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Tuesday, 30 April 2013
iOS 7 Design Rumored to Have Completely New Look
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Engadget Giveaway: win a 32GB iPad (4th-gen), courtesy of AnchorFree!
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Hulu: Paid subscriptions have doubled to four million in past year
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Now In 20 Cities, Grouper Brings On-Demand Group Dates To The iPhone
Since graduating from Y Combinator in 2012, Grouper has been on a mission to help busy, overworked young people get away from the glow of computer screens and out into the real world to meet new people. To do that, the startup sends its members on “Groupers,” which are essentially blind, group dates between two groups of friends, designed to take the awkwardness out of one-on-one dating.
Eager to avoid being seen as another dating site, the startup instead wants to appeal to younger generations who prefer casual meetups over drinks at a local bar to traditional “dinner-and-a-movie” dates. Since launch, the service has expanded into 20 U.S. cities, and members have shared hundreds of thousands of drinks. Up until now, Grouper has existed exclusively on the Web, but today the startup is looking to take its offline social network to the next level by bringing Groupers to the iPhone.
“Grouper has always made more sense from a phone,” says founder and CEO Michael Waxman. “As a device, it has the ability to get out of your way and let you enjoy the real world, which is what we think Grouper is all about.” To make the dating experience more manageable, Grouper allows anyone to sign up, choose two friends who are up for a blind date, and pre-pay for a round of drinks at a local bar.
The service then matches your trio with another group of three — for now, three guys and three girls — using your application, Facebook info, algorithms and some human curation to match you with a cool date. No profile creation required.
On its web service, members have been able to tell the service when they want to go on a Grouper, and the startup will take care of everything else, including choosing the location, making the reservation and paying for the first round of drinks. If the date is a bust, members are only roped into one round of drinks and can make a move for the exit thereafter. If it goes well, they can pay for a second round themselves, or head to a new location.
While this makes the experience more casual and takes the hassle out of planning, it still requires users to plan in advance. That is the biggest selling point of Grouper’s new iPhone app, which, besides streamlining the process for mobile, now allows members to schedule Groupers on-demand. Starting this week and rolling out over the next few months, members will be able to organize Groupers on-demand, in under an hour.
Inspired by other apps that act like a remote control for real life, like Uber, Waxman says, on-demand Groupers allow users to tap a button, get matched with three new people they’ve never met and schedule a Grouper the same night. The iPhone app comes with a mobile concierge service, so that members can message back-and-forth with the group who makes the reservations. It also automatically sends a confirmation email to both parties.
Another cool feature is that Grouper connects to your Instagram account so that you can snap pics while you’re out on your date, which are automatically pinned on a map by location so that users can tap through, checking out Grouper’s candid date shots. At the end of the date, like Lyft or Uber, the app asks members to rate their experience.
However, unlike the traditional “four star” approach, users can rate their Groupers on a sliding scale. If the date went horribly, it will automatically ping the startup’s customer service team so that they can try to help resolve the issue and take steps to make sure the issue doesn’t happen again.
Going forward, Waxman says that Grouper will look to add other integrations that complement its mobile experience, like being able to order an Uber to take your group to and from the date. While he wouldn’t specify, Foursquare or Yelp integration would jive with its mobile strategy, allowing users to view recommendations on nearby restaurants, bars and attractions.
Waxmans says that, while features like allowing those already in relationships to organize double dates are on the long-term map, in the near-term they will be focusing on additions that make the current mobile experience better and easier. Plus, anything that Grouper can do to add value for its 400 partner bars will be a win over the long-run and make city-wide expansion easier as it scales.
Because the on-demand feature is just launching today, I haven’t had a chance to test it live and thus can’t vouch for it, but having seen a demo, it looks great and does make a lot more sense in terms of user experience for what the company wants to be strategically over the long haul.
Check it out for yourself here.
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Twitter opens up ad-buying to all US users, brings new tools to self-promoters
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Hasselblad stops production of V System cameras after 17 years
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Acer Aspire V5 11.6-inch notebook leaked with $450 price tag, unexpected AMD Temash chip
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LeapFrog's LeapReader pen teaches reading and writing, on sale in July for $50
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Is This Tiny Tank the Comfiest Wheelchair Ever?
It might look like a one-seat sofa capable of traversing almost any terrain on the planet, but this compact electric vehicle is actually designed to be a highly maneuverable and comfortable alternative to a traditional wheelchair. You won't ever see it cruising down sidewalks, but one day they might be crawling all over hospitals.
