HoloLens Hands-On: How We Built An App For Microsoft’s Augmented Reality Headset

Microsoft’s HoloLens is no joke. We’ve now tried the company’s latest revision of its unreleased augmented reality headset and even built an app for it. The new hardware, which Microsoft also showcased during its Build developer conference keynote yesterday, feels very solid and the user experience (mostly) delivers on the company’s promises.

Earlier today, Microsoft gave developers and some of us media pundits a chance to spend some quality time with HoloLens by building our own “holographic application” using the Unity engine and Visual Studio.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that HoloLens is all about augmented reality. It’s about placing objects into the real world, which you can still see while you are wearing the headset. It’s not a virtual reality headset like the Oculus Rift, so it’s not about total immersion. Instead, it lets you see objects on a table in front of you that aren’t there in the real world, for example, and it lets you interact with them as if they were real objects.

When you first see somebody who is using HoloLens, you will probably think something is wrong with them. They’ll walk around things you can’t see, make random click gestures in the air (“air-tapping” is what Microsoft calls that) and probably ooh and ahh a few times.

Until you’ve used HoloLens — and very few people have — this all sounds very abstract. But once you strap it on and use it, it’s indeed a bit of a revelation.

The early (and highly positive reviews) from Microsoft’s January event, where a few select members of the press got to try it, weren’t an exaggeration.

Let me walk you through the experience Microsoft put on for us today. After locking all of our electronic devices in a locker — because we weren’t even allowed to take our smartwatches into the demo room (so we don’t have any photos either, of course) — Microsoft paired us up with a mentor who would walk us through the rest of the experience.

We all got our own HoloLens and a PC to code on and four members of the team walked us through building a simple HoloLens app. First, though, they taught us how to use the basic gestures that work across all apps: air clicks (for selecting stuff), gazes (which is really just about looking at things) and voice commands (which developers can easily customize). With that out of the way, we loaded up a couple of preset assets into Unity, made a few minor modifications to the scene, and then exported everything to Visual Studio. From there, deploying the app to the HoloLens (over USB) was just a matter of of a few clicks.

The scene Microsoft had pre-built was a sketchbook with a few cubes on top of it, two paper airplanes that leaned against the cubes, and two paper balls that were suspended in the air over them (so they could bounce of the paper airplanes).

We started with a very basic, static scene and then added more interactivity from there. At every step, we would go to Unity, add new features, deploy the app, and strap on the HoloLens again to take another look at our creation.

At its most basic, the Unity SDK allows you to simply place an object at a certain distance and height from where the device is pointing at when you initialize the application. That object is then suspended in that spot in space and you can walk around it.

We then added a bit of interactivity so the balls would drop when you clicked on them, as well as sound and — finally — the HoloLens’ ability to detect objects in the world and have the whole scene and the dropping balls interact with it. Because HoloLens knows what you are looking at — and uses that to allow developers to place a small 3D cursor into the scene — you can easily use air clicks or voice commands to interact with objects.

That’s really what HoloLens is about, too. We were able to drop the scene on a table for example. Then the balls would drop and roll off the sketchbook. So far so good, but the balls also dropped off the real table and maybe get stuck against the sofa next to it. That’s very impressive, because that kind of real-world mapping is extremely hard to do.

HoloLens constantly scans the world around you and then builds a (somewhat crude) model of it. That’s how it knows where the ground is, for example. It doesn’t know that a table is a table, but it does know that there’s a flat surface there. The same goes for any other kind of objects.

While I originally assumed HoloLens — like most other augmented reality applications — needs some kind of QR code or markers to know where to place objects, it can actually recognize the world around you and then allows you to place objects where you want them — and using the Unity physics engine, it can interact with them.

For the grand finale, we added a new object to the scene that would explode when one of the balls hit it — and which then revealed a whole cavernous world underneath the floor — complete with a stream and animated birds. That was obviously the most impressive demo and really showed the potential of HoloLens. You could even drop the balls into that cavern and see them bounce twenty feet beneath your feet.

The new hardware we used felt very solid and unlike the first prototypes, it’s an untethered, stand-alone unit. You use a headband to strap the device to your face and while the device is not exactly light, the smart weight distribution between the front and back makes up for that. Microsoft admonished us to be careful with the units, but they didn’t feel fragile at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if this model turned out to be very, very close to the final production unit.

Going into the demo, I was especially interested in how well the holograms would lock into place. That, after all, is very hard to do and if objects start randomly moving around as you walk around them, it’s very hard to feel like they were really there. I was surprised how well this worked. Indeed, I found myself trying to kick the little paper balls with my foot after they had rolled of the table (but sadly, the algorithms are clearly not quite fast enough yet for this kind of real-time interaction).

There is, however, still a little bit of jitter to the holograms that is mostly noticeable when you get close to them. The do really feel like they are locked in place, though, and that’s the real achievement here, especially given that Microsoft is not using any markers for placing them. You can randomly move objects around in space. They will stay put. No QR codes necessary.

My best guess is that Microsoft is using one (or more) of Movidius’ Myriad 2 vision processing chips in the device to be able to do the positional tracking necessary to enable all of this.

The one disappointment for me in trying HoloLens was that the field of view was very limited. This was not a totally immersive experience because objects would get cut off long before you would naturally expect them to drop out of sight. Some of the writers who saw Microsoft’s first demo told me that they felt the viewing angle on these new devices was smaller than during the first demo. I can’t verify that, though.

What did positively surprise me, though, was how little opacity there was to the holograms. I expected them to look somewhat transparent, with the background shining through. That really wasn’t the case, though. They looked really solid and there was almost no transparency. You can still see the

Today’s demo obviously happened in a controlled environment, but it was nowhere as controlled as I expected. People moved around as four or five of us gathered around a table to look at our holograms and everything still worked really well.

