FUNKY GREEN: 05/02/13

Thursday, 2 May 2013

The Engadget Interview: Sir Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic and space tourism for the everyman

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Google now has a 'Chief Game Designer' in Noah Falstein

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Songza Launches Version 3.0 With Improved Search, Quicker Navigation, And Revamped UI

Songza, the app that matches expert-created music playlists to your mood or activity, has just released a huge update to its iOS app, streamlining the experience quite a bit and cleaning up the UI to ensure that users are getting the best music to match their mood and activity in the fastest time possible.

To start, you’ll notice straight off the bat that the Concierge screen has changed dramatically, with new colors in the background and the removal of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. But it’s not just about looks. Songza’s smarter now, too.

The Songza team has always prided itself on finding you an amazing playlist to match your mood and settings in just three clicks. Today, they brought that down to one long-press click on any Concierge situation (like Driving or Sweaty Dance Party) to get music playing quickly.

Songza 3.0 also includes a faster way to find music for the situation you’re in, even if Concierge hasn’t predicted it for you. Simply shake the app while on the Concierge screen and you’ll be asked what you’re up to, leading you to the right playlist for the right moment.

One of the biggest pain points with Songza is that it’s difficult to find the right music based on artists. Sure, you can hunt for mixes by genre, mood, activity and artists, but even then you have to sit through most of the playlist before your fave comes on.

Songza 3.0 solves this problem by letting you hunt out all the playlists that include your queried artist, with the mixes that are most relevant to your preferences coming up first. And if that weren’t enough, the app automatically moves songs by your favorite artist to the top of the playlist.

Last, but certainly not least, the new and improved Songza made a few tweaks to its Audio HQ feature, which was debuted in collaboration with Audyssey Laboratories back in December.

Record Store Clerk, a feature that tries to match you with new music based on what you already like, has been baked into the experience on the back-end, rather than remaining as a front-end feature.

Clearly, things have changed a lot in the land of Songza, but the new version comes with in-app tips to help you find your way. Songza has picked up tons of traction since it launched, now boasting 4.7 million monthly active users who spend more than 65 million minutes with Songza on a daily basis.

The update is available now on the App Store.

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Bioshock Infinite Is Your Deal of the Day

The Engadget Podcast is live at 3:45PM ET!

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Google Keep now available in the Chrome Web Store

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Sorcery! on iOS reincarnates Fighting Fantasy books for tablets (video)

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DARPA wants your ideas for a mobile ad hoc network, no internet please

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New App Brings Reddit to Google Glass

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How You Really Look Wearing Google Glass

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Blockbuster releases On Demand video streaming app for iOS

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Instagram 3.5's Photos of You lets users tag each other (video)

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Instagram Adds People-Tagging to Photos

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HTC looks to boost One sales with new weekend promo, offers $100 to $375 for trade-ins

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Microsoft finishes migrating Hotmail users to Outlook.com, adds direct SkyDrive sharing

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Google Hangouts add remote desktop control, lets you play tech support

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Camera inspired by insect eyes can see 180 degrees, has almost infinite depth of field

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Renewable, Recyclable 3D Printing With Wood and Salt

Facebook helps you log back in with a little help from your Trusted Contacts

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Untappd comes to Windows Phone 8, forgoes Metro

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Facebook Ads Startup SocialWire Raises Another $1M, Chief Revenue Officer Bob Buch Becomes CEO

SocialWire, a startup building Facebook ads for retailers, has raised $1 million in “seed extension” funding. The company is also announcing that Chief Revenue Officer Bob Buch, a former exec at Aol and Digg, is taking on the role of CEO.

When I talked to Buch this morning, he acknowledged that when he tells people that he works in the advertising business, they usually respond, “Oh, I hate advertising.” But that, Buch said, is “why I’m doing this.” The company’s goal to is to create advertising that’s a “win win win” — something that attracts customers for advertisers, makes money for publishers (for now that means Facebook), and actually exposes consumers to relevant products. He compared it to his work at Digg, where the ad formats pushed advertisers to communicate their message in “more newsworthy ways.”

In the case of SocialWire, the company’s working on a technology that it calls Dynamic Product Ads. Instead of just showing people a generic ad for a store (“Shop at Nordstrom’s!”), SocialWire can present them with a specific product that’s targeted at their interests, so the ad is much more likely to be relevant and attention-grabbing.

