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Wednesday, 31 July 2013
Google Hosts New York City's First 'Geek Street Fair'
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This is the Modem World: The sinister side of the '80s BBS
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Trakdot luggage tracker now shipping
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Stipple Partners With Getty Images For Smarter In-Image Advertising
Stipple is announcing a partnership with Getty Images that integrates Stipple’s technology for in-image advertising with Getty’s library of photos.
Technically, there was nothing before that stopped someone who published Getty’s photos from including Stipple ads inside those photos. However, the new integration should make those campaigns more effective, particularly by tapping into the Getty metadata — Stipple co-founder and CEO Rey Flemings said that one of the things that has “hindered” the use of photos online is the fact that most publishing systems strip the relevant metadata from those images.
Thanks to the new partnership, Getty’s tags will be applied to its photos throughout the Stipple network, and those tags can then be used to place ads. For example, if a Hollywood studio wanted to advertise its new film, it could run a campaign across Stipple’s network that targeted all Getty photos that feature cast members from the film. The companies say this should improve the reach of brand campaigns and increase monetization for publishers.
You can view a sample image with Stipple links here.
Craig Peters, Getty’s senior vice president of business development, said the company is always looking to help its publishers monetize (after all, they’re probably going to be happier about paying for Getty’s content if they’re actually making money from those photos), and that Getty is working with Stipple specifically because the company “can basically align the interest of advertisers and publishers,” delivering ads that are effective and don’t annoy users because they’re actually relevant to the image.
“It really does unlock a lot of the value that sits in that visual asset online that has been under-monetized and under-appreciated up until this point,” Peters said.
In order to take advantage of the new integration, publishers have to be working with both companies, but that’s a group that includes People.com, Condé Nast, and Gannett.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/GBCtSiH78uY/
Socrative Gets $750K From True Ventures, NewSchools To Bring Realtime Student Response System To K-12 Education
TechCrunch has learned today that Socrative, an intelligent student response system aimed for K-12 classrooms, has quietly raised $750K in seed financing from True Ventures, NewSchools Ventures and a handful of angel investors in Boston — where the startup is headquartered — including Jean Hammond and Eileen Rudden. According to our sources, the startup closed the majority of its round in April, but has added a few investors since then and has mostly remained mum in regard to its financing and investors.
The initial prototype for Socrative was developed in 2010 by Amit Maimon at MIT, who then brought on co-founders Benjamin Berte and Michael West after graduating. The co-founders bootstrapped for two years before joining Imagine K-12′s incubator and picking up a bit of seed funding as a result. The startup has grown steadily since. Berte tells us that, over the 2012-2013 school year, Socrative saw 116 million questions answered and 278K quizzes created and shared across 3.2 million individual teacher and student users. Towards the end of the school year, Berte says, the platform was adding new teachers at a rate of 1,000/day.
For those unfamiliar, Socrative is a free, cloud-based student response system, which is available via the Web or mobile apps for iOS and Android that allows teachers to create and distribute quizzes and conduct polls in class. Students can then respond via their laptops, tablets or smartphones, allowing teachers to get a more “realtime” understanding of student comprehension and to aggregate and store that data to track student learning curves.
The idea is to allow schools to upgrade their old hardware, or their “clickers” (and clicker systems) that one might use in a large introductory class, for example, replacing them with a more digital system. Socrative and its clicker platform 2.0 allow teachers to create and distribute a number of types of quizzes, including true/false, multiple choice, graded short answer or short response, whether they be teacher-paced or student-paced.
To put it simply, Socrative is doing for K-12 what Top Hat does for higher education. (It also follows Pearson’s acquisition of student response startup, Learning Catalytics, in April.) Like Top Hat, the system allows teachers to add gamification elements to quizzes so that students can compete against each other, view leaderboards, or display live results to get class discussions started. All in all, it’s a way to update the formal assessment standards that still exist at most schools today.
