, and today’s announcement comes as the firm continues to push its rebuilding process forward, having streamlined its business considerably since Kazuo Hirai took up the reins as CEO last year.
Initiatives undertaken to cut costs include: decoupling its Sony Ericsson joint venture; selling off its chemical products businesses for $730 million and offices in Tokyo for $1.2 billion and New York for $1.1 billion; divesting shareholdings in a number of companies — including a 13% stake in DeNA for $470 million— and cutting employee head count by 10,000 worldwide, 1,000 of which were in Japan.
Headline image via Toshifumi Kitamura / Getty Images
- Viki expands its music video collection, bringing Universal Music’s full catalogue to Southeast AsiaMay 23, 13
Exactly one year (to the day) after it began offering music content, global video streaming site Viki has announced a deal with Universal Music that will see it offer the label’s entire worldwide music video collection in South Korea and nine markets in Southeast Asia.
Viki made its debut streaming movie and TV shows from a diverse range of countries and global broadcasters, including NBCU. It makes the content accessible to global audiences thanks to its unique, crowdsourced translations, which are managed and translated entirely by its community.
Last year, the Singapore-based company landed deals to stream music videos from Warner Music, SEED Music Group of Taiwan and Korea’s LOEN worldwide. Now, users in South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, The Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam will gain access to 7,500 music videos from Universal Music’s global roster. That includes US artists like Jay-Z, Ne-Yo and Lady Gaga, as well as those from Korea, other parts of Asia and worldwide.
Razmig Hovaghimian, CEO and co-founder of Viki, tells TNW that the move to expand its music catalogue makes perfect sense since it “cross-pollinated” its TV and movie content in many markets, such as Korea, where a number of music artists also act or appear in TV shows. Not to mention that it will bring music videos from truly global stars in a number of markets in Asia that are not served by streaming services.
Hovaghimian says Viki in the process of introducing new content to its global markets after it took time to review and analyse how its content was being consumed. Interestingly, he says that there are some unusual patterns emerging, for example Korean dramas are particularly popular in Saudi Arabia — thanks to the subtitles — while Bollywood is popular worldwide.
That opportunity to search new audience segments that, without Viki’s subtitles, would struggle to consume content in their native language is attractive for music companies, which can broaden their reach using the service.
That’s the message from Loo Yew Ming, VP of Digital & Business Development in Southeast Asia for Universal Music Group International, who comments thusly:
We see a lot of potential in Asia and Viki offers an interesting and innovative way for our artists to engage fans who don’t speak their language. At the same time, translations help fans discover new music from artists they’ve never connected with before.
Hovaghimian also reveals that mobile is becoming a prominent platform for Viki, with video consumption from phones and tablets overtaking that of desktops in a number if markets, including Singapore.
That is, he says, in part due to a deal that sees the Viki service bundle on the Samsung Galaxy S4. For now, that deal is operative in Singapore only, but Viki is in talks to expand it to other “significant markets”, Hovaghimian explains.
Viki fans in the selected countries can access the following initial 10 channels as of now, the remainder of Universal Music’s collection will follow very soon:
Headline image via piitaaraq / Flickr
- May 23, 13
Google on Thursday announced Gmail users will soon be able to see relevant emails, Google Drive files, Calendar events, and so on as they type out a query. The search feature is rolling out to US English users “over the coming week.”
For many months now, Google has been running a trial of the feature for those users who specifically chose to opt-in. The company has now apparently deemed the test a success, and is thus ready to push it out, at least in its home country.
Here’s how it looks (notice that the query hasn’t been typed in completely and results are already popping up):
As you can see, results in the Google search box feature not only the usual email messages, but also information that Google considers to be relevant, as well as content from other Google services. We can presume that the company will continue to expand the list beyond just Google Calendar and Google Drive.
This is part of Google’s broader plan to unify all its services under one search roof. Gmail is arguably the company’s most popular product, so it makes sense to start there.
Sagar Kamdar, Director of Product Management, Universal Search at Google, in August discussed this vision under what he referred to as “Universal Search.” He noted email is a natural extension for the company, saying that “Gmail is almost larger than our web corpus and it continues to grow.”
One day, it’s easy to imagine being able to search in Google on your Android phone and see everything from your emails to files to photos show up, regardless of where they’re stored. This will naturally only work if you’re signed in with a Google account, a practice which of course the company wants to make a habit so it can track you everywhere and serve you all the more relevant ads.
See also – Google lets you add Calendar events directly from Gmail by clicking on a date and time, English-only for now and Gmail is getting quick action buttons that let you RSVP to events, rate restaurants, view flights, and more
Top Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images
- May 23, 13
Microsoft has clarified that the next iteration of Kinect, the motion tracking peripheral unveiled alongside the Xbox One earlier this week, will be coming to Windows next year. We had previously known that the device would eventually be supported by Windows, but didn’t know when.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is keeping quiet in regards to how developers will actually be able to take advantage of the new Kinect; the firm simply stated that it will share more details at its BUILD conference next month.
Microsoft did share a number of potential use cases with us, however. The company highlighted how Kinect for Windows could be used in particular for “interactive displays in retail environments,” rehabilitation and fitness applications, as well as education and training software.
The company clarified that the existing Kinect sensor serves retail environments well, but that HD video will “make this a lot better,” especially for augmented reality displays. Microsoft also shared that the rehabilitation and fitness use case is “most exciting for us.” The company stated that the “need for extremely high precision human tracking is critical,” and the next generation Kinect features a whole new level of fidelity to make this possible.
New Kinect, new
The new Kinect offers an ultra wide-angle 1080p HD depth camera, which should offer professional recordings and video calls for apps such as Skype, as well as improve its sensitivity and practicality in small living rooms.
The device captures RGB color video at around 30 frames per second and comes with a few interesting parlor tricks, such as the ability to monitor the user’s heart rate. Kinect has always been an input device for the Xbox first and foremost, but it’s a fairly unique piece of hardware that has also attracted the attention of the modding community.
Who knows what Microsoft has planned this time around. Perhaps it will simply sell the peripheral separately and let developers do as they please, as before. Or, there’s a chance that the company will integrate it somehow with Windows 8, introducing a new user interface similar to Leap Motion.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
- May 23, 13
A new piece of Android malware has been discovered that can intercept your incoming text messages and forward them on to criminals. Once installed, the trojan can be used to steal sensitive messages for blackmailing purposes or more directly, codes which are used to confirm online banking transactions.
The malware in question, detected as “Android.Pincer.2.origin” by Russian security firm Doctor Web, is the second iteration of the Android.Pincer family according to the company. Both threats spread as security certificates, meaning they must be deliberately installed onto an Android device by a careless user.
Upon launching Android.Pincer.2.origin, the user will see a fake notification about the certificate’s successful installation but after that, the trojan will not perform any noticeable activities for a while. Here are a few screenshots:
The malware is loaded at startup via CheckCommandServices, a service that runs silently in the background (right-most screenshot above). It will then connect to a remote server and send over the following information about the mobile device to those behind the attack: handset model, device’s serial number, IMEI, carrier, cell phone number, default system language, operating system, and availability of the root account.
The threat then awaits instructions that contain commands in the following format: command:[command]. Doctor Web has found criminals can send the following instructions to the trojan:
- start_sms_forwarding [telephone number]— begin intercepting communications from a specified number
- stop_sms_forwarding — stop intercepting messages
- send_sms [phone number and text] — send a short message using the specified parameters
- simple_execute_ussd — send a USSD message
- stop_program—stop working
- show_message—display a message on the screen of the mobile device
- set_urls – change the address of the control server
- ping – send an SMS containing the text ‘pong’ to a previously specified number
- set_sms_number—change the number to which messages containing the text string ‘pong’ are sent.
