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Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Virus-based sensors find superbugs in minutes, may lead to safer surfaces
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Kwikset Kevo Unlocks Your Door with a Magic Touch
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Microsoft's Amy Hood named CFO as Peter Klein departs
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Hipstamatic launches Oggl, an all new photo app with subscription model
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Facebook Phone Is Now Just 99 Cents
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Slickdeals' best in tech for May 8th: Samsung NX1000 mirrorless camera and Amazon Kindle Fire
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Neil Gaiman: I Would 'Definitely Not' Wear Google Glass
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Roku can now tell you how to get, how to get to Sesame Street with new PBS channels
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Identified Looks To Solve Social Media's Dirty Data Problem For Recruiters With Help From Former LinkedIn Data Gurus
In November 2011, Identified emerged out of public beta on a mission to create a better professional job search engine. Built on top of Facebook data, Identified set out to nibble at LinkedIn’s lead in this space by giving both job seekers and companies a better way to connect — and find talent. To do that, the startup offered a product that it promised would become something akin to the “Google Page Rank for people,” assigning a numerical rank (out of 100) to professionals and companies based on their education, career path, social footprint and more — a la Klout.
By the following summer, Identified had attracted three million active users and had imported 10 million profiles from Facebook, which it used to secure a sizable $21 million series B financing round, led by VantagePoint Capital and Capricorn Investment Group, along with participation from Tim Draper, Innovation Endeavors, Chamath Palihapitiya and more. After this early buzz and validation subsided, however, Identified was met with the challenge of having to convince and incentivize the younger generations to claim and fill out their Facebook-derived profiles on its platform — not such an easy task when so many people already have a litany of online profiles to manage.
But doing so is critical for Identified, because without users claiming their profiles and adding more data, an Identified profile isn’t worth much more than any other. Plus, it means the company has fewer data points with which to work when trying to assign an accurate score or effectively tracking a user’s career progress. As such, Identified has spent the last nine months in relative silence, hiring data scientists and designers and building out its team in an attempt to create technology that would set it apart from the field and enable it to begin monetizing.
Today, Identified is finally unveiling what it’s been working on over the last year: Patent-pending artificial intelligence technology called “SYMAN,” which aims to organize the masses of disparate, incoherent professional data that lives in our social media profiles in order to identify new insights into the job market. Essentially, Identified co-founders Brendan Wallace and Adeyemi Ajao tell us, SYMAN is an attempt to provide a solution to a problem many social media companies have struggled with for years: Unstructured, disorganized and inconsistent data.
For the enterprise, startups (or really any company) to make use of social media data in a way that’s actually valuable and contains actionable insight, that unstructured, messy social data needs to be cleaned and structured in a way that makes sense. For example, “dirty data” as the co-founders call it, makes it difficult to deliver high-quality search or analytics products — part of the reason why Facebook’s GraphSearch hasn’t yet seen substantive adoption from recruiters and partly explains why LinkedIn’s career map didn’t take off, respectively.
By putting social media data in a clean, organized format, companies can more effectively ingest this data to power recruiting, human capital management, CRM, marketing and a host of other enterprise products. To help solve this problem, Identified partnered with a team of former LinkedIn data scientists to develop SYMAN. Inspired by some of the early work that LinkedIn did on its professional dataset, the startup is applying that methodology to a much larger trove of professional data: Facebook.
While one might not think of Facebook as being the go-to site for professional information (especially as many are keen to keep their social and professional profiles separate), with over one billion people on the social network, there’s still an enormous amount of professional data to be gleaned from its profiles. Facebook’s dataset is, as one might expect, more than five-times the size of that of LinkedIn, far less structured and much less complete.
That’s all well and good, but how does it work? Without revealing all the nuts and bolts behind the patent-pending technology, SYMAN’s data architecture enables a machine to draw inferences about the meaning of a particular data entry based on context in much the same way the human brain does. In other words, knowing that someone wrote “Analyst” as their job title on Facebook might not be of much help when making predictions about their ideal professional career. However, by considering complementary and related data, like their education, company and friend, SYMAN can infer that the person is in fact a “Systems Analyst” at Cloudera.
Comparing biographical, professional and educational data against the career path of a “typical” systems analyst, Identified can now predict that Palantir, for example, might be the best (and most logical) next step in the career path for that particular analyst. The data schema and learning algorithms behind SYMAN, Wallace says, are inspired by pioneering neuroscience research proposed by Jeff Hawkins (the founder of Palm and Handspring) and Ray Kurzweil, who recently joined Google to develop a similar technology and apply it to pattern recognition.
Identified has also developed SYMAN to create and inform a new product, which is currently in beta and tested by 50 or so clients, called Identified Recruit. Just as LinkedIn used its enterprise recruiting tools to begin monetizing its dataset, the startup hopes to use its new product to enable recruiters to more easily and effectively search and identify candidates based on professional information culled from Facebook. In other words, Identified wants to turn Facebook into a candidate database just as LinkedIn has converted its own for similar uses.