At the end of the session, I came away very impressed. When I first heard about HoloLens, I thought this was a technology that was still very far away from being production-ready and I assumed that the demos Microsoft showed earlier this year were simply well-staged and had managed to pull the wool over the assembled tech press. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft started selling HoloLens within a year (the company, of course, won’t say when HoloLens will go on sale or at what price).

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1lcXsh5qGng/
via IFTTT

Rocket Internet’s Foodpanda Gobbles Up $100M More Led By Goldman Sachs

Less than two months after raising $110 million, Foodpanda — the Rocket Internet-backed food delivery service — is back at the table gobbling down an additional $100 million serving from investors.

The round was led by Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, with Rocket Internet among the existing investors also in the mix. This new funding takes Foodpanda, which is based in Berlin and was founded in 2012, to $310 million from investors to date. The company did not reveal its valuation.

Foodpanda, which was incubated by Rocket Internet, started out focusing on Asia and other emerging markets but today it covers 580 cities across 40 countries in five continents. In total, it claims to have over 60,000 restaurants on its menu. Those figures have been reached thanks to a major acquisition binge that saw Rocket Internet buy into Delivery Hero and acquire nine other food delivery startups across the world.

Foodpanda said it will use its latest cash injection of capital to “further expand its own delivery activities and improve overall customer experience,” but beyond that vagueness it isn’t entirely clear how the money will be spent.

It could just be for basic costs and breathing room, since Rocket Internet’s emerging market startups typically burn through vast amounts of money growing out logistics, hiring teams and offering incentives to woo new and existing customers.

Rocket Internet has entered early in a number of emerging markets which, in practice, means its businesses are often setting themselves up for future growth and opportunities. Aka, revenue isn’t pouring in right now… though it could in the future.

It seems likely that Foodpanda is in this ‘growth’ stage, particularly in countries where smartphone adoption is low (but growing) and the market for on-demand services, like food delivery, is nascent but with serious potential to grow.

Yet, clearly investors like Goldman Sachs see huge potential in on-demand verticals in emerging markets, where consumers typically leapfrog wired internet for the mobile internet on smartphones.

“We believe that Foodpanda has a tremendous opportunity to cement its emerging markets leadership position in the coming years. It is our expectation that the company innovative, value-added offerings will lead Foodpanda to be the winner in online food delivery within the markets in which it operates,” said Ian Friedman of Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.

With over $200 million raised in two months, it would be fair to assume that Foodpanda is full for now. But emerging market internet companies are capital intensive at scale, so don’t be surprised to see the Rocket Internet firm plating up for more investment later this year.

Featured Image: Quickmeme

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/AImB6UR_UQ8/
via IFTTT

Tesla’s $3,000 Powerwall Will Let Households Run Entirely On Solar Energy

You almost certainly associate Tesla with cars — very cool cars — but the company has an even grander vision beyond that. Today, CEO and founder Elon Musk unveiled ‘Tesla Energy’ — a new business arm that is focused on ending our dependence on grid power and switching instead to solar energy.

The first Tesla Energy product is ‘Powerwall Home Battery,’ a stationary battery that can power a household without requiring the grid. The battery is rechargeable lithium-ion — it uses Tesla’s existing battery tech — and can be fixed to a wall, removing much of the existing complexity around using a local power source.

“The issue with existing batteries is that they suck,” Musk said in a press conference announcing Tesla Energy. “They are expensive, unreliable and bad in every way.”

Tesla’s solution, he said, is different.

For one thing, the company’s batteries cost $3,500 for 10kWh and $3,000 for 7kWh — add your snarky Apple Watch price comparison here. They are open for pre-orders in the U.S. now, the first orders will be dispatched “in late summer.”

Like regular batteries, they can be used together — up to nine can stacked up together to create a strong and reliable power source. Musk said he believes they can help people in emerging markets or remote locations ‘leapfrog’ the need for existing power systems, in a similar way that mobile phones have become more important than landlines in remote parts of the world.

A Tesla car is (sadly) not included with your puchase

The Tesla Powerwall charges up using solar power, but it also integrates with the grid “to harness excess power and give customers the flexibility to draw energy from their own reserve”. The batteries recharge in a ‘smart’ way, saving money by picking low rate periods when electricity is cheapest. They store solar energy for later, for example overnight, and can act as a back-up in the event of a power outage.

Removing dirty energy is an ambitious plan — much like space travel — but Musk believes it can be done. He explained that 160 million battery packs could “transition” power usage in the U.S. to renewable energy, while 900 million units could shift the entire world’s energy needs. Then there is the potential to make the world’s cars run on clean energy.

“This is within the power of humanity to do,” Musk said. “It is not impossible, it is something that we can do. But there’s going to [need to] be other companies involved.”

Musk added that Tesla will continue its policy of open-sourcing patents to help make that happen.

Contrary to most companies these days, Tesla’s press conference — which ran entirely on solar energy — was direct and to the point with little hyperbole.

Musk has made electric cars a (stylish) reality, and is pioneering space exploration with SpaceX. Tesla Energy is another concept which, though beyond the realm of most people’s understanding, has potentially huge consequences if Tesla can execute as Musk believes it can.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Slfb6KShYkw/
via IFTTT

Music Streaming Site Grooveshark Closes As Part Of Legal Settlement

After years of legal battles, music streaming service Grooveshark has shut down.

The only thing on its site now is a statement:

“Today we are shutting down Grooveshark.

We started out nearly ten years ago with the goal of helping fans share and discover music. But despite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.

That was wrong. We apologize.
Without reservation.

As part of a settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all of the record companies’ copyrighted works and hand over ownership of this website, our mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.”

The company, which was founded in 2006, went on to recommend some of the newer music streaming services that were established after its launch nearly 10 years ago, such as Spotify and Deezer.