The first one allows attackers to indicate the number from which the trojan should intercept messages, meaning this can be used for targeted attacks to steal specific messages. The third one from the bottom shows the criminals have planned for changing servers in case they believe the current one will be shut down.
Although Doctor Web doesn’t say so, the good news here is that Pincer2 is not likely to be very prevalent. It has not been found on Google Play, where most Android users should be getting their apps, and appears to be meant for precise attacks, as opposed to being aimed at as many users as possible.
In short, this malware threat isn’t one that you will likely be hit with, but it is an interesting example of how Android malware is evolving. Our advice is the same as always: only install apps that you know are safe.
Top Image Credit: Flavio Takemoto
- May 23, 13
Three months after launching in beta, TechStars grad Bondsy is releasing its self-titled iPhone app to the public with the goal of helping friends “trade things you can’t put a price on.”
Bondsy first made its debut on stage last year during TechStars NY’s demo day. At the time, the startup was pitched as “the social network of things” — a highly vague, but also quite accurate description. You’ll see why shortly.
Like submitting an item to Craigslist, Bondsy lets you sell, trade or give away just about anything. The key difference, of course, is that with Bondsy, you’re dealing solely with friends. Aside from making the entire process significantly less uncomfortable, trading with friends opens up an entire world of opportunities.
Founder Diego Zambrano says he’s seen everything from apartment rentals for cash to playdates with fernando the dog in exchange for ice cream. Everything from services to like-new, used and found items are fair game. And without restrictions, Bondsy becomes an entertaining way to foster deeper connections with the people you know.
As Zambrano puts it, “when you aren’t forced to pay with money, things get a lot more interesting.” If your interest is piqued, try out the app for yourself, and let us know what you think in the comments below.
➤ Bondsy
- May 23, 13
Evernote has added customizable reminders, one of the company’s most highly requested features, to its popular note-taking app on Mac, iOS and the Web today.
Users will now see a small alarm clock with a tick symbol above each note. Clicking or tapping it once will initiate a new reminder, which can even be static – simply notifying users that it still hasn’t been completed – or scheduled for a particular date and time.
Evernote offers some common deadlines by default, such as tomorrow or in a week, but there’s also a compact calendar for more precise scheduling. Selecting a specific day will trigger another field above, where users can set a specific time to be notified about the note.
While using Evernote, users can also clear the reminder, or just mark it as completed. Upon setup, users can also ask that they receive reminder emails on the day that the note is due.
Ongoing reminders are added to a separate list that sits just above the notes section in the Mac app. It’s clear, unobtrusive and doesn’t take up too much screen space, which is vital for an app like Evernote where there’s already so much information being displayed at once. Users can also click a ‘plus’ icon here to add their own custom reminders alongside a new note.
The introduction of reminders shows that Evernote is prepared to expand beyond a simple note-taking service and begin moving into the same space already occupied by calendar and to-do list apps.
In theory, the feature should streamline users’ workflow; rather than receiving a reminder in a completely different app or service, launching Evernote and then returning to the original notification to dismiss it, everything is now self-contained.
It’s not quite as simple or beautiful to look at as a dedicated service such as Clear, but it’s certainly a start. The new feature follows an update to Evernote Food on iOS earlier this month, which added improved Foursquare integration and new recipe partners.
The company has also teamed up with Korea-based Kakao to integrate its note taking service in Kakao Talk, a cross-platform messaging app with more than 90 million registered users.
Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.
Image Credit: Joern Pollex/Getty Images
- May 23, 13
The HTC First, the only smartphone to come pre-installed with Facebook Home, is no longer coming to the United Kingdom.
At least not right now, anyway.
The device was originally set to launch with local network operators EE and Orange this summer, but Facebook has reportedly decided to cancel all pre-orders and shipments until further notice, due to “customer feedback” following its availability in the United States.
“Following customer feedback, Facebook has decided to focus on adding new customization features to Facebook Home over the coming months,” a statement sent to Engadget by EE reads. ”While they are working to make a better Facebook Home experience, they have recommended holding off launching the HTC First in the United Kingdom, and so we will shortly be contacting those who registered their interest with us to let them know of this decision.”
It continues: “Rest assured, we remain committed to bringing our customers the latest mobile experiences, and we will continue to build on our strong relationship with Facebook so as to offer customers new opportunities in the future.”
It’s a huge blow for Facebook Home. The service, which combines an interactive lockscreen experience with its new cross-platform Chat Heads messaging service, was met with a rather mixed reaction when it was unveiled earlier this year.
The service is available to a large number of Android users to install as a custom app launcher, but it doesn’t come with all of the functionality found on the HTC First. This is because the hardware was designed from the ground-up to take advantage of the software, thereby allowing Facebook to dive a little deeper into the Android operating system.
There have been rumors that the HTC First isn’t selling very well in the United States, but this hasn’t been confirmed with any concrete sales figures. Regardless, the statement from EE shows that at least in Facebook’s eyes, the dedicated smartphone isn’t ready to be sold to the British public.
“We’ve listened to feedback from users on their experience using Home. While many people love it, we’ve heard a lot of great feedback about how to make Home substantially better,” a spokesperson for Facebook told The Verge.
“As a result we’re focusing the next few months on adding customization features that address the feedback we received. While we focus on making Home better, we are going to limit supporting new devices and think it makes a lot of sense for EE and Orange to hold off deploying the HTC First in Europe.”
By putting the breaks on a wider release, Facebook will give itself some time to improve Facebook Home and fix any glaring problems. It’s a sensible move, given that it’s vital both HTC and Facebook make a good first impression with new users.
-
Posts
- May 24, 13
A new report from 9to5Mac and its usually well-connected sources today adds a little more color to what we’ll be seeing from the big iOS 7 redesign rumored to be making an appearance at WWDC this year in June – and what we’ll apparently be seeing is a lot less color. The visual overhaul not only emphasizes so-called “flat design” (avoiding complicated textures in favor of bold, solid tones), but also features the use of many black and white elements across the UI.
The new report reiterates what we’ve already heard – that Ive is heading up a pretty extensive overhaul of Apple’s mobile OS, concentrating primarily on the visual aspects of iOS. Now, though, we get a bit more info about how and why Ive is targeting so-called skeuomorphic elements (those that mimic real-world textures) and additional details about specific elements of the OS that have undergone change, plus redesigned apps and even some new features.
Ive feels that the sorts of heavy textures used in the current iteration of iOS aren’t designed to last, and will quickly take on a dated look, according to 9to5Mac’s sources. Physical metaphors for digital design are a dead end, he apparently believes, and makes for a lack of harmony between and among individual iOS apps like Notes, Maps and Game Center. It’s true that other, more recent takes on mobile interfaces have focused more on unity, like Windows Phone, but it’s also true that from a success perspective, iOS has trounced Microsoft’s newer mobile OS; flat design may have the praise of the tech community, but it hasn’t necessarily proved itself in the consumer arena yet.
Other big changes coming to what people are used to on iPhone include the lock screen mechanisms, which will finally see the iconic lock screen re-envisioned with a “shine-free, black interface” says 9to5Mac. Round buttons will replace the grid for security code input, and notifications might get more useful thanks to expanded interactivity options made possible through multi-touch gestures.
Notifications in general will get some changes, ditching the linen texture background per the report in favor of something more black and white. More widgets are on their way to Notification Center, too, and we could see access included to regularly-accessed settings, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the Airplane Mode switch.