The product is currently being used by enterprise health clients, like Kaiser Permanente for example, to find healthcare candidates, who traditionally have shied away from building LinkedIn profiles, like nurses and patient care professionals, in particular. To give an example of how its new product is being applied in this context, SYMAN was able to find 562 ways in which nurses self-identify on Facebook (how they say “I’m a nurse, in other words).
The technology then maps these 562 different terms to 15 unique categories or “15 different types of nurses that recruiters are actually looking for,” Wallace explains, enabling recruiters to find more in one search than they would be able to otherwise, using GraphSearch, for example. At present, Identified has only “cleaned” healthcare data via SYMAN, but going forward, the company intends to apply the technology to other industries, like finance, education and life sciences — to name a few on the near-term roadmap.
Moving forward, the co-founders tell us that they’re also keen on integrating other datasets, applying SYMAN not only to Facebook, but to LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Quora, Github and others. Though this will take some time, one can also see the company using its new tech to develop analytics products for professionals and companies, like, say, products that would them optimize their workforce and view leads, candidates and more in a centralized dashboard.
Also on the roadmap, Wallace says, is the development of an API for a variety of social media sites, which would allow companies to use SYMAN to clean and organize their data, on-demand. Data-cleaning-as-a-service, in other words. The founders also hope that, through its future API, SYMAN could enable companies to monetize their data for enterprise applications in a way they’re currently unable to do, as well as allowing developers and third-parties to build B2B tools, apps and tools on top of SYMAN’s technology.
Of course, in the big picture, the applications for SYMAN are just beginning to take root, so it’s still too early to say just how effective and attractive this kind of technology will be to other companies. But, based on where Identified was a year ago, it certainly feels like a step in the right direction, especially if it means to monetize in any significant way. Sure, it’s easy to talk about what could be, making Identified’s future plans for its technology seem like pie-in-the-sky-type conceptualizing at this point.
However, the startup does seem to have assembled a team of experienced data scientists and engineers, and the recent addition of two new board members from well-known recruiting and human capital companies may be a sign that the startup is at least moving in the right direction. To that point: This quarter, Wallace says, the company officially added Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan and Max Simkoff, the founder and CEO of Evolv, to its board of directors (as board observers).
As to what he sees as the potential for SYMAN, Simkoff says that he thinks the technology could solve a problem “that plagues big social data and which no other social or professional network has really been able to solve effectively,” and as such, could “uncover powerful insights and relationships buried deep within the Social Web, which have the potential to change how companies pursue talent, manage their workforce, and understand their competition.”
For more, find Identified at home here, more on its recruiting product here and a brief video demo below:
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/e8hDQxEDb1c/
Engadget Primed: The rise (and rise?) of Bitcoin
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Klipsch's Music Center KMC 3 Bluetooth speaker costs $400, will be available in June
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This Is What the World Looks Like Through Google Glass
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Webflakes Aims To Build A Lifestyle Web Destination With Crowdsourced Translations, Raises $3M
A startup called Webflakes aims to bring some of the best international content on fashion, food, travel, and more to English-speaking readers with the help of volunteer translators. The site is officially launching today, and the company is also announcing that it has raised $3 million in Series A funding.
CEO Nathan Shuchami told me that people searching the web can sometimes struggle to find “genuine, authentic content” on a given topic due to language issues. For example, for wine connoisseurs, there are certainly plenty of sites about wine, but the commentary of many French experts is inaccessible unless you speak French.
To address that issue, Webflakes has selected 60 established bloggers in Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Switzerland and Peru and has licensed the rights to their content in every language except the original. Then a team of volunteers translates their work into English and posts it on the Webflakes site.
For now, neither the blogger nor the translator is paid. Shuchami said the blogger gets exposure to a new audience. Meanwhile, many of the translators also do professional translation work, so this is an opportunity to do something more fun and build their portfolio. Plus, Webflakes will donate $1 for every 500 words translated to the charity of the translator’s choice. And in the future, Shuchami suggested that Webflakes might be able to offer revenue-sharing deals to both groups.
But is the global nature of the content enough to attract readers? One advantage, Shuchami said, is that Webflakes is currently focusing on lifestyle topics where the blogger’s nationality should be a particular draw — not just French writing about wine, but also Italian writing about Italian food, Japanese writing about Japanese architecture, and so on.
I poked around the site this morning — I don’t read a lot of lifestyle content, but I thought the range of topics was pretty interesting. The top trending article right now is a French writer on “How To Wear A Bow Tie.” Also on the front page is a Peruvian writer telling readers to “Invite Your Mother To Peru For Mothers Day!” And the translations are usually quite readable, if not always graceful. (To be fair, that may have as much to do with the original post as the translation. And yes, the writing on English-language blogs can be pretty rough, too.)