The treads allow the Unimo to easily tackle six-inch steps, and with a zero turning radius it can even spin itself around inside an elevator. The EV's seat automatically adjusts its angle when the tiny tank is rolling down an inclined slope so the passenger always feels secure. And in terms of speed it maxes out at just under four miles per hour, keeping hospital pileups to a minimum. [Nano-Optonics Energy via Tech-On!]
via Gizmodo http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/excerpts/~3/zJ6zvJbh8ak/is-this-tiny-tank-the-comfiest-wheelchair-ever-485804786
Fred Wilson: Money Is Information, Like Bits, And We Want To Invest In Ways Of Moving It
Fred Wilson, legendary New York venture capitalist and partner at Union Square Ventures, is the latest VC to highlight his interest in startups that help move money, “an area that is still very much up for grabs,” in his opinion. “Money is information, like bits,” he said today, giving currency a spin that puts it in a continuum with the many blogging and content companies that his firm has invested in over the years. (That list has included Twitter, Tumblr, FeedBurner, del.icio.us and Disqus.)
Speaking on stage today and continuing on the e-commerce theme, Wilson added that he is also interested in more startups focused around marketplaces. Wilson is also an investor and board member at Etsy.
Two days into TC’s conference, bitcoin has been a buzzword that’s already come up more than once among the investors on stage. Yesterday, Chamath Palihapitiya of Social+Capital Partnership called bitcoin “Gold 2.0″ as he described how he invests in bitcoins not just as an investor in startups, but as an individual mining them himself. Earlier in the day, Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz also said he plans on investing more in bitcoin startups.
Wilson described his interest as about the movement of money. “We’re interested in forms of currency and money,” Wilson said, highlighting in particular the way that there are still a lot of areas where companies can come in to bring down the costs of taking money from one place to the other. “If I’m sending you money, why should that cost me or anyone?” he asked.
Highlighting Dwolla, one company that focuses on this area, Wilson also mentioned that Square, Stripe and Braintree are three other companies he rates highly in this space, but he also said that money is “still very much up for grabs. There is way way more to do.”
On another monetary theme, Wilson today also reiterated his support of companies in his portfolio that were investment targets in pre-revenue phases, but are now moving into stages where they are starting to monetize. One of the big poster boys for this transition has been Foursquare, led by Dennis Crowley, which effectively spearheaded a new space in mobile with check-in services but has more recently been trying to convert that into an actual business, often with some very public attacks about how well that business is proceeding.
“I think Foursquare is doing great,” Wilson said today. “I think Dennis has gotten through the hardest thing you can do in a company, which is to turn a product into a business. That is difficult, and it reminds me of where Twitter was a few years ago. I think he’s gotten behind that now.”
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/43XwQloczNY/
M-Files Raises $7.8M Series A For Its Metadata-Powered Enterprise Content Management Solution
Finnish startup M-Files, a provider of a metadata-powered content management solution targeting the enterprise, has closed a €6 million (~$7.8m) series A round led by DFJ Esprit, with participation from Finnish Industry Investment. It says it will use the fresh injection of capital to fuel it growth plans in the U.S., and bolster sales and marketing via partner channels globally.
Described as shunning the outdated folder structure traditionally used by enterprise-wide document management systems, which is said to date back to the ’80s, M-Files’ solution is based on a metadata approach that cares less about where documents/content is stored — on-premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid of the two — and instead manages information based on what it is. One way to think of its approach, says the company, is the way a user’s iPhone doesn’t surface the device’s file structure but only the content and related metadata, where you’d expect to find it, such as music and the iTunes app (tracks, artists, genre etc.).
Or, as M-Files CEO Miika Mäkitalo says in a statement, “Think Enterprise Document Management 2.0, or the combined power of Dropbox AND Documentum but for enterprise-scale businesses.”
Okay then.
To the end user, files show up on their desktop just like any shared drive. Navigation is via the Windows Explorer UI, while Windows applications are supported using standard “File Open” or “Save” commands. M-Files also integrates with other enterprise systems such as CRM, ERP and Accounting systems, including Salesforce CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM (online and on-premise), Dynamics GP, AX and NAV, and NetSuite.
Having expanded out of its home base of Tampere, Finland, M-Files already claims a number of enterprise customers in the U.S. such as AstraZeneca, SAS, Pandora, the United Nations, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Charles Schwab, Hecla Mining, and Hill+Knowlton.