The Home Screen gets a minor but notable visual refresh, losing the shine on buttons and system apps given flatter designs that don’t “pop” quite as much as the current versions. iOS 7 also apparently borrows a trick from Android, adding in panorama-style scrollable wallpapers that continue across home screens, instead of presenting the same static image for each. In general, common interface elements like the on-screen keyboard will undergo a flattening effect, ditching things like drop shadow and toning down the color in favor of greys, whites and blacks. This extends to core apps like Mail, Calendar, Maps and Notes, each of which have more uniformed, primarily white interfaces. Each also gets a unique olor for buttons and highlights, however, providing a strong visual cue about which you’re using while retaining a similarity of design across all the software.
New features reportedly include a standalone FaceTime app for iPhone, as well as Flickr and Vimeo integration, and better in-car tools connected to Maps and Siri for hands-free use. We’ll also see a lot of changes on the developer side, likely with the introduction of many new APIs to unlock more potential for apps, something which has become a common feature of iOS updates.
9to5 reports that we’ll see this arrive for the general public along with new iPhone and possibly iPad hardware this fall. The iPhone version of the iOS 7 redesign might beat the iPad version out of the gate however, as the report claims that Apple’s design and engineering talent are focused on pushing out the smartphone version first. Hopefully we’ll learn more at the WWDC keynote, which is coming up June 10, and where we’ll be reporting live.
- May 24, 13
Netherlands-based hardware initiative Fairphone began around three years ago as a project designed to highlight the use of conflict minerals in the construction of consumer electronics, and then evolved three years later into a full-fledged hardware startup, with the aim of turning its knowledge into action with the building of an ethically sourced, built and distributed smartphone. Now, it’s opening up pre-orders to the general public, beginning with customers in Europe.
The Fairphone needs 5,000 pre-orders in order to begin production, and retails for a total of €325 ($436). That price included taxes, however and what you get for that is an unlocked, 4.3-inch smartphone running Android 4.2, powered by a quad core processor. It has an 8 megapixel rear camera, and a 1.3 megapixel front facing shooter, with dual-SIM trays for easy carrier switching and international travel.
As a smartphone, the Fairphone seems capable enough, but it’s the manufacturing process that’s really core to the concept of the device. The phone itself is made using materials from a completely transparent supply chain – Fairphone is looking at the provenance of each mineral used to make each component, the people who build each part and the processes evolved and their social and ecological impact, and will make all of that information available to buyers and the general public. The idea is to flag stuff that’s being done poorly, highlight ways to make changes, in both the short and long term, and also build a collection of best practices that can be shared with the rest of the industry.
Fairphone initially had opened sales only to the over 16,000 people who signed up to express interest when it initially announced the project, giving them first crack at the initial pre-order run. It seems like the percentage of those that were actually willing to put their money down on a device and contribute to the initial fund was much lower, however, which has prompted the expansion of sales to anyone in Europe who might want to contribute.
The Fairphone is being transparent about the sales process, too; thus far, it has managed to sell 2,333 phones through pre-orders, with 20 days left in its campaign. Hopefully broadening the buyer pool will spark more interest, because the project stands to be able to shed a lot of light on what for many is a completely invisible or poorly understood process.
- May 24, 13
Google is the latest suitor to be reportedly circling around social sat-nav smartphone app Waze. Bloomberg reports ‘people familiar with the matter’ who say Mountain View is considering an acquisition, and that Waze is “fielding expressions of interest from multiple parties and is seeking more than $1 billion”. However sources contacted by TechCrunch have poured cold water on the Google rumour.
We’ve reached out to Google and Waze but at the time of writing neither company could be reached for comment. Update: A spokeswoman for Waze said: “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”
Earlier this month we covered reports that Facebook was sniffing around the mapping and traffic service, with a view to ramping up its mobile efforts. Meanwhile Apple has also previously been linked with a Waze buy – having had its own highly public problems with maps. Google has also previously been rumoured to be interested, as has Microsoft. So that’s the full complement of tech giants all apparently eyeing up the same crowdsourced traffic startup.
Waze was founded in 2007 and has raised some $67 million in VC funding from backers including Kleiner Perkins, BlueRun Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, Vertex Venture Capital, and Li Ka-shing, according to Crunchbase. In February it announced it had grown to 40 million registered users, some of whom it picked up during Apple’s mapgate troubles. Waze has offices in the U.S. and Israel — the latter being where its R&D is based.
A key blocker for any Waze acquisition has been apparent investor conflict over the terms of any deal, with questions about whether Waze would move fully to the U.S. or keep R&D in Israel causing disagreements. There has also been investor conflict about whether to accept a lower, mostly cash offer or a higher offer comprised of more shares, according to our sources. Rumours of big tech suitors like Google sniffing around could also be a way for Waze investors to try to leverage more out of an acquisition — by making other suitors, such as Facebook (whose up to $1 billion interest in Waze we have previously confirmed), up their own offers.
Bloomberg’s sources claim Google and “other large tech companies” — but not Apple — have approached Waze about a possible acquisition since its talks with Facebook become public. However they also say none of the bidders is close to clinching a deal, and add that the talks may fall apart or Waze may walk away and seek more VC funding to continue expanding its mapping program. So really that’s saying everything is still to play for and any outcome is possible at this point.
To our ear, the most plausible-sounding scenario here is that investors are trying to leverage more out of a possible Facebook acquisition of Waze. Especially because multiple credible sources contacted by TechCrunch have told us that the Google acquisition rumour is not at all true.
- May 24, 13
Just four days after Yahoo-owned Flickr unveiled a brand-new upgrade, the site is experiencing major downtime for some—but not all—users.
Flickr tweeted its acknowledgement of the site going down, about two hours ago.
Experiencing slowness or having trouble accessing the site? We’re on it, and are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible. #badpanda
— Flickr (@Flickr) May 24, 2013
While it appears that some users are not seeing any problems, there are others who have not been able to access the site for hours. TNW spotted a tweet from @danielbowen complaining about the downtime that was posted at 5:30PM PDT. That’s almost six hours ago, at time of writing.
But isitdownrightnow.com shows the site is up, and other users like @bestofnatparks posted a tweet about its Flickr gallery about three hours ago.
Flickr’s update, launched just four days ago, overhauled the photo site’s interface with large, high-res photos. This pairs with a recent update of Flickr’s apps on both iOS and Android. Flickr has said that the updated iOS app yielded 25 percent more uploads.
The additional load placed on Flickr’s systems by all the high-res flood coming in is likely to have taken its servers down. Flickr has about 89 million users. The new site upgrade also bumped up each user’s upload quota to a whopping 1Tb. Not everyone’s going to be rushing to reach the quota, but it’s undoubtedly revived a lot of interest from users who have fallen by the wayside in recent years.
- May 24, 13
We’re all familiar with the bill shock associated with roaming abroad with our cellphones. There are plenty of players that allow you to swap out your SIM card and use cheaper traffic, including Cubic Telecom. However, that process is tedious. So Cubic has secured new funding to enable a range of tablets and notebooks to have their technology built into partner devices. To do this they’ve raised a further $5.2 million in funding from Enterprise Ireland, Qualcomm Incorporated, ACT Venture Capital and TPS Investments.
The money will be used to expand globally, and invest in the technology which essentially allows Cubic to operate like its own global mobile phone carrier, not an MVNO. As a licensed mobile network operator (MNO), Cubic Telecom partners with Tier 1 mobile operators to provide coverage in 230 countries. Its Software Defined Network (SDN) works across multiple technologies (3G, 4G-LTE, CDMA and WiFi).
The Dublin based company has also secured contracts with a number of leading Fortune 100 tablet and notebook manufacturers to be in-built into their devices, though these partners have yet to be announced.
The embedded nature of the service means any changes to the internal SIM can be Over The Air (OTA).
Barry Napier, CEO of Cubic Telecom, says they will “enable the latest devices and applications to be always connected anytime anywhere.”
