The PERI Duo Battery Case Does Double Duty As A Wi-Fi Speaker

The PERI Duo is an iPhone battery case for the frequent entertainer — those who go out with friends and find that they’re the one stuck hooking their phone up to a speaker and doing some impromptu DJing.

Slightly bulkier than a Mophie, the Duo packs two powerful (for their size) speakers that can push a surprising amount of sound. While it’s not going to be the best sound you’ve ever heard (especially if you’re all about that bass), it’s certainly a better solution than putting your phone in a cup to amplify its built-in speakers. The battery can charge your phone by 170% (so fully, and then a bit more) or keep you fully charged and give you 3-4 hours of music over the speakers.

There are a few use cases where you’d want giant speakers attached directly to your phone on the go — PERI co-founder Michael Hsu suggested groups that go running together and want some jams when we met this week — but generally you want a stationary speaker pointing to the rest of the group.

That kind of sucks if you also want to use your phone while entertaining everyone else, so the Duo actually works as a Wi-Fi speaker when disconnected from your iPhone. If you use it at home a lot, you can configure it to connect to your home router and let people control it who are connected to the same network. If you take it out to the beach or a friend’s place, you can set it to generate its own local network.

If you several friends pick up Duos, you can do some neat tricks with the case’s peer-to-peer networking functions. You can set multiple speakers to play the same music, but change the volume levels on individual cases so some rooms can be for dancing and others for hanging out. You could set several up on each side of a room and send the right and left channels of music to each side. Or you could control multiple speakers in different rooms playing different songs, all from one phone.

PERI successfully funded its Indiegogo campaign and sold out of its early-bird specials, but if you’re still interested in picking one up (there’s a version for the iPhone 5/5s and one for the 6) the campaign is still going for another week. They’re going for $99 each, and Hsu says backers can expect to receive their final units towards the end of Q2 2015.

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Once $399 A Year, Google Earth Pro Is Now Free

Lots of people have dabbled with Google Earth to fly around their neighborhood or poke around a 3D version Paris. But how many dropped $400 (per year!) for a Pro subscription?

Not a ton, it would seem. At least, not enough for Google to keep counting on it as an income source.

Google has just nixed the subscription fee for Google Earth Pro, dropping it from $400 a year to completely free.

You’ll still need to get a key from Google to unlock the Pro features, but that’s a matter of filling out a quick form. (Ignore the “free trial” bit in the URL; the new free license should work indefinitely.) Then you’d download the free Pro client from right here.

So what’s different about Google Earth Pro that once made it $400 a year? It’s primarily good for project planning and tinkering with data. It’s not something everyone will need — but hey, it’s free now!

Here’s what it can do that the non-Pro version can’t:

• Print images at 4800×3200; non-Pro is capped at 1000×1000.


• Automatically import a few thousand addresses at once to be pinned on a map


• Capture HD videos of what’s on screen.


• Measure distances/areas using lines, paths, polygons, circles, and more. Non-pro can only handle lines/paths.

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Windows 10 for enterprise will not be free, splits into two upgrade branches

There aren't many people who don’t like the sound of "free", and this was one of the keywords taken away from Microsoft's Windows 10 event earlier in the month. As build 9926 was unleashed on eager upgraders, Microsoft revealed that it will be free to upgrade to Windows 10 in the first year.

At least this is the case for the average consumer; it's something of a different story for enterprise customers. Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise are not versions that will be eligible for a free upgrade -- this is the personification of Windows as a service.

In a blog post, Microsoft explains a little about how Windows as a Service will work, and what it will mean for customers. There's no word on pricing at this stage, but Jim Alkove does reveal a little about how the enterprise version of Windows 10 will be updated and how the update process can be customized to suit individual customer needs. Alkove also announces that there will be two different branches of Windows 10 for enterprise, the Long Term Servicing branches and the Current branch for Business.

But what does this actually mean?

The Long Term Servicing branches have a security focus and will not receive all of the same updates as the consumer version of Windows 10.

To support Windows 10 devices in these mission critical customer environments we will provide Long Term Servicing branches at the appropriate time intervals. On these branches, customer devices will receive the level of enterprise support expected for the mission critical systems, keeping systems more secure with the latest security and critical updates, while minimizing change by not delivering new features for the duration of mainstream (five years) and extended support (five years).

The aim is to ensure that key systems are not taken out of operation by updates that are not completely essential, and are not subjected to updates that have not been fully tested.

The Current branch for Business works in a slightly different way. This branch will be able to access the same updates as consumers, but on a timescale that suits individual businesses. It takes advantage of testing done by Windows Insiders, and updates can be deployed automatically through Windows Update, or via WSUS.

This renewed flexibility is a sign not only of Microsoft listening to its customers, but also the particular ethusiasm for Windows 10 to be more of a success than Windows 8.

Photo credit: woaiss / Shutterstock

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British army's 77th Brigade to wage psychological war on Facebook

The British army is creating a new battalion of online soldiers in the form of the 77th Brigade. Hundreds of recruits will make up the division and will engage in "non-lethal warfare" on Mark Zuckerberg's social network from April.

The 77th Brigade will engage in psyops (psychological operations) to try to influence the opinions of civilians in certain parts of the world, as well looking to change the behavior of those engaged in various forms of warfare. The activities of groups such as ISIS (Islamic State) have shown the importance of the internet in general, but social networks in particular, to spreading ideas, messages and propaganda, and this is what the army is looking to manage.

In many ways, what the brigade will be doing is deploying propaganda of its own. It is a very public acknowledgement of the idea that wars are not won solely through violent means, and the army says that it will be using the "traditional and unconventional". An army spokesman said:

77th Brigade is being created to draw together a host of existing and developing capabilities essential to meet the challenges of modern conflict and warfare. It recognises that the actions of others in a modern battlefield can be affected in ways that are not necessarily violent.

Facebook has previously said that it will not block violent videos by default -- although it does pander to requests from some countries like Turkey when it comes to blocking insulting material -- but it has generally steered away from causes with more political leaning. Facebook has clearly been targeted by the army because of its size, reach and popularity, but it is somewhat unusual for the military to become so publicly involved, using the social network as a tool against foes.

As terrorists, guerrilla outfits and intelligence agencies make use of the web, it does make sense for other forces to do so as well. Whether the 77th Brigade turns out to be more than a spin and PR machine remains to be seen.

Photo credit: i4lcocl2 / Shutterstock

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Three Reasons Why Your Software Is So Far Behind Schedule

When not opining here on TechCrunch I’m a software engineer for the fine folks at HappyFunCorp (1) and I’m occasionally called on to diagnose and fix projects that have gone horribly wrong (2). The more I do this, the more I notice commonalities among problem projects–“antipatterns,” if you will. Here I give you three more of my ongoing list of such. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

1. Onboarding Time == Technical Debt

Technical debt is not always a bad thing, but if you accrue too much of it, it will kill you. When under schedule pressure, or when new devs keep coming onto and going off a project, people tend to build new software subsystems and connect them to the old ones Rube-Goldberg style, instead of doing it right. It’s like turning a family home into a cantilevered skyscraper one room at a time, and waiting with dread for an earthquake to hit, instead of razing it and pouring a new foundation as you should have.

But sometimes taking on short-term technical debt is the right thing to do. The real problem with technical debt is that it often lurks off the metaphorical balance sheet: it’s hard to measure, especially if you’re non-technical. What I’ve noticed of late is that there exists an excellent proxy measure for a project’s technical debt: the onboarding time for a new developer.

So ask yourself: how long does it take a new dev to get set up and start pushing good new code to the repo? In many cases the answer should be an hour or less. No, really. “git pull”, “bundle install”, “rails s” and away you go. Or “git pull”, “pod update”, open the workspace in XCode, hit Command-R, and boom. It’s been some months since I did any Android work, but Android Studio ought to be comparably easy.

But, I hear you sputtering, my environment is very complicated! We have virtual machines and multiple databases and virtual private networks! Systems talking to systems talking to systems! No way we can get a new dev set up in an hour! Uh-huh. Facebook’s pretty large and complicated too, you know … and Facebook engineers famously write real code on their first day and push it to the live site their first week. If your new developers are spending hours wrestling with configuration and environments, you have probably run up more technical debt than you care to think about.

