FUNKY GREEN: 09/05/13

Thursday, 5 September 2013

PayPal app becomes a deal offering mobile wallet payment platform

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HP's 'Recline' touchscreen all-in-ones can be used with the screen hanging off the desk

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Toshiba's 8-Inch Encore Tablet Puts Windows in Your (Large) Pocket

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Ping App Wants to Make Email Fun Again

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LG G2 Lands in the U.S. This Month

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TriMet mobile ticketing app opens to all mass transit riders in Portland area

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Scoop.it Launches A Social Curation App For The iPad

Scoop.it, a startup that helps users highlight interesting content (and, implicitly, their own knowledge in the field), is bringing its social curation tools to the iPad today with the launch of a new app.

The company asks users to build topic pages where they aggregate relevant content (we’ve described these pages as “your own digital magazine“). Those pages are viewable on Scoop.it, shareable on social networks, and SEO-optimized. Plus, other users can follow those pages.

In some ways, it’s like following someone on Twitter who tweets news and articles that you find interesting. However, co-founder and CEO Guillaume Decugis argued that “when you follow topics and not people,” the signal-to-noise ratio improves significantly (at least if you’re interested in learning more about or keeping up-to-date with the topic in question, rather than getting updates about someone’s life).

The iPad app extends that idea to tablets. Decugis and Scoop.it President Marc Rougier gave me a demo of the app, browsing content by searching the app, looking at other topics, and reading the content that was recommended by Scoop.it’s personalization technology. When they found something they liked, it only took a couple of taps to save the article to one of their own topic pages, or to create an entirely new page.

In some ways, the demo reminded me of Storify. For one thing, both Scoop.it and Storify on the iPad are pitched as ways to go beyond just consuming content on tablets. However, Storify’s curation tools are focused on individual stories, whereas Scoop.it is more topic-based — and in fact, Rougier said you can embed a Storify story on a Scoop.it page.

The service already launched an iPhone app, but Decugis said that app was designed to be “a companion” to the web version — in fact, you need have an account set up with Scoop.it already in order to use it. The iPad app, on the other hand, can work as a standalone experience. So while the new app was built, in part, to answer the requests of existing users, Decugis said he’s hoping it helps Scoop.it reach a new audience too.

The company recently raised a $2.6 million in new funding and it says its users have indexed and shared more than 50 million pieces of content.

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This Week On The TC Europe Podcast: Nokia Gives Up, Seedcamp Invests, Tado Heats Up

The biggest tech news of the week came from Europe! Microsoft is acquiring Nokia’s phone business for $7.2 billion, and we needed to process the news together. This is the TechCrunch Europe Podcast, wherein we European writers discuss tech news, as well as what’s happening in our startup scene.

Also happening this week, Seedcamp celebrated its sixth birthday and gave us interesting numbers. We discuss whether European tech startup accelerators are improving.

Join Mike Butcher, Steve O’Hear, Natasha Lomas and Romain Dillet to comment on those topics, Tado (a European Nest competitor) and Skype turning 10 years old.

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcast every Thursday.

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Intro music by Espanto.

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Lenovo Debuts 5-Inch Vibe X Smartphone

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1-2-3-4: I Declare a Miniature Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots Thumb War

Vizio 55" Razor LED HDTV Lightning Review: Good and Cheap

Logitech's IFA 2013 line eyes-on

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'Kirobo, please stop talking and open the pod bay doors' (video)

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Engadget Giveaway: win one of two NVIDIA Shields, courtesy of NewEgg!

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Haier's new OLED TV is harder to push over than most

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Haier shows off its latest eye-controlled TV at IFA, we go eyes-on, naturally

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Eyes-on with LG's 55-inch Gallery OLED TV (video)

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T-Mobile to launch LG G2 on September 25th, sells Optimus F6 today

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Researchers claim 'almost instantaneous' quantum computing breakthrough

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Pakistan Government-Backed Incubator Seeds Local Investor Appetite

Ali Rehan and his university cohorts had just won Pakistan’s inaugural Startup Weekend hackathon when they decided to quit their PhD research project to build a photography app. Weeks later they were offered a $100,000 investment for 60 percent equity in Eyedeus, as their fledgling startup is called. The money on its own was a tantalising offer in Pakistan’s nascent ecosystem, but it would mean ceding control from a very early point.