Going forward, Socrative plans to launch a design overhaul in early August, with multi-selection multiple choice questions, Common Core assessment tagging, back channel-style discussions and student quiz navigation being a few of the enhancements one can expect. Berte also tells us that Socrative is in the process of integrating with Google Apps for Education so users can access Socrative via Google Sign-on and export assessment reports and so on to Google Drive.
For more, find Socrative at home here.
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PSA: Windows Phones to lose Google Sync activation on August 1st
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Chris Cassidy explica cómo falló el traje espacial de Luca Parmitano
TodavÃa no se sabe el motivo por el que el traje espacial de Luca Parmitano sufrió una fuga de agua el pasado 16 de julio que obligó a abortar el paseo espacial que estaban llevando a cabo, y de hecho la Progress M-20M, recién llegada a la Estación Espacial Internacional lleva herramientas para intentar encontrar el origen de esa fuga.
Pero Chris Cassidy explica en estos dos vÃdeos lo que pasó:
En este primero enseña por donde entró el agua al casco de Luca Parmitano y como se fue acumulando detrás del reposacabezas plástico de la parte trasera del casco hasta que lo desbordó y se fue pegando al gorro en el que van los auriculares del equipo de comunicaciones, a las orejas de Luca, sus ojos y su nariz, una situación peligrosa que afortunadamente no tuvo mayores consecuencias.
En el segundo explica los posibles puntos de los que puede haber venido ese agua, empezando por la bolsa de agua para beber, aunque esta la descartaron enseguida, descartando que fuera orina o sudos, y siguiendo por el mono refrigerado por agua y aire que llevan puesto, y los sistemas de soporte vital de la mochila del traje.
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/chris-cassidy-explica-como-fallo-el-traje-espacial-de-luca-parmitano.html
Google taps film students with Glass Creative Collective
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Héroes ocultos, una exposición sobre los objetos cotidianos que pasan desapercibidos
Fabricados por millones, todos estos son objetos cotidianos que a menudo pasan desapercibidos pero que nos son indispensables en nuestro dÃa a dÃa.
A veces son fruto de una idea ingeniosa y sencilla. Otras veces son fruto de acertadas estrategias creativas y empresariales, y en muchas ocasiones el azar también tuvo mucho que decir para convertir en productos de éxito masivo a inventos concebidos con un fin distinto.
La exposición Héroes ocultos , que se puede ver en Domus en La Coruña hasta el 31 de agosto de 2013, analiza la invención, producción, evolución e influencia de cada uno de estos veintisiete objetos, y propone tres itinerarios, tecnológico, artÃstico e histórico-social a su alrededor.
Hay además visitas guiadas de lunes a domingo a las 11:30 y 19:00.
Es una exposición del Vitra Design Museum en cooperación con Hi-Cone.
Producida y organizada por la Obra Social «la Caixa», con la colaboración de los Museos CientÃficos Coruñeses:
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/tecnologia/heroes-ocultos-una-exposicion-sobre-los-objetos-cotidianos-que-pasan-desapercibidos.html
Grockit Sells Social Learning Platform To Kaplan, Goes All-In On Learnist, Its “Pinterest For Education”
If you haven’t heard, some of the former giants of the education world haven’t been doing too well, particularly academic publishers, as evidenced by McGraw-Hill’s recent sale and Cengage’s filing for bankruptcy earlier this month. The bigs are faced with a slow death, or slow rehabilitation (with death still a possibility) by digitizing their content and services — and digitizing fast.
Kaplan is one of those familiar names, as the 70-year-old test prep company recently launched its own TechStars-bankrolled “EdTech” accelerator in NYC, while its venture capital arm moves to invest in more digital education startups, like Treehouse. Today, it’s taking another smart step toward a digital future by snapping up the test prep assets and social learning platform of veteran EdTech startup, Grockit, the San Francisco-based maker of social learning apps and technologies.
Why is this a smart mutual decision? Well, for starters, as Kaplan CEO Andy Rosen recently said: “Continuing to cultivate new innovations in education technology is critical to the future of the company and the industry at large.” Yup. For many of these old hands of education, developing digital tools internally will be equivalent to starting from scratch. There has been a new wave of education startups that are innovating and building mobile apps and software across the educational spectrum.
