FUNKY GREEN: 10/16/13

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

Researchers looking to submerge WiFi, drive demand for Google SnorkBooks

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Hitch a ride to Engadget Expand aboard Gogo's private jet

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One More Thing About That Fancy New Fox News Deck

If the new studio at Fox News, with its big-ass touchscreens, looks a little bit like Minority Report, that’s because it’s just like Minority Report.

Oblong, the same company that helped create the technological interfaces seen in the futuristic movie, outfitted the new studio with a product called Mezzanine, powered by G-Speak, allowing Shepard Smith to drag and drop videos on a wall like he’s directing an orchestra.

John Underkoffler, Chief Scientist at Oblong, confirmed Fox News’ use of the Mezzanine product to TechCrunch, calling “the whole undertaking a laudably ambitious undertaking on the part of Fox News.”

You’ll notice at At 2:47 in this video, as well as 3:25, that Shepard Smith uses a 38-foot remote-controlled video wall manipulated by a white hand-held wand tool. This is Mezzanine.

Mezzanine is a product created by Oblong Industries meant to be a conference room technology, letting users control and manipulate every pixel in the room, from the massive screens in the Fox News studio to the wifi-connected iPhones, iPads and laptops in the room. With the wand, the same one you see Shepard Smith waving around in the video, you can drag and drop info, zoom, manipulate, and edit information as you go.

“Fox News Deck installation is the most publicly visible (permanent) deployment of Oblong’s technology in general, and of the Mezzanine product in particular, to date,” said Underkoffler.

MG Siegler, who’s used the technology before, calls it the future of computing and refers to the Mezzanine Wand as a WiiMote on steroids.

But Mezzanine isn’t the end product. Underkoffler, speaking at TC Italy less than a month ago, explained that Oblong wants to give a soul to your devices and to the interface. G-Speak, the spatial operating system behind all of Oblong’s products, is the path towards that soul.

For now, Mezzanine requires a wand, but eventually technology that can already sense gloves and hands will be commodotized, and G-Speak will power a new generation of hand-waving computer conductors. Knowing that, it’s clear that Shepard Smith’s 38-foot video wall is far cooler than the giant touchscreens filling up the Fox News studio.

Here’s a look at MG’s video from a while back:

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Social Ad Companies Team Up As Brand Networks Acquires Optimal For $35M

Social media marketing company Brand Networks is announcing that it’s acquiring Optimal for $35 million in cash and stock.

Brand Networks co-founder and CEO Jamie Tedford told me that he sees the two companies as largely complementary. While Brand Networks is trying to address all of a company’s social marketing needs, Optimal has been “laser-focused on ad optimization and insights.”

“We think that the self-serve technology leader in the ability to get [return on investment] from media spend — there’s really no company that was doing it as well as Optimal,” he said.

This is an area where companies like Salesforce.com have been making acquisitions. In fact, when Brand Networks raised a $68 million round (its first outside funding!) earlier this year, Tedford cited the need to compete as an independent company against bigger competitors – so the acquisition also helps Brand Networks by growing its headcount.

“There is a race to scale, if you will,” Tedford said. “Not scale for scale’s sake, but scale to help the biggest brands and biggest agencies as social becomes more important, more measured, and more measurable.”

Optimal founder and CEO Rob Leathern (pictured above) will become chief product officer at Brand Networks, and he said the entire 40-person Optimal team will become part of the combined company, resulting in a combined headcount of around 175. Optimal is headquartered in San Francisco, while Brand Networks is based in Boston, so Optimal is supposed to become “the hub” of the company’s West Coast operations.

Founded in 2008, the smaller company was previously called XA.net, but eventually took on the name of its optim.al social ad campaign manager. It says its advertisers include Gucci, Sephora, JustFab. and Gilt Groupe, plus it recently won the grand prize in the Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer Innovation Competition.

Optimal has raised $5.1 million in equity (I reported on a $7 million Series B earlier this year, but Leathern said $2.5 million of that was debt from Silicon Valley Bank) from investors including Neu Venture Capital, DoubleRock, The Social Internet Fund, Siemer Ventures, Signal Ventures, and James Altucher (who’s a columnist at TechCrunch).