In plain English, that means Cubic Telecom devices can integrate with content and apps. Thus, imagine a world where an app provider asked Cubic to allow its use to be free on Cubic dvices. All it would require would be a simple OTA update from Cubic to its customers. That could be a very powerful place to be.
The company also announced that it will create a total of more than 70 new jobs over the next 3 years, as part of an investment supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Enterprise Ireland.
- May 23, 13
AngelPad, the San Francisco-based accelerator founded by former Googler Thomas Korte, held its sixth demo day yesterday. I wasn’t there (I know, it’s super-embarrassing), but I did get to meet with Korte and partner Carine Magescas today to talk about the newest batch of companies.
Magescas said that in the three years since AngelPad was founded, “the premise of what we had in the beginning has been validated.” That premise breaks down to three main ideas, she said. First, she and Korte “push [the startups] really hard.” That’s particularly important in the company’s early stages, Korte said, because it can be hard for the founders to get honest feedback from their family and friends, and because making a relatively small change can have a big effect on a startup’s ultimate trajectory.
Another reason the partners might be particularly tough on the startups is because they’re investing their own money. There’s no separate fund — at least not yet. (When I asked, Korte said, “There hasn’t been a fund to date,” followed by what may or may not have been a significant pause.)
Second, Magescas said, “We are a really small family.” Twelve startups were chosen from thousands of applicants. The first AngelPad group had eight companies, and there was one with 15, but they’ve settled on a dozen for the last few classes. That allows the AngelPad team to spend a lot of time working one-on-one with each company.
“I feel like it’s better to spend more time with less companies,” Korte said, adding that he’s realized that having a long list of well-known mentors isn’t as useful. There are outside experts who come in and give talks on a specific subject, but it really falls to Korte and Magescas to work closely with the founders. When you have too many different people offering “cookie cutter advice,” Korte said, “It hurts more than it helps.”
Third, they said AngelPad has always had a strong focus on business-to-business companies. In fact, there’s not a single consumer-focused company in the current class, according to Korte — some of them might offer consumer products as part of their business, but none of them are focused on building large-scale, free services that make money from advertising. At the same time, Magescas said they’re open to consumer startups, they just have to be “really good.”
So that’e the vision. Here are the companies, in alphabetical order:
Audience.fm uses data from existing music services to help bands and marketers reach their desired audience. For example, if a band was making a tour stop in San Francisco, Audience.fm could identify the band’s biggest fans, and they could offer free or discounted tickets.
Boxbee is a storage startup that delivers boxes to its customers. You fill the boxes with whatever you want to store, then Boxee picks up them up. It won the best new startup prize at this year’s Launch conference.
Chasm.io is a content marketing network, where influencers and brands share content that they want to see promoted. Rather than getting paid for sharing sponsored content, it’s more of a quid pro quo system, where influencers are rewarded for successful sharing with points that they can redeem to share content of their own.
DroneDeploy has built software for commercial drone operators (just to reemphasize — commercial drone operators, not military ones). The founders are former Googlers with machine
learning PhDs from Cambridge and Edinburgh. We covered the company here.Fieldwire is a mobile task management system designed for workers who are out in the field. For example, it could be used by a team of construction workers while they’re on a construction site.
HumanAPI aims to build an API for accessing all the data that’s being gathered on various health devices, sensors, and services. So instead of figuring out how to work with dozens of different devices, a medical provider could just pull data from HumanAPI.
Iterable is an email marketing startup founded former Google and Twitter engineers. Customers can test different emails and also personalize the messages to each user without any coding.
Pogoseat integrates with existing ticketing solutions and apps, allowing them to offer seat upgrades. Partners already include Ticketmaster, the Golden State Warriors, and other NBA teams.
Roobiq aims to build a layer of voice commands and natural language processing on top of existing CRM systems, so a salesperson who’s out taking meetings could update their CRM from their phone without slowing down to type.
SensorTower has built a marketing platform for mobile app developers, allowing those developers to track and improve their rankings on different search keywords.
TheShelf is a collaboration platform where fashion brands can interact with fashion bloggers. There are already 1,500 bloggers on the platform.
TrulyWireless has built an enterprise phone system that’s cheaper than traditional systems and runs entirely on smartphones.
Interested investors can find the AngelList profile of each startup here.
- May 23, 13
Video ad network Tremor Video has filed for its long-awaited public offering. The company’s shares will trade on the NYSE at TRMR and it wants to raise at least $86 million.
Tremor Video, which runs ads on more than 500 Web sites and mobile apps, disclosed in its S-1 filing that from 2011 to 2012 its revenue increased from $90.3 million to $105.2 million. During that period, its gross margin improved from 35.2% to 41.7%, due in part to the adoption of its performance-based pricing models, while its net loss decreased from $21 million to $16.6 million.
Since its founding in 2005, Tremor Video has received a total of $116 million in funding from Canaan Partners, Masthead Venture Partners, W Capital Partners, Meritech Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Catalyst Partners, as well as investors Jason Glickman, Mark Pinney and James Rossman. Its IPO will be underwritten by Credit Suisse and Jefferies.
Tremor Video is among several video startups that are anticipated to launch IPOs this year. Bloomberg reports that YuMe and Adap.tv have also began planning public offerings as they look forward to strong growth in the video-ad market this year thanks to a boom in online commercials.
- May 23, 13
Adly, a startup that connects advertisers with celebrities willing to post promoted messages on social networks, recently raised $2 million in additional funding.
The new funding came from previous backer GRP Partners and new investor Siemer Ventures. Adly has now raised a total of $7.5 million.
The company also launched a new product this week. It’s the first thing you’ll see if you go to the Adly website — a button that says “Match Me Up!” which allows Adly to analyze a business’ existing content and followers, then find publishers who are a good match to “amplify” their content.
For example, when I signed in with my personal Twitter account, Adly said it found six celebrity publishers who, collectively, could increase my reach 61x and my engagement 31x. They include a blogger/entrepreneur with 103,000 followers, an analyst with 180,000 followers, and a podcaster with 199,000 followers. (I also tried to analyze TechCrunch’s account, but we have too many followers.) Who are these people? Well, you don’t actually get to find out until you actually start a campaign with Adly.
Walter Delph, who became Adly’s CEO a little more than a year ago, said this is part of his larger strategy. One of Adly’s big selling points is the fact that advertisers aren’t just getting access to a lot of eyeballs. By enlisting celebrity endorsers, they’re hopefully prompting lots of conversation and engagement, i.e. reach that’s “earned” rather than paid for. The company’s next step is building more tools to ensure that the conversation and engagement is happening.
To that end, Adly has been adding analytics to track the results of each campaign — the full reach of the message, the replies, the shares and the clicks. That dashboard, however, is really about looking back at a campaign (though customers get the data in real time, so they could adjust their spending accordingly). On the other hand, Delph said the celebrity matching tool is all about looking forward — it’s a way to get people started with Adly campaigns. He added that we can expect more features to come that take advantage of the company’s “reams and reams of data.”
By the way, even though Adly is known as a celebrity endorsement network, it’s actually broader than that. The company has relationships with 75,000 influencers, and Delph estimated that only about 2,000 of them are celebrities in the traditional sense — “By celebrity, what I mean is, if you walked down the street you would recognize them.” The other 73,000 aren’t at that level, but they have influence that’s valuable to advertisers (at least when it comes to certain topics).
- May 23, 13
No longer just an oddly flavored potato chip, the Limon is also a new sexy-time vibrator from a startup called Minna. The company is looking for backers for its “couples’ vibrator”, which just so happens to look like a pink lime-lemon hybrid.