There’s a ton of early-stage capital moving into education, but not so much in the series A and B range. Education startups are starting to feel the crunch and will continue to for the foreseeable future, which presents a great opportunity for what corporate acquirers there are in the education space.
As a matter of fact, CB Insights laid this out for us in May, and as you can see, Kaplan ranked fourth on the list in the number of acquisitions it made over the last three years. With its acquisition of Grockit, the company is just one purchase behind Blackboard and Macmillan, and it really wouldn’t be surprising to see Kaplan continue playing the role of EdTech buyer. As long as it has the cash, there’s no reason not to continue.
It’s also a smart move, because Grockit went through a significant shift of focus over the last 18 months or so. The startup first came on the scene in 2006 as a video test prep course for standardized tests, before re-launching at TC50 in 2008 as a social learning service, combining game-ification with personalized, adaptive learning-based test prep programs. The idea was to become a more effective way for students to study for tests — either by themselves or in groups.
While Grockit has survived, it never quite exploded, and in May of last year, it launched Learnist, which was dubbed its “Pinterest for education.” The team had developed Learnist internally, sort of on a whim as an experiment to potentially use as a feature add-on within their existing solution. They launched it and it took off over the last six months, so eager to ride the wave, they shifted their focus completely to Learnist. Last December, the team raised $20 million from Discovery, Summit, Atlas, Benchmark and others and that cemented it.
While the raise was behind the Grockit name, really it was for the market opportunity the founders and investors saw in Learnist. As a result, no surprise, but we’ve heard from sources that, as a result of this shift, the founders have been looking for a buyer for Grockit since. With Kaplan having one of the most recognizable names in the test prep market, the deal makes a lot of makes sense. And, from what we’ve been hearing, it works out well for Kaplan, because it doesn’t exactly break the bank.
In terms of what exactly Kaplan did acquire, Grockit founder Farbood Nivi clarifies, telling us that “Kaplan acquired the Grockit name, the Grockit Test Prep business, and the Grockit technology and platform.” However, Kaplan is not hiring any of its employees, who are all staying on to help build the new platform, which has been spun out of Grockit as its own company under the Learnist name, he explains.
The funds from the round the company raised in December are staying with Learnist and everything remains largely unchanged in day-to-day operations, just as it’s been for the last year, Nivi added.
“As we seek to better understand the role of social learning and gamification in test prep effectiveness, the acquisition of Grockit branded assets accelerates our own efforts,” Kaplan EVP Rochelle Rothstein said in the company’s statement today. “We’re looking forward to exploring platform synergies to improve our student experience.”
More on the announcement here and Learnist here.
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Google reportedly testing 'hyper-local' news card for Now
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Canon's 1080p Legria mini camcorder makes it easy to film... yourself
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Samsung preps Galaxy S 4, Galaxy S4 Mini variants with seamless dual-mode LTE
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Personalized Video Ad Platform Eyeview Raises $8.1M
Eyeview, a company with technology that personalizes video ads, has raised $8.1 million in Series C funding.
You can see some examples of Eyeview’s personalization below. For example, the visuals in an ad for a national retailer could be tailored to highlight local stores and deals. The examples in the video are mostly focused on location, but CEO and co-founder Oren Harnevo said ads can also be personalized based on things like weather and time of day.
There are other personalized ad technologies, but Harnevo said they use Flash banners or some other overlay, whereas Eyeview’s personalization occurs in the video itself — the company can create many different versions of the video, then deliver the correct version to each viewer based on its targeting. And when there’s updated information, like new pricing, the videos are updated too.
That approach is important because it means there’s no real integration required on the part of the video publishers, and because it means Eyeview’s personalization works across devices.
“In the cloud we’re creating hundreds of thousands of videos that you can then use in mobile, in connected TV, with no limitations,” he said. “This is a real play for cross-platform, cross-stream personalization.”
