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Thursday, 27 June 2013
Samsung lures former BlackBerry UK chief for EU business unit
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Renesas to shutter the modem business it acquired from Nokia in 2010
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Skype for iOS update brings unlimited free video messaging, unending joy
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Puentes empujados, los puentes que como su nombre indica se colocan a empujones
Los puentes empujados son aquellos en los que en lugar de ir colocando los segmentos del tablero, ya sean prefabricados o fabricados in situ, uno detrás de otro se añaden por detrás a la vez que se empuja todo el conjunto sobre los soportes, tal y como se puede ver en este vídeo.
Este puente sobre el canal Beauharnois en Canadá es el segundo puente empujado más grande del mundo, con una longitud de 2.550 metros.
Por lo visto este tipo de método de construcción es recomendable para puentes de más de 600 metros de longitud –con los más cortos no es económicamente viable– y con una separación entre soportes de entre 30 y 60 metros, aunque se pueden usar también en puentes con intervalos de entre 20 y 90 metros.
En Construcción de puentes empujados hay más detalles sobre este curioso método de construcción que necesita de unas poderosas máquinas para poder colocar todo en su sitio.
(Vía @juaniquito y @sabemoscons).
- Mover un gigantesco puente de 3.400 toneladas era más barato que reconstruirlo al completo, Un puente de robótico (y un poco amenazador) aspecto, Vídeo: el nuevo cable de suspensión del Puente de la Bahía de San Francisco, y El nuevo Puente de Tacoma Narrows, algunas historias más de puentes.
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/tecnologia/puentes-empujados.html
Square Hires AdSense “Godfather” Gokul Rajaram Away From Facebook
While Square has seen several top senior people leave over the last year, it’s also making up for them with some notable hires.
Today Gokul Rajaram, dubbed the “Godfather of AdSense,” is joining Square from Facebook, where he was the product director of ads. At Facebook, he oversaw the company’s aggressive monetization push over the past year, including incorporating better ad units on mobile devices.
The company says he’ll oversee Square Register, the point-of-sale system that the startup designed for small and medium businesses to use from tablets and smartphones.
“I’ve been fortunate to work for two mission-driven, world-changing companies, and Square’s vision and passion for helping businesses grow is inspiring,” Rajaram said in a statement.
He joined Facebook through the sale of his startup Chai Labs to the social network back in August 2010. Before that, he also was a key leader in developing Google’s AdSense network.
While Square has lost recent executives like COO Keith Rabois and other senior people like Jared Fliesler to the world of venture capital, Rajaram is a win for the company as it figures out its strategy going forward. The company picked up Francoise Brougher from Google as Business Lead in April. It also hired former U.S. trade representative Demetrios J. Marantis as head of international government, regulatory and policy work last month.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/jASESWf1iRU/
TC's Picks From TechStars NY Summer 2013 Class
We’re here at the TechStars 2013 Summer class Demo Day, and the graduates are nothing short of delightful, from a service that helps church congregations make donations to a Fitbit for cars to a service that helps expecting moms plan for baby’s arrival.
The TechStars accelerator is one of the nation’s biggest and most notable tech startup programs, and the NY-based class should make Silicon Alley proud. So without any further ado, here are TechCrunch’s picks from the 2013 Summer class:
Triggermail
Fayez Mohamood and Mahmoud Arram started Triggermail to help ecommerce companies send their customers relevant triggered emails in a similar fashion to Amazon’s personalized email service. For those of you who don’t have a degree in marketing, triggered emails are marketing emails that are sent after a certain event (or trigger) like your birthday, 90 days passing since you’ve visited the site, or your purchase of a product on the web site.
As it stands now, the founders believe that marketers are segmenting users based on geography, age and gender, but that there could be a much higher ROI where there is a deeper level of personalization. When Triggermail signs up a client, they give the client code to put on their ecommerce website to track users’ behavior. Meanwhile, the client gives Triggermail the copy for emails, and Triggermail returns with the five best triggered emails that brand should send. The brand chooses which emails they’d like, and then Triggermail populates the content within the copy for each individual user.