2. The Test Suite Sweet Spot

Obviously you need to write, and run, tests for your code. And in an ideal world, you would have up-to-date tests for all of your code, which run automatically whenever you commit a change to the repo. Unfortunately, in testing as in life, the perfect is often the enemy of the good. It’s amazing how often I’ve encountered projects with elaborate test suites that have been hopelessly broken for months and/or take forever to run.

Developers write tests but don’t run them regularly, so they begin to fall out-of-date, and schedule pressure means that fixing the tests is non-critical whereas getting the new release out is critical, so the vicious circle compounds and the test suite decays into uselessness. Or–more rarely–test-driven development becomes test-centered development, and actually Getting Stuff Done takes a back seat to writing ever more and more elaborate test code, the refactoring of which takes so much time that development progress gets slower and slower.

There are costs to maintaining a huge and complex test suite; after you refactor code, you may have to either refactor your tests, which takes time, or let them break, which (ultimately) takes even more time. If your organization / management / development pressures are such that keeping all your tests up to date isn’t a valid option, and you can’t alleviate those pressures, then it’s actually better to shrink your test suite. I know that doesn’t sound appealing. I don’t like it either. But a smaller test suite you actually run and maintain is much better than a larger one you ignore.

3. Please Just Stop Running Your Own Servers Already

Big Company problem projects tend to have something else in common: they’re still running their own servers. No AWS or Google Compute Engine for them, much less Heroku or Elastic Beanstalk or App Engine. They have their own machines. And their own sysadmins. And their own homegrown processes for patching and updating and deploying code. And their own incredibly paranoid security, which often means “no developer may lay hands on the production machines,” which often makes it pretty hard to get anything done.

Big companies need to ask themselves: are our sysadmins better than Google’s or Amazon’s? And since the answer is probably no, the conclusion is: why don’t we let the experts handle it? (To be fair, they often are better than those of some cloud hosts — eg I’ve never had a good experience with Rackspace.) Yes, there are downsides. Yes, it means a loss of control. It’s not a panacea.

But unless your circumstances are truly exceptional, a full cost/benefit analysis usually points very firmly towards moving your servers to The Cloud. Back in the early days of electricity, every factory had its own generator, and many protested loudly at the loss of control inherent in this whole newfangled “power grid” notion. But there’s a reason the grid succeeded, and it’s the same reason the cloud is succeeding today. Don’t get stuck in the twentieth century. Stop making the old mistakes. After all, there are so many bold new mistakes to make.

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(1) Recently profiled on video here, to my great surprise. (Nobody will believe this, but despite my TC-columnist gig, I had no idea this was happening until the week it happened.)

(2) Usually either internal projects at large clients, or startup apps built by a cheap third-party dev shop. There is some truth to the notion that you get what you pay for.

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Review Of Uber’s Privacy Policy Shows Positive Signs, But Still Room For Improvement

Uber today released the results of a review of its privacy policies, which it had commissioned from independent law firm Hogan Lovells. The firm found that Uber had appropriate policies and disclosures in place and that it had invested significantly to enforce those policies. However, it made 10 recommendations into how the company could improve the way it handles user data.

The review of Uber’s policies began after a series of events called its commitment to user privacy into question last year. Those incidents led Senator Al Franken to ask Uber a series of eight questions about its policies in a public letter.

At a dinner last fall, senior Uber executive Emil Michael suggested the company spend $1 million conducting opposition research on journalists. Meanwhile, the company also examined claims one of its general managers had used a journalist’s location data without her permission. Around the same time, a report emerged that Uber executives had shown off its “God View” at a launch party several years ago.

Over a six week period, Hogan Lovells reviewed Uber’s internal documents and interviewed executives about its policies. The firm found that while appropriate policies and procedures in place, especially for a company of its age and scale. But there’s always room for improvement:

Based on our review and findings, we have offered ten core recommendations for the expansion of Uber’s Privacy Program. We recommend that Uber: (1) enhance its existing privacy governance framework by continuing to formalize information policies and practices, developing a concrete plan and time frame for regular reviews of the Privacy Program, and ensuring that senior leadership continues to set an appropriate tone at the top; (2) streamline and enhance the content and availability of existing privacy disclosures to help consumers more readily understand Uber’s practices relating to Consumer Data; (3) implement additional tools, access controls, and written procedures that will help automate and further embed compliance with the Company’s access control policies into day-to-day operations; (4) enhance its privacy by design program by further formalizing the existing privacy review of products prior to launch; (5) further formalize its vendor management program by enhancing template agreements, developing a standard set of diligence questions for vendors, and developing formal procedures to periodically review third parties’ compliance with contractual and legal obligations related to data security; (6) implement additional procedures to review inactive or closed accounts that have been retained for a valid reason for a certain period of time to determine whether that reason still exists; (7) create a central “hub” for incident response resources and revise relevant policies and procedures to reflect a consistent system for classifying incident severity; (8) update the Company’s written data security policies, guidelines, and templates to formally document any unwritten data security expectations for personnel related to Consumer Data; (9) enhance and formalize its training and awareness program to provide tailored trainings about Uber’s privacy practices based on job responsibilities and to mandate regular refresher trainings and updated guidance; and (10) continue to emphasize employee accountability for data privacy through additional formal initiatives.

“While Uber is encouraged by these findings, we fully acknowledge that we haven’t always gotten it right,” the company said in its blog post. It said that it will continue to “review and iterate on its policies, processes, and technology” based on Hogan Lovells’ recommendations.

Featured Image: 360b/Shutterstock



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TC AppleCast 3: Apple Sells All The iPhones

It’s a very special episode of the TechCrunch AppleCast, as we’re joined by Jackdaw Research founder and Chief Analyst Jan Dawson, who offers some context around Apple’s huge earnings success reported earlier in the week. Dawson joins Darrell Etherington and Kyle Russell to explain just how Apple managed to sell 74.5 million iPhones in a single quarter, and to discuss some possible causes of the iPad’s flat growth.

We also talk about what the iPad category might look like in the future, as well as how Apple has changed the way it reports the financial performance of its retail operations, and why it might’ve done that as a result of the retail plans it has for the Apple Watch. Speaking of the Apple Watch, Dawson refers to his recent Smartwatch report to explain why battery life will be the thing to watch when the first reviews of the Apple Watch begin to hit the web.

Speaking of the Apple Watch, it arrives in April, so we also get into some of the other factors that will be key to that launch, including support from third-party developers.

Feedback via email is appreciated, as always, and be sure to also rate the podcast on iTunes if you feel inclined.

Direct download available here, or find us on iTunes and SoundCloud.

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Google Now Gets Upgraded With Cards From Your Favorite Apps

Google Now, Google’s service focused on bringing you real-time information to your mobile device – including things like traffic updates, scores, stock changes, travel times, your flight status, and much more – is getting a notable update today. The company says that, going forward, the Google app will show users updates from their favorite apps, too.

At launch, Google is offering relevant information from over 40 applications, in order to show things like “last-minute hotel deals to home-buying tips,” the company says.

“In the morning, catch up on news of the day with cards from The Guardian. On your commute, Pandora can give you recommendations for music to play, based on what you like, or you can be reminded to complete your daily French lesson on Duolingo,” writes Google, explaining how the new system can work as an alternative to launching the apps directly.

The idea, it seems, is to start taking advantage of the fact that Google can parse the information contained with mobile applications – information that’s been surfaced though deep linking technology, in many cases, and through marked-up email updates from app providers in other cases.

There are over 30 developers – including apps like Airbnb, Lyft, eBay, Instacart, Pandora and Zillow, to name a few – supported as the new feature goes to launch this afternoon. It’s currently only available on Android devices, but likely this will come to the Google app on iOS in the near future.

Google says that other apps will be added in the future, and the feature itself will be expanded over time, as well.

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This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Apple iPhones, Samsung Smartphones, And Legos!