Grooveshark suffered a major defeat last fall when a U.S. District Court judge found that its employees had violated copyright infringement laws.

That lawsuit was only the latest in a series of legal battles that started six years ago and led to Grooveshark being temporarily blacklisted from Google’s autocomplete search results in 2013.

TechCrunch has emailed Grooveshark for more information about its closure and the future of their team.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/WsOD3oTYFsc/
via IFTTT

Researchers Create The Ultimate Smartphone Ultra Zoom To See And Measure Strands Of DNA

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have created a smartphone ultra zoom solution that allows scientists in the field to image and size DNA. The tool, which uses a little 3D-printed box that acts as a high-resolution microscope, can be used to see objects as small as two nanometers in width.

“For perspective, that makes DNA about 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Currently, imaging single DNA molecules requires bulky, expensive optical microscopy tools, which are mostly confined to advanced laboratory settings. In comparison, the components for my device are significantly less expensive,” said Aydogan Ozcan, the UCLA professor involved in the project.

From the release:

The device is intended for use in remote laboratory settings to diagnose various types of cancers and nervous system disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, as well as detect drug resistance in infectious diseases. To use the camera it is necessary to first isolate and label the desired DNA with fluorescent tags. Ozcan says such laboratory procedures are possible even in remote locations and resource-limited settings.

To scan the DNA, the group developed a computational interface and Windows smart application running on the same smart phone. The scanned information is then sent to a remote server in Ozcan’s laboratory, which measures the length of the DNA molecules. Assuming you have a reliable data connection, the entire data processing takes less than 10 seconds.

Considering current methods require non-portable heavy machinery and computers this seems like a godsend for researchers in the field. The team is currently using the tool to “detect the presence of malaria-related drug resistance.”

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/xVcdUbKeq3w/
via IFTTT

You Can Now Use Shazam, Instacart, And Other Android Apps With “Okay Google” Commands

You’ve been able to use your voice (“Ok Google”) to do all sorts of stuff on Android for a while now. But said stuff has almost entirely been built-in by Google itself; third party developers haven’t really been able to tap into that functionality.

Today, that changes. Though it’s limited to select apps for now, things like “Ok Google, Shazam this song” or “Ok Google, Show me Smurfs 2 on Flixster” are now possible.

Here’s a list of some of the currently integrated commands, as hidden away on this support page and dug up by AndroidPolice:

• Flixster: “Show me Inception on Flixster.”
• Instacart: “Show instacart availability.”
• Lincoln: “Start my Lincoln MKZ.”
• NPR One: “Listen to NPR.”
• Realtor.com: “Show rentals near me on Realtor.”
• Shazam: “Shazam this song.”
• TripAdvisor: “Show attractions near me on TripAdvisor.”
• Trulia: “Show homes for sale in Boston on Trulia.”
• TuneIn Radio: “Open TuneIn in car mode.”
• Walmart: “Scan my receipt on Walmart.”
• Wink: “Activate home mode on Wink.”
• Zillow: “Show me open houses nearby on Zillow.

Even within the apps that are supported, voice commands are fairly restricted, so don’t expect it to do everything right now. “Ok Google, Show Instacart availability” works. “Ok Google, order me some apples from Whole Foods on Instacart” does not. Apps can support up to 3 custom voice actions at a time.

If you’re a developer looking to hook into this, there’s one catch: while it’s open to far more developers than it was in the past, you’ll still have to convince Google that your app is up to snuff to be allowed into the special test group. You can find the form for that here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7_fa8MJX4WY/
via IFTTT

Apple Invites Developers To Test Its New “App Analytics” Service

Ahead of its annual developer conference in June, WWDC 2015, Apple has opened up beta access to a new mobile app analytics service aimed at iOS developers. Simply called “Apple’s App Analytics,” an announcement inviting developers to request early access to the service appeared today on the iTunes Connect developer portal. Those with an iTunes Connect account can also reach the sign-up page using the direct link analytics.itunes.apple.com.

According to the announcement, the new service will allow developers to learn how customers “discover and engage with your apps.” Access to the service will be granted on a first-come, first-serve basis, says Apple, which means that not everyone who requests an invite will be allowed in, it seems.

There aren’t a lot details being offered about the analytics service’s feature set at this time, but Apple says the service will offer developers the ability to track how often customers visit an app’s page on the App Store, find out how many users open the app over time, check on app and in-app purchase sales, create custom campaign links and follow the success of marketing campaigns, and understand which websites refer the most users.

Apple’s move into this space – which will pit it with a number of third-party analytics providers, including Flurry and App Annie, for example – has been expected ever since Apple acquired Burstly in early 2014. Burstly was the parent company to a number of mobile services aimed at developers and publishers, including the app testing platform TestFlight, which Apple still operates. It also ran an in-app ad management program and a service called FlightPath, a mobile analytics solution, which was shut down prior to Burstly’s acquisition.

Apple teased its plans for the service at last year’s WWDC, noting that “free analytics” would be offered to developers alongside TestFlight for beta testing pre-release apps.

For developers, the advantage of using an Apple-run analytics service is direct access to the mobile download and engagement data, which is not available to third-party providers. Another plus is that, unlike with competing solutions, developers using the new Apple App Analytics service won’t have to write code or update their apps. Instead, once granted access, they’re able to view their analytics data right away directly from the iTunes Connect homepage.

Apple is likely planning to offer more information about its new service at this year’s WWDC.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/aV-5Fe-Brfc/
via IFTTT

The Secret About Rich Founders And Ferraris

By now, the outrage machine is in full bore over the shutdown of Valley darling Secret. The once high-flying app, which allowed you to anonymously share details with your friends and the wider world, eventually sputtered in its growth, leading its founders to shut it down yesterday.