However, the Limon is no lemon or lime. It’s an ultra-powerful bullet vibrator that is controlled by how hard you squeeze it. That is, the harder you squeeze the lime part of the Limon, the harder the lemon-style tip will vibrate.
Minna claims that it’s the strongest vibrator of its type in the world, thanks to the fact that they squeezed a motor made for larger toys into a lime-sized bullet vibrator. Of course, I’m sure the Jimmyjane Form 6 or the Hitachi Magic Wand beg to differ.
The Limon also has a customizable memory, meaning that you can record and playback the vibration levels exactly how you did before.
Interesting, right?
Consider the scenario: Two lovers are chilling with their Limon and one has to go away for a week on some business trip. They can use the Limon the night before, and the lonesome lady will then have a recording of her partner giving her the good stuff. Sexy.
Minna Life – Limon Couples Vibrator from BENT LENS Productions on Vimeo.
The Limon battery will last anywhere between 90 minutes and three hours, depending on how aggressive you are. It’s waterproof, charges by USB cable and comes in both teal and pink.
Of course, we’ll have to conduct a complete review, lest we shamefully leave these claims unverified. But for now, the Limon is looking for backers so that it can be made into a reality. It’s expected to go for $120, but donations start at $25.
- May 23, 13
As great as the web is, I still haven’t been able to kick my habit for buying fashion and lifestyle magazines off the newsstand. One of the things I love the most about monthly glossies are features like Vanity Fair’s My Stuff and Us Weekly’s What’s In My Bag, in which notable people reveal the exact products that they actually buy and use (celebrity chef David Chang uses Sensodyne toothpaste and wears Levi’s jeans, FYI.) It’s just compelling to find out more about people through their stuff.
The folks at New York-based startup Vaunte think so too, and in fact, they think this kind of voyeuristic editorial approach could be the next generation of luxury e-commerce. Vaunte has created a web platform where notable people (think starlets, fashionable executives, designers, and socialites) show off the stuff in their closets — and put things up for sale. Vaunte started off as purely a consignment market that takes 30 percent commission for photographing and shipping seller’s items, but it has since expanded to also sell new versions of the items people show off.
Though Vaunte has made a splash in the fashion news space since its November 2012 launch, it has flown under the radar in the tech and business press. But now for the first time, the company is revealing a bit more on the corporate side. TechCrunch sat down this week with Gilt Groupe veteran Leah Park and engineer/entrepreneur Andy Shin, two of Vaunte’s three co-founders — the third, ex Gilt Grouper Christian Leone, was in Los Angeles working on a Vaunte photoshoot — to talk a bit more about what Vaunte is and what’s in its future (video embedded below.)
First, some numbers: Vaunte has raised $1.125 million in seed funding from Battery Ventures, Maveron, and fashion and retail mogul Christopher Burch. The company has a staff of nine, but is set to expand as it moves into a 6,000 square foot space in Manhattan that will serve as office space and inventory storage. Based on just word of mouth and a few press mentions, Vaunte has grown to 60,000 members and done more than half a million dollars in transactional revenue since launching in November.The big news going forward is that with the launch of its upcoming mobile app scheduled for this summer, Vaunte is set to open up its platform to let anyone display and sell their clothing and accessories on the site. These users will be charged less of a commission than the higher-profile sellers, since they will be responsible for taking their own photos. There is a significant amount of additional technology that Vaunte’s team had to build to make this app scalable to taking items from the general public — quality control on the photos that are taken and having to verify that luxury items are genuine, for example.
It’s an expansion that will put Vaunte in an interesting intersection in the existing e-commerce market — its competitors will now range from Net-a-Porter to The RealReal to Poshmark to Threadflip and more.
Personally, I’m excited to see what Vaunte has in store for its future. The first time I opened the site this week, I had one thought: “Uh oh. I am going to spend so much money here.” I’d imagine that I’m not alone.
Park and Shin stopped by the TechCrunch TV studio to discuss Vaunte’s vision and give us an early look at the new mobile experience. Check it all out below:
- May 23, 13
Bloomberg today reports that Google could face a new U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust probe into its display advertising business. As Bloomberg’s Brian Womack and Sara Forden note, the FCC is looking into whether Google used its strong position in this market to “illegally curb competition.” The investigators, the report also notes, want to see if Google used its display ads business to “push companies to use more of its other services.”
We reached out to Google for a statement about this new investigation but Google did not have a comment on the report.
As Bloomberg notes, the FCC investigation – assuming it will go forward – will likely focus on whether Google used its dominance in the display ad business to “squeeze out competitors in the display advertising market.”
Google’s ad revenue from display ads was about $2.26 billion in 2012 and, according to a report by eMarketer, could hit $3.11 billion this year. According to the same report, Google currently owns about 17.6 percent of the display ad market, followed by Facebook and Yahoo.
Google and the FTC are, of course, old acquaintances. The two have sparred pretty regularly over the last few years, and just this January, the FTC settled its latest antitrust probe with Google after a 20-month investigation. Google, at the time, agreed to make some voluntary changes, including how it handles its AdWords campaigns.
Google also still faces a similar investigation in Europe, where it recently proposed to settle the European Commission’s investigation into its business practices. A number of other countries, including Canada, are also currently looking into the search giant’s business practices.
- May 23, 13
Features:
- Ships with Windows 8 64-bit
- 13.3-inch display running at 2560 x 1440 (221ppi)
- 256GB SSD
- 2GHz Intel Core i7-3537U Processor
- 8GB of RAM
- MSRP: Starts at $1,599, model reviewed costs $1,999
Pros:
- An incredibly high-res display for a Windows laptop
- 2 years of free premium support
- Respectable battery life
Cons:
- No discrete graphics card
- Man, this thing is expensive
Eye Candy Meets Horsepower
Toshiba isn’t exactly known for churning out attractive, high-end notebooks, which is why the company’s new Kirabook is such an oddity. It’s a handsome little thing if you’re into very (and I mean very) understated designs, though I imagine at least a few people will think the Kirabook looks downright dull.
The Kirabook is wedge-shaped like many of its other ultrabook brethren but it’s thankfully very light on branding (save for a small, chrome-esque Toshiba logo slapped on a corner of the Kirabook’s lid), and a finish that comes as a result of the magnesium alloy chassis is nice enough. Sadly, that magnesium frame doesn’t mean the Kirabook is immune to scratches, something I quickly learned after stowing the thing in a checked bag while flying to Austin.
It’s got a respectable spate of ports for an ultraportable too: AC power aside, there are a total of three USB 3.0 ports plus an HDMI out, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader.
If anything, the real eye-catcher here is that sumptuous screen. The Kirabook plays home to a 13.3-inch display running at 2,560 x 1,440 (that makes for a pixel density of 221ppi), and Toshiba likes to crow about it being the highest resolution display available on a Windows notebook. Credit where credit is due, that display is one of the Kirabook’s most notable high points: colors are generally vivid and bright, and the panel seems hardy enough to handle even the most frenzied touch inputs. That’s not to say it’s without its shortcomings though. There’s a bit of light leakage around the edge of the display panel and viewing angles aren’t the greatest — looking at the thing dead-on is pleasant enough, but there’s a bit of color distortion to be seen once you start moving around.
But there’s one big problem when it comes to the display, and it has nothing to do with the panel itself. I won’t belabor the point too much — by now you’ve probably already made up your mind about Microsoft’s divisive OS — but the biggest disappointment is that Windows 8 and the apps that run on it just aren’t completely tuned for these HiDPI screens yet. Cruising through the touch-friendly start screen is a visual pleasure, as is firing up apps like Internet Explorer, Maps, Vimeo, and Netflix since they all thrive on these sorts of displays. Jumping into the desktop is another world entirely, and it’s full of applications and menus that appear blurry and ill-suited for such a neat display. What a bummer.