Harnevo told me that when Eyeview announced its Series B early last year, it was still making its initial entrance into the US market. Now he said it’s working with big advertisers like Land Rover, Lowe’s, Toyota, Paramount, and Target. He also said that revenue grew 6x between 2011 and 2012, and it’s on-track to grow the same amount in 2013.
The new round was led by Marker, with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, and Nauta Capital. The new funding will go towards expanding Eyeview’s market (so that it’s available in all of the United States) and continuing to develop the technology, Harnevo said.
The company has now raised a total of $19.4 million.
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Sourcebits-Incubated Twine Launches On iOS And Android To Flip The Mobile Flirting Game On Its Head
Sourcebits, a young mobile development house, captured $10 million from Sequoia and IDG in 2011 for its expertise in developing custom mobile, web and cloud solutions for businesses. Sourcebits has developed hundreds of apps for a range of companies, from Fortune 500 players to startups, including Night Stand HD, Apocalypse Max, FunBooth and Robokill.
Since then, a team within the strategy and design firm split off to begin working on a project called Twine, which essentially sought to create a better mobile solution for flirting and meeting new people. After a year in development and looking to capitalize on the growing popularity of “people discovery” apps like Highlight and mobile flirting apps like Tinder, today Twine is officially bringing its “ice breaking” app to App Store and Google Play.
Apps like Omegle have taken off among young people, because they people who are comfortable with these media to meet strangers, chat with them, and quickly move on to the next conversation. Essentially, it’s anonymous, serial chatting, if you will, a spin on the same principle behind both Chatroulette and Airtime. On the other hand, it’s an extension of mobile chat and texting experiences like WhatsApp, Viber and Rounds, a class of apps that has become extremely popular among young people in particular.
But Twine differs from these in that it’s tackling the “new friend discovery” experience, anonymously matching you with strangers around you, while attempting to remain spam free. The second big differentiator is that Twine is actively curating its user base in order to achieve a 50/50 balance of males to females using the app.
The reason for this is that men tend to be more active users of flirting and dating apps, so the women who are using whatever platform tend to get bombarded with texts, messages and so on. Women also tend to be more selective, while men cast their dating nets wide, so it leads to a disproportionate amount of women not only getting blown up with spam, but rejections and broken-hearted suitors. Round and round that goes, until everyone gets fed up and leaves.
Twine keeps the ratio even and, a la Tinder, puts the focus on chatting and flirting with new people, not dating. It’s designed to be casual. The app also uses an algorithm that matches you with an anonymous chat partner based on your interests and proximity to those users — the idea being to create the most compatible local connection so that you go meet the person in real life if you happen to like them and hit it off.
Twine gathers your “likes” and interests from Facebook, matching you to the closest fit. You can immediately begin chatting, and continue the conversation as long as you want. However, unlike Tinder, their profile picture is blurred so that you can’t see exactly what they look like, the idea being to keep the focus on the chat and getting to know the person — not the blatantly superficial. If you like them, you can hit a button asking them to reveal, if they agree, it will then un-blur their picture so that you can see what they look like.
The idea, again, is to focus on connecting first, not on engaging based on a profile photo, offering users features like its so called “I.C.E.,” which parses the interests of you and your Twine match, generating unique questions you can send to them to get the conversation flowing. For example, if you’re both Beatles fans, the app might suggest “What’s your favorite Beatles song?” to help break the ice.
Twine also limits the number of matches that you can make and receive per day (up to six) in an attempt to ensure that users don’t get pestered with spam and in an effort to have the matches they create result in more meaningful conversations and connections. If you get bored of talking to a person, you can ask Twine to match you to a new person, but again, you only get a fixed number of matches per day — three inbound and three outbound. (That means you can hit the “Twine” button three times yourself, while you may end up as three other peoples’ match as well, if that makes sense.)
That puts Twine in stark contrast to Tinder, which is all about quickly flipping through photos and passing quickly from person to person until you find someone you’re interested in — it’s more like mobile speed flirting. Twine wants you to have some of those features, but to actually dig in, too.