Startups fail all the time, but what made this one special was that the founders, David Byttow and Chrys Bader-Wechseler, had previously received $3 million dollars a piece through a mechanism known as a secondary sale in their $25 million Series B fundraise last July. Byttow in particular used the money to buy a (red!) Ferrari, which the New York Times reported yesterday is now “gone.”

Job firings while the CEO drives away in a (non-existent now) (red!) Ferrari is perfect fodder for a press corp concerned about problems with founders and how much startups are a rich man’s game. There are now wide demands in the press and particularly on Twitter for the co-founders to return their millions to investors as a sign of, I guess, repentance.

I say, screw them all and keep the goods.

Secondary sales are a key and common part of the venture capital landscape today. No VC was harmed in the making of this Secret production, and frankly, I can only get so outraged about VCs losing money through their own decision-making (how many of them ownFerraris Teslas exactly? How many of them are red?)

Secondary sales are pretty simple to understand. When a company raises funding, that funding goes directly to the company as cash on the balance sheet, which is why it is known as primary. Secondary is when a founder or even other employees sell part of their personal shares in the company at the price of the round. That money doesn’t go to the company, but into the seller’s pockets.

In private equity buyouts, much of the money invested in a company may actually be secondary dollars if a founder bootstrapped a business and still owns all or virtually all of its stock. Such a deal has to balance investors’ desire to take ownership with the need to put money on the balance sheet to give the company fuel to grow. Thus, there is an intricate art to getting the primary and secondary capital levels right to generate the highest return on the investment and ensure that the founder agrees to the deal.

Such deals are certainly less common in the high-growth startup space, but they have become more popular. Just in the last few years, Snapchat’s founders each pulled out $10 million in secondary and Foursquare’s founders took out $4.6 million. Other companies like Groupon and Zynga have seen these secondary rounds as well, although often at later stages.

While investors partially use this mechanism in order to get additional equity – particularly in the high-priced rounds typical of social networking startups – the key reason for these secondary sales is incentive alignment. Investors believe that giving founders these millions will make them work harder toward a much more massive outcome.

I see people sometimes describe these dollars as allowing a founder to live more comfortably so they don’t have to think about rent or putting food on the table. This is wrong. These dollars are meant to make a founder feel rich and successful early, so they get a taste of what they might feel like if their company goes up another 100x. Byttow bought a (red!) Ferrari, and so did Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel when he got his secondary sale (also red!). Think of it as cocaine – once you have it once, you want even more of it later.

For the best companies, the demand for a secondary sale often comes more from investors than it does from founders. It’s easy to see why. Founders, if they truly believe in the growth trajectory of their company, are selling their stake at potentially a 99% discount from what they think it is worth. Speigel’s $10 million of secondary shares just two years ago are potentially worth around $200 million right now. What a ripoff!

Investors rely on the arrogance of their founders to make this all work. When you are playing at these leagues, no one wants to be the guy that only made $5 or $10 million on their successful social startup. Investors are also trying to preclude an early acquisition sale, since there is a status difference between a founder selling their shares for $50 million in an acquisition and getting $2 billion or more at an IPO.

That brings us back to Secret. When investors gave the founders secondary, they believed the company could potentially be worth billions, but also understood that it could go belly up. Founder secondary was a means of ensuring that the founders would push the company into the stratosphere or die trying. Well, they died. This is what deal making is in VC. It’s hard for me to see how sophisticated and experienced firms like Index and Redpoint were somehow duped in all of this.

If there is something to be outraged by, it is the gross inequality of the treatment of founders and early startup employees. Founders are considered indispensable, and thus need to be purchased to ensure they stay the full course. That is the complete opposite treatment of startup employees, who these days have seen their shares completely locked up by their companies with few options for liquidity.

If we are going to complain about Secret and secondary, complain that more employees didn’t receive it. That inequality is the true secret about secondaries and (red!) Ferraris.

Featured Image: Antoine Valentini/Flickr UNDER A CC BY-SA 2.0 LICENSE

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/gk9siAegulE/
via IFTTT

LinkedIn Q1 Beats Street On Sales Of $638M, EPS Of $0.57

After Facebook and Twitter reported mixed results this week, LinkedIn today was the latest of the social networks to report its Q1 earnings. It posted sales of $638 million,  up 35% year on year, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.57, beating analyst expectations.

Analysts had been expecting adjusted earnings per share of $0.56 per share, on revenues of $636.5 million. LinkedIn has actually beaten earnings expectations in every quarter since it went public in May, 2011, and analysts were again bullish going into today’s report. Still, perhaps because of the overall pounding that stocks for other social companies like Twitter are facing, LinkedIn’s shares were trading down a couple of percentage points as market close approached today.

LinkedIn also beat its own guidance of  $618-622 million in revenues and non-GAAP EPS of $0.53.

LinkedIn’s big news of the last several months was its acquisition of Lynda.com for $1.5 billion, spearheading the company’s move into a whole new business category, online learning. The transaction is expected to close some time in the current quarter, and LinkedIn may talk a bit more about its plans in today’s call. (We’ll update as and when they do.)

Forging a new business in online education makes a lot of sense for LinkedIn, as it builds on its existing community of users who come to the site to network with other professionals, and look for jobs. LinkedIn continues to monetize in both of those areas — by way of paid job listings and searches; paid premium accounts for better access; and advertising — but online learning will help the company develop another reason for people to visit, stay and pay to be on LinkedIn.

Other recent big moves include the launch of a new product, Elevate, a paid tool for employees to share links to stories across social media networks (think: Hootsuite); the acquisition of Refresh.io to add more predictive analytics and social insights to its mobile app and other services; and the purchase of Careerify to enhance its online recruitment tools.