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Nomi Raises $10M, Accel-Led Round To Bring Online Marketing Data To Offline Businesses

Marketing startup Nomi has raised $10 million in Series A funding.

The startup says that it wants to give brick-and-mortar stores and other offline businesses the data they need to become as optimized as an e-commerce website — specifically, it can show them whether marketing campaigns are lead to in-store traffic, and whether that traffic is converting to make actual purchases.

When I spoke to co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Wesley Barrow in February, he said Nomi takes advantage of data that already exists, but it brings everything together to provide full picture of customers across the web, mobile, and in stores.

The Series A was led by Accel Partners, with participation from seed investors First Round Capital, Greycroft Partners, and Forerunner. In the press release announcing round, Accel’s Jake Flomenberg cited the team’s background at Salesforce.com and Buddy Media (Barrow was a sales director at Buddy, while co-founder and CEO Marc Ferrentino was chief technical architect at Salesforce), and he said, “In a single year Nomi signed more clients than every other competitor combined.”

How many clients is that? Ferrentino told me in an email that Nomi has signed 50 customers in the past six months, “including 3 of the top 10 retailers and 2 of the top 10 restaurant chains in the US.” And his vision is getting bigger.

“We realized that the value of our platform extends beyond retail to include any business with a brick and mortar presence,” he said. “Like Omniture for offline businesses, we began by building in store analytics and are branching out to include A/B testing and customer service features.”

Nomi has raised a total of $13 million. The company says it will use the new funding to grow the engineering and product teams.

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Dailymotion Announces An Upcoming European Acquisition And A New Office In Japan

While the French government scuppered Yahoo’s acquisition of Dailymotion, the video platform is still planning its next expansion moves. According to news agency AFP, the French company will open a small Japanese office in the coming days to target this Asian market. It is also in talks to acquire a European video startup to fuel its growth.

Fully owned by Orange, the French telecom company had to invest $40 million (€30 million) in May so that Dailymotion could bounce back after the failed acquisition talks. While the YouTube competitor first wanted to find another investor or buyer, it looks like it is now focused on growing its business activities within the boundaries of Orange.

First, Dailymotion will open a small office in Japan. It is one of Dailymotion’s fastest growing markets and one where video ads are not very widespread. It could be a good opportunity to become a major video platform in the country to compete with YouTube and other local players. The company’s hidden goal is to capture the advertising money before its competitors.

Dailymotion already targets a global audience as 85 percent of its sales already happens outside of France, with the U.S. leading the way. The company already has an office in New York, but the Japanese office will be the first one in Asia.

The other news is that the company will switch to external growth thanks to a European acquisition — the acquisition should close in a month. Dailymotion seems confident about this deal as it is already teasing it. No word on why it makes sense, whether it will boost the website’s traffic, help its advertising platform or create a new team. It could be an easy way to set foot in the U.K. or Germany for example.

As a reminder, Dailymotion recently announced a new product offering a few days ago. The platform now provides Warner Bros. movies and TV shows in its home country. It works a lot like movie renting in the iTunes Store, with a 48-hour window to watch a movie and similar prices. The company has been profitable for a couple of years, but video distribution is a cost-intensive activity. It remains to be seen whether the company will be able to create another revenue stream with its paid movie platform.

(Image credit: SPDP)

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Bunkr Unveils New Major Version Of Its PowerPoint Killer

French startup Bunkr just released a new major version of its presentation web app in partnership with Etamin Studio. It still is a fully responsive HTML5 web app that works seamlessly on your computer, phone or tablet. Yet, it was redesigned from the ground up and the new user experience should make the app more appealing to new users.

As a reminder, Bunkr is the PowerPoint killer we’ve all been waiting for. It allows you to collect content and create a presentation, integrating the cumbersome image searching and saving step into the service. Whenever you see something that you want to add to your presentation, just click on the bookmarklet and it will be in your Bunkr account. Users can collect images, videos, websites, articles, notes or quotes.

On the presentation side, it looks a lot like PowerPoint for the web. Like in PowerPoint and unlike in Prezi, Bunkr still uses the traditional slide metaphor with simple drag and drop mechanisms. In other words, Bunkr paid attention to heavy PowerPoint users — they won’t feel lost.

