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Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Media Queen Gerry Laybourne Joins Betaworks Board
Betaworks’ John Borthwick has today announced, via the company blog, that Gerry Laybourne will be joining the board of directors.
Alongside co-founding Kandu, a betaworks-backed technology company for kids, Laybourne is also known as one of the most powerful women in television.
She started out at Nickelodeon in the 80′s and 90′s, conceiving of classic children’s shows such as Rugrats, The Secret World of Alex Mack, and Pepper Ann.
After more than a decade at Nickelodeon, she founded Oxygen Media in 1999 and served as Chairman and CEO until she sold the company to NBC Universal in 2007.
Her latest venture, Kandu, lets people build their own games and software applications without any knowledge of how to code. It hasn’t launched yet, but we can glean a bit from the company’s about page:
It’s not okay that only a small number of people can make software. It’s as if only a few could write at a time when reading was taking off — precisely the situation in the 15th century when the moveable press was first invented. After the invention of the book, it took hundreds of years for literacy to spread. At Kandu, we don’t think it should take hundreds of years for people to become literate in the creation of software.
betaworks has always been focused on media of all shapes and sizes, whether its Digg or Dots. Most recently, the New York-based company hired Branch Media founder Josh Miller as a part-time venture partner. Laybourne, on the other hand, brings more traditional experience to the team.
Laybourne joins current betaworks board members Mike Buckley, Ken Lerer, Paul Cappuccio, Stu Ellman, Eric Martineu-Fortin, John Drizik, and John Borthwick.
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Chrome apps may soon run without any trace of the web browser
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Time Warner reveals how much money HBO makes, and why it's not splitting from cable yet
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KnowRoaming's international sticker SIMs begin shipping to backers today
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ISS-Above, un cacharro que te avisa de cuando la Estación Espacial Internacional pasa por encima de tu casa
Aunque la mayoría de la gente no lo sabe la Estación Espacial Internacional es perfectamente visible a simple vista desde la mayor parte de la Tierra, con lo que aproximadamente un 90 por ciento de la población mundial puede verla siempre que la meteorología lo permita.
Pero la órbita de la EEI no es geoestacionaria, de tal modo que no pasa siempre por los mismos sitios ni a la misma hora, aunque para no tener que estar pendiente si quieres verla la propia NASA te avisa desde Spot The Station por correo electrónico e incluso por SMS si vives en los Estados Unidos, también hay aplicaciones como Pass Finder para iOS, por ejemplo, que hacen lo mismo.
Claro que el puntazo definitivo como espaciotrastornado sería tener un cacharro que puedas poner encima de tu mesa o en una estantería y que te avise con unos LEDs o en una pantalla LCD de las próximas pasadas de la EEI que puedas.
Y eso es precisamente para lo que sirve ISS-Above , un gadget que ya ha conseguido financiación en Kickstarter.
Basado en un Raspberry Pi se conecta a Internet para descargar los datos de la órbita de la Estación, y convenientemente configurado con tu ubicación irá haciendo destellar los LEDs de su display cada vez mas rápido según se vaya acercando esta, aunque también te puedes conectar a su servidor web interno para ver los detalles de las próximas pasadas.
Si quieres, también es capaz de enviar un tuit de saludo a la Estación.
Según la opción que escojas en Kickstarter puedes conseguir desde un agradecimiento a un ISS-Above completo, montado en su caja impresa en 3D, y configurado, pasando por una tarjeta SD de 8 GB con el software necesario para meter en tu propio Raspberry Pi.
(Vía Universe Today).
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Cómo sacar de sus casillas a un diseñador en 40 segundos
Cómo minar la moral de un diseñador fácilmente: enséñale degradados, textos absurdamente estirados o comprimidos, fotos e imágenes procedentes de colecciones de clip-arts…
Todo ello obviamente sin criterio ni mesura ningunos. Y, por supuesto, haciendo un uso aberrante de las tipografías – con especial énfasis de la ínclita y denostada Cómic Sans.
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Twitter posts small earnings in first quarter as a public company, but user growth is slowing
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Estrellas y tormentas en time lapse
Huelux , un precioso vídeo de Randy Halverson grabado entre abril y noviembre de 2013 en Dakota del Sur, Wyoming, y Utah. Para ver en grande y con la luz apagada o casi.
La música es Getting Closer de Peter Nanasi.
Fotografiado con dos Canon EOS 5D Mk III y una Canon EOS 6D con una variedad de objetivos Nikon, Rokinon, Canon, Zeiss y Sigma.
(Vía Bad Astronomy).
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Samsung loved its leather-look Note 3 so much it's revised the Galaxy S 4 design to match
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Lumo Lift Wearable Seeing Upwards Of 400 Pre-Orders Per Day As Campaign Nears $1M
The Lumo Lift is the second product from startup Lumo BodyTech, and the second to help users with their posture. The Lumo Back was the first, and it raised around $200,000 in 40 days on Kickstarter. This time, Lumo opted to do the crowdfunding themselves, and the trajectory of the latest device has been quite different: Lumo Lift is at over $900,000 raised as of this writing, just under a month into the pre-order period.
That adds up to nearly 13,000 pre-orders, and totals about $32,000 per day raised thus far. The original Lumo Back campaign managed around $5,000 per day, or roughly one-sixth as much. Interest isn’t really waning the way it has a tendency to do with these kinds of campaigns, either – between Jan. 28 and Feb. 3, there were 3,149 pre-orders in total, which was close to on par with the very first week after a couple of weeks of slower, but still strong interest, as you can see from the chart below.
“It’s going well for a couple reasons,” explained Lumo founder and CEO Monisha Perkash in an interview. “Lumo Lift really differs from other wearable tech because it’s customizable to different fashion tastes. It’s really wearable tech that’s more than just tech: It’s fashionable tech. Also [...] it focuses on bringing out the more confident, more attractive, the healthier you and that requires both staying active as well as good posture and we’re the only solution in the market that can do both.”
Interest in the campaign has produced some interesting demographic insight, too. Lumo has found that the majority of pre-order interest is from male customers, who are responsible for just over 67 percent of all orders. The U.S. is the big market for the Lift, unsurprisingly, with 86.7 percent of all orders, while 92.5 percent of sales come from the combined English-speaking countries of the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada. White is the most popular color choice with 54 percent of purchases, while 26 percent preferred black and silver trailed both with just 20 percent.
The difference between the initial campaign and this one is staggering – Lumo Lift will almost certainly exceed $1 million in pre-orders, likely before the week is out, which is five times what the startup accomplished on Kickstarter for the Lumo Back. I asked Perkash about how the two experiences compare.
“There are pros and cons of going in either direction [Kickstarter vs. self funding],” she explained. “What we’ve found is that because your customers interact with you on your website, you end up having a closer relationship with your customers. You can engage them more without having a third party between you, and you can also develop your own brand and messaging, [...] and make it consistent with what you want to communicate.”
Perkash says Lumo is still happy with having used Kickstarter in the beginning, since it helped them reach a wider audience with a brand that people didn’t really know to begin with. Also, she says that going alone a year and a half ago when they first started out, crowdfunding was still a relatively new concept, so there wouldn’t really be an opportunity to build a big following using your own platform vs. partnering with someone like Kickstarter.
Despite massively exceeding their initial expectations, Perkash says that she doesn’t anticipate any hiccups with initial production, since they’re confident in the manufacturing system and relationships they built with the original Lumo Back. There are only three more days left to get the Lumo Lift at its discounted price of $69 before it goes back to $99, so we’ll likely have a better idea of what kind of initial shipment volumes they’ll be facing once that price change starts to affect pre-order demand.
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Browsing on your Android phone just got safer, thanks to the EFF
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Google will escape fines in EU antitrust case by promoting rival services
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Apple and Samsung to spar over iPhone 5, Galaxy Note II at next trial
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Mileways, The Social App For Frequent Flyers, Adds Flight Compensation Through Partnership With AirHelp
Mileways, the Munich-based social app for frequent flyers, just got a little more useful. The iOS app has added integration with AirHelp, the flight compensation startup co-founded by Morten Lund, to make it easy for travellers to claim compensation should they face delay, cancelation or overbooking when flying to and from the EU.
The AirHelp partnership builds nicely on the Mileways proposition. The startup’s iOS app wants to be a one-stop-shop for flyers to help them keep track of and share flight information with their social network, and collect air miles that can be redeemed at a number of partners services, including Airbnb, Sixt, and Uber — with more partners coming soon.
Features include the ability to share travel details with friends (or switch to private mode), follow other travellers, get alerts when your flight is delayed, view weather forecasts, and find and book accommodation. In addition, there are a bunch of more generic social features, such as photo sharing and commenting on your friends’ trips.
Like the AirHelp app itself, the process of filing a compensation claim is somewhat automated. Data entry is minimal since the Mileways app already has most your flight details; you simply enter your name and booking code, and AirHelp’s “automatic flight compensation technology” kicks in.
First it will alert you when you may be entitled to compensation, and then assist you with filing the claim using its own airport, weather and airline data in order to consolidate the legal work required to make it stick. If the claim is successful, AirHelp keeps 25% of the compensation amount.
When I met Mileways co-founder Alexander Lueck at last year’s Disrupt Europe London meetup, he showed me an earlier version of the app and asked what I thought. My slight criticism was that I thought Mileways needed to provide more utility — it felt more vitamin pill, less pain killer — to incentivise users to go to the trouble of entering their travel details or syncing flight bookings. One way it’s doing that is obviously the redeemable air miles. And with today’s AirHelp integration, it’s added another reason for frequent flyers to use the app.
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La policía podrá detener coches a distancia
En Yahoo, En 2020, la Policía detendrá tu coche a distancia ,
El ENLET, European Network of Law Enforcement Technologies, trabaja entre otros proyectos, en un dispositivo capaz de desactivar la alimentación de un automóvil a distancia. Una herramienta que se supone de gran utilidad para que las policías eviten peligrosas persecuciones, disparos a las ruedas y líneas de pinchos, a la hora de echar el guante a los malos. Sólo se podría activar desde una sala de control, visualizando el delito en pantalla, bajo el visto bueno de la autoridad judicial, y contaría por encima de todo con la colaboración de las marcas de automóviles. Todas ellas deberían aceptar un estándar común y en todos sus coches a partir de 2020 debería existir la posibilidad técnica de detenerse por control remoto.
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Un «pre trailer» de «The After», la nueva producción del creador de «Expediente X», Chris Carter
Viendo el vídeo no queda nada claro de qué va la vaina, pero The After está producida por Chris Carter, creador de Expediente X, y sólo por eso merece un par de segundos de atención. En realidad se trata de un pre pre pre trailer de un pre pre piloto, así que el proyecto podría quedar en nada.
Según Wired, «se trata de una serie que a partir de un incidente misterioroso explora la fragilidad humana, el terror, el triunfo de la humanidzZzZzzZzzz». Perdón. Lo que sea, pero que no sean más zombis.
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Hábitos procedentes de la era de las máquinas de escribir
Menuda lista la de Matthew Butterick en Typewriter habits . Una enumeración de 22 malos hábitos procedentes de los tiempos en los que las máquinas de escribir eran la herramienta del escritor:
Entre los clásicos:
- 1 y 6. Usar las comillas verticales en vez de las inteligentes.
- 7. Hacer como si las tildes no existieran (muy «de móvil»).
- 10. Usar retornos de carro para separar párrafos.
- 22. Usar una longitud de línea como si el texto se imprimiera en un papel con márgenes.
Los de la gente que usó más las máquinas de escribir que los ordenadores
- 2. Usar dos espacios después de los puntos finales.
- 5. Usar tres puntos (...) en vez de puntos suspensivos (…)
- 14. Subrayar
Y uno que no conocía:
- 20. Centrar demasiado a menudo
Además el texto sirve de homenaje al famoso libro de Robin Williams El Mac no es una máquina de escribir de donde surgieron La Web no es una máquina de escribir y otros.
Los interesados en el tema gustarán de leerse Butterick’s Practical Typography , una excelente web/libro sobre el tema.
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