As a point of comparison, last quarter LinkedIn reported $643 million in revenues and EPS of

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/OT3h_0YIMCU/
via IFTTT

The Worst Business Mantra Is ‘Spend the Company’s Money Like It’s Your Own’

Editor’s note: Dan Ruch is the founder and CEO of Rocketrip.

What do a teepee, cosmetic surgery and hot tub supplies have in common? They all appeared on corporate expense reports in 2011. Yes, it turns out that when companies tell employees, “Spend company money like it’s your own,” some people listen too well. When the average American household carries $15,611 in credit card debt, let’s face it: you don’t actually want employees to follow that broken platitude.

The “your money” mantra is not a source of freedom – it’s a stealthy form of repression and a leech on productivity. If you want employees to experience self-direction and choice, relativistic spending guidelines that obscure expectations will not help. Instead, it’s time we provide transparent benchmarks and data that empower workers to make their own informed decisions with ease.

The Tyranny of Ambiguity

Teepee expensing is no doubt rare, but expecting employees to be reasonable is unreasonable. The concept sounds great: let’s run a democratic business where employees can make their own spending decisions. We’ll give workers “choice,” so they feel a sense “ownership” and care about our “bottom line,” right?

Quite the opposite. When you tell employees to spend money like it’s their own, you create fear, indecision and abuse. People will spend too much or too little and question their choices. This is true not just of Travel and Expense (T&E), entertainment and business software, but also true of unlimited vacation policies, free snacks and limitless work-from-home days.

The hottest startups champion cultures of free will, transparency and self-direction. Like modern Magna Cartas, the best culture documents seek to liberate employees from the tyranny of corporate bureaucracy run amok.

Yet, if we replace absolutism with ambiguity, we actually kill off the freedoms we hoped to create. Instead, we introduce tyrannies of the mind in which employees don’t understand what’s ‘reasonable’ and begin to consider choice a burden. There’s no freedom in fearing the consequences of every decision.

Decision Burnout

“Spend company money like it’s your own” is an invitation to make decisions without prior approval. That is a good thing. However, it usually requires employees to spendprecious mental power on tons of unclear choices that have little to do with your business goals. This is proven to reduce self-discipline and decision quality.

In a popular TED Talk, “The paradox of choice,” psychologist Barry Schwartz explains that a high level of choice “produces paralysis, rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all.” So when employees join a culture with the “your money” mantra and unlimited [fill in the blank] policies, they face a huge set of choices. This intensifies “decision fatigue” (aka ego depletion), the biological price we pay for making choices.

As science columnist John Tierney shows in the New York Times, dozens of peer-reviewed studies illustrate that people have a “finite store of mental energy for exerting self-control,” and it plunges throughout the day as we trudge through choices. It doesn’t take complex decisions to induce fatigue – shopping for clothing presents enough tradeoffs to deplete this mental reserve. The consequences are significant, as ego-depleted people “take illogical shortcuts and tend to favor short-term gains and delayed costs.” So a hyper laissez-faire environment will likely speed up ego depletion and increase poor decision-making.

Imagine the process of booking a business trip when your guiding principle is, “Spend company money like it’s your own.” The direct flights are $300+ more expensive than the one-stop options, but they would shave three hours off travel. Which one is acceptable? How do I filter the dozens of flight options? Will I get in trouble if I take the more convenient route? What if I stay at this more expensive hotel but forgo the rental car? The questions and sub-decisions multiply like parasites because there are no clear principles guiding each decision (e.g. minimize costs and travel times).

Without guidelines that “automate” decisions, employees will face choice paralysis and ego depletion. Your company will sacrifice productivity and quality thinking to a counterfeit freedom.

Benchmarks and Guardrails

We know that draconian policies, exhaustive procedure and rampant bureaucracy cripple businesses. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve made a case that unstructured choices – best characterized by the mantra, “Treat the company’s money like your own” – is repression in disguise and detrimental to the quality of decision-making in your organization.

However, I still advocate democratic company culture. What I propose is a self-directed spending culture that uses benchmarks and guardrails to make decisions easy and beneficial to the company.

Sharing knowledge is more effective than imposing upper limits.

To create benchmarks, we can investigate what something should cost, and we can look at historical averages among employees. With T&E, business software, office supplies and other free market purchases, you can crunch some numbers to predict what things should cost.

With knowledge of a suggested or average budget, employees can compare potential purchases with ease and make their decision without suffering from uncertainty, endless sub-decisions and the accompanying ego depletion. If you have an unlimited vacation policy, you can determine how many days people take off on average and publish the number. That way, new employees don’t stress each time they consider a vacation. They can use the data to make a reasonable decision.

Guardrails, on the other hand, are minimum limits. With an unlimited vacation policy, a lot of people will take little or no time off, which has been shown to increase the risk of burnout, heart disease and depression. Therefore, setting a minimum for required vacation days makes good sense.

With client dinners, too, the “your money” mantra can scare employees into picking mediocre restaurants and skimping on the wine. TGI Fridays and white zinfandel won’t help you close deals. Transparency – knowledge of what an average dinner costs – will save employees from the agony of overthinking their choices. Sharing knowledge is more effective than imposing upper limits; the data exerts social pressure whereas upper limits will erode price sensitivity and encourage employees to max out their spending.

Freedom with Knowledge 

The takeaway here is to preserve free choice yet eliminate ambiguity by using data. Benchmarks, guard rails and rewards give you the levers to reign in spending while preserving a culture of democracy and free choice. If you tell employees to spend company money (and time) like it’s their own, it will backfire.

It’s a mantra that sounds good on paper but disconnects spending from business goals. It’s a mantra that will increase the likelihood of teepees, cosmetic surgery and hot tub supplies appearing on your expense reports.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/utNp19-n_Zc/
via IFTTT

How Old Do You Look? Microsoft Built A Robot That Tries To Guess Your Age

How old do you look? Old for your years? Young enough that you get carded every time you try to buy a beer?