Alongside today’s funding, the company is announcing that Jim Geary and Bob Suh, described as “proven technology leaders” (Accenture, Perot Systems, and Pedestal Software), and DFJ Esprit’s Mikko Suonenlahti, have joined M-Files’ Board of Directors.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/Tg7ujsJpCco/
John Borthwick Of Betaworks Talks About Starting A Business In New York (Spoiler: It's A Good Idea)
John Borthwick and his investment company Betaworks made news last week by acquiring Instapaper, a popular read-it-later app. However, he’s not just looking for companies that are situating themselves on the virtual plane. Instead, he recommends entrepreneurs seriously consider New York as a launch spot, especially if they’re in the media, ad, or hardware game.
Borthwick sees the value in encouraging startups to grow in the New York area but he’s not big on tax subsidies simply because it creates an unusual precedent that could, in the end, force a not-so-lean startup to realize they have run out of cash too soon once the tax bill comes.
The company also launched Open Beta, a place users can visit to see cool new products that the company is building before they’re officially launched.
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The Flattening of iOS and Other News You Need to Know
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I Am Stereoblind, But the 3DS Lets Me See the World as Others See It
I cried the first time I held a Nintendo 3DS. The experience was a revelation that I'll not soon forget, and even if everyone stopped making games for it tomorrow, my blue 3DS XL is not going anywhere. That little machine is a window into a part of human experience that most people take for granted, but which is otherwise inaccessible to me.
124 Millimeters of Depth
I am mostly stereoblind. Stereoblindness is a blanket term for any condition that prevents a person from perceiving depth using binocular vision.
Depending on whom you ask, it affects somewhere between 3 and 15 percent of the world's population, which creates an interesting demographic hurdle for the 3D television industry. Some people are stereoblind because their vision in one eye is severely impaired, others because their brains are unable to coalesce images from both eyes into a three-dimensional result.
I'm very slightly cross-eyed. Not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough that my lines of sight intersect about 10-12 inches in front of my face and continue in divergent directions.
Basically, I have double vision all the time.
Childhood eye therapy and surgery (not LASIK—I had sutures on my left eyeball) helped a bit, but most of the time I just use one eye and ignore the other. Being stereoblind isn't that much of a handicap; I can't see Magic Eye images, and 3D movies are just 2D movies with lousy contrast, but that's about it.
I say I'm "mostly" stereoblind because despite my eyes' poor grasp of trigonometry, the optical center of my brain seems to work just fine. I discovered this the first time I held a 3DS and played Pilotwings Resort. To be perfectly honest, I really didn't expect much from the console. But clever readers have already noticed that my sight lines meet at just the right distance for holding a 3DS.
After playing with the depth slider off for a few minutes, I slid it up out of sheer curiosity and saw something I had never seen in my life: a third dimension.
This is how other people see the world all the time.
Not only was I "seeing into the screen" the way so many others feel when playing a 3DS for the first time, I was seeing in a direction that had previously been literally invisible to me.
It's difficult to come up with a metaphor. Maybe it's what Gomez saw the first time he spun the world in Fez. Maybe you can remember the first time you lay on the grass at night, looked up at the stars, and realized you weren't looking up at all, because there is no "up", and you were suddenly aware of being attached to the surface of a tiny sphere rolling through a vast emptiness. Or perhaps you once looked at an Escher woodcut long enough for the positive and negative space to switch places. I suppose any analogy would be imperfect; I was seeing a new piece of everyday reality.
As silly as it may seem to get an existential epiphany out of a $200 plastic gadget, the apparent solidity of the tiny simulacra on that screen made them seem almost more "real" than the world around me, which looked suddenly flat by comparison. It didn't matter that they had three-digit polygon counts and textures that must have topped out at 512x512. I had never before perceived things as having volume, only a sort of surface area in terms of how much of my vision they took up. It was intoxicating. It was a glimpse into something that I immediately realized was part of everyone else's normal experience. This is how other people see the world all the time. There's nothing magical about the perception of depth.
I had never known it was possible for reality to look this way—for things to look as solid as they feel.
Yet there I was, holding this little chunk of plastic and silicon in my hands, tears streaming down my face because I had never known it was possible for reality to look this way—for things to look as solid as they feel. I couldn't look away. I got a 3DS of my own the next day, and later replaced it with an XL. I revisited Hyrule in Ocarina of Time 3D, stopping and staring at every piece of architecture. I still spend more time running aimlessly through Super Mario 3D Land's gorgeous environments than I do trying to beat the game.