Eventually, Shuchami said he hopes to add more writers and translators and to expand to other kinds of content.
As for the funding, it was led by Oren Zeev’s Orens Capital, with participation from Audible CEO Donald R. Katz, eBay CTO Mark Carges, Chegg co-founder Aayush Phumbhra, former GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman, former Apax partner Stephen Grabiner, and others.
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Sony lifting development license fee on PlayStation Vita and Mobile starting ... yesterday
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OUYA console gets torn down, found to be highly repairable
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Lockheed Martin's ADAM laser blasts enemy rockets with its HEL beam
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Un panel solar de la Estación Espacial Internacional recibe un «chinazo»
Foto del panel solar agujereado - NASA
En una de las múltiples fotos que hace Chris Hadfield en la Estación Espacial Internacional apareció una sorpresa en la forma de un pequeño agujero en uno de los paneles solares de esta.
Según la NASA, que estima el tamaño del agujero en unos 6 milímetros, este habría sido producido por un micrometeoroide o un resto de basura espacial de 1 ó 2 milímetros de diámetro y con una velocidad de algo más de 35.000 kilómetros por hora.
Este impacto no supone ningún problema para la Estación ni para sus tripulantes, pues no compromete en modo alguno la capacidad de generar electricidad de los paneles, aunque el resultado podría haber sido muy distinto de haberse producido sobre algún cable o caja de conexiones.
No sólo la ISS se ve afectada: esta es una hendidura en la ventana del Challenger descubierta a la vuelta de la misión STS-7. La línea blanca mide 1 milímetro.
En cualquier caso la Estación y sus componentes están diseñados para soportar este tipo de impactos sin mayor problema, y de hecho se estima que se produce uno cada seis meses o así, sólo que normalmente no dejan huellas apreciables, aunque a veces sí se ven, como sucedió con una de las ventanas de la Cúpula.
Es más, en realidad nadie sabe desde cuando está ahí el agujero que fotografió Hadfield.
Son más preocupantes los objetos de entre 1 y 10 centímetros, pues no hay forma de seguirlos desde Tierra y un impacto con uno de este tamño podría afectar la integridad estructural de la Estación.
En el caso de objetos más grandes, son seguidos desde Tierra, y en el caso de que presenten riesgo de impacto contra la Estación normalmente se ajusta la órbita de esta para evitarlo, aunque en alguna ocasión la detección ha sido demasiado tardía como para eso, lo que ha llegado a obligar a tomar precauciones del estilo de cerrar todas las escotillas de la Estación y hacer esperar a sus tripulantes dentro de las cápsulas Soyuz, que servirían como botes salvavidas en el peor de los casos, hasta que pasó el peligro.
Y eso que se dice que la ISS es la nave especial con mejores escudos jamás construida.
(Información adicional vía Science).
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/panel-solar-estacion-espacial-internacional-recibe-chinazo.html
Kwikset introduces Kevo, a smartphone-friendly lock powered by UniKey
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If Payphones Survive, Will They Look Like This?
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Fusion-io's CEO and co-founder step down, new leadership looks to increase growth
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New Huawei P6-U06 spy shots show off black, brushed metallic body
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Syria back online after a nearly day-long internet blackout
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87% of Tech Startups Hiring This Year
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Klout Now Lets You Share Your Expertise on Bing
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Regal outfits almost 6,000 theaters with Sony closed-captioning glasses
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Nielsen includes Internet viewers for the first time, estimates that there's now 115.6 million TV homes in the US
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With ‘Snap Your Stay', HotelTonight Launches A More Visual (And Less Review-y) Take On Hotel Reviews
Before he co-founded last-minute hotel booking startup HotelTonight, one of CEO Sam Shank’s previous companies was the hotel review site TravelPost. And today, he’s launching what he said is a reinvention of the hotel review, optimized for mobile phones.
“What makes mobile different is, mobile’s with you all the time,” Shank said. “With hotel reviews, you’re sort of summarizing your stay. It’s text-oriented. But on mobile, the primary input device is the camera. It’s more photo-based.”
The new feature is called Snap Your Stay, and it asks HotelTonight users to take six different photos during their stay — one each of the bed, bathroom, view, lobby, and exterior, plus a “cool find” of their choice. You can adjust the lighting in a photo, but there are new filters per se.
The photos can be shared on Facebook or Twitter, and they’ll also show up on a hotel’s profile page in the app, sorted by things like the type of image (so that you don’t end up with six pictures in a row of beds) and whether other users liked the photo. And the app will also start featuring a page with recent popular photos.
