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Thursday, 21 March 2013
The Daily Roundup for 03.21.2013
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Verizon Messages extends unified SMS and MMS to Android, iOS and the web (video)
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Exec CEO Justin Kan Talks Competition, Cleaning, And Future Plans
Hot on the heels of Exec’s Cleaning Service launch in NYC, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to get CEO and co-founder Justin Kan in the studio for a quick chat. We also couldn’t resist checking out the service in action, and thusly hired Execs from the company’s standalone Cleaning app to help tidy up our NYC Aol Ventures crib.
For those unfamiliar with Exec, the concept is quite simple. Exec lets you hire people on a case-by-case basis for errand-running and cleaning. The app originally launched as an errand-running service, letting Execs who sign on to the platform (and pass background checks) run to get you coffee, pick up your dry cleaning, or assemble that Ikea bed for you. You’re charged $25 per hour, the majority of which goes to the Exec and a percentage of which goes to the company.
After realizing that cleaning was dominating over 50 percent of Exec’s orders, the company launched a standalone Cleaning app in February. Since, the cleaning side of the business has expanded to Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and here in New York City.
“We wanted the cleaning app to be the easiest thing you can imagine,” said Justin. “We don’t want you to have to make any decisions.”
He mentioned that most of the current cleaning services force you to play phone tag and call a number of services. Meanwhile, on Exec, you simply open the app and are instantly given the availability for your house cleaning and a quote.
But even though cleaning makes up a large part of the Exec business, we can’t forget about errand-running. I asked Justin how Exec gets users to change behavior, as most people in the younger demographic feel somewhat uncomfortable giving directions for others to do their chores. But Exec has added layers to the app that give you prompts for what you might do with it, like have someone stand in line for you at Brunch. (Justin’s actually used Exec for that very purpose.)
As the company continues to enter new markets, the biggest challenge (according to Justin) is handling the logistics on the backend as the apps scale.
In the past eight months, over 11,000 people have applied to be Exec contractors. Not only does the company have to handle the massive hiring funnel, complete with interviews and background checks, but also handle scheduling thousands of workers with real-time tasks on the spot.
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HBO CEO casually mentions standalone HBO Go option for broadband subscribers, but it's not à la carte
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Google Turns Your Favorite Website Into Smartphone-Controlled 3D Maze
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¿Me pone unas baterías, pero que no se incendien mucho, que son para el Boeing 787?
Una de las baterías modificadas
Ya que nadie sabe todavía la causa del incendio de las baterías de dos Boeing 787 que hicieron que a principios de enero de 2013 se retirara el permiso para operar a ese modelo el fabricante busca modificarlas de tal modo que resulte más difícil que se vuelva a producir otro incendio, y que si se produce, minimizar los efectos de este.
Lo cuento para RTVE.es en Boeing revela los detalles de las modificaciones de las baterías de los 787 .
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Firefox Nightly now packing OdinMonkey JavaScript optimization
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El Planck produce la imagen más detallada del universo primigenio
La radiación de fondo de microondas vista por el Planck, con las anomalías detectadas por este resaltadas - ESA and the Planck Collaboration. Clic para ver en grande
Durante sus primeros cientos de miles de años de existencia el universo no era más que una sopa informe de protones, electrones y fotones a unos 2.700 grados centígrados, y esto hubiera seguido siendo así de no haberse formado lo que los científicos llaman anisotropías en ella.
Estas anisotropías, que se formaron inmediatamente tras el Big Bang para luego crecer según se expandía el universo, son, para entendernos, como grumos alrededor de los que se fueron concentrando partículas que con el tiempo dieron lugar a estrellas galaxias, y a nosotros mismos.
Su huella sigue presente, al cabo de más de 13.000 millones de años, en la radiación de fondo de microondas, por lo que su estudio es de especial interés para conocer más acerca del origen de nuestro universo.
Para ello se han lanzado distintos observatorios como el COBE o el WMAP, que hasta había producido la imagen más detallada del universo primigenio de la que disponíamos hasta hoy.