So the almost-PhD-grads from Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering at Lahore University of Management Sciences (Rehan “barely” graduated from his masters course) rejected the offer from the unnamed investor and instead took up residence in Plan9, a government-backed incubator that allowed them to remain 100% shareholders. Six months later Eyedeus has completed a gruelling mentoring program, launched Groopic, an iOS app which superimposes photographers into their group photos, and the team is weighing up their next options for expansion.

“We came from one of the best schools in the country, with a great track record of top quality research in the area, and we were a strong team,” Rehan said. “We believed that we could do it ourselves [but] there was much more than [VC] money that we needed.”

“A lot of other entrepreneurs accept those kinds of deals, but this is what Plan9 is trying to change through their program, campaigns, and angel investments group.”

The group’s story represents a new chapter in Pakistani entrepreneurship, which is being underwritten by startup incubators and accelerators popping up across the country. They provide the financial support and business networks required to turn an idea into a minimal viable product, and ultimately a business. It’s the foundation of the country’s tech entrepreneur evolution.

Last year, the Punjab Government established Plan9, an incubator offering a six-month program providing business facilities, a small stipend ($200), and connections to mentors and investors. It recently accepted a second batch of startups into the program, which doesn’t take any equity.

There are other options for entrepreneurs. There’s the social enterprise-focused i2i investor/mentor network which has just selected a second batch for its own accelerator program, which covers new businesses in a number of areas like agriculture but still with a tech underpinning. The recently launched co-working space Dot Zero in Karachi also aims to provide resources for tech startups.

While this publicly-funded, no equity incubator model is being used to seed Pakistan’s startup ecosystem, similar spaces in the west have been used to align the interests of entrepreneurs and corporations. Microsoft’s BizSpark and accelerator program offers startups access to free office space as well as the company’s software, while the BBC recently established its Worldwide Labs for digital media startups that could potentially partner with the UK media giant down the track.

The activity in Pakistan has caught the attention of investors.

DYL Ventures founding partner Adam Dawood said these incubators are creating a pipeline of deals that previously was dry. As more investments are made, both parties will learn how to structure fairer investment terms for Pakistan’s corporate environment — avoiding the situation that befell Ali Rehan.

“Local investors are here to fund, but they want to fund in very specific areas,” Dawood said.

“Plan9 is useful because it gives investors a one stop shop where they can find entrepreneurs and startups. Although plan 9 also has a lot of learning to do in terms of how to add value to their startups I suspect this will happen very quickly add each new batch enters. They have a strong team who are very enthusiastic and motivated to make the program the best in the region.”

Khurram Zafar, board member of Plan9 said the country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem faces a catch-22 situation: there needs to be liquidity and dealflow for investors to hedge their risk, but for this you need some funding to bootstrap startups.

He said the government had to intervene.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. This is a way to bootstrap the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and very soon we’ll see private companies get involved.

Groopic allows the photographer to insert themselves in the photo.

He was reluctant to take credit for the success of Rehan’s Groopic and other graduates, saying the incubator program simply exposed them to investors, locally and overseas — for example, it sent Groopic to Google’s Blackbox event in Silicon Valley as well Startup Asia 2013 in Singapore. Plan9 also funded one of its graduates, Rocxial, to take part in the LaunchPad Denmark program, supported by the Danish Ministry of Business.

Groopic’s Rehan said that Plan9 helped in four key ways: mentorship, networking opportunities, office space, and stipend.

However, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

Plan9 conducts reviews every six weeks to ensure that startups are on track. After one and a half months they should have a business model developed based on real world feedback; at the three-month mark they should put their alpha product in front of early adopters; and at 4.5 months they should introduce iterations to refine their market strategy. If they can’t meet their goals, they’re out of the program.

Of the incubator’s inaugural round, only eight of the 13 startups graduated.

“The others were eased out. They weren’t serious or committed enough, or they just couldn’t pull it off.”

Rehan and his friends were just one of eight teams to have graduated from Plan9′s inaugural incubator class, but it appears there are more of their kind out there. More recently, Pakistan emerged as one of the world’s biggest locations for individual outsourcing via sites such as odesk, elance, and freelancer.com.