For now, the team is still price testing, but cost to clients should be in the $1000s.
weeSpring
weeSpring was born out of a personal pain point. Co-founder Allyson Downey found herself in tears at a Baby’s “R” Us when she was pregnant with her first child, overwhelmed by the variety and her unfamiliarity with the brands. As she delved into preparing for the baby’s arrival, she found that the standard practice among other expecting mommy’s was an excel spreadsheet, which is then passed around between other mommies for recommendations on brands and things to add to the to-do list.
Clearly, this is not the best use of technology to solve this problem. And so weeSpring was born. The site lists thousands of products that have been recommended by other moms, whether they’re in your social circle or part of the weeSpring network. The site opened to the public in January and went from 300 pre-populated products to now over 1,500 products, with over 30,000 product ratings. Each product has been recommended by at least one user.
According to the founders, a married couple, they built the site expecting to see anywhere between 5 to 10 ratings per user, but rate an average of 15. Users can choose to view recommendations and ratings from friends only, or the entire network, and if you cross 25 ratings you become a featured mom, floating to the top of the reviews thread.
Faith Street
Faith Street is a mobile and desktop network that helps you find a congregation, connect with others, and give to your church. Eventually, the social platform will tap into synagogues, masques, and all of the various faiths, but for now the team of Christ co-founders is working on building up the network for Christian churches.
Churches set up their own specific network for their congregation, wherein events can be planned, prayers can be heard, and (yep, you guessed it) donations can be made. And yes, Faith Street is taking a small percentage of the tithings. I asked them upfront, being raised in a Christian background myself, how they could justify taking a sliver of what is biblically commanded funding for the church. They explained that they believe online giving tools will actually end up bringing more overall money into the church anyways.
Over 12,000 church leaders have come to the platform to sign up for the free service. The team only processed their first donation last week, but in a world where over $100 billion is given to churches each year, they’re likely on a road to quick profitability.
Placemeter
Before we go out each day, there are a select number of circumstances we check, namely the weather. But the folks at Placemeter believe that, one day, we’ll also check to see how crowded or traffic-filled our intended destination is before we ever leave the house.
Using highly sophisticated algorithms and the livestreams already available online covering Manhattan, Placemeter can determine how crowded that Forever 21 is or how packed the coffee shop around the corner is by counting the people walking in and out automatically. In fact, the team only needs 2,000 more cameras deployed to cover the entirety of Manhattan.
Eventually, this will result in a mobile app, but for now the team is working on data acquisition. They don’t only need consumers of their data, but folks who are willing to contribute. After all, Waze has 50 million users, but only around 70,000 contribute data to the mapping service.
That said, Placemeter is asking users to sign up to contribute, and place an old camera phone outside their window to contribute streaming video over Wifi using their app. Early contributors will have access to that data, and an app meant for consumers will be out in the fall.
Dash
Dash is a Fitbit for cars. In every car made after 1996, there is a port underneath the steering wheel called an OBD (on board diagnostics). This port is what allows mechanics to run diagnostics quickly on your car, a practice they often overcharge for. With Dash, users can simply buy the OBD plug-in and connect it to the Dash mobile app to run their own, constant diagnostics on their car.
The app gives them feedback on their driving across a number of touchpoints, including accelerating to quickly, braking too hard, etc. But it also acts as an OnStar-type system, detecting if you’ve been in a collision and calling emergency services. Plus, you’ll always have a gauge on your car’s health and get an estimate from the app of what it’ll cost you to fix a problem.
Dash is available as an iOS and Android app, which is currently in beta. It will operate with a freemium business model, where users can unlock further data about their driving and car through in-app purchases.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/ExYJE8IOVI8/
Promising To Bring Mobile Ads On-Par With Desktop, Real-Time Bidding Startup Gradient X Leaves Beta
After a six month test period, Gradient X is the beta label off its mobile ad platform.
Backed by $3.75 million from GRP Partners (er, I guess that’s Upfront Ventures now) and others, the company claims to bring performance ads on mobile to “feature parity” with other forms of digital advertising. The features highlighted on its website include audience data pulled and normalized from multiple sources, a real-time bidding platform that’s been specifically optimized for mobile, algorithms that predict ad performance, and actionable dashboards (you can see one of those aforementioned dashboards below.
