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Friday, 24 January 2014
Samsung's slumping sales suggest China is the next mobile battlefield
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SoundCloud reportedly in talks with record labels to stem copyright claims
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Fotos inéditas del desastre del transbordador espacial Challenger
Todos los que tenemos una cierta edad tenemos esta imagen grabada en nuestras retinas. Se corresponde con la destrucción del Challenger el 28 de enero de 1986 durante el lanzamiento de la misión STS-51-L.
Pero en realidad esta no es la imagen que todos recordamos, sino una muy similar tomada por un compañero de trabajo del abuelo de Bonte que ese día estaba viendo y fotografiando en lanzamiento.
Tal y como comenta él mismo se la encontró junto con otras pocas más en una caja después de que su abuelo muriera y las escaneó y publicó en el álbum Challenger Disaster para que todo el mundo pudiera verlas.
A estas alturas no van a aportar nada a lo que ya se sabe de las causas del desastre, pero personalmente me deja impresionado que el fotógrafo fuera capaz de seguir haciendo fotos a pesar de lo que estaba viendo.
Yo no creo que hubiera sido capaz.
(Las encontré vía Stu Cohen).
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Apple's Tim Cook: 'There is no backdoor. The government doesn't have access to our servers'
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Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” Gets A Movie Deal
In an era where movie creators simply copy books for lack of original ideas, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In has been picked up for a movie deal.
According to the WSJ, Sony Pictures Entertainment has announced that it has acquired the film rights to the Ms. Sandberg’s book, which was published last year.
As Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sandberg penned the advice-based book to help women be more successful in today’s workplace, where few women rarely reach the top.
Oddly, Lean In has almost no narrative structure whatsoever, and rather offers analysis and advice. How that will turn into a riveting movie is beyond me.
This isn’t Sony’s first go-around with Facebook-themed content. The studio was responsible for 2010′s “The Social Network” which was a box office hit. That, like Lean In: The Movie, was based on a book, “The Accidental Billionaires.”
It is unclear how closely Sandberg will be working with the filmmakers on the script, but her co-writer Nell Scovell is already hard at work on a first draft of the script.
Though I’m not expecting to laugh and cry at the premiere of Lean In, there is a bit of good news out there for movie lovers in the tech space. If Lean In can be turned into a movie, there’s a really great chance that Bilton’s book, Hatching Twitter, on the origins of the shortwinded social network will also find its way to the big screen.
Who do you think will play Jack Dorsey?
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Selling The Wooden Horse In The Age Of The iPad
Is there a more timeless toy than a wooden horse? I dare say there isn’t. N-Gages and iPads will come and go, but the wooden horse is forever.
A pair of brothers have turned to Kickstarter to bring their wooden horse to the masses. Made out of maple and meticulously finished, this toy seems like it will last generations. Don’t expect your kids to hand their LeapFrog down to their offspring.
At this point Kickstarter has began to transcend funding art projects and iPhone accessories. It’s much more than that now. Kickstarter is quickly becoming ingrained in the creative process. Thanks to Kickstarter, The Smith Tapes was nominated for a Grammy, Music From Brooklyn Babylon was nominated for a Grammy, The Square was nominated for an Oscar. And two brothers from New York are finding a way to fund a wooden horse.
The small company is looking for $35,000 to fund their project. As of this post’s publication, they’re just north of $15,000. The money will be used to place bulk orders, allowing CNC machines to carve out the pieces en masse. Right now, each piece, and there are 30 of them, are cut by hand.
Pledge $16 and they’ll provide you with the 3D CAD files so you can print your own. $45 or more nets you a wooden horse.
Why is this on TechCrunch? As a father to two kids addicted to technology, I’ve watched apps and devices flow through their hands at an incredible pace. Only our trusty iPad 2 has had any lasting effect. But these kids, raised on Android, iOS and the Boxee Box, are mysteriously drawn to mechanical toys such as this horse. In our ever-connected world, there will always be a place for wooden toys. That makes me smile.