It’s earnings season, which means we get a deeper look into the true popularity of the various gadgets on the market. This week, all eyes were on Apple as the company announced record-breaking quarterly results, including the sale of ~75 million smartphones. Turns out, Samsung showed similar sales figures by unit but at a lower margin per device, yielding lower overall sales.

Meanwhile, LEGOs are still fun to play with. Seriously.

We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the TC Gadgets Podcast featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, Darrell Etherington, and Jordan Crook.

Have a good Friday, everybody!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.

You can subscribe to the show via RSS.

Subscribe in iTunes

Intro Music by Mendhoan.

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Motorola begins to rollout Android 5.0 Lollipop for Moto G in India

Motorola has started to seed out the Android 5.0 Lollipop update -- the latest iteration of the Google’s mobile operating system -- for both the first and second generation Moto G handsets in India. In a blog post, the Lenovo-owned smartphone manufacturer noted that users who purchased the affordable handset from Flipkart or Airtel store will be able to snag the update.

Announced in October, Android 5.0 Lollipop is one of the biggest updates to Google’s mobile operating system since its inception in 2008. The update brings in a range of features including improved notifications, revamped user interface, support for ART runtime by default, and advanced security features, among others.

Moto G was launched in India in February 2014. The company has since released both first and second generations of Moto X, the second generation of Moto G, and the dirt-cheap Moto E smartphone in the country. Earlier this week Motorola announced that it had sold more than 3 million Moto handsets in India in under a year.

Seeing the sales figures, it is safe to assume that the company made a splashy return to one of the world's largest smartphone markets. Motorola had shut its operations in India in 2012. Last year, when the then-Google owned smartphone manufacturer re-entered India, it chose to sell its handsets through online channels. The company opted to use this route in an effort to minimize the logistics and other overhead expenditures.

At an event in New Delhi last month, Amit Boni, General Manager of Motorola Mobility in India told me that the company has no future plans to sell its handsets through offline channels.

A few weeks ago, Motorola also pushed out the Lollipop update for first and second generation Moto X handsets. With its timely update, Motorola has once again shown how dedicated it is to giving its users the best mobile experience. Rival smartphone manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, Sony, Xiaomi, and Micromax, among others, are yet to update their low and mid-range smartphone lineups with Lollipop.

To download the update on your handset, go to Settings > About Phone > System Updates.

Did you install the Lollipop update on your device? Has it improved your smartphone experience? Please share your contentment (or ordeal) in the comments below.

from BetaNews http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/zp9v3EYDicw/

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Vine Introduces Vine Kids

Vine is today introducing a new layer of the app called Vine Kids. It’s meant to be a safe, kid-friendly space for a younger audience to play around with the app and watch vines.

The feature pulls from the millions of Vines being created on the platform and chooses ones that are appropriate for children. The interface of the Kids section of the app has also been tailored to be more fun for children, showing a new Vine each time the user swipes left or right and playing “quirky” sounds each time the user taps the screen.

From the official blog post:

The idea came about during an office conversation in early January. One of my colleagues was talking about how much his two-year-old daughter loves Vine –– he said he wished there was a separate app she could use to more easily watch posts that are appropriate for kids. That week happened to be Hack Week, a time when we get to work on projects outside of our day-to-day work. So two folks teamed up and built exactly that.

Vine is Twitter’s own video platform, where users can create cool stop-animation looping videos and re-share them, like them, etc from a central feed.

Vine has since added channels to help users discover new content, but Vine has always had content on the platform that is PG-13 at the very least. Wandering through the apps various channels and feeds, as kids are wont to do, could lead to some inappropriate content.

Vine Kids solves that problem, letting parents hand over the Vine app without worrying about their kids seeing something they shouldn’t.

The update is available now. Learn more here.

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Airbnb Hires Former Say Media SVP Alex Schleifer As Head Of Design

Airbnb has always been pretty design-oriented, but today it’s announcing that it has hired former Say Media exec Alex Schleifer to head its design organization. He’ll lead the user experience and content design teams, as well as working with the production design team.

Airbnb’s roots in design run deep, since the company was founded by two designers and an engineer. After all, the concept behind Airbnb — then AirBed & Breakfast — came about when Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia rented out air mattresses in their loft to help make rent during the 2007 Industrial Design Conference.

So Airbnb brining in a head of design is not surprising. In fact, the most surprising thing might be that it took this long.

Schleifer is joining the company at a time when the company has already gone through a significant brand and design overhaul. Last summer, Airbnb introduced a new logo and redesign meant to make its website more appealing to customers and easier to use. More recently it’s updated its mobile web design based on an overhauled back end that will help it to roll out new products and features.

But his hire is a long time coming. Schleifer says he spent several months talking with Airbnb’s founders to make sure it would be a good fit.

“The company was in good hands design-wise before they brought me in,” Schleifer told me. But he’s hoping to continue moving the product forward, especially since, as he says, 99 percent of the product is offline. It’s Airbnb’s job to make it easier for consumers to use the product and get out of the way.

“We’re a social network that’s trying to reduce engagement on our app,” Schleifer said.

He brings with him 20 years of experience as an engineer and designer. He most recently came from Say Media, where he led creative as the company’s SVP and Creative Director. He joined that organization after Say Media acquired Sideshow, which is the digital design firm he founded.

At Airbnb Schleifer will join the executive team and lead design efforts for the company. He will work directly with Airbnb’s design teams, but will also coordinate with other parts of the business to make sure all are on the same design page. It’ll be his job, he says, to connect those dots.

“I’ll work with [global hospitality head] Chip Conley on the host stuff and how we communicate with hosts… and I’ll work with [CMO Jonathan Mildenhall] on marketing and branding,” he said. “Each of these groups sits at the same table and has a voice that carries that same weight. We meet every day and discuss all these things.”

But ultimately he’ll report to the founders. So what does it mean to work for a couple of designers and an engineer? Reflecting back on the day he decided to take the job, Schleifer said founder Brian Chesky took 15 minutes to convince him why he should join.

“I knew that working with other designers would either be heaven or hell… It would be either the best job I ever had or the worst job I ever had,” Schleifer told me. But after hearing Chesky out, he says, “I got a sense immediately that it would push me forward and not drag me down. These guys lean very heavily on people they feel can handle the task.”

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Daily Mail Acquires Millennial-Focused Website Elite Daily

DMG Media, publisher of UK newspaper The Daily Mail, announced this morning that it has acquired Elite Daily.

Describing itself as “The Voice Of Generation Y,” Elite Daily mixes general news and culture coverage with stories like, um, “You Can Literally Make Over $13,000 A Year Just By Pooping.” (Which, to be fair, is good to know.) In a blog post about the acquisition, CEO David Arabov said the site now has a 65-person team and reaches 74 million readers.

“This marriage will permit Elite Daily to continue to flourish as a platform for and by Millennials, allowing us to expand internationally, grow our staff and continue to deliver the most relevant and engaging content for Millennials,” Arabov wrote.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but The Wall Street Journal reported that the price was $47 million. Jon Steinberg, Daily Mail’s CEO for North America (and previously president of BuzzFeed), told The Journal, “We want to compete with AOL and Yahoo, and this will help us get to that goal.” (AOL owns TechCrunch.)

TechCrunch’s coverage of Elite Daily also got us into a spat with The Awl back in 2013 about whether the site was an “astounding troll-holl” (The Awl’s characterization), and whether, by kinda sorta defending it, we were “startup shills.” So that was fun.

Featured Image: Elite Daily



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Windows 10 updates -- new Surface Pro graphic driver, new Windows Phone Windows Insider App

We're gradually moving towards the official release of Windows 10, but in the meantime we have the Technical Preview to work with -- Build 9926 specifically. As we're only at the preview stage, it is to be expected that there will be a few issues here and there.

The good news is that Microsoft is working on fixing these problems, not just for the eventual RTM release of Windows 10, but also the preview builds. Surface Pro 2 and owners complained about problems with stability when watching videos, and this has been addressed with a driver update.