Now, how old do you look… to a computer that does nothing but guess ages?

As something of an experiment, Microsoft’s machine learning team has built a site that takes any photo you throw at it and tries (with varying success) to guess the ages of those it portrays. They say they put it up in hopes of “perhaps 50 users” trying it out; within hours, it was getting hammered by tens of thousands of people.

After a quick demonstration today at the BUILD conference, it’s popular enough that they’re having trouble keeping the servers up.

You can upload any photo under 3 MB, which has people trying out all sorts of silly stuff. How old does your dog look? Or that weird stain on your wall that kind of looks like a face? 37? Okay!

Give it a few well lit photos, and it’ll generally get your age right within a year or two.

If it gets your age terribly wrong, though, fret not — you’re not alone. On the first pass with a poorly lit photo, it told me I was an 80-year old man. Just yell “YOU DON’T KNOW ME, ROBOT” and close your computer, everything will be okay.

Other times, it just explodes completely:

The backend of the app is constantly searching for new photos/data it can learn from, so it theoretically should improve with time.

And if the site won’t load for you at all: don’t worry, you’re not alone there, either. The site went down pretty hard almost immediately after it started getting popular, which is… perhaps not the sort of demo Microsoft wants.

You can find Microsoft’s How-Old app right over here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/fyR_PnqcnTE/
via IFTTT

Google To Test Mobile-Optimized Web Pages For Slow Connections In Indonesia

Google announced today that it will begin running tests of a new way to deliver search results to mobile users with slow connections. The company’s pilot trials will initially take place in Indonesia, a country where the Internet is playing a greater role in people’s lives – especially among younger users – but is still plagued by slow mobile connection speeds, which average around 2.0 Mbps. With Google’s page optimization technology, however, the company says it’s able to load pages four times faster.

The tests will begin in two weeks, the search giant says, and will involve displaying optimized web pages to users who Google detects are visiting from devices on slower mobile connections, like 2G, for example. These optimized pages will be loaded up by default, but users will have the option to click a link to visit the original page if they choose, and publishers also have a way to opt out of the optimizations.

Only mobile users surfing the web from their mobile phones will see these new pages, not those using Google search from tablets or computers.

The system works by transcoding web pages on the fly – which basically means that Google is converting the page to a more lightweight format that loads faster and saves data. The company says that these transcoded pages use 80% fewer bytes than normal pages, and because they load more quickly, Google has seen a 50% increase in traffic to supported sites.

For the time being, pages are only transcoded for searches performed from the Chrome browser and the Android browser (on Android 2.3 and higher).

This not Google’s first effort at developing optimization technology aimed at mobile users. The company earlier last year rolled out an optional data compression feature in Chrome for mobile, which was also designed to reduce data usage. But that effort was focused more on helping smartphone owners save money on their monthly cell bills, while these tests in Indonesia are more about making Google search – and the web in general – more usable.

Google also rolled out streamlined search results earlier this month, which load up faster on slow mobile connections.

In all cases, the focus on making the mobile web more functional is critical to Google’s bottom line, as the company continues its transition into a world where much of the “web” is served up by way of native mobile apps. That shift could potentially mean fewer Google searches, and ultimately impact Google’s ad business.

These optimizations in the near-term will affect advertisers and potentially ad revenue, as the technology means pages are limited to showing just three advertisements for now. Google is currently working with ad networks Zedo and Sovrn to support their ads along with AdSense, to start, and it’s working to support DoubleClick for Publishers, too. It intends to include other ad networks in time, and is offering interested parties a way to apply to be included in the transcoded pages.

For publishers, the change could mean fewer supported ads on their pages, but on the flip side, their pages are likely to see increased traffic because of the optimizations which means more visitors, page views and ad clicks.

Some pages will not be transcoded, Google also notes, including those that require cookies (personalized sites or those where you have to login in order to use them), data-heavy sites like video sites, and others. These will be labeled as “non-transcoded” in the search results.

Presuming the Google trials in Indonesia go well, it’s possible that Google will roll the technology out to other developing markets, but the company has yet to confirm those plans.

Image credit: Bloomua / Shutterstock.com

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/iyWCPl8U-b4/
via IFTTT

How To Install Windows 10 IoT On Your Raspberry Pi 2

Thanks to the release of Windows 10 for multiple single-board computers, tinkerers are now waking up to the possibility of running Windows as a usable and surprisingly polished alternative open source operating systems like Raspbian. But how do you run Windows on a RaspPi? And why?

First, I invite you to check out Microsoft’s refreshingly complete Github page where they offer instructions for installing Windows 10 onto Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Galileo, and MinnowBoard. The page offers instructions for getting the official “Windows Embedded IoT” image for use with these devices. You can also just download it here.

A note to OSX users: I originally hoped to include instructions on how to flash an SD card for RaspPi2 using OS X or Linux but, sadly, Microsoft’s FFU image files require specific Windows file handling software. I tried converting this to an image file using obvious methods – changing the extension – and unobvious methods – looking hither and yon for an answer – but generally it was a problem I couldn’t solve.

Here is how to install Windows 10 IoT onto your Raspberry Pi.

1. Create an account at Microsoft Connect.
2. Download the file Windows_IoT_Core_RPI2_BUILD.zip which contains flash.ffu. Place this file in an accessible place.
3. Insert a blank 8GB Class 10 SD card into your computer.

4. Open a command prompt and type:
diskpart
list disk
exit

This will allow you to find the drive number for your SD card. Use this in the next step.