When it comes to performance, the Kirabook manages to hold its own very nicely. We like running Geekbench around these parts, and on average the Kirabook scored between 7500 and 8000 when it came to running 64-bit benchmarks: very solid numbers, and there wasn’t anything that came up during my day-to-day use that managed to flummox the little guy. That is, except for gaming — the lack of a discrete GPU in a $2000 machine is concerning, and the integrated Intel HD 4000 plus the need to push a crazy number of pixels means that there will be very little Bioshock Infinite running on the Kirabook unless you dramatically crank down the quality.
Speaking of day-to-day use, the Kirabook has more than enough juice to get you through the day. I’ve been toting the 2.9 pound notebook around for the better part of a week, and I’ve consistently been able to camp out in coffee shops and keep the Kirabook going for just over six hours.
There’s little question that the Kirabook is actually a pretty speedy little bugger, but there is a caveat. The downside to all that power is that the tiny fan nestled on the Kirabook’s bum will fire up after even slight provocation, and it’s just loud enough to be grating if you decide to do anything processor-intensive for a while. If you work in environments with plenty of ambient noise it may not be much of a problem, but be warned — those of you who like to work in quiet, zen-like tranquility will probably get pretty miffed.
I haven’t fiddled with many of Toshiba’s older laptop keyboards, but the consensus seems to be that they were largely rubbish. Keyboard snobs may just turn up their noses after a few moments with the Kirabook’s 6 row affair, but despite the fact that the keys feel a bit small I found that using it to peck out posts and emails wasn’t too bad at all after a break-in period. Sad to say, the trackpad was a completely different story.
See, the trackpad occasionally seems to forget what it’s capable of — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to two-finger scroll in Chrome using the trackpad before the Kirabook suddenly stops accepting multi-finger inputs. This may not seem like a big deal to some of you (especially since the Kirabook sports a highly responsive, glass-covered touchscreen) but it’s tremendously frustrating to discover what worked 5 seconds ago doesn’t work any more for no apparent reason.
The elephant in the room here is the price tag that’s attached to this highly portable package — the configuration I’ve been spending time with will set you back a cool $1,999. Toshiba has tried to temper the sticker shock by loading the Kirabook up with full versions of Photoshop Elements and Norton Internet Security (ugh), not to mention two years worth of premium support from a dedicated team of Kirabook specialists all within the United States, but the price differential will probably be enough to make some would-be ultrabook purchasers balk.
Who is it for?
Designers
No. If you’re an artist looking to get some work done, I suspect the blurry, pixelated text and images that result from mixing a hi-res screen and applications that aren’t really ready for it may be enough to get you running for the hills.
On the plus side, Photoshop makes full use of what limited screen real estate the Kirabook affords you and it’s easy enough to get into the swing of things… if you’re willing to squint, that is. Hooking the Kirabook up to an external monitor helps quite a bit, but the sketchy trackpad means you’ll definitely need other peripherals to chip in too.
Founders
No. If you’re a founder looking for a smart way to spend your newly-raised seed funds, you’d probably do well to stay away from the Kirabook. That’s not to say it’s a bad computer, but the crucial bang-for-the-buck factor is notably absent here. The most basic touchscreen-laden Kirabook retails for $1,699, or $100 more than an a higher-end 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro. That’s not an insignificant premium to pay when the Kirabook is marred by a few prominent issues. And sure, you can pick out a slightly less expensive version that eschews the touchscreen, but then there’s really no point in Kirabook in the first place.
Programmers
Maybe? 13.3 inches may seem a little cramped for coding, but that multitude of pixels means that you’ve got plenty of real estate for crafting apps and tapping into APIs. Arguably the price tag is still too steep if all you’re looking for is a machine to run Visual Studio, Android Studio, or good ol’ Notepad++, but there’s nothing here that would immediately disqualify the Kirabook from being a coder’s companion.Bottom Line
You know, for all of the little things Toshiba either got wrong or didn’t execute that well, I still actually really like the Kirabook. The company took a shot on something different, and even though this first iteration isn’t exactly a home run, it has made me rethink the prospect of spending my own money on a Toshiba computer.
Once the Kirabook drops in price (which shouldn’t take long since Intel’s new Haswell chips are barreling down the pipeline), Toshiba’s nifty premium ultrabook may find the success it deserves. For now though, it’s just too pricey and too unpolished for anyone but the biggest Toshiba die-hards to splurge on — here’s hoping that Toshiba manages to firm up the formula when it comes time to whip up the Kirabook 2.
- May 23, 13
Features:
- Convertible laptop
- 13-inch touchscreen
- Up To 128 GB SSD
- Intel Core i5 Processor
- MSRP: $999
Pros:
- Slim form factor works as a tablet and a laptop
- Nice design
- 10-finger multi-touch
Cons:
- Mushy keys
- Accelerator sensing can be frustrating
- Underpowered for the price point
Twist And Shout
Convertibles were all the rage back in the 1950s (thanks to tailfins and the Corvette) and in the early 2000s (thanks to Microsoft and Sony). In the 2000s, however, we saw convertibles in the form of laptops that could twist and turn themselves into tablets. The result, usually, was a not-very-good-laptop folded into a not-very-good tablet.
That’s what makes the Yoga special. This 13-inch laptop is as plain as can be – it has just two USB ports and an SD card slot – but becomes much more usable when you realize the various configurations you can bend it into. For example, as a laptop the screen stays straight up and there is a small central Windows button that you can either press or ignore under the screen bezel. You can also fold the laptop in half along one edge, essentially tuning off the keyboard and making the screen one big tablet. Finally, you can fold the Yoga into a tent, allowing you some modicum of control over the laptop via the keyboard or allowing you and another user to view the screen head-on.
To be fair, the “folding” features are more of a gimmick than anything else. The vast majority of the time you’ll be using this in either standard laptop mode or tablet mode. However, unlike the Microsoft Surface, you don’t have to worry about the screen flopping over at inopportune moments, which is a huge plus.
The Yoga can be rightly termed the perfect Windows 8 machine. Touchscreen access was surprisingly smooth and responsive but it wasn’t mandatory. This is a handsome, cleverly designed laptop that works as both a keyboard-based and touch device. Performance-wise, however, you’re going to take a bit of a hit on this device when compared to similar i5 devices.They Yoga 13 hit a Geekbench score of 4,664, which is low. The i5 MacBook Air, for example, gets about 5,000 other Core i5 laptops can hover at about 8,000 depending on the machine. The laptop lasted for 5 hours of standard use. The Core i5 in this model was enough for most work thrown at it but it’s still considerably underpowered. Other users I talked to mentioned some latency issues with the trackpad although I didn’t experience them during use.
That said, I’m loath to ding the laptop on performance simply because Lenovo did something very unique with their laptop and made something that I’d actually carry. The goal of these reviews is to show some of the most unique and usable laptops available now, not the latest and greatest in terms of chipsets and processors. In terms of speeds and feeds the Yoga 13 does not shine. However, when it comes down to usability and class, the Yoga 13 is a real contender.
Who is it for?
Designers
Yes. Photographers, artists, and media types will love the big, bright screen and the unique “bendable” spine makes it easy to share the screen with multiple users or flip it over to show off a snapshot or sketch. While it’s not exactly a Wacom digitizer – you basically get a capacitive touchscreen that will respond to simpler, passive styli – this laptop is definitely something you can get a little work done on.
I would worry, however, about the limitations of the i5 processor and the on-board graphics. I wouldn’t recommend, say, rendering video or handling massive RAW files. Think of this as a showcase machine, designed to display your work after it is complete.