The social and political winds are also shifting.

Internet and cloud technologies have lowered the barriers to entry to compete in the global digital economy; and among Pakistan’s 183 million strong population there are almost 30 million internet subscribers. Meanwhile, voters recently appointed the second successive democratically elected government — the first time that’s happened in the 64-year troubled history of a country whose progress has been sabotaged by regular military coups.

Pakistan perhaps has not enjoyed the IT outsourcing success that other developing nations, such as India and the Philippines, have, but young citizens are now writing a new chapter in the country’s technology evolution. Zafar believes that IT services companies were deterred by the frequent reports of drone strikes and terrorist attacks but said consumers don’t care about where a product is developed.

“They don’t dig enough into the news to figure out what the incident was or where the place was, they just correlate ‘drone strike’ with Pakistan and have this image of a country that’s troubled, but that is happening in the north and in the tribal areas,” Zafar said. “The perception is disastrous for the services industry, but we’re not interested in IT services. What we’re doing at Plan9 and other incubators is we’re trying to encourage and incubate product companies, and leverage the limited tech talent we have. At the end of the day, people use products through phones, laptops, and desktops, and they don’t care about where it’s from, as long as it works well.”

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Hands-on with the LG G Pad 8.3 (video)

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Ricoh Theta WiFi camera shoots 360-degree photos for $399 (hands-on)

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Topsy lets you search tweets from 2006, look up old cringeworthy posts

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Sony Made the First Curved LED TV, and It's Worthy of Your Lust

Thinkpad Yoga: Finally a Convertible With Some Grit

Lenovo exec: there's no longer a need for Windows RT

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Amazon's new Kindle Paperwhite priced at £109 for UK, arrives October 3rd

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ooVoo updates its iOS and Android apps with video messaging, filters and more

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Lenovo Announces Yoga 2 Pro and ThinkPad Yoga

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Samsung announces the world's first curved UHD TVs at IFA 2013

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Smart Thermostat Market Heating Up As Tado Raises $2.6M For Its European Nest

With Nest, the smart thermostat startup founded by ex-Apple iPod chief Tony Fadell, seemingly getting closer to a UK launch, TechCrunch has learned that European competitor Tado has raised a further $2.6 million from previous backers Target Partners, and Shortcut Ventures.

The Munich, Germany-based startup plans to use the additional capital — building on the $2 million it’s thought to have previously raised — for further European expansion outside of its home market, and existing sales in Austria, and Switzerland. Our understanding is that this will include the UK where Tato already has around 100 beta testers, with sales also opening up to the rest of Europe, pegged for next month. It looks like the smart thermostat market is starting to heat up this side of the pond.

Tado differs from Nest in a number of ways. Firstly, unlike Nest it shuns any kind of built in screen, instead relying on accompanying iPhone and Android apps for almost all interaction. That isn’t just a UX-based design decision, it also reflects Tado’s other key differentiator.

Rather than taking a purely self-learning approach like Nest, or relying on preprogrammed timetables for when heating should come on or off, the system is geolocation-based so that it knows when each smartphone carrying resident is close to home and therefore the heating should be adjusted accordingly. Being Internet-connected, it takes into account local weather reports, too.

The Tado app also gets a neat update today, adding approximated heating costs so that users can keep an eye on what their eventual heating bill will look like. In addition, there’s a new visualisation feature to show when residents are close enough to the home for Tado to kick in the heating.

“Nest is called the learning thermostat and needs to be trained by the user over a period of at least one week. Tado in contrast starts to work immediately since it works on real time signals,” says the company. “Our control algorithms acutally start to make the whole space really smart. The focus is to use real time signals which come from the smartphone app or Internet weather data to adjust room temperatures.”

Of course, like Nest and others in the smart thermostat space, such as Latvia’s Istabai, the end goal is the same: to help a user save energy and therefore money through a much ‘smarter’ home heating system that also has the potential to bring greater comfort.

Now if that doesn’t leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy, I don’t know what will.

(The Tado Connector Kit can be bought with lifetime service for €299 or to rent for €8.25 on a monthly contract.)

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