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Y así es como se hace aterrizar un Airbus A320 en automático
En aquellos aeropuertos dotados con los equipos necesarios, y siempre que el avión y la tripulación estén certificados para ello, se pueden realizar aterrizajes ILS categoría III, en los que sólo es necesario disponer de 50 metros de visibilidad horizontal para que al final el piloto tome el control cuando el avió ya está en tierra y lo lleve al aparcamiento.
Así es como se hace en un A320, que nunca se sabe cuando uno se va a ver en la necesidad.
El vídeo es de la Baltic Aviation Academy, cuyo canal de YouTube tiene un montón de vídeos que de esos que nos encantan a los aerotrastornados.
- ¿Podría alguien hacer aterrizar un avión sin tener ni idea? Una pregunta que sin duda todos nos hemos hecho.
- Cómo aterrizar un avión comercial en caso de emergencia, ¡fácilmente!, unas instrucciones al respecto por si acaso.
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Gmail and other Google services go down (update: back up for some)
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Adnimation Uses Animation To Help Online Ads Grab Your Attention
Startup Adnimation is launching an ad network with a new approach to attracting the attention of online viewers.
As you can probably guess from the name (and, okay, from the fact that I pretty much spelled it out in the headline), the core of the company’s approach is animation, but it’s not trying to create normal animated ads. Instead, it layers animations on top of standard banners.
For example, founder and CEO Tomer Treves told me that if a cat food company was running an ad, Adnimation could show a cartoon of a cat jumping around the page, then drawing your attention back to the banner. The animation isn’t created by the advertiser, and instead comes from the library of animations that Adnimation has built up. That means advertisers can continue creating standard banners without spending the extra time or money on animation, yet hopefully still see increased engagement.
But from a consumer perspective, is this just another for ads to annoy you? Treves pointed out that there’s nothing here that’s deceiving users, and he suggested that the company’s fun animations mean that people will “come in with a smile.” (You can see a sample animation in the video below.)
He added that the animations work on both desktop and mobile, and when I asked about whether large brand advertisers would want to use animations that they hadn’t created themselves, Treves said, “For the very big brands, we make sure that our animations are very high end.”
Adnimation has raised an undisclosed, “very small pre-seed investment” from Israeli angel investors.
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This case will turn your iPhone into a mobile wallet for $70
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Black Car Competitor Accuses Uber Of Shady Conduct, DDoS-Style Attack; Uber Responds With “Regret”
Competition is fierce in the world of on-demand transportation. The consumer demand for better, more convenient car service has exploded over the last two years, and startups services are racing to capitalize. In fact, the race is now so heated that it seems some companies are willing to try anything to put the brakes on their competitors.
As one of the early movers in a staunch, union-controlled market, Uber is familiar with pushing against boundaries. It’s been known to offer perks to drivers from competitive services to get them to switch, including $50 gas cards just for stopping by its headquarters and signing bonuses for those who switch. But with Gett’s claims today, it appears as if Uber’s aggressive tactics may have gone too far.
Gett launched its black car service and hailing app this fall in New York City with the goal of offering a better, more affordable alternative to services existing black car services. With a $100 million run rate and a growing international business, Gett’s arrival was hardly lost on Uber. To welcome its competitor to New York, Gett claims that, over a span of three days last week, Uber employees ordered and then cancelled more than 100 of its cars.
Gett CEO Jing Herman equates Uber’s move to a malicious denial-of-service attack, as more than a dozen Uber employees worked together to request rides from its competitor. In some cases, the CEO says, they would wait until the Gett cars had nearly arrived before canceling their order.
Once they requested a Gett car, the Uber employees would have access to the driver’s number. On Tuesday, one of these Uber employees then texted as many of the drivers as they could, attempting to recruit them into the fold. In copies of the text shared with TechCrunch by Gett, the Uber employee offered Gett drivers money to come over to their camp — not unlike the methods they’ve previously used on mustachioed competitor, Lyft.
