FUNKY GREEN: 01/08/14

Wednesday, 8 January 2014

Forget gesture cameras, here's a wireless armband that senses your muscles

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Live from the Engadget CES Stage: WowWee CTO Davin Sufer

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White House agrees to fund International Space Station until 2024

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Cambridge Consultants wants to make you a better basketball player through the power of technology (video)

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Live from the Engadget CES Stage: iRobot CEO Colin Angle

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Battle of the Curved Smart TVs at CES

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With An Eight-Figure Runrate, Oscar Doubles Down on Health Insurance Through $30M In New Funding

Oscar, the New York-based startup in the decidedly unsexy world of health insurance, has just picked up an additional $30 million in funding.

Why? Promising numbers in the product’s first 90 days since launch. The company debuted last October just as the federal government and states unveiled new health insurance exchanges where consumers can pick and choose plans in compliance with the Affordable Care Act.

Oscar has since enrolled “thousands” of customers and has “tens of millions” of dollars in annualized revenue. While the federal government’s exchange had an embarrassingly messy launch, state programs in places like New York and California rolled out more smoothly.

That’s where Oscar has picked most of its new clientele. Apparently, the numbers were good enough that Founders Fund, which had been a minority investor in the company, decided to increase its stake at a $340 million valuation. Other firms including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and Kushner’s firm, Thrive Capital, also participated. Founders Fund put in $25 million, while the other firms added the remaining $5 million.

Oscar tries to marry many of the design and user experience lessons from the consumer web and mobile world with health care.

They have a clean and clear sign-up flow and they offer amenities like telemedicine or the ability to talk to a doctor within one hour of making a request. Generic drugs and primary care visits are also free.

The company has a notable team behind with it Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner, Vostu co-founder Mario Schlosser, Kevin Nazemi and Fredrik Nylander, who ran engineering and operations and Tumblr. That’s just on the tech side. They also picked up executives with about 1,000 years of health insurance career experience behind them. On the company’s board is Charlie Baker, who ran insurer Harvard Pilgrim out of Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance exchange before the Affordable Care Act was passed.

Oscar’s timing was incredibly lucky. The team looked at the healthcare space before they really understood what the full impact of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) would be. But the act fortuitously offered them a window to pick up customers just as the U.S. government enacted an individual mandate, or a requirement that people buy insurance or face penalties. That has meant a host of previously uninsured customers have come online the last several months.

In total, Oscar has raised $75 million, about $29 million of which has gone toward a capital reserve that the state of New York requires for health insurance providers.

The company only caters to customers in New York and has no immediate plans to expand outside of the state (although that is the goal long-term).

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Hulu's original TV shows for 2014 are a mix of new series, new seasons and foreign transplants

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Live from the Engadget CES Stage: Sennheiser CEO Daniel Sennheiser

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FAST, el radiotelescopio chino de 500 metros

Aunque por ahora el radiotelescopio de Arecibo con sus 305 metros de diámetro es el más grande del mundo de su tipo allá por septiembre de 2016 perderá su puesto cuando China inaugure en FAST, el Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope .

Como su propio nombre indica, el Telescopio Esférico de Quinientos Metros de Apertura contará con un reflector de 500 metros, aunque con la peculiaridad de que este estará formado por 4.600 paneles triangulares que se podrán orientar independientemente, lo que le permitirá cubrir una zona del cielo de 40 grados alrededor de la vertical del lugar en el que está instalado frente a los 20 de Arecibo.

Se trata de una depresión natural en terreno kárstico situada en la región de Guizhou, a 170 kilómetros de la capital de esta, en una zona muy poco poblada, con lo que tendrá muy pocas interferencias de radio.

Esto, junto con el tamaño de su reflector lo hará el doble de sensible que Arecibo, que en 2013 cumplió 50 años.

Así FAST podrá detectar objetos muy débiles como los púlsares de periodo rápido que son demasiado tenues como para ser medidos con precisión por instrumentos más pequeños.

# Enlace Permanente

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T-Mobile Will Now Pay Your Termination Fees for Switching

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These Are the Brains of the Next Bitcoin Mining Monster

Nokia Lumia Icon shows up on Verizon's test site with 20-megapixel PureView camera, 2420 mAh battery

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Live from the Engadget CES Stage: the EFF's Julie Samuels

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BMW's autonomous car, or how we drifted into love with a robot

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CES 2014, Day 2: Five signs you're at the biggest tech show on Earth

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Panasonic's first-person 4K camera debuts at CES, set for launch in late 2014

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Vizio's 4K Ultra HD TVs start at $1,000 for a 50-inch set (video)

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Sharp Debuts Wireless High-Def Audio and Video Player

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FINsix laptop adapter is tiny yet powerful, arriving in time for summer

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Seattle kills Gigabit Squared's fiber internet rollout before it even starts

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Polar's latest wearable wants to be more than just a sports watch

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This case turns your iPhone into a night vision camera

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Audi Has Car Headlights That Shoot Laser Beams

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Live from the Engadget CES Stage: The Engadget HD Podcast

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Panasonic's next GH mirrorless camera will record 4K video, arrive late February for under $2,000

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There's a Dalek on the Loose at CES

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Meet WowWee's MiP: A gesture and app-controlled robot with moves like Jagger

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Check out 3Doodler's upcoming accessories and swappable tips

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Making Engadget's Best of CES trophies (video)

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OLPC shows off its two new kid-friendly tablets (hands-on)

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AMD's Project Discovery tablet for work or play... but mostly play

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Live from the Engadget CES Stage: The Engadget Podcast

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Tablo streaming DVR now available for pre-order, ships in February for $219

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This is the final hardware for Scanadu Scout, a real, functioning tricorder

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Must See HDTV for the week of January 7th: Justified, Helix and Alpha House

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Here's that $500 3D scanner for the iPad

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Gawker Neil Patrick Harris Got Wasted in Mexico, Took Some Priceless Photos | Jalopnik This Heartbre

AMD's impossibly thin nano PC prototype sits on your TV, but don't call it a set-top box

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What Legal Battles? Video Upstart Aereo Lands $34M In New Funding, Plans Big U.S. Expansion

Streaming TV startup Aereo generated quite a few headlines last year. Backed by Barry Diller and IAC, the controversial young company has become entangled in a lengthy and expensive legal battle with the major network broadcasters who want to see it shut down — a battle that’s now headed to the Supreme Court.

While the startup has been growing fast and announced big expansion plans early last year as a result — in which it expected to be in 22 new markets by the end of 2013 — the legal battles have slowed Aereo’s nationwide expansion. However, today Aereo looks to be turning that around with a big round of new capital to fuel these efforts, as the New York City-based company announced that it has closed $34 million in Series C financing.

The new round, in the company’s lead investor, IAC, was joined by media investor honchos like Gordon Crawford and Himalaya Capital Management, will support Aereo’s “rapid nationwide expansion” and allow it to ramp up hiring, the company said. Previous investors Highland Capital Partners, FirstMark Capital also joined in the round.

The company will be making a full presentation about the news at the Citi Global Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference tomorrow morning. Readers can find the live stream of the event here.

We’ve reached out to the company to learn more, and will be updating the post in the meantime.