If you're a Pro user who has been experiencing issues in Windows 10, just hit Windows Update and you'll find an updated Intel graphics driver waiting for you to download and install. The availability of the update was announced with little fanfare by Windows Insider Chief Gabe Aul who got straight to the point:

This is not the only Windows 10 related update hitting the downloading servers; there's also an update to the Windows Insider app for Windows Phone. As pointed out on Super Site for Windows, the app doesn't show up if you search the store for it, but you can grab a copy from a direct link.

The previous version of this app was all but useless as it was essentially an internal build, but now it is possible to sign in using a Microsoft account. Nothing is showing up at the moment, but it could mean that we're on the verge of seeing a preview build of Windows 10 released for mobile devices.

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Minibar Offers On-Demand Booze Delivery In 13 Cities

The snow is piled high and frozen on the New York city streets. Joshua and Amanda sit on their couch for the fifth night in a row, bored out of their minds but unwilling to bundle up, venture into the winter night and try to find warmth elsewhere.

“Christie and Caleb want to go out,” Amanda says unenthusiastically, without looking at Joshua. “You care?”

“Tell them to come here,” Josh says, staring into his smartphone screen.

“To do what? We have nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Are we supposed to sit around listening to music and drinking coffee at 10:30 on a Friday night?”

Joshua opens up his phone and flashes an annoyingly overconfident smile at Amanda.

“I’ve got it covered,” he says, as he flips open the MiniBar app on his iPhone. He shops for Amanda’s favorite Gin, gets his favorite Rye, and finds a nice hoppy beer for Christie and Caleb, using the filters in the app, and simply checks out.

As Josh and Amanda wait for their friends to arrive out of the dark snowy night, an order is sent to one of MiniBar’s vendor partners, where inventory is confirmed, and the order is put through the vendor’s payment system. The vendor checks out the user, packages up the product, and sends out a delivery man.

Answering a knock at the door, Josh stands before a man bundled in black and dusted with snow. He wears a yellow reflective vest. His bike is probably downstairs. He asks for Josh’s drivers license, checks it out, and hands over a bag full of booze.

And it is finished.

The story of Josh and Amanda and whatever the others’ names were is true for users across thirteen cities. Minibar is available across the web and on mobile in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Jersey City, The Hamptons, Ithaca, Dallas, Hoboken, Westchester, Silicon Valley, Palm Beach and Miami. Vendors on the platform can list their products, name their prices, and set up shop on the internet to get new, more educated customers.

Even with heavy competition in the space, Minibar cofounders Lara Crystal and Lindsey Andrews say that Minibar is currently the biggest player in the space in terms of revenues. Minibar makes money by taking a transactions-based technology fee from vendor partners at the end of the month.

To check out Minibar, which has raised a total of $1.8 million in seed funding, head over to the website here.

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Canon 5DS Leaked Specs Reveal A High Megapixel DSLR Geared For Color Accuracy

Canon’s announcing a new pro-level DSLR camera next week, according to CanonRumors, and now specs have leaked that reveal what we can expect. The 5DS (and 5DS R, a variant with the low pass filter removed, which should provide greater detail for landscape photographers at the expense of higher moiré) should offer a generous 50.6MP full frame sensor, dual DIGIC6 processors and an ISO range of 100-6400. That range sounds very limited at the top end, but this camera is made special for photographers looking for color accuracy rather than low-light capabilities.

The Canon 5DS will also reportedly have a 61-point AF system, which is likely similar to or the same as the one currently available on the 5D Mark III and the 1D X. It’ll offer 5FPS continuous shooting, a special “fine detail” picture style mode, 1.3x and 1.6x crop shooting modes, time-lapse movie capture, anti-flicker, and interval timer and a bulb timer. It’ll also have a magnesium alloy body designed to be sealed against both dust and rain.

As mentioned, an “R” variant will do away with the low pass filter, which is also called an anti-aliasing filter and which is used in digital cameras to prevent moiré, which is the appearance of weird patterns on materials that contain repeated details, like tweed or gingham clothing, for instance. That’s going to be much better for photographers who do wide landscape shots, however, since low pass filters work by blurring fine details before they reach the image sensor in order to prevent that moiré effect from appearing.

Canon is also putting very a strong color filter array on these cameras, which limits noise-free low-light shooting, but which also should produce much more accurate color capture vs. Canon’s existing camera offerings. The 5DS (and 5DS R) are aimed at a specialist audience, so this makes sense, while a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV will offer even higher sensitivity and better low-light performance, and should arrive some time later this year.

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Airbnb To Begin Collecting Taxes In Amsterdam, San Jose, Chicago, And Washington, D.C.

Over the past few years, Airbnb has been working with local lawmakers and regulators on ways that it can comply with local hotel tax and housing laws. Those efforts have been slow-going, as its public policy team has more or less had to work with each individual city to do so.

But things are speeding up. Today the company announced that it will soon begin collecting and remitting tourist taxes in four new cities: Amsterdam, San Jose, Chicago, And Washington, D.C.

Airbnb will begin collecting taxes in Amsterdam and San Joe, Calif. beginning tomorrow, and will expand that to Chicago and Washington, D.C. on February 15. That follows earlier announcements that it would collect taxes in Portland, Ore. and San Francisco.

So far the company says it has collected and remitted $5 million for those two markets since introducing those taxes just a few months ago. It’s releasing that number in part to show how much money other governments are missing out on by not working with it yet.

While Airbnb could theoretically begin collecting taxes in any market, there are often legal hurdles to it doing so. In some places, like San Francisco, the company needed laws passed that would legitimize the business it operates in those cities.

That’s the case in New York, where the company has been engaged in a long-running fight with the NY Attorney General’s office. NY AG Eric Schneiderman has been pressing the company to shut down what the state views as illegal hotel operations, but under current law they estimate that 3/4 of listings on the platform would be deemed illegal.

For its part, Airbnb is asking to have the laws changed, and is attempting to sweeten the pot by estimating it would collect $65 million in taxes in New York. It just needs the local government to create a framework under which it would be able to legally collect and remit those taxes.

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Uber Sued In California For Fraud And Negligence Following New Delhi Rape

Nearly two months ago, a young woman was allegedly raped by her Uber driver in New Delhi, India. The incident led to the banning of the service in India and a full-scale investigation there, but the victim has brought her case over to the U.S. now filing a complaint with the Northern District Court of California.

The charges raised in the complaint include negligence and fraud, and the victim (who is going by Jane Doe to protect her identity) says that it’s Uber’s hollow marketing tactics and disregard for customer safety that led to the events that unfolded on that December 5 night.

One of the focal points of the complaint is Uber’s background check policies with regards to its riders.

Had Uber not sacrificed customer safety for the sake of profit and expansion, and actually cared about who it was employing to drives its cars rather than being preoccupied with claiming its share of the India taxi market, Plaintiff Doe would not have been viciously raped. In fact, a basic background check would have revealed that Yadav had a known propensity for violent and deviant conduct, including numerous arrests for rape and assault, which should have disqualified him from working as an Uber driver.

Uber structures its business in a way that doesn’t shoulder much responsibility for the behavior of its contracted drivers. Uber promises background checks on hired drivers, but it’s up to the user to choose the safest and best driver on the app (even though it automatically matches you and fines you for canceling). What goes on between the time that the driver picks up the passenger and drops them off is the responsibility of the driver alone.

For this reason, similar cases in the past haven’t made much of a dent in Uber’s legal armor.

Following this particular New Delhi case, Uber’s service was banned in the city. India represents one of Uber’s largest markets outside of the United States.

However, one week ago the service returned to the city under new legal restrictions, working on a no-profit model pending radio taxi license approval.

The company, embattled from the start, has grown from fledging startup to one of the most successful companies of the last decade. Uber is valued north of $40 billion and operates all over the world.

If you want to look at the full details of the complaint, we’ve embedded them below.

Jane Doe vs. Uber Technologies

[via Re/Code]

Featured Image: Visual Idiot/Shutterstock



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Tesla Model X Caught On Video At The Test Track

A new model Tesla has been caught on camera at the Alameda Airport test track (via Electrek). The car looks pretty similar to a Prius, or perhaps a crossover utility vehicle, and could plausibly be either the Model X SUV Tesla has been working on for years, or, as others are arguing, a prototype of the mass-market Model 3 that the coming is planning to bring to market in the $35,000 price range.