Founders
Yes. The Yoga is almost custom-built for salesmen and business folk. Want to get a point across? Fold this puppy up and treat it like a mini-whiteboard. Want to give a presentation? Lay it out flat like a tablet and swipe through the slides. Finally, when you have a bit of alone time and need a laptop, it’s right there and ready to go. If you’re running a Windows shop and need something that can act as both a tablet and a PC, this is probably your best bet right now. As an exploration of the Windows 8 form, this thing is great.
Programmers
No. I’m not certain that this is the right laptop for a coder. It’s definitely a cool idea but the value intrinsic in the folding hinge is lost on folks who probably need the machine to act as a primary typing device. I’d recommend looking at this thing in terms of whether or not you’d use the touch features on a daily basis and make your decision that way.
Bottom Line
The Yoga is a gimmick, to be sure. However, I think it does a good enough job at being a laptop and a tablet that the interstitial positions don’t matter as much. The Yoga 13 is everything the Surface was supposed to be and, although I do enjoy the Surface Pro, the Yoga is a superior experience.
- May 23, 13
Salesforce.com met analyst expectations for its first quarter with non-GAAP earnings per share of 10 cents. Total first quarter revenues were $893 million, an increase of 28 percent on a year-over-year basis.
Subscription and support revenues were $842 million, an increase of 29% on a year-over-year basis. Professional services and other revenues were $50 million, an increase of 25%. It had operating cash flow of $283 Million, up 33%. Salesforce also raised its 2014 fiscal year reenues to an estimaged $3.835 to $3.875 billion.
Salesforce.com is on a bit of a roll. Gartner nmed it the number one CRM platform in the world this past quarter. CEO Marc Benioff said in the earnings call that it had a record number of SAP customers moving to Salesforce.
(We will update the story as more information comes available.)
- May 23, 13
Pandora has had a busy quarter. In March, the social radio company saw its long-time CEO Joe Kennedy abruptly step down, leaving the board to scramble to find a replacement. On the bright side, Kennedy’s exit, while likely a result of stress, followed relatively good times for Pandora. And it’s continued to push forward since.
Pandora launched an ad-free version for Windows 8 in March, surpassed 200 million users (with over 140 million accessing Pandora via mobile) in April, then launched a “Premieres” station for U.S. users and deepened its Facebook integration with a new Timeline App.
Today, Pandora’s first quarter earnings reflected this flurry of activity, as the company saw GAAP total revenue increase 97 percent year-over-year to $83.9 million (with non-GAAP mobile revenue of $86.7 million), which outpaced mobile listener hour growth at 47 percent year over year. Meanwhile, total revenue came in at $125.5 million, representing 55 percent year-over-year growth and non-GAAP total revenue of $128.5 million.
What’s more, share of total U.S. Radio listening for Pandora grew to 7.33 percent in April — an increase from 5.86 percent in the same period last year.
This news followed a strong earnings report from Pandora for the fourth quarter as well, thanks chiefly to mobile revenue growth of 111 percent year-over-year (to $80.3 million), which caused the company’s stock to jump for joy.
Based on this performance, Wall Street expected the trend to (mostly) continue for Pandora in the first quarter, with forecasts pegging revenue at $123.9 million (on losses of $0.10 per share) for the quarter, compared to a loss of $0.09 per share for Q1 last year — and revenue of $123.5 in Q4. And so it did.
Of his company’s performance, Kennedy said:
Mobile listening hours and mobile ad revenue reached record highs, with growth in mobile ad revenue exceeding growth in mobile listening hours. During the quarter, we successfully implemented a mobile listening limit, enabling us to manage our content acquisition costs with minimal impact on listenership or revenue growth. Pandora’s subscriber base surpassed 2.5 million, adding more net new subscribers in the quarter than in all of fiscal 2013, giving Pandora the largest US streaming subscriber base of any music service.
It’s also interesting to note that Kennedy resigned after last quarter (as mentioned above), yet Pandora’s release today names him as Chairman and CEO. It seems either Pandora’s copy editors need more coffee or their communications team knows something we don’t. Perhaps Kennedy’s resignation (due, understandably, to heavy stress) was a bit more abrupt than intended and announced early. Although that’s not totally clear at this point.
All in all, it was a strong quarter for Pandora, with advertising revenue showing a 49 percent year-over-year increase to $105.1 million, with non-GAAP subscription and other revenue coming in at $23.4 million — a 114 percent year-over-year increase. Non-GAAP basic and diluted EPS were $0.10, right in line with Wall Street’s expectations, while the company ended the quarter with $75.4 million in cash, compared with $89 million after the prior quarter. (Cash used in operation activities came in at about $12.6 million.)
Some other notable metrics: Pandora’s total listener hours grew 35 percent to 4.18 billion for the first quarter, compared to 3.09 billion for the same quarter last year. According to Kennedy, Pandora’s mobile listening hours hit an all-time high this quarter, alongside significant growth of its subscriber base (which Kennedy claims above makes it the biggest in the U.S.).
As to guidance, non-GAAP revenue is expected to fall in the $155 million to $160 million range, while Pandora expects non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of -$0.02 and +$0.01.
- May 23, 13
Postmates is looking to expand its business and make mobile, on-demand deliveries a widespread thing throughout cities around the country — that we already know. The company has been operating in San Francisco for a while, and launched in Seattle about three months ago. But where will it land next?
All signs point to New York City.
Postmates has a mobile app that allows customers to get food from restaurants, groceries and even goods from retailers like the Apple Store or Nordstrom delivered within an hour for a low, fixed price. Thanks to a little scouring of the Internet and some clues that the company has left behind (as well as a photo from a local
hipstertipster), we have reason to believe that the Big Apple will be the next city to have delicious lunches (or anything, really) delivered with just a few clicks of the Postmates mobile app.For those of you in New York, don’t get too excited — yet. People who have downloaded the app there can’t quite use it yet, several of my
friendssources have confirmed. That said, a tipster in New York swears that he saw a Postmates-branded bike courier tooling around the city, and sent along this photo. (Thanks, Jesus!*)Anyway, if Postmates is about to launch in New York City, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise. Back when I talked to him about Seattle, Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann had mentioned it as an ideal market for future expansion.
Oh yeah, and the startup has been trying to recruit couriers on Craigslist for about a month now. The company has also recently been looking to hire an operations manager in New York over the last few weeks.
Want more proof that an NYC launch is probably coming soon? Well, Lehmann is in New York City right now as we speak. Coincidence? We think not.
@ded No idea. I'm in New York. Want me to look into it or is someone on its way?—
Bastian Lehmann (@Basti) May 23, 2013(For what it’s worth, he hasn’t responded to our requests for comment.)
In March, Postmates announced that it had raised $5 million in funding led by Founders Fund as it looks to expand. Other investors include Crosslink Capital, Matrix Partners, SoftTech VC, AngelPad, David Wu, Thomas Korte, Naval Ravikant, Russell Cook, Russel Simmons, Walter Lee, Andy McLoughlin, Scott Banister, Paige Craig, and Jawed Karim.
==
* Tipster’s name was not actually Jesus. - May 23, 13
A new bulletin from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warns that lethal, undetectable 3D-printed firearms may be “impossible” to contain, Fox News reports After a Texas law student designed and released digital blueprints for the world’s first fully printable gun, the files have allegedly been downloaded more than 100,000 times, despite a domestic ban on distributing the files from the U.S. State Department.
“Significant advances in three-dimensional (3D) printing capabilities, availability of free digital 3D printer files for firearms components, and difficulty regulating file sharing may present public safety risks from unqualified gun seekers who obtain or manufacture 3D printed guns,” reads a May 21 bulletin from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center obtained by Fox News. “Limiting access may be impossible.”