Uber, when contacted about the incident, confirmed that its employees had attempted to recruit Gett drivers. Through Spokesman Andrew Noyes, Uber admitted that its “local teams can be pretty determined when spreading the word about Uber and how our platform opens up new economic opportunities for drivers.”
Depending on where one sits, the word “determined” is either a fair descriptor of an ambitious, if not zealous philosophy, or a hilarious understatement. Uber’s statement, of course, showed that the company was aware that its business practice had likely crossed the line, but qualified that by saying that Uber had then paid any necessary cancellation fees. Whether that makes up for the “transgression” or not, remains to be seen.
The statement reads:
It was likely too aggressive a sales tactic and we regret the team’s approach to outreach of these drivers. But to be clear there was no time spent by the providers as the requests were canceled immediately and Uber did pay cancellation fees for these requests. We have messaged city teams to curtail activities that seek lead generation by requesting transportation services.
Gett, of course, was none too happy about the incident, as the CEO explained that it, unsurprisingly, had a disruptive effect on its business. Once Gett learned that it was in fact a coordinated effort and not random cancellations, Herman said that the company “quickly blocked the attack” and was able to prevent the system from being compromised. It has also immedliately blocked the dozen or so Uber employees from its system, which will prevent them from using Gett (at least under their own name) in the future.
In documents shared with TechCrunch containing the order forms resulting from Uber employees’ requests, it’s also clear that this not just some Uber intern who was coerced into launching a black car-style DDoS or a rogue employee. In fact, the dozen or so Uber employees whose names appear on the orders include a social media manager, operations manager, community manager and its general manager.
While Uber’s actions may be cutthroat and a bit over-zealous, just how far over the line Uber went remains to be seen. It’s not clear whether Uber could find itself on the wrong side of the law following this stunt and whether or not it qualifies as an unfair business, which is, of course, illegal under more than a few state’s laws. For the time being, Gett declined to comment on whether or not it would be pursuing any form of legal action.
In competitive markets like the one Uber and Gett are operating in, a certain amount of “shenanigans” and “tomfoolery” are to be expected. While it remains to be seen what will come of this event if anything, it should at the very least make clear to Uber that if it continues down this road, lawyers and courtrooms likely await.
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PlayStation Vita TV review: Sony's first mini-console has some growing pains
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Aviary Says It Has Been Used To Edit 10 Billion Photos
Aviary is announcing today that it’s hit a big milestone in the use of its photo editing platform — that platform has been used to edit 10 billion photos.
And it seems that most of that activity happened in the past year, since Aviary made its 3 billion photo announcement in March of 2013.
The company offers its own, Aviary-branded apps, but it’s probably best known as a tool for developers — the company says that by using its software development kit, developers can add photo-editing capabilities to their app or websites within minutes.
In fact, the company says that it’s now been integrated with more than 7,000 partner apps, including Pic Stitch, Tango, and Squarespace. It also says the SDK has been downloaded in 143 countries.
Across all of those apps, Aviary says it reaches more than 70 million monthly active users (a number that it has shared before). It’s hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison, since Aviary isn’t just a consumer photo app, but as a reminder, Instagram has said that it has 150 million monthly actives.
The company blog post says:
As we look forward, what most exciting is the fact that a new visual lingua franca has emerged. Unquestionably, photos have become the communication language of the global mobile generation. We are long past the point when photo editing was just about turning an average picture into a good one. Photo editing is now about enhancing visual communication between billions of people across the planet, in a way that embodies the full richness of emotions, feelings and inspiration.
By the way, a regulatory filing at the end of last year suggested that Aviary had raised a $2 million debt round. When I asked CEO Tobias Peggs about it, he told me via email:
In short, having turned on b2c and b2b revenue last year, the company is in a really, really good spot. But we wanted to accelerate a couple of initiatives early this year (specially international expansion and our Branded Content model), so it was helpful to have a little more firepower. To do that, we raised a quick debt round from existing investors. It’s pretty normal, and fast – which is important, because fundraising can be a major distraction and we have a lot to get on with. It’s great to have a board who understands that. It was the best solution all round.