The video doesn’t show much beyond a car driving around at a relatively high speeds both straight and through some wide loops, and the camouflaged body of the vehicle with a broad back end and what looks like a fairly high seating arrangement for the driver, which does suggest it’s a Model X test vehicle. It also has a lot in common in terms of design, body shape and apparent size with the original Tesla Model X design unveiled in 2013 by Elon Musk.

I think it’s most likely this is the Model X, because of the points raised above, and because Tesla CEO Elon Musk said earlier this month that the Model X is on track for release by the early part of the second half of 2015, meaning it should be about as road ready and design-final as the vehicle in this spy video is. That means it’s time to get excited, electric car fans who want a bit more cargo capacity.

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Google proves once again it is terrible at selling smartphones

Getting the latest Nexus smartphone from Google in the first few months of availability can prove to be a real adventure. You know how it goes, as the same thing has happened before with its predecessor. You have to be either extremely lucky to get one early on or extremely committed to the brand to put up with the perennially insufficient stock by waiting your turn at finally getting one. It's insane.

Because of these issues, I have long given up on the thought of buying the latest Nexus smartphone while it's hot -- including the Nexus 6 phablet, as much as I would love to grab one. The fault lies consistently with Google. The search giant is terrible at selling smartphones. Even worse, it comes up with a crappy excuse to justify it.

I was amused to read this explanation, from Google CFO Patrick Pichette, on why lots of folks, including my colleague Joe Wilcox, are still having trouble buying a Nexus 6, which is now three months old. Yeah, three months old!

During Google's earnings conference call, Pichette said: "While the Nexus 7 [he actually meant Nexus 6, clarifying this later] was very well received as a new phone, we had real issues and were unable to secure sufficient inventory to meet the demand that we had forecasted".

Pichette cannot seriously expect any sane prospective buyer to be fine with that excuse when basically the same thing happened with Nexus 4 and Nexus 5. Clearly, Google has some issues in this department, which may be solved by putting more competent people in charge of Nexus devices.

We don't need to hear a similar excuse a year from now. Three botched launches in a row are enough, wouldn't you agree?

Some may say that Google could be trying to build up demand for Nexus 6 by limiting availability. But this would only make sense when the device is new and not exactly interesting. Nexus 6 is neither, so the limited availability is harming sales, and, quite possibly, consumers' interest in the device. And I think Google isn't delusional in thinking otherwise.

It's all fun and games for a while after the positive reviews come out, but it gets old fast as the money is still in consumers' pockets. Just don't act surprised when you read about low Nexus 6 sales numbers.

from BetaNews http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/ZL_uUKLDyo0/

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Doxing: what it is, and how to avoid it happening to you [infographic]

There are many potential dangers to using the internet, and most people are familiar with the idea of identity theft, unauthorized access to online accounts and the like. But there's another hazard which has come to prominence recently: doxing. The idea is not new, having its roots back in the 90s, but there have been numerous high profile cases of celebrities who have fallen victim to "document dropping".

This is involves releasing personal information about someone to the internet -- information that could be embarrassing, personally revealing, or something that the victim would just rather keep to themselves. Interestingly, doxing is not necessarily illegal, but that doesn't mean that the ramifications are not far-reaching.

While doxing is something that is often carried out by hackers, it's not necessarily the case. Nearly all of us publish massive amounts of personal information online, and this can be very easily pieced together and used to gain access to even more data.

It is thought that 2015 is going to be the year in which doxing really hits the headlines, and Studyweb.com has produced an infographic that explains areas of risk, and the steps that can be taken to avoid falling victim.

What is Doxxing and How Can You Avoid It? [Infographic] by the team at studyweb.com

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Nokia shows sharp Q4 profit growth

Nokia’s best decision might have been selling its mobile division to Microsoft for £5 billion, removing the sinking division and giving the Finnish company enough capital to re-invest in networking and mapping technologies.

The results are already noticeable; Nokia reported £2.84 billion in revenue and £331 million net profit in the fourth quarter, compared to £2.60 billion in revenue and £17 million in net loss last year.

Networking sales increased by 10 percent since last quarter, partly due to strong interest in North America. Nokia also managed to maintain a strong portfolio of patent sales throughout 2014.

CEO Rajeev Suri was pleased with the results and bringing Nokia back to profitability, after removing the loss leader Nokia.

"We will not shy away from investing where we need to invest", he said. "But, we plan to always combine that with disciplined cost control and a focus on delivering ongoing productivity and quality improvements across the company".

Nokia HERE is another big market the Finnish company is actively exploring, after making a deal with Baidu to provide mapping technologies to Chinese people when on holiday.

In its quarterly report, Nokia said it expects all three sectors -- networking, mapping and patents -- to see growth in annual sales across 2015.

Nokia is also preparing to invest in other technologies and markets in 2015, but for now has been silent on the subject of a mobile device. Nokia recently announced the N1 tablet running Launcher Z on top of Android, but this has not been released yet.

Microsoft also noted growth on its mobile division, selling 10.5 million Lumia devices with an average sale price of £139. Microsoft decided to try and push Nokia’s into the low-end market, instead of competing against Apple and Samsung.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

from BetaNews http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/rMfrojDpLL8/

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Secret Co-Founder Chrys Bader-Wechseler Steps Down Because It’s Not About Design Anymore

One year after founding anonymish app Secret with fellow Googler David Bytow, Chrys Bader-Wechseler is leaving the company on amicable terms. He cites that Secret isn’t about design and curation as much now since it redesigned recently, dropping the artful photo squares with overlaid text in favor of a sterile text feed that looks just like competitor Yik Yak.

In a blog post, Bader-Wechseler is quoted as saying:

“It’s become clear that the next chapter of Secret is beginning in a way that will be less about the kind of creation and design that I love, and so it’s time for me to step down, let the team do what they do best, and focus on what I do best.”

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Snapchat Out Grows The Friend Zone

Discover is Snapchat’s big new play in the world of media. It is a special tab in the app powered by content publishers like ESPN, Yahoo, etc., offering daily long-form content with videos, articles, and of course, advertisements.

Brands can buy advertisements against these Discover ‘Editions’, which play every three or four swipes. It’s really not all that bad. It’s what we’ve grown accustomed to. It feels like a magazine that you would read in the future. But with the launch of Discover, one small piece of the app disappeared. Best Friends is gone.

This disappearance is small, but it signifies something bigger in the grand scheme of Snapchat’s evolution.

One For All

Snapchat launched as a personal messenger, where people were supposed to “be themselves”, and then opened up the potential for it to become a broadcast tool, where people could become ‘Snapchat stars.’ Some are artists and some are comedians. Some are just random, everyday people, and some are celebrities. Focus shifted from creation to consumption.

And now, Snapchat has gone beyond even that. Snapchat is a now a messenger, a social network, and a media network, all in one.

Sounds good, right? The ‘unbundle’ doctrine hasn’t necessarily played well for companies in the past, especially in Facebook’s case, and Snapchat has become a place where users can do anything. They don’t need a full inbox to check the app. They have Discover. ‘Snapchat stars’ don’t have to worry about connecting directly to their fans. Snapchat gives them the tools necessary to distribute their content, like Stories, as well as tools to communicate, like the messenger and video chat.

The app now has the flexibility to be whatever you want it to be. If you use it only to message close friends, dive right into that. If you use it to broadcast your life to a broad list of followers, you have new filters and drawing tools for that. And if you want to use it as a reader, hit up Discover. You can do whatever you want, but something small is missing.

Best Friends

Best Friends is a feature that goes all the way back to the beginning of Snapchat. In fact, Snapchat Best Friends (the three people you messaged with the most) used to have web profiles as well that you could search by user name. Snapchat fiddled with the feature a bit, adding fun little tricks in the app to expand your Best Friends list from three to five. It wasn’t a prominently displayed feature, but once you found it, it was easy to become addicted to watching it.

When it disappeared in the Discover update, I saw a bit of a reaction on Twitter and thought little of it. Best Friends was never a feature that I really understood. The whole purpose of the app is that you send these snaps and they disappear. They live only in the memories of their recipients, and even then they don’t know if they are the only recipient. To list Best Friends seems slightly counter-intuitive to the whole philosophy of the app.