El Planck durante su montaje - ESA
Pero gracias al análisis de los datos del observatorio espacial Planck de la ESA esta imagen es ya la segunda mejor, quedando este lugar ocupado por la producido por el Planck presentada hoy: Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe .
La imagen recoge datos de los primeros 15 meses de la misión, y se corresponde con un universo con una edad de 380.000 años.
Esos datos obligarán a volver a darle una vuelta a nuestras teorías actuales sobre la evolución del universo tras el Big Bagng, ya que revelan algunos hechos que van en contra de lo predicho por estas teorías.
Se trata de fluctuaciones en la temperatura de la radiación de fondo de microondas más débiles de lo previstas, una diferencia marcada entre la temperatura de esta entre los hemisferios norte y sur del universo, y una zona fría en el hemisferio sur que no se sabe muy bien qué pinta allí.
Así que aunque en general los datos encajan bastante bien con un modelo simplificado del universo, a los científicos les toca ahora refinar las teorías que manejan para acomodarse a los datos.
Y así, por cierto, es como avanza la ciencia: observaciones que permiten formular teorías que hacen predicciones falsables que mediante nuevas observaciones se van refinando.
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/planck-produce-imagen-mas-detallada-del-universo-primigenio.html
Microsoft demos improvements to Bing voice recognition for Windows Phone
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Apple updates iOS Podcasts app with new design, custom stations
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Apple Says 75% of Its Power Comes From Renewable Energy
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Pinterest iOS App Update Makes It Easier To Discover New Pins
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Google reportedly halts print editions of Frommer's guidebooks
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Apple Gets More Secure With Two-Step Verification
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Navigate NYC Subway With Giant Touchscreens
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BlackBerry Travel for BB 10 launches, lets users track price changes and flight status
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The Engadget Podcast is live at 3:45PM ET!
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Apple says it now gets 75 percent of its total energy from renewable sources
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Apple brings two-step verification to iCloud and Apple ID users
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Mobile Rewards Startup Kiip Launches Its Second $100K ‘Build Fund' With Sponsorship From Pepsi
A year ago, Kiip ran a “Build Fund” contest for independent developers, offering $100,000 in prizes. Founder and CEO Brian Wong told me recently that the fund was supposed to be a one-off promotion, but this year, enough developers asked if he was going to do it again that, indeed, he’s doing it again.
Just like the first fund, Wong is looking for the best developers of apps that integrate with Kiip’s mobile rewards system, where users receive prizes from advertisers when they achieve certain goals in an app. There are, however, a couple of changes this time around. For one thing, there are only going to be 10 winners this year, not 20, which means that there’s more prize money for each developer — $10,000 in cash, plus $5,000 in services from partners like Parse, Urban Airship, Amazon Web Services, Crittercism, and Localytics.
The contest is also designed around a theme this year: “Creation.” The idea, Wong said, is to focus on apps that are really doing something innovative and creating new categories, rather than just offering a small tweak on what others have already done.
“We are trying to look for the true creators who literally do not care about anything but just making something great for the sake of it being great,” Wong said.
The other addition this year is that Pepsi is sponsoring part of the Build Fund, specifically by offering sponsorships to the fitness apps that win.
You can read more about the fund here.
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Google Glass and the Future of Head-Mounted Displays
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J.D. Power: average smartphone satisfaction is up, fights are fierce for second place
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Pocket Change Brings Its Rewards-Focused Virtual Currency To iOS
Pocket Change says its mission is to “build the world’s first universal rewards currency,” but until now it has been limited to Android apps. Today, it’s announcing that it’s opening to iOS developers as well.
The company was founded in 2011 and has raised $6.4 million from Google Ventures and others. Co-founder and CEO Ari Mir said that last year, Pocket Change switched its model from being a virtual currency that users have to pay for in apps, and instead became something that’s given to users as a reward for “positive, organic behavior,” say for achieving certain goals in a game. The currency can then be redeemed for both virtual and physical rewards.
The switch turns around Pocket Change’s relationship with users, Mir said: “You cannot build a successful universal currency if you have a negative relationship with the consumer.”