Wouldn't anyone, if it were the only place where things had volume?
Sometimes I despair. Sometimes it's hard to face the possibility of never being able to perceive mountains or forests or ancient ruins or modern cities or my parents or my fiancée with such depth as I can see Link opening a treasure chest inside an illuminated 4.88-inch rectangle. But ultimately, I'm incredibly lucky to have only this minor affliction to contend with. And in any case, it may even be possible to treat stereoblindness.
Until then, I'm keeping my 3DS.
George Kokoris is a senior designer at Rare Ltd. He's an ex-cinematographer, a graduate of Full Sail University, and a former member of Microsoft Studios' college hire program. He yells a lot and puts garlic on everything. You can follow him on Twitter @BurningNorth.
Republished with permission.
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Jawbone is acquiring BodyMedia, makers of health monitoring armbands, for over $100 million.
Jawbone is acquiring BodyMedia, makers of health monitoring armbands, for over $100 million. No further details have been made public about the deal.
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Finally, Phone RAM as Good as the Stuff in Your Computer
Samsung has just announced that it's rolling some pretty exciting new memory into production, which will finally bring computer-like RAM performance to your mobile.
Of course, to work that out you have to sift through all the mention of 20nm manufacturing techniques and LPDDR3 naming. What you really need to know is that it's fast: it can transmit data at up to 2,133 Mbps per pin. That's twice as fast as the previous mobile memory standard, and means it's possible to transmit three full HD videos—17GB!—in one second over the new Samsung chip when it's embedded in a phone.
It's efficient, too, with the shrinking of the chip's geometry apparently providing a 20 percent increase in efficiency. All that, and it's possible to squeeze 2GB into a stack just 0.8mm in height. Expect to see this stuff hit the next generation of super phones within the next year—and notice a big difference, too. [Engadget]
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Thorsten Heins: tablets aren't a good business model, BlackBerry aiming to lead mobile computing in five years
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Track180 Wants to Bring You News You Haven't Already Seen
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Jawbone Opens 'UP' Platform to Other Apps
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Jawbone acquires health-tracking pioneer BodyMedia, opens API to developers
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Leap2 Raises $1.6M For A More Social And Image-Centric Approach To Mobile Search
Search startup Leap2 is announcing that it has raised $1.6 million in new funding. It’s also releasing new versions of its iOS and Android apps.
Building a better search experience than the existing players is a pretty tall order. In Leap2′s case, it sounds like the focus really is on the experience, incorporating more images and social updates into a unified search result.
Mixing different media into one list of links may not sound particularly new, but founder and CEO Mike Farmer told me via email that Leap2′s goal is to give you “the whole answer,” so there’s one result with all the content you’re looking for, and you don’t have to visit a number of different sites to piece things together.
For example, Farmer said that if you wanted to search for a list of brunch spots on Sunday morning, Google will give you “a hodgepodge list of results,” so you’ll end up “clicking back and forth” between restaurant websites, Twitter, Yelp, and Google Images. He added:
Now let’s imagine you run the same search through Leap2. Rather than a returning a simple list of links, Leap2 pulls in content from all over the web, providing you with visually engaging, organic results relevant to your query. Using the same set of keywords, your results are now a combination of websites, social conversations and images. Instead of clicking back and forth through a list, you now have one-stop access to scroll through much more dynamic results.
The new round was led by Dundee Venture Capital, with participation from OpenAir Equity, Linseed Capital, and Wichita Technology Corporation. Leap2 had previously raised $280,000 in seed funding.
As for the new apps, they tweak the existing experience in a number of ways, most notably by adding a new Leap2 Live homescreen, which displays trending topics and articles. I played with the app a little this morning, and while I’m still getting used to the functionality, I’m definitely impressed with the design, particularly the way it packs a lot of information into the small screen.
Leap2 plans to launch web version soon too.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/xpr5Gn8YaBE/
RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg that "in five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have
RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg that "in five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore," and that tablets are "not a good business model." Which is maybe true if you sell PlayBooks and less so if you sell, say, 20 million iPads every three months.
via Gizmodo http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/excerpts/~3/WTj6v_PyYe8/rim-ceo-thorsten-heins-told-bloomberg-that-in-five-yea-485777599
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