A Numbers Game

Then I started thinking about my early interactions on Facebook and MySpace. I used to send friend requests to as many people as possible. It wasn’t the people. It was the number. Seems silly now, thinking about how over-populated my friends list on Facebook is, and how it makes the network nearly useless to me. And still, the desire to accumulate more followers on Twitter and Instagram persists.

Those numbers — friends, followers, favorites, and likes — they are a big part of the addiction. The dopamine hit we get when we receive a like or get a new friend or follower is part of what drives us to use these networks.

On Snapchat, Best Friends was the only “metric” for a user that gave any context to their popularity or status. In an app where the goal is to be true to your real life, the Best Friends metric could be an important tool for monitoring their relationships with their friends.

It’s also the only identity that the app gives you. On Snapchat, you have no profile. You can build a daily Story for your friends, that can act as a sort of living profile, but that means snapping all day long. You have a username, and that is all. The Best Friends list was a profile. It was a sort of context.

Luckily, Best Friends isn’t gone for good. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel tweeted out that the BFF feature will be back soon.

Seems reasonable.

Priorities

But as you can see from the responses to the tweet, there is just one small issue with this announcement. In some small way, Snapchat is prioritizing the broadcast portion of the app, “the higher-profile friends”, over regular users who want to see their best friends.

It’s entirely possible that this media network empire that Snapchat is building was the goal all along. But in a landscape where the messenger holds the key, and where other social media giants have taken up so much space in the content broadcast space, it seems counterintuitive to in any way neglect Snapchat’s messenger roots.

Social media giants who have come before, Facebook and Twitter, have followed the same evolutionary path, from personal messenger tool to powerhouse media network. Snapchat entered the scene promising to do things differently, during a time where the most coveted spot of all is the messaging space. The ability to pay friends with Snapchat is a more useful and unique feature introduction than almost anything Twitter or Facebook ever offered users.

Discover is a beautiful product. And finally, so is Snapchat’s traditional messenger. But for Snapchat as a company to reach its highest potential, it must continue fostering the messenger — the part of the app that is personal and intimate — just as much as it does the glitzy, shiny new Discover network.

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Tesla’s P85D Will Get Even Faster Thanks To A Software Update

Tesla’s P85D is already fast. Really, really fast. Push the button to put the car into “Insane” mode (really — that’s what it’s called) and it’ll do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds.

Now it’s about to get even faster.

And get this: it’s getting faster because of an over the air software update.

Musk confirmed the change in a tweet:

0.1 seconds might not seem like a lot — but when you get down into these time ranges, every tenth of a second is monumental.

More importantly, just think about that for a second:

• You buy a car.


• The engineers who made the car realize they can tweak some parameters of the car and make it better


• Next time you get in your car, it’s faster. No going to the dealership for an update, no popping the hood and swapping parts — it’s just faster. Because it can be.

Imagine getting into your car and having it say “Oh! Hey. I’m faster now than I was yesterday. You’re welcome!” Because that’s what’s happening.

Musk also noted that the P85 (the single motor version, versus the P85D’s two) will be seeing an acceleration improvement, albeit not as significant.

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Google CFO Calls Glass A Case Where The Company Needed To “Pause” And “Reset”

Google’s Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette wasn’t too optimistic about the future of Google Glass on today’s Google earnings call for Q4 2014. The executive took some time to highlight the project as an example of when Google is willing to take a step back and rethink something that isn’t working out, even when they’ve made a considerable investment in the tech.

“When teams aren’t able to [leap] hurdles, but we think there’s still a lot of promise, we might ask them to take a pause and take the time to reset their strategy, as we recently did in the case of Glass,” Pichette said. “[A]nd in those situations where projects don’t have the impact we hope for, we do take the tough calls, we make the decision to cancel them, and you’ve seen us do this time and time again.”

Google discontinued the Glass Explorer program back on January 19, after announcing it would shut down and be reassigned to Tony Fadell’s consumer hardware department within the company. Google is still encouraging developers to develop for the platform, and a repositioning under Fadell also doesn’t indicate a finality of its fate, but Pichette’s comments today are the most concreate statement we’ve heard on the Glass program’s outcome from a top executive, and they certainly don’t suggest an imminent consumer launch.

Glass might live on as something else, but Pichette’s statements today suggest we might not recognize the form it takes when it does eventually re-emerge.

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This Week On The TechCrunch Bitcoin Podcast: An Interview With Luis Buenaventura Of Rebit

Welcome back to TCBTC, TechCrunch’s weekly podcast on the cryptocurrency bitcoin. This week Alex is on vacation so I recorded a short interview with Luis Buenaventura Of Rebit, a major Bitcoin remitter in the Philippines. Luis gave us a quick look under the hood of his growing business.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.

Subscribe on iTunes.

You can subscribe to the show here.

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Amazon’s Mixed Q4 2014 With $29.33B Revenue, And $0.45 EPS

Amazon just released its fiscal Q4 2014 earnings, reporting $29.33 billion in revenue, $214 million in net profit representing $0.45 per share. According to CNBC/Thomson Reuters, analysts expected the company to report earnings of $0.17 per share on $29.67 billion in revenue.

For the past two quarters, Amazon unexpectedly posted losses. Three months ago, the stock market was very harsh with the company, pushing the stock down 10 percent.

Last year, Amazon reported $25.59 billion in revenue, and earnings per share of $0.51.

But this quarter is supposed to be different. Amazon is still recovering from the release of the Amazon Fire Phone. After realizing that very few people were buying the company’s new phone, Amazon had no choice but to lower the price. You can find it for $0.99 every now and then.

As a result, Amazon’s margins are suffering. But things are starting to look better. First, the revenue is still greatly increasing. While the company is investing heavily in research and development for new devices, Amazon is still first and foremost an incredibly successful ecommerce website.

In particular, Amazon Prime is doing really well. Tens of millions of people around the world subscribe to Prime to get faster delivery and streaming services. The company can probably generate healthy margins on this subscription.

Other high margin areas include advertising on Amazon’s properties, the Amazon Appstore for Android, Amazon Instant Video and the Kindle Store.

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Reddit Complied With 58% Of User Info Requests, 31% Of Takedown Notices In 2014

Reddit just released its first transparency report, outlining at the requests for user information and for content takedown that it received in 2014.

Not surprisingly, the report doesn’t go into detail about individual requests, but it does break things down by category. It also notes how many of those requests the news and content sharing site actually complied with and offers some context around how the company makes those decisions.

On the user information side, Reddit says it received 55 requests in 2014, which covered 78 different user accounts. The requests asked for things like account registration data, log data, and content uploaded by users, and Reddit says it complied with 58 percent of them. In those cases, the company says it notified the affected user “unless provided by a court order or where we decide delayed notice is appropriate based on clear criteria.”

Last year, there was a wave of tech company transparency reports following Edward Snowden’s revelations about government surveillance, but in this case, Reddit says it has “never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information.”

As for takedown notices, the company says it received 218, and it complied with 31 percent. Many of the notices that it didn’t comply with were for links to content hosted on other sites, or didn’t cover copyrighted or trademarked material. As a specific example, Reddit says it didn’t remove any content based on “claims of alleged defamation.”

You may recall that there was a bit of controversy last year around the company’s decision to remove subreddits hosting nudes from hacked celebrity accounts. Similar to its comments in the report, the company justified those takedowns as being valid from a copyright perspective.

Outside of the transparency issues, Reddit had a pretty wild 2014 — it raised $50 million, promised to give the equity to users, and lost its CEO.

You can read the full report on the Reddit blog.

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Google Offering 24 Hours Of Inbox Invites On The Day Of Outlook’s iOS Launch

Google is serving up its longest ever period of guaranteed invites for Inbox, its alternative mobile email app built by the Gmail team. The official Gmail account tweeted the announcement today (which was then retweeted by the official Inbox profile), noting that anyone who emails inbox@google.com from a personal Gmail account between 12 PM ET today and 12 PM ET tomorrow will receive an invite.