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Sony teases 'slimmest' PlayStation device coming to the UK on January 30th
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Nokia's dumbphones face an uncertain future at Microsoft
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Fresh Off Its $21.5M Raise, Tutoring Marketplace WyzAnt Acquires Deadpooled Competitor, Tutorspree
Tutorspree launched out of Y Combinator in 2011 to tackle the fast-growing, high-priced and increasingly franchise-happy tutoring market. To take on heavyweights like Sylvan Learning, the startup set out to create a better way for students of any age to find high-quality private tutors, using its proprietary algorithms to match students with teachers based on their location, background and preferences.
By early 2013, Tutorspree had recruited over 7,000 tutors across the U.S., grown to 10 employees and had raised $1.8 million in financing from an impressive roster of investors, including Sequoia Capital, Lerer Ventures and Quora co-founder Adam D’angelo. However, in spite of its promise, six months later, Tutorspree was no more.
Confronted with a laundry list of challenges — namely, being a startup in an increasingly crowded market, scaling a local marketplace and slower-than-expected growth — co-founders Aaron Harris, Josh Abrams and Ryan Bednar made the difficult decision to shutter Tutorspree and return its remaining capital to investors. All in all, it was a disappointing end for a startup once dubbed the “Airbnb for tutoring.”
Today, however, in a dispatch from the Department of Silver Linings, TechCrunch has learned that the Tutorspree story is getting an epilogue. Fresh off a $21.5 million investment, fellow tutoring marketplace competitor, Wyzant, is acquiring Tutorspree and its remaining assets for an undisclosed price.
Because Tutorspree is no longer an operational business, it’s likely that the deal terms (and price) weren’t particularly high. Nonetheless, it’s positive note to end for Tutorspree — relatively speaking, of course — giving its tutors and student customers stranded a place to land, and the opportunity to recover a bit of change for its investors. And naturally, because all Tutorspree founders and employees have gone onto new projects and companies, the acquisition is strictly an asset purchase.
So, why did WyzAnt decide to do this so late in the game? Simply put, the acquisition gives WyzAnt access to Tutorspree’s customers, their domain and technology at a very affordable price. (Like, we’re talkin’ rock bottom affordable.) Plus, the Tutorspree site has been up and running for awhile, without being actively managed — a sad, nagging reminder of the First Rule of Startup Club. (That 90 percent of them fail.)
Though it sounds like fluffy talk, it’s also true that Tutorspree and WyzAnt very much shared similar goals. Both set out to fix the tutoring industry, make it more efficient and affordable and increase accessibility to affordable tutoring, and both companies believed that the marketplace model was the best way to approach these goals.
While Tutorspree struggled to scale, WyzAnt’s eight-year-old tutoring marketplace formula has ben growing steadily. Today, WyzAnt works with over 500,000 tutors and serves over one million students, and the company has amassed more than $100 million in gross sales to date. With a larger base and geographical reach to draw from, WyzAnt has been able to more successfully capitalize on the broader, verticalized marketplace trend that has emerged over the last few years.
Also known as the “sharing economy,” or “peer-to-peer” economy, the companies living under this umbrella are finding fast success by bringing user-friendly online marketplaces to well-established yet predominantly-offline industries. Tutorspree and WyzAnt were two of the better known examples of startups applying this model to the tutoring market.
On top of that, WyzAnt has been able to find success by eschewing a focus on the SATs or a particular subject, instead taking a broader approach, a la Etsy or Amazon — offering tutoring in over 240 subjects that range from K-12 to college, test prep to arithmetic.
Furthermore, as we wrote at the time:
On the flip side, WyzAnt offers a way for tutors to tap into a new pool of customers, while moving their small tutoring service online and bringing in more dollars. Like many other marketplaces, WyzAnt generates revenue by taking a piece of each transaction, with the percentage it takes based on a sliding scale, depending how often the tutor uses WyzAnt. In addition, by offering profiles, payment processing and some basic CRM tools, the company wants to be an easy way for tutors to run their businesses, market themselves and manage usually tedious operational pains, like scheduling and collecting payments.