And there are some impressive names involved, both at the company itself and among its advertisers. Gradient X said brands like Western Union, Jeep, Audi, Toyota, Motorola, HTC, and Microsoft have used the platform, while the startup’s founding team includes CEO Brain Baumgart (formerly chief strategy officer at Adconion Direct), CIO Julie Mattern (co-founder and formerly the chief technologist at the Rubicon Project), and CTO Michael Lum (former head of engineering at OpenX).
“To date, agencies, and advertisers have not been able to invest in mobile at the levels they’d like to due to these shortcomings,” Baumgart said in today’s press release. “The Gradient X mobile platform explicitly tackles these issues by providing unparalleled transparency, audience data, and brand safety, all via real-time bidding.”
During the beta period, the company says its grew to provide access to 400 million unique devices and 50 billion impressions. Baumgart told me via email that it continued launching new features during that period too, including support for rich media and video ads, support and tracking for cost-per-install ad units, and its data management platform.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/0nyUhtuf5cw/
Handibot Smart Tool hits Kickstarter, cuts in 3D with mobile controls (video)
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Amazon opens up Kindle Worlds Store, for all your licensed fan fic needs
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Guardian: NSA still collecting Americans' online data under Obama administration
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Anchor is like Facebook for the workplace, launches today on iOS and the web
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PayPal Galactic arrives to address the pressing issue of paying in space
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Verizon reportedly offers more than $600 million to buy Wind Mobile
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Content Recommendation Startup My6sense Raises $2M After Shifting Focus To Mobile Publisher Tools
Personalized content startup My6sense announced today that it has raised $2 million in new funding. It’s also using the announcement to talk about its new focus — the company’s Content Discovery Bar for publishers.
In the past, my6sense used its technology to build content recommendation apps for consumers. Co-founder and CEO Avinoam Rubinstein told me that there was some promising early adoption, but “we actually faced a significant issue of generating revenue on a consumer application.” So the team decided to build a tool for publishers instead.
You can see how the Content Discovery Bar works in the video below. The basic idea: When someone is browsing a news or content app or mobile website, a small “more” tab will appear when they’re ready to see more content. If they tap on the tab, a bar will open recommending content that they might find interesting.
To make those recommendationMy6sense is taking advantage of the technology and AI expertise that it developed previously. And while there are other content recommendation services for publishers (such as Outbrain), Rubinstein noted that none of them are built specifically for mobile. The mobile use case is particularly challenging, he said, because you don’t have the screen space to waste on stories that the reader doesn’t care about.
Publishers can also include sponsored content in the bar, and then share the revenue with my6sense. So even though the company is no longer purely consumer-focused, its business model is still based on advertising.
My6sense is only officially launching the Content Discovery Bar today, but it says the bar has already been used by publishers to recommend nearly 5 billion articles, and that half the users who see the initial prompt choose to open the bar.
The funding comes from an undisclosed investor — my6sense says it was one of the company’s original angels. The startup has now raised a total of $7.5 million.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/KTlTthbnoxE/
La máquina definitiva, versión 2
Desde el departamento de los dispositivos más inútiles del mundo nos llega una versión revisada y tuneada de famosa máquina definitiva de Claude M. Shannon. Hay que ver el vídeo completo porque hay sorpresas hasta el final.
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/hackers/maquina-definitiva-v2.html
Foxconn demos iPhone-friendly smartwatch with health sensors
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Aereo coming to Chicago on September 13th
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Verizon 4G LTE reaches 500th market, initial network build-out now complete
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Passion Capital Cracks Open Data On Investments, Deal-Flow, Founder Salaries, And More
It’s not every VC that publishes annual stats on things like deal-flow, average size of investment, average founder salary, number of exits and startups dead-pooled. But openness — within no doubt carefully crafted limits — is part of London-based Passion Capital‘s brand after it set the bar with its inaugural report last year. And while “openness” is probably the headline takeaway again with this year’s report, it does provide some interesting insight into the workings of an early-stage VC in Europe and what, if anything, has changed for the firm over the last 12 months.
To set some context and give you an idea of its size and how active Passion Capital is, let’s begin by drilling into the first two year’s numbers. Spanning April 2011 to June 2013, the venture capital firm founded by Stefan Glaenzer, Eileen Burbidge and Robert Dighero, and backed by a mixture of UK government funding and private investment, has invested in 34 portfolio companies, two of which have exited and three wound down.
The second-screen football betting app Picklive was sold to Sports Millions for an undisclosed amount, and academic research platform Mendeley was acquired by publisher Elsevier for an amount that TechCrunch pegged between $69-100 million.
The three startups shuttered were Twitter real-time chat service Bonfire, travel site Tripbirds, and wine portfolio app Vinetrade.
Digging deeper, noteworthy is that Passion has only added 13 new startups to its investment portfolio this year — OpenSignal, Memoto, Birdback, ShowMyHomework, CarThrottle, Thread, Future Ad Labs, Hasty, Toothpick, Duego, laZook, and Tray.io — though this doesn’t mean it has been any less active in terms of number of investments, but instead reflects that the fund is maturing when you factor in follow-on and bridge funding as well as Passion’s participation in 3 Series A rounds. In fact, in terms of total transactions (investments, follow-ons, exits, bridges, etc), 30 were made in year two compared to 31 in year one, so not much change there.
Furthermore, Passion has made a total of £5,695,000 in Seed investments, which in turn has gone on to attract a further £35,896,000 from more than 25 different VC funds, though this includes Passion’s own follow-on funding. Looking at the first year’s cohort only, 11 out of a possible 21 have gone on to raise follow-on financing at increased valuations, it says, while 6 are still operating from their seed round financing, and 2 of those are said to be profitable.
That’s perhaps telling, suggesting that Passion got its runway trajectory on the money, but I suspect the real story for many of the startups in its portfolio won’t come until year three. It is still early days after all — can we say Series A crunch?
In addition, Passion has bundled some interesting operational data mainly related to the way the VC firm attracts deal-flow, but also the average salary of the founders of its portfolio companies (£36,149 per annum), some of which I’ve included below.
Deal flow:
Year 2: 1,932 (up 26% from Year 1 number of 1,532)
533 from referrals (up 22% from Year 1)
779 from the website (up 19% from Year 1)
620 from events (up 40% from Year 1)Sources of the investments made:
9 from referrals from our existing Passion founders
7 from within our network (founders were already known to us)
6 from other referrals (not from our founders directly)
3 we proactively sought out (after tracking for some time)
2 from our open office hours
1 from a team which was renting desks at White Bear Yard
Meanwhile, Passion says that the average number of days between a prospective investment first meeting one of its 3 partners to a term sheet/investment offer is 6.41 business days — early-stage VCs are won’t to boast the speed at which they make any offer. It doesn’t say, however, how long it takes to get that first meeting.
It’s also — rightfully — highlighting the fact that it hasn’t charged any of its portfolio companies for legal expenses, closing fees, directors fees, or monitoring fees etc., noting in particular that it’s always paid for its own legal council, with little or no fuss (unlike others).
Of note, Passion says it doesn’t employ a PR firm to act on its behalf, which says something about the PR industry considering they do alright on the publicity front. Actually, Passion does more than alright and other European VCs could probably learn a thing or two from their openness, in every sense of the word.
And in a final boast, the VC firm says that the number of founder CEOs it’s replaced with “someone we’ve brought in” has been zero. That’s likely great news for the starry-eyed entrepreneurs it’s backed. However, like the difficult third album, Passion is now into the difficult year three for some of its portfolio companies, so let’s hope it’s not a case of famous last words.
All in all, though, good stuff.
Keep the openness comin’ — we look forward to next year’s update.
(For more data, see Passion Capital’s own blog post, which includes a rather nice inforgraphic if you’re into those sort of things.)
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Boomerang Android app tames Gmail inboxes with reminders
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Swell Launches A Personalized App For News Radio Listening
Swell, a smartphone app launching today, is quickly becoming my favorite way to listen to spoken-word content.
There are other apps focusing on that kind of content — for example, when we wrote about Stitcher’s growth last year, we said it was starting to sound like “the Pandora of talk radio.” Stitcher, however, actually follows more of an on-demand model — you choose what you want to listen to (although there are also content recommendations). Swell, on the other hand, is closer to the Pandora experience, where you just open the app, hit play, and interesting content should immediately start streaming.
The startup behind Swell, Concept.io, is led by co-founder and CEO Ram Ramkumar, who was previously founder and CTO at image recognition startup SnapTell. (Amazon subsidiary A9.com acquired SnapTell in 2009.) Ramkumar told me that the team has been focused on making the experience as simple as possible — you can start listening to Swell at the beginning of your commute, and as you drive, you only need to interact with it if you want to skip a program.
Swell says that it has partnered with NPR, American Public Media, and ABC News, and it also includes podcasts from the BBC, CBC, Comedy Central, TED Talks, and others. As you use the app, it should begin to understand what your tastes and interests are. Ramkumar said there’s an element of human curation, so that only high quality content makes it into the app, and it also looks at the response from a larger user base to figure out what’s resonating.
Beyond just listening and skipping, users can tell the app that they’re currently looking for content around a certain topic, such as technology, and they can bookmark programs for listening later (which can be useful if you find something interesting that you’re just not in the mood for at the moment). There’s also a WiFi-only mode, where you download the content when you’re on WiFi and then listen while offline, which could be appealing for people who want to go easy on their data plans or who don’t have reliable cell signal during their commutes (like if they take the subway).
I tried the app out last night, and the experience was as seamless as Ramkumar promised. Even though I hadn’t done much to personalize the experience, I still thought there was a nice mix of content, starting off with some of the day’s big news and then moving into less obvious programs about business and culture. It balanced different topics and different program lengths pretty effectively, too. I don’t think Swell is going to replace my subscriptions to my favorite podcasts, but it could become my go-to app whenever I don’t have a particular podcast in mind, but I want to catch-up on the news or hear something thoughtful.
The app is free. Eventually, Ramkumar plans to make money with advertising and premium features. I also asked about whether he’s paying for the content, and it sounds like the answer is basically no, since these podcasts are available for free in iTunes, though the company is currently “in discussions” with some of the content providers.
“It’s a new product, and the business model is evolving,” he said, adding, “We respect content provider’s wishes. We don’t alter the content, and we’re giving it additional distribution.”
Swell is launching for iOS today, with plans to add Android soon. You can see a quick demo of the app in the video below.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/4141EHh6YYc/
Visualized: The $15,000 Westinghouse 4K Whiteboard
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FCC listing exposes new Roku Streaming Stick remote with audio out
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Cómo se verían desde la Tierra los planetas si estuvieran tan cerca como la Luna
En Mail Online , vía The Atlantic,
Ron Miller ha creado una serie de imágenes que ilustran los tamaños de los otros planetas (...) mostrando cómo se verían en el cielo si estuvivieran a 385.000 kilómetros de distancia —la distancia aproximada a la que está la Luna de la Tierra.
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/arte-y-diseno/como-verian-desde-tierra-planetas-estuvieran-cerca-como-luna.html
Digg adds reader to its iOS app, offers instant Google Reader import
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Un mapa del mundo dibujado con las pistas de aterrizaje de los aeropuertos
The World, Traced by Airport Runways es un mapa del mundo en el que sólo están representadas las pistas de aterrizaje que existen por todo el planeta —o al menos lde os más de 45.000 registrados en la base de datos utilizada para dibujar el mapa.
Existen al menos 45.000 lugares en los que aterrizar un avión.
Para la colección de datos inútiles que mola saber.
Vía Co.Design.
- En este mapa se distingue a los usuarios de Twitter según el teléfono móvil que utilizan
- Mapas de uso de Flickr y Twitter por el mundo
- Mapa del mundo de las relaciones en Facebook
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/arte-y-diseno/mapa-mundo-dibujado-pistas-aterrizaje-aeropuertos.html
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