This is the first time Google has opened the Inbox invites for a full 24-hour period, and also the first time it’s done one of these promotions in 2015. It has slowly been rolling out invites in batches to those who request during times not specifically flagged for guaranteed response, but if you do it in the next 24 hours you’re a lock to get in.

What’s interesting is that this promotion is happening on the day that Outlook for iOS (based on Microsoft 2014 acquisition and third-party mobile Gmail app Accompli) is available to all. The free app from Microsoft is already being hailed as the best mobile Gmail client available on iOS devices, owing at least in part to the fact that it hasn’t been changed very much from the much-loved Accompli upon which it’s based.

Inbox is Google’s attempt to come up with an email client for its Gmail service that makes more sense on mobile devices, but Microsoft may have bought its way to a better solution. Either way, taking advantage of this Inbox invite promotion is your best bet for comparing the two first-hand.

Featured Image: Google



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Cargomatic Gets $8 Million To Build An Uber For Truckers

Every day I hear about a new ‘Uber for X’ startup and most of them are pretty crappy, but every now and then one comes across my desk that’s actually pretty cool.

Los Angeles-based Cargomatic, which hopes to become ‘Uber for truckers,’ is one of the cool ones. And it just raised $8 million to expand its platform for connecting shippers and truckers who are available to help move their cargo.

Launched in 2014, Cargomatic hopes to bring some technology to the local trucking industry by providing a platform enabling shippers to list available jobs that local truckers with excess capacity can complete. By making the connection, the company hopes to not only help truckers make more money, but also to route shipping more efficiently.

The company has a website where companies can enter the details of cargo they need to ship, and a mobile app that can be used by truckers to accept jobs and track their routes.

Like other on-demand services, Cargomatic pre-vets drivers who sign up, reviewing their commercial licenses and insurance to ensure they have everything they need to transport another company’s goods. It also provides pricing transparency by determining how much a driver should make based on the weight and distance of goods that they move.

Finally, the platform enables truckers to get paid more quickly by facilitating the invoicing and payments portion of the transaction. Shippers are asked to enter their credit card or ACH information, which Cargomatic uses to pay out truckers shortly after a job is completed.

Before platforms like Cargomatic, most companies that needed to move cargo mostly relied on a few local truckers that they knew, according to Cargomatic CEO Jonathan Kessler. But those truckers weren’t always guaranteed to have excess capacity. Meanwhile, truckers had to deal with uneven work schedules and driving for a limited number of shippers.

The company hopes to reduce that friction in the market, by giving shippers a way to quickly get their good shipped while also increasing income for truckers by making them aware of jobs that are available. Because it knows where truckers and available jobs are, it can also do more efficient routing to reduce the cost of transporting goods.

The company has been operating in Southern California and in the New York metro area, but it’s looking to expand. To do that, Cargomatic has raised $8 million led by Canaan Partners with participation from Volvo Group Venture Capital, Rob Estes of Estes Express, Morado Venture Partners, SV Angel, Sherpa Ventures, Structure Capital, Nicolas Berggruen, Scott Banister, Fritz Lanman, and Hank Vigil.

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iTunes Connect Issue Logging Developers Into Other Accounts [Now Offline]

UPDATE: Apple seems to have temporarily taken down iTunes Connect.

An issue with Apple’s iTunes Connect service, which lets developers upload new versions of their apps to the App Store and track sales and income, is causing some developers to log into the wrong accounts this morning.

The issue came out as developers, noticing that they had access to apps they clearly did not develop, began posting screenshots of the issue on Twitter. As you can see in some of the examples that popped into my timeline, some of the accounts compromised by the bug gave random users access to apps developed by large companies and small, indie developers.

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Betaworks-Backed Giphy Lands $17 Million Series B Led By Lightspeed Venture Partners

Giphy has just raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from General Catalyst and previous investors such as Lerer-Hippeau, betaworks, RRE Ventures, and CAA Ventures.

The investment values Giphy at $80 million, according to a report from Business Insider.

Giphy is a search engine for gifs, put simply. The company tags gifs to certain categories or with various keywords to make finding the perfect gif that much easier.

And beyond that, Giphy ensures that artists are credited for their works and offers distribution tools to help spread the word. For example, Giphy launched a link shortener that automatically embeds a clickable gif into tweets instead of taking up characters with the gif link and the intended hyperlink.

The company launched out of betaworks in the same class as Dots and Poncho in April 2013, and has since gone on to raise a $2.5 million Series A alongside this recent $17 million Series B.

The team still works out of the betaworks office in NY.

We’ve reached out to the Giphy team and are working on getting more information.

Developing…

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/E8i4NznYjug/

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New business collaboration platform secures data with personalized cryptography

Data security is a big concern for both individuals and businesses. This doesn't only apply to the public face of a business, but to exchange of information and collaboration between employees too.

Canadian company Witkit is launching a new platform that allows the creation of teams and groups within industries, companies, and departments to tackle projects and solve problems collectively, with the safety and security of knowing their data cannot be breached.

"Our intention with Witkit is to make the first fully encrypted global collaboration platform so that companies and individuals can more easily reap the benefits that socialized teamwork brings to their business challenges," says Sean Merat, president and CEO of Witkit.

Witkit is a modular platform that works by allowing users to create tailored workspaces. These center on 'Kits' -- virtual groups based on specific topics or projects. Within each Kit, members can upload and access shared files, initiate and contribute to group discussions, post and respond to team tasks, and use a single synchronized calendar.

Additional features include secure storage using proprietary encryption, along with messenger and video conferencing services.

Kits can be made private or public and users are able to participate in multiple Kits at the same time. A single dashboard and news feed collates all of a user's memberships in one place.

"The vast majority of breaches today happen on a centralized system which contains sensitive user data," says Merat. "WitCrypt technology ensures that the encryption and decryption of user data is only done on user devices locally. All data that is sent to the Witkit servers is fully encrypted and can only be decrypted by the user's WitCrypt passphrase. We can confidently say that we've minimized most, if not all the risk, to user data being hacked. That is to say that in the unlikely event that the Witkit servers are compromised, there will be no decrypted data to be found".

For more information visit the Witkit website, the first 50,000 people who sign up for the platform will get 50GB of encrypted storage and all available applications for free.

Image Credit: Tischenko Irina / Shutterstock

from BetaNews http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/-_OjkzGkLWE/

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Video Review: BMW i8 Hybrid Supercar

The i8 is BMW’s latest supercar. Able to go 0 to 60 in about 4.4 seconds with its hybrid electric/gas powertrain. The i8 looks like a Hot Wheels car, handles like a supercar and is as expensive as a high-end Porsche. With a starting price of $135,000, this isn’t the car for everyone. It’s actually a gateway into BMW’s other hybrid, the cute and cheap BMW i3, a shorter, sporty runaround that BMW is touting as their answer to crunchy hybrids from Honda, Nissan, and Chevy.

Read our full review here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CJZJxv6Wj14/

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CommunicateBetter.io Teaches Entrepreneurs How To Communicate Better

The fine people behind some of the best SaaS startups around are putting together 52 weekly lessons to get better at communicating both inside your company, and with potential partners and customers. Every week, subscribers will receive an email with advice on how they can get better at communicating. The best part is that it’s free.

So far, 15 companies are on board, and it looks like each company will design its own lesson for now Other companies might join later on, or the original companies will write other lessons. And I’m sure subscribers will receive promo codes for these services.

There is a story behind my interest for CommunicateBetter.io. While the website is not branded, the original idea comes from the team behind Front. Front is a shared inbox app and service that makes email, Twitter and SMS communication suck less.

I met Front co-founder and CEO Mathilde Collin two weeks ago, and she couldn’t stop talking about Ben Horowitz’s book — The Hard Thing About Hard Things. “When a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge,” Horowitz wrote.

I feel like she asks the same question every time she meets someone who works in a startup — how do you work with each other? She always wants to know the tools people use, workflows and particular use cases. It’s a great way to learn what people want for Front, but it goes a bit further than that.