In the end, it’s a positive note for Tutorspree to end on, and it’s good to see a company that offered quality design, technology and had plenty of promise come to a not quite so ignominious end.
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VCs, They’re Just Like Us!
One of our favourite things about Twitter is that if you follow the right people, its conversational nature can feel like you’re hanging out at Starbucks eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. And when those conversations are VCs talking amongst themselves, beautiful, life-affirming things can happen. Like the time you realised that VCs are in actual fact just like you — other than the fact they control hundreds of millions of dollars.
Take, for example, this exchange of tweets by a group of London-based VCs, started by Passion Capital VC and ex-Skype Product Manager, Eileen Burbidge, discussing the virtues of having a real job.
best work experience for me: telesales and restaurant waitress/hostess (more real world practical exp than any internship inc Bell Labs etc)
— Eileen Burbidge (@eileentso) January 23, 2014
Burbidge makes a very valid point, of course: Entrepreneurs need to know how to sell, while people-facing skills are a crucial, but perhaps under celebrated, skill-set required for startup success. In her case, work experience in telesales and waitressing appears to have best time spent interning at legendary Bell Labs.
Cue Saul Klein, Partner at Index Ventures, who chimes in reminiscing about when he too had a regular job. He agrees with Burbidge, telesales is good, but perhaps not as good as working as a kitchen hand, dishwasher, and cleaner.
@eileentso totally agree re telesales – also for me was kitchen prep and dish washing in a restaurant plus being a cleaner
— Saul Klein (@cape) January 23, 2014
Next up is Sean Seton-Rogers of PROfounders Capital. He too bestows the virtues of learning to sell. In his case, selling fruit and veg at a farmer’s market, aged 15 — something a tad far removed from his time at Balderton selling Bebo to AOL for $850m “Good times!,” he tweets. Good times, indeed.
@cape @eileentso I spent a summer selling fruit and veg at a farmer's market when I was 15. Good times!
— Sean Seton-Rogers (@setonrog) January 23, 2014
Finally, up steps Joe Neale of m8Capital with his own tale of real world experience. In contrast to Burbidge, he describes working in telesales as “soul-destroying” — we’re presuming he wouldn’t describe being a VC like that these days. Although, on a more positive note, the ex MySpacer-turned-VC says it taught him how to hustle. And hustle he has.
@jlopezvalcarcel @cape @eileentso I had a dreadful job in Telesales right after university, soul-destroying but learned to hustle 
— Joe Neale (@Joe) January 23, 2014
However, we are disappointed that Juan Lopez-Valcarcel, Chief Digital Officer at Pearson International, enthusiastically embraces selling when he really ought to be BUYING STARTUPS. Ok Juan?
The take-away to all of this is: VCs, they’re just like us.
(And, if you land a job in telesales, a career in Venture Capital can ensue.)
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Facebook gets into nerd feud with Princeton, hilarity ensues
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Una curiosa «foto fantasma» producida por el efecto visual postimagen
- Mira la nariz de la modelo fijamente durante 60 segundos
- Aparta la vista y mira a una superficie blanca, ej. el techo
- Parpadea rápido
- …¿Qué clase de brujería es esta?
Es otra versión del famoso efecto óptico postimagen , que ya hemos explorado por aquí en efectos como la Li’l Color y el espectacular Spanish Castle Magic.
Por la forma en que funciona el cerebro, la imagen queda «memorizada» pero en negativo. Eso origina algunos fenómenos (…) a los que se puede sacar partido con las ilusiones ópticas. Después de mirarla fijamente, al llevar la vista a un fondo blanco (una pared, un papel), «vemos» la imagen de la silueta pero en negro. Puede ser un efecto algo "fantasmagórico", porque vemos una silueta que no existe (…) Después de estar un rato mirando fijamente este negativo modificado, en nuestro sistema visual se genera una postimagen positiva (…) –
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