Shank argued that Share Your Stay allows users to capture their experience during their stay (as opposed to trying to remember it afterwards), and to do it in a quick, convenient fashion — he noted that you can take and upload all six photos with just 20 taps, whereas writing a review would take “thousands.” (Put another way: Typing out an in-depth review on your phone would be a pain.)
Now you might be thinking, “Hold on, that doesn’t really sound like a review. How do I explain that the staff was mean? Or that there were a lot of weird noises at night?” And for now, at least, you can’t. HotelTonight already asks users whether they would recommend the hotel — Shank described that as a quality control mechanism (a few hotels have been removed from the app for low ratings) and a way to make users feel more comfortable about their bookings. Meanwhile, he described Share Your Stay as a way to capture the experience, which will help other HotelTonight users decide whether a hotel is right for them.
When I asked whether he’d consider adding a text review feature in the future, Shank answered that the team was trying to make things as simple as possible to start, and that HotelTonight will enhance Share Your Stay based on what users want.
As for what you get for taking those photos, Shank said that HotelTonight is currently offering a $5 credit for completed photo set. He added, “What I’ve learned with reviews in general is, the reason people give reviews is to give back to the community.”
The Snap Your Stay feature is available today in HotelTonight’s iPhone/iPod Touch app. The company plans to introduce it to the iPad and Android apps too.
HotelTonight is also announcing something called the “HT Price Guarantee.” If you can find a lower price for the same room on the same night on another site, then HotelTonight says it will make up the difference in credits.
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The Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 1PM ET!
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Google Fiber plans Missouri expansion to Grandview
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Keepin' it real fake: China's Codoon SmartBand pays homage to Jawbone Up
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Betaworks-Backed Telecast Brings The TGIF TV Experience To Mobile Internet Video
When this generation looks back to retell the best and most amazing past times of the early oughts, surfing YouTube will undoubtedly be on the list. But as we shift to a more mobile lifestyle, content discovery — with particular regards to internet video — is becoming less and less fluid.
That’s why betaworks is today launching Telecast, a new service that bundles internet video content into an easily digestible, themed package.
Co-founder and hacker-in-residence Matt Hackett (formerly one of the first employees at Tumblr and lead engineer there) came up with the idea for Telecast when he was looking for great video content on his iPad mini. “Right now, the video consumption experience on desktop is very different from that on mobile,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to quickly find high-quality video on your iPad or iPhone.”
To solve this problem, Telecast will bundle top-notch video from all over the internet into a package. This package consists of one to five videos, each lasting around five minutes. But each of these videos will have a common thread.
For example, you might open up Telecast to a package on noted television psychic hotline maven, Miss Cleo, wherein you’d watch a classic Miss Cleo ad, a clip of her on the Jerry Jones show, and then a clip from her confessional documentary on the falsities of hotlines. The trick here is not just threading together common videos, nor is it finding the best video on the web.
According to the co-founders, the amount of high-quality video floating around on the internet is growing by the second, while discovery tools aren’t changing much at all.
The trick, then, is that Telecast actually starts to learn about you. When you first sign up for the service, you’re taken through a cute little mini quiz to determine which channels Telecast should serve up. As it stands now, there are only around 12 channels but that will expand quickly as the service grows.
Once you’ve completed the quiz, Telecast starts to pay attention to what you watch to bring you even better tailored content.
“Watching video content is no longer about six shows in a row on Friday night,” said Matt. “Most of the best video out there is on the internet now, so we’re trying to bring a similar experience to mobile video consumption.”
I see Telecast being big with heavy YouTubers as well as those who only view videos sent directly to them in email or on social media. Both categories of human are interested in finding great video easily on their mobile devices. But to the team, Telecast is much more targeted at someone who isn’t interested in putting in the work it takes to find great mobile video, as opposed to the wanderer who can spend four hours on YouTube.
“We’re really focused on delivering the highest quality video possible,” said Matt. “We’re not an infinite well.”
But what about the cash?
The team sees a number of opportunities to generate revenue from Telecast, but the one they’re most excited about has to do with branded video. According to Matt, some of the best producers on the web are brands, but they have awful methods for driving traffic to the videos that often cost millions of dollars to make.
Telecast believes that they can step in and push users to branded content in a way that feels less like advertising, and more like watching part of a story unfold.
Telecast is available now in the App Store.
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Google Glass Update and Other News You Need to Know
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Google Translate adds five more languages to its repertoire
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Microsoft bringing white space internet, Windows 8 hardware to Tanzania
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Google Doodle Gets Animated to Salute Designer Saul Bass
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Indian government launches Central Monitoring System, watches citizens' calls, emails and internet activity
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Maxthon Cloud Browser adds local network file transfers for Android and Windows
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Hands-on with the Delta Six gun controller (video)
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Delta Six gaming gun returns to Kickstarter, boasts Arduino innards
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