Communication is the keystone of a company. It can make or break a startup success story. Teams who can communicate effectively also ship more often. And finally, many startups fail because they can’t get customers and users.

Moreover, communication tools are quite popular right now. Facebook recently launched Facebook at Work, Slack raised $120 million. But instead of trying every new shiny new tool, CommunicateBetter.io might teach you a few skills.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/dLedXqBhspo/

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After Raising $1.8M, Jolla’s iPad Alternative Returns To Indiegogo With 64GB Version

After smashing through its original crowd funding goal of $380,000 in just over two hours, eventually raising $1.8 million before the campaign closed in December, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised to see the Jolla Tablet return to Indiegogo.

The keep things interesting (and, presumably, a little more competitive), the iPad alternative, which runs Jolla’s open source Sailfish OS, is now being offered in a 64GB version, along with a few other updated specs. These include a bigger battery (4450mAh, up from 4300mAh), and limited support for microSD cards up to 128GB.

The latter means that you’ll be able to use microSD card for back-ups and extra storage, but, due to Microsoft’s licensing limitations and to keep with Jolla’s ‘open source’ ethos, microSD cards that are over 32GB and formatted for use in the Jolla Tablet will not be readable by Windows computers or other devices, such as cameras, phones or tablets, that sport microSDXC support.

“We feel that this suits best with our community’s wishes and Jolla’s values,” says the company.

A couple of other changes see the tablet’s display now being fully laminated, and Jolla are adding gyroscope and compass sensors. However, the proximity sensor that was previously touted, will not be included.

Otherwise, on the hardware front, the Jolla Tablet is aiming to square up to the iPad Mini 2, with a 7.9-inch screen, sporting a resolution of 2048 x 1563. Inside, it’s powered by a 1.8GHz quad-core processor, has 2GB of RAM and there’s a 5MP rear camera.

Meanwhile, this time around, you have until the end of February to back the iPad alternative, built by the same team of (largely) ex-Nokians, who are also behind the Jolla phone.

Talking of which, the company is offering a special phone+tablet bundle as one of the available perks on its Indiegogo campaign, should you want to go all in on Sailfish OS, the operating system that came out of the ashes of Nokia’s Meego OS, the once handset giant’s intended successor to Symbian before it jumped off a burning platform and into Microsoft’s arms.

Of note to previous backers of the Jolla Tablet, for a new perk of $25 you can upgrade to the new 64GB version.

Full list of Jolla Tablet ‘perks’ on Indiegogo:

Jolla Tablet 32GB: $219

Jolla Tablet 64GB: $249

64GB upgrade for early birds: $25

Shipping: $20

The Combo: Tablet 32GB & Phone: $419

The Combo: Tablet 64GB & Phone: $449

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/lGIQe5FwxWE/

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Bench Bookkeeping Service Cooks Up $7 Million Series A

Bench, the TechStars-backed company that matches bookkeepers with businesses, has today closed a $7 million Series A round. The financing was led by Altos Ventures with participation from Contour Venture Partners.

Bench started out as 10sheet, an algorithm-meets-human platform where SMBs could sign up to have all their transaction paperwork sent directly through the 10sheet system and then looked over by a human bookkeeper. The idea was to remove the hassle of bookkeeping so businesses can focus on the service or product they provide, instead of focusing on hiring an accountant to handle the books or doing it themselves.

Turns out, the human piece of the equation was important.

So after graduating TechStars, the Vancouver-based company rebranded to Bench and implemented a system in which every customer would be matched directly with their own Bench bookkeeper. The technology still pulls in transactions from corporate cards and checking accounts, but also provides a one-on-one service to communicate with your assigned accountant.

Since the rebranding, the company has been focused on improving the product to enhance that one-on-one relationship. For example, the startup recently introduced in-app messaging between you and your Bench accountant so that you can communicate any time about any issue without having to call a number or send an email to some generic address.

This latest round brings total funding for the company to $9.1 million.

Bench is using the money to make more hires and build out a solid employee recruitment engine. The company currently has 126 employees, many of which are Bench’s own accountants as the startup only uses its own accountants instead of using a third-party.

“Our job is to ensure that the experience you have is easy and as painless as possible,” said cofounder Jordan Menashy. “We don’t want to effectively risk that relationship or that experience because we used a contractor or an overseas operation when this is ultimately what people are coming to us for. People think you can’t scale if you do the work yourself, but we’re in the business of proving we can actual scale this model.”

Hiring more accountants will give Bench the ability to meet demand better, and the extra funding will allow for a better office and a better system for bringing on and retaining talent.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/J-w3mwDaV9o/

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Federal cyber security rules should learn from industry guidelines

For many in the cyber security field, this year’s State of the Union speech was particularly notable, as information security took the spotlight alongside other major international and domestic issues.

President Obama said he would propose several sensible new security measures, including:

• National rules on the circumstances under which organizations must notify the public that they have experienced a breach


• New efforts to encourage organizations to share information related to cyber security


• Better cyber security tools for law enforcement

Overall, these are welcome moves -- and the high-level attention to cyber security is cause for optimism. But to be effective, these measures will have to make more of an impact than past government interventions in cyber security, which have often been vague and piecemeal.

Playing Catch Up

Ultimately, the government should not need to step in on matters of private organizations' data security -- but it’s no surprise that lawmakers feel they must act. The last year has seen a flurry of high-profile breaches, from the string of hacks on major retailers to the unprecedented cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The fact is that many businesses have been caught woefully underprepared for the realities of the modern cyber security landscape. Now they’re playing catch up, if they’re responding at all. Security has never been more urgent, but many businesses still have highly inadequate security controls. When these businesses are struck by hackers, consumers also pay the price.

Previous government regulations on cyber security typically haven’t been sufficient, but they have had some positive impact. For example, many companies used to hide that they had experienced a breach. Consumers were left in the dark, and it was difficult for security professionals to tell how many attacks were really occurring. Now, state-level breach notification rules -- and HITECH Act provisions governing healthcare data -- have changed the story, requiring companies to notify people whose data has been compromised. Consumers have more information to consider when entrusting companies with their data, and we have a much clearer picture of the security breach landscape.

These are important outcomes, and not to be underestimated. But to truly change the game, lawmakers should take inspiration from industry-driven rules.

Prescriptive and Responsive

There are a number of problems with the majority of state and federal security rules that are in effect today.

One big issue is consistency: 47 states have breach notification rules, but the rules differ in each state. Another problem is strictness: it’s unlikely that a new federal measure will go any further than existing, and only relatively stringent, state breach notification laws such as the rule in Massachusetts. While it would be worthwhile to have a federal rule to bring all of the states into parity with some of the more focused state rules, it’s still only a half-step toward the type of solutions that are required.

We see this half-stepping quality in many government security efforts. HIPAA security rules are frequently chided as hazy and insufficient; healthcare organizations can feel they have complied without putting in place robust protections. What organizations really need are specific, prescriptive rules designed to be responsive to constantly evolving security needs.

There is a useful model for such guidelines in the payment card industry’s PCI Data Security Standards, a set of security controls required of any merchant that processes payment cards. The PCI rules are specific, offering merchants meaningful guidance and regular updates to reflect new security realities. PCI guidelines are developed based on input from security professionals as well as business owners, and this collaborative approach shows in the rules’ deft balance of security priorities. While certainly not perfect, the security bar established by the PCI security rules is a more stringent and more prescriptive baseline than any US government security law in effect today.

To create security rules that more effectively protect US businesses and consumers, lawmakers should look to industry efforts as a guide. By working with industry leaders and security professionals to develop the kind of prescriptive and responsive rules that are needed, these rules may help businesses and their customers alike survive in the face of hacking threats.

In his role as partner with LBMC Security & Risk Services, Mark Burnette directs the firm’s resources to craft security solutions that mitigate security risks in a way that is practical and relevant to the organization’s environment. Mark has received numerous commendations for his contributions to information security on behalf of his employers and the community at large. Most recently, the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) named Mark a Fellow, one of a handful of individuals recognized for their accomplishments in information security, leadership, and service to the association and profession.

from BetaNews http://feeds.betanews.com/~r/bn/~3/-EgXCRpIS5k/

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