The ice-breaking question auto-generator is a cool feature, but Twine is going to have to offer more incentives. Even if you really hit it off with someone in chat, people use these kind of tools because they’re bored or they want to flirt with someone, and there’s only so much talking you can do with complete strangers before you’ve decided whether it’s a waste of time or a match. I could see people easily using up their three matches and being annoyed when they don’t have the opportunity to find more, especially when there’s a ready-made mobile community that allows them just that.
Also, the cool thing about apps like Rounds is that they allow couples and friends to co-browse together on their phones when in two completely different locations. They can play games interactive games together, browse the Web simultaneously, doodle on whiteboards, send virtual gifts and video chat. These tools are all missing from Twine in its first release, but could be huge additions to the app to add more stickiness and potential engagement to the user experience.
The startup says that a few of these capabilities will likely be coming in the next version of the app and, because Twine is free, virtual gifts could provide a future opportunity to monetize. Or, the company says, it might also consider creating a kind of Twine token that users can buy and then cash in to receive more matches, if they go beyond their first three.
With how popular Tinder has proven to be, it wouldn’t surprise me if people (especially younger users) just flat out prefer the more image-based (or superficial) dating and flirting experience on mobile. But Sourcebits and the Twine team have clearly designed this to be a direct response or counterpoint to mobile dating experiences like Tinder. So, for those who are looking for a little bit more meaningful chat and flirting experience, Twine could be it by striking a good balance between the two.
Plus, in a flirting marketplace like this, there needs to be an equality of supply and demand. The more users, the more opportunity Twine has to match you with someone you’ll actually enjoy talking to and connecting with in a mobile chat room. That’s going to take time, but at the very least, with a run of successful apps under their belt, Sourcebits is a strategy and design firm that knows how to design a good mobile app. For that reason alone, and based on the amount of demand there is for mobile dating and flirting experiences (and how much room even popular apps like Omegle have left in the quality department), Twine is worth checking out.
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Algunas fotos del programa espacial chino
De una forma tenaz China está avanzando en su programa espacial, que recientemente acaba de terminar su misión tripulada más larga, y que incluye objetivos tan ambiciosos como tener su propia estación espacial o colocar un taikonauta sobre la superficie de la Luna.
Pero sin embargo, a pesar de los éxitos obtenidos, a menudo es complicado obtener imágenes de lo que están haciendo, y muchas veces nos tenemos que contentar con capturas de pantalla de escasa calidad.
Asà que resulta interesante poderle echar un ojo a las 29 imágenes incluidas en China's Manned Space Program , que incluyen lanzamientos, centros de control, el interior de algunas cápsulas, niños jugando en lo que parece ser un simulador de vuelo, etc.
(PictureCorrect vÃa @eliasibnz).
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/algunas-fotos-programa-espacial-chino.html
Marvell flaunts its Armada 1500-mini CPU powering Chromecast, lists codecs
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Pinterest Updates iPhone App With Faster Pinning
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NODE modular sensor gets color scanning capability
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Phone to Chromecast app streams pics and video, but can't be released yet
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This Film Could Turn Your Smartphone Into a Solar Panel
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El crecimiento de Madrid en dos siglos
Los amantes de la ciudad de Madrid encontrarán encantadora esta animación creada por Francisco Maturana para Madiva que muestra la evolución de la capital entre los siglos XIX y XXI. Es un repaso desde cuando Madrid era un pequeño grupo de viviendas alrededor del Madrid de los Austrias hasta la «asimilación» de los pueblos de los alrededores.
En la animación se aprecian perfectamente el crecimiento de zonas emblemáticas como el Paseo de la Castellana, la M-30 o algunos de los grandes parques y zonas verdes de los alrededores.
(Visto en el Twitter de @victorianoi.)
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/mundoreal/crecimiento-madrid.html
Pinterest upgrades iPhone app with animated pinning shortcuts
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PaperDude VR resurrects Paperboy with Oculus Rift, Kinect, KickR and a bike
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Federal appeals court rules search warrants not needed to seize cellphone records
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