As outlined in a company blog post, the Dynamic Product Ads take advantage of a number of Facebook’s targeting capabilities, including interests and location (so people who live in San Francisco and are interested in golf, Tiger Woods, or something related would see ads for golf lessons in San Francisco), as well as Custom Audiences (so a retailer can use their own data about different customer segments to deliver customized ads).

This is a bit different from what SocialWire’s initial focus of connecting organic social sharing with promoted Newsfeed stories. Buch said the vision remains the same, but the team decided that initial product wasn’t going to grow quickly enough. As it developed the new platform, SocialWire started to get a lot of interest from advertisers, and it’s already working with LivingSocial, Shoedazzle, and others.

“All of a sudden we were off to the races,” Buch said. “We realized, ‘There’s a lot of technology here that we want to build, so we need to raise another round.’”

SocialWire announced a $2 million seed round last fall. Buch argued that the company hadn’t quite reached the point where it made sense to reach a Series A (“you’ve got your product market fit, you’ve got your core technology, now go scale out your revenue”) , so it raised the seed extension instead. The funding comes from new investor SoftTech VC and previous investors First Round Capital, 500 Startups, Accelerator Ventures, and Joi Ito.

Buch also said that he’s taking over as CEO while founder Selcuk Atli becomes executive chairman. He said he really liked that he was the only business person at the company when he joined, because it meant it was “a very technical and product-oriented team.” However, they reached a point where they looked at the work Buch was already doing at the company and “it just made sense” for him to become CEO. Still, he acknowledged that this could be a “sensitive” situation.

“The guiding principle for me has always been transparency,” Buch said. “I wasn’t even willing to do unless it was somethign that Selcuk was totally supportive of and that everybody else wanted. This isn’t a coup or a forced takeover. This is what we all think is the right plan.”

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Kaleidescape's online video store officially opens, promises Blu-ray quality downloads

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This 3D-Printed Cyborg Ear Comes With a Built-In Antenna

Apple iMac now shipping with 256GB and 512GB flash storage upgrades

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Pelican Imaging's 16-lens array camera coming to smartphones next year

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How NASA's Fermi Telescope Sidestepped a Gigantic Space Crash

Skype Video Messaging preview makes its way to Windows 8

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If This Iron Man Flash Drive Can't Protect Your Files, What Will?

Angry Birds Friends now available on iOS and Android, is totally free

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Evomail for iPad set to enter the fray for control of your Gmail inbox

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Reconciliando la historia con los libros de texto: Marconi vs Tesla, Bell vs Meucci…

La radio la inventó Marconi , explicado para niños de 6 años.

¿O fue Tesla? ¿Y el teléfono, no lo inventó el italiano Meucci? (Irónicamente a veces parece como si dependiera de qué Wikipedia consultes).

En fin: es difícil explicar a los más pequeños qué sucedió realmente incluso en la historia reciente, tal y como explican con cierto sarcasmo en Ese punto azul pálido, un recomendable blog sobre popularización de la ciencia.

# Enlace Permanente

via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/mundoreal/historia-libros-texto.html

Gaming League Employee Turns 14,000 Users Into Bitcoin-Mining Zombies

Reddit's reworked privacy policy clarifies data handling, comes into effect May 15th

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Intel names current COO Brian Krzanich as new CEO, starts May 16th

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Traktor DJ gets remixed for iPhone, brings big features to small pockets (video)

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Native Instruments' Slick DJ App for iPad Now Comes in a Bite-Size iPhone Version

Adobe working on Lightroom for iOS, uses cloud compute to edit RAW files (video)

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Google files patent for smartwatch with Glass-like touchpads and functionality

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'Introverted' Evernote pairs with messaging app Kakao Talk (and its 90 million users)

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Drop: un nuevo entretenimiento del creador de Minecraft

Es tan simple que probablemente Notch se lo ha programado de una sentada. Se llama Drop y es uno de esos juegos que tanto nos gustan por aquí: aparecen letras y hay que teclearlas tan rápido como sea posible. Un pequeño entretenimiento que te puede dejar enganchado a la pantalla un buen rato.

De la misma familia y que alguna vez hemos comentado por aquí: