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Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Meet Helpouts, Google's Secret Plan To Bring Live, Video Commerce To Local Businesses

Screen shot 2013-07-24 at 5.00.39 AM

While its roots lie in search, today, Google wears many hats. From self-driving cars and wearable technology to social networking and mobile operating systems, there are few industries where the search and advertising giant has yet to make its presence felt. Lately, however, Google’s expansion has taken a noticeable tack in a more singular direction: eCommerce.


With the outsized success Amazon and eBay have had building online marketplaces that seek to remove the barriers around buying and selling on the Web, it was only a matter of time before Google decided to pull its chair up to the eCommerce table. Today, TechCrunch has learned via tipster that Google has quietly been pursuing its marketplace ambitions under the auspices of a new platform that leverages its increasingly powerful cloud services to power live, realtime commerce.


The product, which has reportedly been named “HelpOuts” and is currently being tested internally in Mountain View, will take shape as a marketplace that enables individuals and small and large businesses to buy and sell services via live video. With the capacity to connect merchants and consumers on both an immediate and scheduled basis, according to our tipster, the platform will allow sellers to create their own profiles and take advantage of reputation management, scheduling and payment features, while offering robust search and discovery tools for consumers.



As its live video infrastructure is increasingly becoming the unifying backend for its expanding roster of realtime products, Google’s new marketplace will leverage HangOuts to deliver services via live video. To that end, the platform will also come integrated with what could end up being a handful of Google products, particularly its young virtual wallet and payment service, Google Wallet.


From what we’ve heard, Google began internal testing of the product in late June, but may be at least a month away from a public release.


In the meantime, from what we can gather from leaked mockups of Helpouts, the platform seems reminiscent of eBay’s recent efforts to expand its own marketplace with the launch of Secretguru, its concierge-style platform that allows merchants to offer a range of services directly to consumers — from business mentoring to beauty tips.



Part of the reason Amazon has sprinted out to such a commanding lead in the eCommerce market is its growing network of fulfillment centers and distribution warehouses, which allow it to produce that magic, online retail bullet of low prices, convenience and speedy delivery. Without a fulfillment network, Google’s own local shopping ambitions seem to be taking a different shape. With Helpouts, Google, like eBay appears to be leaning into the territory of collaborative consumption marketplaces like, say, Zaarly, TaskRabbit and Live Ninja.


According to our source, Helpouts, like these startups before it, will cover a range of categories, including computers, education, food, health, hobbies and repair. One can then imagine services on Helpouts ranging from health consultations and fitness classes to appliance repair support and cooking lessons.


Google has also apparently partnered with a number of brands during internal testing, including One Medical Group, Sears, Weight Watchers and Alliance Frances, for example. At launch, the platform will also reportedly include an array of individual merchants and instructors as well, from yoga gurus to fitness teachers — all of whom will be able to offer both free and paid services to consumers via Helpouts.


According to our sources, with Helpouts, Google is looking to remove some of the barriers that have traditionally stood in the way of the seamless delivery of live services. For example, using Helpouts, a Spanish tutor from Argentina could offer language training to students in Japan, while a Yoga instructor in New York would be able to provide classes to a stay-at-home mom in Wyoming and an appliance repair shop could walk a customer through fixing a broken fan in their laptop — with an Internet connection being the only requirement.


Under the new, “One Google” Era, the company has begun to prioritize a greater collaboration or interrelationship between its products. With Helpouts, one could also imagine how the platform can act as a logical extension of Google’s core search and ads business. For example, customers could connect to retailers and manufacturers to get recommendations and advice on product purchases — or receive guidance on how to set up their products.


This could work to shore up a nagging gap for Google: When it comes to product searches, people no longer turn to Google. It’s all about Amazon. It also wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine Helpouts connecting to YouTube to offer video or lesson playback or integrating with Google’s Nerd Glasses.


Of course, as with any Google product launch, life could be getting a little bit tougher for its smaller (and startup-y) competitors. There is a long list of businesses that either parallel or would directly compete with some part of Helpouts, whether it be LiveNinja, PowWow (which is, believe it or not, founded by a former Googler), Live Moka, InstaEdu, Shmoop and, perhaps less directly, platforms like Angie’s List, Udemy, Skillshare, TaskRabbit, CreativeLive and Curious. Though, admittedly, some of these overlap more than others.


When it comes to Big Data or resources that can be thrown into curating a service offering like this, startups are bringing a knife to a gun fight. Firstly, there’s plenty of room for a more polished, higher-quality product in this space and, secondly, Google has video tech that’s already been widely adopted by individuals and businesses. Not to mention, most startups can’t hold a candle to Google’s marketing machine.


Furthermore, according to our sources, Google has been building Helpouts in complete secrecy — well, until now — and few employees at the company were initially aware of the product, which has been developed by a team of two dozen engineers over the past year. Other than that, details are hazy. Perhaps Sergey and his secretive Google X unit are responsible. Only time will tell.


In the meantime, some may be wondering, if Helpouts is destined for YouTube (or at least HangOuts)-level adoption, or whether this is more of an experiment and it will just end up suffering the same fate as Reader or the geek-adored Wave. While it’s not totally clear just how much marketing spend Google is going to dish out and whether it intends for this to have mass-appeal, but based on what we’re seeing, I would lean towards the affirmative.


Furthermore, while the type and date of the product’s roll out remain unclear, we’ve heard from sources that Helpouts was recently the subject of a company-wide meeting, which suggest that at least a few Googlers are taking this seriously.


Stay tuned for more.









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Perk's Reward-Centric Mobile Browser Now Blocks Unwanted Ads

perk-block-ads


Austin-based incubator Jutera Labs is putting even more of its weight behind Perk, a rewards-centric mobile web browser that blocks out ads when used on tablets.


Perk, which originally started out as a way to give consumers coupons, discounts or airline miles while browsing the web, is now blocking ads. While companies like AdBlock have built up strong web-based businesses with more than 200 million downloads, Perk co-founder Julian Frachtman says that there’s a window of opportunity to do the same thing on tablets, especially as they cannibalize PC usage.


The company partners with affiliate networks to give Perk users deals at about 2,000 online stores. Those stores include big brands like Amazon, Target, Best Buy and Starbucks. There are also deals for frequent flier miles at airlines like Delta, US Airways and Alaska Airlines and charitable donations to non-profits like the American Cancer Society.


Users can explicitly opt into these rewards and there’s a shopping icon in the app’s top bar that lets users scroll through different rewards available to them based on points they’ve earned by browsing the web.


“When people shop online or when they do research online or take other actions like watch videos and fill out surveys, they can redeem these actions for cash or frequent flier miles,” Frachtman said. He says one advantage of blocking ads is that the browser will load pages faster.


The app is still quite small at this point with 5,000 monthly actives, but Frachtman said that once they figure out the lifetime value of a typical Perk users, they can use performance marketing techniques to grow the base. For now, Perk is only available for iOS, but the company plans to bring it to Android in a month and a half.


Jutera has raised about $1 million in funding and the company’s employee base is split between Austin, Texas and Bangalore, India.











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Walmart Labs Scoops Up Website Optimization Startup Torbit To Help It Keep Pace With Amazon

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Josh Fraser and Jon Fox founded Torbit in 2010 after becoming fed up with the amount of time they and other engineers dedicated to the tedious process of managing website performance optimization — by hand. In 2012, the Sunnyvale-based startup launched its first solution, called Insight, in an effort to make the tools they’d spent years developing internally available to the public — without requiring a degree in computer science or 15 developers to understand them.


By allowing any online business to track that critical correlation between the time it takes for a website to load and their core business metrics, Insight attracted the attention of both enterprise players as well as startups like Wayfair, Storenvy, and the Cheezburger Network. By February of this year, Torbit was processing over six billion performance metrics a day for its customers.


With each second a website takes to load potentially resulting in the loss of critical business — something to which big eCommerce properties, like Walmart, are increasingly susceptible. Rather than building these tools themselves, Walmart Labs today announced that it is buying Torbit’s help.


While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, in its announcement today, Torbit startup announced that it will be joining Walmart Labs as part of the eCommerce giant’s move to bring some speed and performance optimization to Walmart’s online properties. Specifically, Fox says, Walmart will look to leverage Torbit’s dynamic content optimization technology to enhance the performance and shopping experience for Walmart customers — behind the larger, and perhaps more pressing goal, of helping it keep pace with Amazon.


Following the acquisition, Torbit will continue to keep its site running for 30 days, but will be shutting down for good on August 23rd. The company will be offering an export process to its customers to prevent them from losing their critical performance data, which readers can find here.


In an effort to meet the expectations of an increasingly digitally savvy consumer, Walmart Labs has been on a mission to develop new commerce solutions to stay ahead of encroaching competitors (and chase e-Tail leaders like the ubiquitous Amazon), while enhancing the shopping experience of its millions of shoppers. To do that, the company has been following the Yahoo playbook of late, making a handful of acquisitions to bring startup talent in-house.


Today’s addition of Torbit to its startup roster follows Walmart Labs’ recent acquisitions of companies like Inkiru, OneOps and Tasty Labs, which are all part of an effort to help its parent company become an actual technology company (and not just another e-Tailer) and beef up Walmart.com. Buying Inkiru, for example, gave the company access to a mobile-centric point-of-sale solution, while last year’s acquisition of Grabble provided a critical Big Data component, allowing it to improve fraud detection and prevention and in-store recommendations.


With these acquisitions, Walmart.com is now able to tap into and offer key features, like improved semantic search, Facebook integration and better mobile support — which are essential as the company adapts to its increasingly digital user base.


With the acquisition of Torbit’s front-end optimizer, Walmart said that it will be able to add much-needed device and platform-agnostic performance optimization tools and minimize customer attrition thanks to slow loading digital storefronts.


The startup’s technology, Walmart Labs’ Jeremy King said in a blog post today, can “dynamically minimize and compress the files the browser downloads to best fit the browser’s characteristics … and by rewriting the page to best exploit the performance behavior of the Web browser requesting the page, Site Optimization can help each browser fetch and render each page as efficiently as possible.”


With a growing share of its revenues emanating from its eCommerce portals, this kind of image loading is critical to allowing shoppers to find what they need in realtime, without the traditional invective directed at their browser.


With the acquisition, Walmart said today that four of Torbit’s engineers will be joining its team, including co-founder Jon Fox.


Torbit’s announcement copied below:


Today we’re excited to announce that Torbit has been acquired by @WalmartLabs. We’ll be joining the team and bringing our Insight / Atlas technology to the Walmart online properties. In addition, we’ll be using our cutting edge Dynamic Content Optimization technology to enhance the performance and shopping experience for all of Walmart.com’s many online shoppers. We’re exited to help make the Walmart online experience even better by optimizing for your device and improving the performance of all of their existing and future sites.


Torbit has been a wild ride and we’ve been truly blessed to work with many great customers. We couldn’t have built any of our performance products without all of your feedback, testing, and patience. I am truly grateful to have worked with all of you. As part of this acquisition, we’ll continue to keep everything running for 30 days, until Friday, August 23, 2013, after which time we’ll have to wind down. We do offer an export process so you can keep all of your performance data. You can see an estimate of your export size here and if you’re interested in exporting your data please email us at support@torbit.com with a list of sites you’d like to export and we’ll send you instructions from there.


There has been a long list of great people who have helped Torbit along the way and I want to thank each and every one of you. From our investors, advisors, and employees to our customers, beta testers, and friends – we couldn’t have done it without you!








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Mediaspectrum Raises $35.8M From Insight Venture Partners To Support Big Media Publishers

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Boston-based Mediaspectrum, a company that has a subscription software service catering to big media publishers like Gannett, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Post and more, just picked up $35.8 million in funding led by Insight Venture Partners.


The roughly 100-person company helps these publishers manage their advertising and content across many platforms on the web and mobile devices. Insight’s managing director Peter Sobiloff and a principal Cian Cotter will join the company’s board.


The company has built a content management system so that publishers can push out stories, content and video simultaneously to the web, tablets, mobile phones and broadcast channels. The product has story development folders where editors and writers can collaborate on different story series and angles. It also has support for SEO, rights management and micro-payments.


On the advertising side, Mediaspectrum has other products that support sales campaigns and different ad formats. They say the ad side of the product can handle billing, booking, ad production and performance tracking so that everyone inside a media company’s sales staff can work together in one environment.


The company’s CEO and co-founder Scott Killoh previously started Openpages, which went on to raise $54 million in venture capital and was later sold to IBM. That company also catered to big print media organizations like Gannett and Knight-Ridder, so he has nearly two decades of experience working in this market.








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Dos astronautas de la NASA «se prueban» la cápsula CST-100 de Boeing


Los astronautas de la NASA Randy Bresnik y Serena Auñón, con sus trajes ACES puestos, probaron hace unos días el diseño interior de la cápsula CST-100 de Boeing, lo que gracias a las fotos y vídeos que se publicaron después ha permitido que echemos un primer vistazo al interior de esta.


Y aunque por fuera se parece mucho al módulo de mando de las misiones Apolo, por dentro la CST-100 tiene un diseño mucho más moderno, con pantallas LCD y tablets, en una nave que tiene como misión principal llevar astronautas a la Estación Espacial Internacional.


Interior de la CST-100

Interior de la CST-100 - Boeing

Otra foto del interior

Otra foto del interior - collectSPACE


Por eso, en palabras de Chris Ferguson, él mismo ex astronauta de la NASA, la CST-100 no tiene 1.100 ó 1.600 interuptores, ya que no quieren que haga falta una cantidad desproporcionada de horas de entrenamiento para manejarla.


La idea de estas pruebas era comprobar que los tripulantes pueden tener acceso a todas las áreas y mandos de la cápsula con sus trajes puestos y moverse dentro de ella con comodidad, así que es posible que con los datos obtenidos en esta prueba los ingenieros de Boeing hagan aún algún ajuste al diseño interior de la CST-100.


Este modelo estaba configurado para cinco plazas, aunque la CST-100 está diseñada para poder llevar hasta siete astronautas a bordo.


Si todo va bien, Boeing dice que la CST-100 podría estar lista para volar en 2016.


La CST-100 es una de las tres naves diseñadas por empresas privadas que aspiran a convertirse en la próxima nave tripulada de la NASA junto con la DreamChaser y la DragonRider.


(Parabolic Arc vía @spacecom).


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