5. Finally, follow Microsoft’s own instructions for flashing the SD card in Windows 10.

Using the admininistrator command prompt, apply the image to your SD card by running the following command (be sure to replace PhysicalDriveN with the value you found in the previous step, for example, if your SD card is disk number 3, use /ApplyDrive:\\.\PhysicalDrive3 below):

dism.exe /Apply-Image /ImageFile:flash.ffu /ApplyDrive:\\.\PhysicalDriveN /SkipPlatformCheck

6. Safely remove the SD card.

The card is now ready to boot in your Raspberry Pi 2.

Why would you want to do this? Well, as Microsoft notes, “Windows 10 IoT Core is a new Windows 10 edition for low-cost, small-footprint devices that will be available ‘free’ for Makers and commercial device builders.” This means you can easily flash and use a stripped down version of Windows in your own projects. Interestingly, this version of Windows will be very familiar to users of similar platforms like Arduino and Rasbian.

Don’t expect to be playing Far Cry on this thing any time soon – think of it as more of a universal app platform that connects to simple devices like Arduino-based relays and LEDs. In fact the UI is quite limited unless you program some apps yourself. It’s a surprisingly friendly move by Microsoft to bring this to market, however, and I think even the most die-hard open source fan will agree that getting more people to use Raspberry Pi in embedded projects is a noble goal – whatever the OS. Let me know if you guys have built anything cool using Windows 10 and maybe we can showcase some of the products down the line.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/l9CyONrqEeM/
via IFTTT

Microsoft’s Project Oxford Gives Developers Access To Facial, Image And Speech-Recognition APIs

Microsoft quietly launched a set of new machine-learning APIs in beta under the “Project Oxford” moniker yesterday. These new APIs allow developers to add face detection and recognition features to their apps, as well as speech recognition with the ability to understand the speaker’s intent. The project also features a vision API for automatically categorizing images and creating smart image crops that always put the subject into the center of the cropped images.

These three services are now available as a public beta. There’s also a fourth API that lets developers build custom language understanding into their applications.

Previously, Microsoft offered a set of somewhat similar APIs under the Bing brand. Bing offers a speech and translator API, for example, but for the most part, these Bing services are somewhat more basic and search-focused than the Project Oxford tools.

To showcase Project Oxford’s Face API, Microsoft built How-Old.net. This site lets you upload photos of faces and then it automatically figures out how old the person in that photo is. It’s a nice demo — and works somewhat well — but it does involve working with a number of other machine-learning services. Right out of the box, this API offers face detection in images, face verification to check whether two faces belong to the same person, and the ability to find similar-looking faces.

The Speech API, as the name implies, offers speech-recognition services for speech-to-text conversion, as well as a text-to-speech service that turns written text into audio. More interestingly, though, it also features intent recognition. The idea here is to allow application to understand the speaker’s intent (order a burrito, cancel a flight, etc.). This is driven by the project’s Language Understanding Intelligent Service.

Using the image API, developers can categorize images to filter out adult content, for example, or to simply automatically apply tags to images or group them into clusters. The API also features optical character recognition capabilities and lets developers crop images automatically by recognizing what’s important in an image and keeping that in the center of the photo as you crop it.

Even if you’re not a developer, you can give some of these features a try here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/H12gJD3wN1A/
via IFTTT

Warby Parker Now Worth $1.2 Billion, Focusing On Building More Brick-And-Mortar Stores

The e-commerce eyeglasses retailer Warby Parker has raised $100 million to expand physical store locations from 13 to 20 by year’s end and to work on technology that will allow customers to conduct eye exams on their mobile phone.

Global investment management firm T. Rowe Price led the round, along with participation from Wellington management and from previous investors Tiger Global Management and General Catalyst. This puts the total amount of funding raised at $215.5 million, according to CrunchBase. This also more than doubles Warby Parker’s valuation to $1.2 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The new valuation adds Warby Parker to the growing unicorn category of private, venture-backed companies, and also makes them one of the highest valued U.S. online retail companies, second only to sports retail site Fanatics, valued at $3.3 billion.

Warby Parker started out with an online distribution model that allowed customers to order and try on several pairs of brand name glasses that retailed for under $100 before buying. The startup was able to offer the glasses at a discount by cutting out third parties and sending directly to consumers. Opening up brick-and-mortar stores in 9 U.S. cities was just a way to test selling the product in 2013, but now employs half the company.

We’ve reached out to Warby Parker for comment and will update this post as soon as we hear back.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/QAxHYQIysUA/
via IFTTT

Phablets Are Eating Phones And Tablets

It’s been increasingly evident for years: smartphone users are digging bigger phones as they do more on screens, and spend less time talking on the phone. And there’s no sign of the appetite for supersizing mobile handsets abating — not according to a new report from Yahoo-owned mobile analytics firm Flurry.

The firm has looked at a top-slice of data taken from the 1.6 billion devices it tracks every month — focusing on the top 875 devices which it says accounted for 87 per cent of sessions in March 2015 — to explore global active device usage by screen size. Flurry found that phablets have more than tripled their share of usage since last year.

In January 2014 Flurry recorded just 6 per cent of active users were on phablets vs 68 per cent using ‘medium phones’ (devices with a screen size between 3.5 inches and 4.9 inches). But by March this year phablet usage had swelled to a fifth (20 per cent), with medium phones squeezed down to 59 per cent.

Full-sized tablets are also being cannibalized — or capped — by phablets, with a shrinking overall share of active users:

Apple’s first phablet, the iPhone 6 Plus, went on sale last fall — finally affording iOS users who want to remain on Apple’s platform the option of using an i-Phablet. That pent up demand has evidently contributed to driving phablet usage.