Finally, sharing a Bunkr presentation is as easy as sharing a URL. It makes it much easier to see a presentation on a smartphone or tablet or even to send a presentation to someone. And if you really need this .ppt or .pdf file, you can download it.

For now, you have to search on Google Images, YouTube and your hard drive to import content. Adding support for more services should come next. Even though Bunkr wants to replace your Evernote presentation folder, linking directly to Evernote has its own advantages.

Out of its 35,000 user base, 500 clients are already paying for the product. The ratio is definitely low, but the startup already has some high-ranked clients, such as Amazon, Publicis and Orangina Schweppes. This new version is really what it should have been from the get-go. It looks better and it works better. Now, gaining traction and raising the right amount of money are the two next steps to turn Bunkr into a serious Prezi and Google Docs competitor.

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IoT Startup Greenbox Aims To Become Nest For The Garden

It’s starting to feel like the Internet of Things (IoT) train is finally leaving the station, as more and more household appliances become Internet-connected with a smartphone app providing the User Interface/remote controller.

We’ve seen the likes of Nest attempt to make the humble thermostat smart (alongside European rivals such as Tado), and more recently it’s doing the same for the smoke detector.

Taking cues from the same IoT playbook is Israeli startup Greenbox with its “cloud-connected smart irrigation system” (that’s a sprinkler controller to you and I). Pegged for a December launch but now available for preorder, the company is pitching itself as ‘Nest for the garden’.

Backed by $250,000 of funding from Kima Ventures after a failed Kickstarter campaign, the premise of Greenbox is a familiar story in the connected home space. It’s set out to bring the garden sprinkler kicking and screaming into the Internet age, replacing what is either a “dumb” device or one that, whilst Internet-connected, is crippled by a clunky User Experience.

“Current irrigation controllers are outdated, extremely unintuitive and frustrating to use,” says Greenbox co-founder and CEO Eyal Dior. “Plus, they are not connected to weather data, so when it rains the controller will continue to water unless you speed to shut if off. When you have a sunnier day than expected, the controller will fail to water unless you rush to turn it on”.

Not only does this mean that a garden doesn’t automatically receive the irrigation it needs, but there’s a lot of water wastage in the process. And in turn, unnecessary expense. To solve this problem, Greenbox, via its cloud-connectivity, is powered by location-based weather data. In addition, and taking a page straight out of Nest’s book, it’s self-learning, resulting in a claimed “up to 50%” reduction in water consumption.

“Greenbox has a simple interface with remote access,” says Dior. “It programs itself based on weather. It learns and improves over time, conserves water, saves money, and above all it will have a fun UX made for real people.” That UX, he notes, comes courtesy of modern and ubiquitous smartphone platforms like iOS. “Since the advent of the smartphone, home automation technology is booming indoors and accessible to the masses. The same need for automation exists in the yard,” he adds.

Greenbox’s business model is straightforward. It makes money directly from the sale of the physical Greenbox controllers, with the smartphone app being free and sans-subscription fees for the underlying cloud service. The company is currently offering an early-bird price of $219. Competitors to Greenbox include Cyber-rain, Rain Machine, and Weathermatic.

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PolicyMic Raises $3M, Betting That Millennials Want Substantive News And Commentary

How many younger readers really care about news and politics — as opposed to celebrity gossip, viral videos, and cat GIFs? Well, a site called PolicyMic is built around the proposition that readers under 35 are looking for something more substantive, and it just raised $3 million in new funding.

Co-founder and CEO Christopher Altchek argued that most existing sites aimed at a younger audience are “very much focused on lighter and more entertaining content,” creating an opportunity for a competitor that’s tailored to the same audience but tackles “meaty topics.”

“My sense is that of the 80 million millennials in the United States, 40 million consume some form of news every day,” he said. “And if you took a poll of the average one, they’re pretty dissatisfied with their options for high quality news right now.”

PolicyMic publishes between 50 and 100 pieces of content each day, created by a network 2,500 writers — some of them paid, some not (it sounds like the unpaid writers can work their way up to paid status), all of them supervised by PolicyMic’s 20-person editorial team. The site’s strength isn’t original or investigative reporting, Altchek said, but rather opinion and analysis.