The threats to plastic guns are so grave that private citizens who control the distribution channels have banned them from their networks. Notorious free-information rogue, Kim Dotcom, and one of the largest consumer-facing 3D printed manufacturers, Makerbot, have both outlawed and removed blueprints.
Still, they exist on the same peer-to-peer file sharing services that distribute pirated entertainment (and legal software). “Even if the practice is prohibited by new legislation, online distribution of these digital files will be as difficult to control as any other illegally traded music, movie or software files.”
The solution: universal searches. One law enforcement source told Fox News, “The only security procedure to catch [the 3D firearms] is a pat down. Is America ready for pat-downs at every event?”
- May 23, 13
Google almost completely revamped the Google+ photo experience last week, but somehow the company didn’t get around to announcing one of the coolest photo-related features in its repertoire yet: Google now uses computer vision and machine learning to let you search your own photos for things like sunsets, food and flowers. I also tried terms like “cars,” “beach” and “bikes” and Google consistently returned the right results. This search is built into Google+, but you can also use the regular Google search and use the query term [my photos of xyz] to find the right images.
That’s a huge step forward for photo search in Google. As Google rightly notes, “searching for your photos can be challenging because the information you’re looking for is visual.” I know I’m anything but diligent about tagging my photos, so this new search feature actually allowed me to find random images I had uploaded to Picasa Web a long time ago.
As Google’s Vic Gundotra noted when he announced the new features for Google+ Photos at I/O last week, Google wants to help its users manage their photos. “Organizing photos is often a hassle,” he said, but oddly enough, the company didn’t announce this search feature at I/O and instead waited a week before launching it.
- May 23, 13
After being acquired by Facebook, the mobile back-end service Parse has been busy integrating itself into the company, as well as launching new services like web hosting for developers.
The service has built tools to help developers focus on the front-end of their product, while handling all of the messy back-end things like cross-platform compatibility and testing. Naturally, Facebook integration is easier than ever for mobile developers thanks to the acquisition. Its been six years since Facebook’s Platform launched, and during a whiteboard session at its Menlo Park headquarters, the company discussed just how far its come.
Doug Purdy, Director of Product Management, and Mike Vernal of Facebook Platform led the discussion. Ilya Sukhar, who recently joined Facebook with Parse, sat in on the discussion as well.
Purdy set up the conversation about next steps by saying: “We’ve been thinking about how we can provide tools to developers to enable a more cross-platform world. We’re trying to create a platform that developers can build something that spans over devices and makes people the center. Regardless of the device that you or your friends are on, everyone can have a rich experience.”
Sukhar, co-founder of Parse, talked a bit about Parse’s beginnings and day four at Facebook:
If you think about applications broadly, there’s the front-end, and below the hood there’s a lot. The data side, how you sync it back to the server, the databases. None of these things bring value to the users or differentiate apps. Our SDKs make this dramatically easier for everyone.
I was originally building mobile apps myself. I was spending a lot of time building things over and over again, things that were quite hard and painful. It’s time that I could have spent on the actual user experience or the utility of my app. So I decided to build Parse. We’ve grown from one person to 24. Since day one, we’ve had 80K apps, 200M installed apps.
Generally, the community is very excited. All of our metrics are up and it’s been a really fun time.
It’s good news that things are going smoothly, and it’s clear that Facebook sees Parse as a huge part of its developer ecosystem push for the future. As far as new services, Sukhar says the team, which is still operating independently, speaks to developers about what should come next. One of the top features that gets requested is functionality around push notifications and offline mode.
The clear value for Facebook is that Parse’s platform could be the easiest way to urge developers to use Facebook ads. Once you get rid of the complexity of building out a backend for an app, you can pay attention to promoting your app more. Hopefully that promotion will come via Facebook, as Purdy mentioned comScore’s findings that the site is the top way to discover new apps.
On whether less backend worries will lead to more promotion, Sukhar said: “This is something we’ve heard: ‘Parse has done well for me to get things out to market, but now I need users.’ We don’t have anything specific to announce today, but it’s clear that Facebook has the solution.”
- May 23, 13
Lambda Labs, an early-stage startup out of San Francisco, is preparing to release a facial recognition API for developers working on Google Glass apps. The API will be available to interested developers within a week, company co-founder Stephen Balaban says. The move comes on the heels of a Congressional inquiry into Google’s new wearable technology, which is still very much in the prototype phase.
The startup’s facial recognition API, launched into beta last year, is already used by 1,000 developers, including several major international firms. It now sees over 5 million API calls per month, and is growing at 15 percent month-over-month. Balaban also says that the company has been cash-flow positive since November.
Now that same API has been tailored specifically for Google Glass apps to enable both facial and object recognition.
Applied to Glass, the technology will enable apps such as “remember this face,” “find your friends in a crowd,” “networking event interest matching,” “intelligent contact books,” and more, Balaban explains. (You can see what apps developers are tweeting about here.)
As potentially amazing/horrifying as that technology sounds, any apps using the technology couldn’t do so in real time – that is, you couldn’t just walk around automatically recognizing people you see through Glass. The way Google’s Mirror API works right now is that you first have to snap a photo, send it to the developer’s servers, then get the notification back. The lag time on that would be several seconds at least, and would depend on how fast you could take a photo and share it. A forthcoming Glass software development kit (SDK), though, may change that.
“There is nothing in the Glass Terms of Service that explicitly prevents us from doing this. However, there is a risk that Google may change the ToS in an attempt to stop us from providing this functionality,” Balaban says. ”This is the first face recognition toolkit for Glass, so we’re just not sure how Google, or the privacy caucus, will react.”
The privacy caucus he’s referring to has to do with the Congressional inquiry from earlier this month where eight members of Congress reached out to Google CEO Larry Page with over half a dozen questions about Glass’ capabilities and the potential impacts to user privacy. The Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, a group led by Texas Republican Joe Barton, wanted to know if Glass would collect data from users without their consent, whether or not Google would consider privacy before approving third-party apps, and a host of other things.
One of those questions was whether or not Glass would have support for facial recognition. That’s something Steve Lee, Glass director of product management, has already answered. In a statement offered to The New York Times, he replied, “We’ve consistently said that we won’t add new face recognition features to our services unless we have strong privacy protections in place.”
That’s not a solid “no,” of course. It’s more of a “no, for now.” Glass is simply too new of a technology to begin limiting what it will or will not do, at least in such definitive terms.
Facial recognition, however, doesn’t appear to be specifically prohibited in Google’s API policies, which inform Glass developers what they can and can’t do in their applications. That means, for now at least, Lambda’s facial recognition API for Glass developers would be permitted.
The only cause that would impact its use, according to Google’s policies, is one that says Glass is “not intended for use in connection with applications and services that might be subject to industry-specific privacy regulations.”
Obviously, lawmakers could still enact such a policy, if they chose to do so.
“Assuming Google and Joe Barton’s Privacy Caucus don’t attempt to stop us, [the API] will be available to everybody within the week,” Balaban says.
Google, it should be noted, has long since had the technology to build apps capable of facial recognition itself, but has always tread very carefully to not incite a privacy backlash.
In 2011, there were reports that Google was developing a mobile app that would allow users to snap pictures of people’s faces to access their personal information. That app never arrived, but facial recognition has since made an appearance within Google’s photo-sharing service Google+ Photos (previously Picasa), where users can now opt in to have their face recognized. This makes finding “pictures and videos of you easy,” explains the company’s documentation on the technology.
Perhaps one day, users will be able to “opt in” to having Glass apps identify their faces, too?
Time – and Congress’s reaction – will tell.
Image credit: Glass concept from Jack Morgan on Dribble; Additional reporting: Frederic Lardinois