The company offers the currency for free to developers, and it makes money by including sponsored rewards, turning Pocket Change into an ad company. (The sponsorship part of the business is only a few weeks old.) There’s no revenue sharing with the developers, who benefit instead by increasing user engagement — Mir said that for some apps, Pocket Change has increased the number of sessions per user by more than 20 percent in a month.
The virtual currency is now used in 500 applications and reaches 3 million users per day. Mir said that about 20 to 30 percent of those millions actually convert to become Pocket Change users.
As for why it stuck with Android until now, Mir said, “It’s actually really simple. We’re obsessed with building a good consumer Internet experience, so we need to iterate with the product really fast. As an SDK provider, there’s already that lag time.” Adding in the Apple approval process would only make the delay worse.
Now, however, Mir said he’s comfortable with the product and is ready to go cross-platform. He said this was a big demand from existing Pocket Change developers, but he’s also hoping to reach a new group of apps.
Other startups make a similar pitch to developers include Kiip and SessionM. Mir argued that Pocket Change is different from the competition because of the direct relationship it builds with consumers, and because of its emphasis on a non-interruptive experience. He also has an ambitious vision for the company, where Pocket Change could eventually be used to make other purchases on the web, such as getting around a newspaper paywall, and to make purchases in physical stores.
Interested developers can learn more here.
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Apple patent application hints at iPhone that changes orientation mid-fall
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The Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 3PM ET!
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IBM turns metal oxides into non-volatile chips through liquid currents
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Portable Speaker Uses Surfaces to Transmit Huge Sound
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Apple Patent Could Make iPhone Cases Obsolete
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Nintendo European eShop restriction lifted, get your 18+ games at any hour
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Huawei's Ascend G700 exposed, may be Ascend D2's cheaper cousin
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As Mashery Tops 185K Developers, CEO Says Competitor Apigee Is The Pepsi To Mashery's Coke
Mashery API management platform has continued to grow steadily. After growing from 35,000 developers in its network to 100,000 in a year, the company now has over 185,000 developers on its network — that’s a roughly 15% jump from the 160,000 developers the company touted back in July.
But that doesn’t mean CEO Oren Michels is ready to rest on his laurels. In a TCTV interview with TechCrunch, Michels explained that the growth in wearable computing devices (whether it be quantified self or HUD headsets) will provide new challenges and opportunities for the company.
“These devices are compact and connected in ways where they’re bandwidth constrained and processor constrained,” said Michels. “We want to send them exactly the data they need, in the format they need it, and only what they need.”
Although this poses challenges for most API makers, Michels claims that Mashery is poised for this transition with its API Packager tool, which lets someone like a product manager (not a developer) “slice and dice” information down to what’s necessary on various platforms.
But what about competition from Layer7 and Apigee? After all, the API marketplace is far more integral to modern-day business than most people give credit for.
According to Michels, Mashery dominates its market. When asked about Apigee’s API Management products, specifically the deeper analytics platform, the CEO said that “Apigee is a great company, and when the market sees a Coke, they want there to be a Pepsi.”
“So they tend to put us in the same realm,” he admitted. Apigee is a mobile-focused API management platform that recently raised a huge round just a day after Mashery announced a $10 million Series D. The company has put a lot of focus on delivering better data analysis to its customers from its APIs.
Still, Michels said that Mashery’s developer network is 10x the size of the next competitor’s, and that he sees Apigee and Mashery as coming from two very different places.
“They started as a hardware router and software router company and have added some API management stuff,” he said. “We started as a multi-tenant SaaS platform for APIs and have been doing that for the last seven years.”
With over 185,000 developers currently, and over 50,000 apps using Mashery APIs as of July, Mashery continues to try and increase outreach with developers. The company often provides data back to developers, like when they should implement ecommerce applications during times of increased purchasing activity. Mashery also held over 80 hackathons last year to promote use of its APIs.
“Developers seem pretty happy with what we provide,” said the CEO.
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Canon Rebel SL1: The World's Smallest DSLR Camera
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Toasting Success With Cheezburger's Ben Huh
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EE brings its 4G to Cumbria, rural home of the signal blackspot
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