As I write this, for example, the front page includes stories like “Wall Street May Be In Decline, and Here’s Why That Should Worry You” and “Inside the Newest Battle to Crush Voter Rights.” They’re not exactly policy papers, but they’re certainly on the more serious side. And there’s lighter fare like “10 TV Theme Songs That Defined The 90s.”

PolicyMic currently receives 9 million unique visitors per month, Altchek said, and the team has learned a lot about how to frame and promote stories to give them a better chance of significant exposure to social media. To illustrate that point, he sent me links to a story on Syrian refugees that was shared more than 94,000 times on Facebook and a story on protests in Turkey that was shared more than 92,000 times.

(Update: I also asked comScore about PolicyMic’s traffic, and its data shows 3.6 million uniques for September 2013, up 523 percent from the same period last year.)

As I talked to Altchek about his vision, I was reminded of some of my conversations with executives at BuzzFeed, which also aims for younger readers with a mix of serious and light content. The mix at PolicyMic definitely skews much more to the political side, and Altchek said he doesn’t see the two sites as competitive — after all, they share an investor (more on that in a second).

As for making money, Altchek told me that PolicyMic will be staying away from standard ads and instead be rolling out “high quality, thoughtful sponsored content” over the next few months.

The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Lerer Ventures (which also backed BuzzFeed), Advancit Capital, and Red Swan Ventures. PolicyMic previously raised $1.8 million from the Knight Foundation, Digital News Ventures, and various angels.

The site also launched its redesign yesterday, giving it a look that’s more polished. In their post about the redesign, Altchek and his co-founder/editor-in-chief Jake Horowitz wrote:

We want millions of millennials to use our platform to find the next generation of creative thinkers and work together to solve our most pressing challenges. Our promise is to give the PolicyMic community the platform, editorial resources, and reach to make a true difference.

Altcheck also told me that the site is looking to expand into other topics (it currently focuses on politics, arts and entertainment, and “identity”) where it can find a passionate, engaged audience. As it grows, he said he’s open to renaming PolicyMic — but regardless of the name, he wants everything to stay on a single URL, rather than launching a bunch of different sites.

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General Assembly Launches Dash, A Tool For Coding Newbies

As General Assembly moves away from co-working and focuses more heavily on educating entrepreneurs and startups, the company is releasing a brand new tool to the public. It’s called Dash, and it’s an interactive online program that helps teach people how to code through a series of interactive storyline-based tutorials.

The program was originally created in-house by project manager Nathan Bashaw and a GA and co-founder Brad Hargreaves, who wanted to give General Assembly students young and old the opportunity to get comfortable with coding.

Dash works in the browser, and helps users learn CSS, JavaScript and HTML through various tasks that are similar to the real life of a coder or developer. For example, as you go through various lessons you’ll learn how to first build a personal website, then a blog theme, then a small business website, and eventually a CSS Robot.

Each Dash project is framed as a task from a fictional client, with corrections along the way in case you make a mistake. But it goes beyond that. Once you’ve completed a project for your client, users can then customize the website and focus on design. After each site is beautified, Dash helps you publish it to the web.

By the end of the course, users will have three mini-sites up and running under their name.

Dash was originally created as an internal tool for General Assembly back in February, assigned as “pre-work” for students taking General Assembly’s full-time Front End Web Development immersive program.

However, after realizing it’s so well-liked among the GA community, the company decided to offer it as a publicly available tool.

If you want to check out Dash, head over here and sign up.

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Personalized Video Ad Company SundaySky Raises $20M Round Led By Comcast Ventures

SundaySky, a company promising to deliver video ads that are customized and updated for each viewer, has raised $20 million in Series C funding.

The round was led by Comcast Ventures, with participation from new investors Liberty Global Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners, as well as existing backers Carmel Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, and Norwest Venture Partners. Comcast Ventures managing director Andrew Cleland will be joining SundaySky’s board of directors.

A spokesperson told me that Comcast (along with other telecom companies) is a SundaySky customer; however, they emphasized that since the investment comes from the company’s venture arm, it’s financial, not strategic.

SundaySky has now raised a total of $40 million in funding.

The company refers to its main offering as Smart Video — videos generated in real time that combine branded content created in advance by SundaySky with data such as personalized account information and up-to-date product pricing. The company says it can support the creation of hundreds of thousands of Smart Videos each day, with each video generated in a few seconds. The platform also tracks the performance of each video and tries to improve the campaign based on that data. (Other personalized video companies include Eyeview, which recently raised an $8.1 million Series C.)

Customers include AT&T, Office Depot, and Allstate — you can see a gallery of SundaySky videos here.

SundaySky says it has delivered 140 million views since it launched in October 2011. The company declined to share specific revenue numbers, but it did say that revenue tripled in 2012 and that it expects revenue to grow a similar amount this year.

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The Boston Meetup + Pitch-Off Is In One Month, Apply Now To Be In The Pitch-Off

Boston in the fall. There’s nothing like it. Leaves are falling, a crisp wind blows in from the bay, and the particular pencils being sharpened are owned by Harvard, Boston College, and MIT students. That said, TechCrunch can’t help but pay a visit to one of the oldest cities in the nation to enjoy some of the newest technological innovations New England has to offer.

Who’s ready for the Boston TC Meetup + Pitch-Off?

The event will be held on Wednesday, November 13 from 6pm to 10pm at The Estate.

Tickets are $5 and include a drink ticket (meaning you need to be 21 or older). There will be tons of networking opportunities, and then we start in on the pitch-off competition.

Anywhere between 15 and 25 entrepreneurs will pitch their startup ideas to a panel of expert judges, including TechCrunch staffers and local VCs, with only sixty seconds to impress and excite the judges and the audience. There are absolutely no visual aids or demoes.

At the end of the night, judges and the audience will vote on the best pitch of the night and winners will be announced. First place will receive a table in Start Up Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Second Place will receive 2 tickets to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Third Place will receive 1 ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt.

We’re still looking for entrepreneurs to pitch, so if that sounds like you, head over here to apply. Just remember, these products must currently be in stealth or private beta.

Those chosen to participate in the pitch-off will also join us for Office Hours, where you’ll get one-on-one meetings with a member of the TechCrunch editorial staff to discuss the product and pitch ahead of time.

But whether you’re an entrepreneur, a student, or a fan of technology, it should be an amazing night.

See you there!

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TiVo Premiere update coming with improved Netflix app, HD wishlists

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Vizio debuts its Co-Star LT Stream Player, an $80 set-top box for HDTVs

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NYC Manhole Covers Could Soon Charge Your Electric Car's Battery

Adidas announces new smartwatch for runners, available on November 1st for $399

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Lenovo intros the Miix2, its first 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet; coming soon for $299

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Google extends Chrome support for Windows XP until April 2015

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Apple's 'Spaceship' Campus Is Definitely Coming to Cupertino

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Endeavour: del Centro Espacial Kennedy al Centro de Ciencias de California

Ya habíamos publicado un time-lapse del traslado del transbordador espacial Endeavour al Centro de Ciencias de California, donde desde noviembre de 2012 está expuesto al público.

Pero este es mucho más completo, ya que arranca con la instalación del Endeavour a lomos del NASA 905, el avión encargado de transportarlo de una costa a otra.

Incluye además tomas en las que se ve perfectamente los «meneítos» a los que hubo que someterlo para hacerlo pasar entre casas, árboles, señales de tráfico, farolas, etc, y eso después de haber talado unos 400 árboles con antelación para preparar el camino.

Es fruto del trabajo de Scott Andrews, un fotógrafo que ha cubierto prácticamente todos los lanzamientos de misiones tripuladas de la NASA, junto con su hijo Philip y Stan Jirman, un ex ingeniero de software de Apple.

Entre los tres, durmiendo apenas cuatro horas cada día durante 96 horas, capturaron unas 500 horas de movimiento usando doce cámaras, lo que vienen a ser seis terabytes de datos repartidos en algo más de 350.000 fotos.

Y eso fue sólo el principio del trabajo, ya que luego hubo que seleccionar las aproximadamente 9.500 que forman parte de vídeo final, suavizar los cambios de iluminación entre unas y otras etc.

Claro que el resultado merece realmente la pena.

(Time vía Víctor Ruiz).