That said, Android remains the dominant force in phablets — which is not surprising, given how many more large screened Android smartphones there are to choose from, vs just the one iPhone. Flurry found that around a third (36 per cent) of Android users are using phablets, vs just four per cent of iOS users. So iOS developers are still mostly going to be focused on building smaller phone experiences — and on iPad apps (full-sized tablet usage accounts for a fifth of iOS usage).

By contrast, Android usage on full size tablets is very weak (just three per cent) — underlining what we knew already: that Android tablets have flopped, but also that there has been less impetus and demand for full-sized Android slates because Android phones have had larger screens for longer.

Flurry has also charted the growth in Android device makers offering phablets — noting that Android phablets only made up 10 per cent of overall Android phones back in 2013. But, two years on, phablets account for close to a third (27 per cent) of all Android devices. So really the Android phablet is the Android tablet.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/4BJZhO9Yho8/
via IFTTT

Nielsen Will Begin Measuring Video Ads On Roku

In further proof of the rise of streaming video services and the cord-cutting trend in general, TV measurement firm Nielsen today said it would begin to track viewing data and audience demographics across Roku’s 10 million+ devices, including its media players and Roku TVs. The move is being heralded as an industry-first by the two firms, as it will allow advertisers to measure Roku’s over-the-top audience according to Nielsen demographics, as well as track their video ad campaigns’ reach.

Roku says that, today, around half of its 250 most-watched channels are delivering ad-supported content. But advertisers have until now been lacking in the ability to effectively measure this audience the way they could previously with traditional network television. These viewers, however, streamed over 3 billion hours of video in 2014.

The new strategic partnership will offer demographic data on viewers, which means that advertisers have the equivalent of audience guarantees as they would otherwise have on network TV. To make this possible, Nielsen will begin collecting usage data from Roku devices (stripping out any personally identifiable information along the way), then use its National People Meter television panel to assign audiences, explains Variety, detailing how the new system will work.

Nielsen and Roku will initially offer OTT (over-the-top) measurement through Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings, which will allow advertisers to “measure, guarantee, and report campaign audience delivery” through the Roku platform, the companies said.

The deal means that an advertiser will not only know how many impressions their ad campaign saw, but how many in a particular demographic segment – like the 18-34 demo – viewed it.

For Roku, the partnership is one that elevates its platform’s importance in the streaming industry as being as worthy of measurement as top streaming providers like Netflix or Amazon (Amazon Prime Instant Video), for example. Last year, it was reported that Nielsen would begin measuring viewership numbers for both Netflix and Amazon’s streaming services, and Nielsen CEO Mitch Barns confirmed earlier that this data would start being collected for the first time by mid-2015.

Nielsen and Amazon have historically been unwilling to share their viewership numbers for specific shows, which has made it difficult for networks to determine the value of their older content, or whether or not streaming was eating into traditional TV viewing, noted Bloomberg in March. But the streaming providers have argued that because they don’t show ads, they don’t have to share this data.

In the case of Amazon and Netflix, however, Nielsen is tracking TV viewing only, and is providing data just to content owners themselves. The Roku deal, on the other hand, is making the audience and campaign data available to advertisers, too.

Roku says it will offer the Nielsen tracking as part of its current offerings for publishers and advertisers known as Roku Audience Solutions.

“We believe all TV will be streamed, and with it all TV advertising,” said Scott Rosenberg, vice president of advertising at Roku, in a statement. “We’re excited to join forces with Nielsen to significantly advance the measurement and value of OTT advertising. With Nielsen, we’re integrating these capabilities directly into the Roku OS, enabling Roku’s channel publishers and advertisers to measure and transact on the industry’s leading metrics.”

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/E5jAwglcBNo/
via IFTTT

NeonMob Is A Platform For Creating, Trading, And Collecting Digital Art

Digital art is gaining popularity, with companies like Curioos dedicating entire marketplaces to the medium, but the idea of scarcity when it comes to the internet is relatively new.

NeonMob is looking to change the way we think about that with a platform dedicated to digital art collectibles.

The company offers tools to creators so that they can build out a collection of art — perhaps based around a theme like “trees” or “unicorns” — and then users can pay to collect those works. The artist chooses the price of each piece of art, as well as the quantity of each piece of art, which introduces the idea of digital scarcity.

“Digital scarcity is kind of radical and goes against the way most people think about how the internet and data works,” said founder Mike Duca. “Since NeonMob inherently promotes the notion of digital scarcity, we have to show people why it’s no different than Andy Warhol choosing to create 50 prints of each Campbell soup poster instead of 1 or 1000. People aren’t used to relating to data, or art, in this way.”

NeonMob has set up an authentication program to ensure that each piece of art collected on the platform is in fact owned by the user and not forged, and the company is currently working to set up a blockchain so that ownership of prints is verified both on and off the NeonMob platform.

1. Bing and Ann by Vic Bell in Yummi

2. Casting by Ruby Zhao in Vincent and Alice

3. Chick Chick by Cleonique Hilsaca in As Big As Mountains

4. Chomper by Craig Bruyn in Punx

5. Cold Tree by Danny Ivan in Explorer

6. Corinth by Isaac Montemayor in Unicorn Empire

7. First Meetings by Elizabeth Kidder in Journey to Vapourri

NeonMob offers a compelling platform to artists, who receive up to 70 percent of every sale that happens on NeonMob. Unlike Curioos, which handles printing and distribution of digital art and thus takes a much larger cut of each sale, NeonMob has the opportunity to keep costs low without ever building or distributing a physical product. In short, artists can actually make livable money off of their work.

But at the same time, convincing users that they want to spend money on collecting digital art may be a tough sell.

“We have all different types of art that appeal to different people,” said Duca. “Everyone appreciates art even if they don’t consider themselves a collector, and when we delight people with a fun user experience, we find that they get more excited about the idea of collecting the art that they enjoy. We’re trying to show people that collecting online can be just as satisfying as or more satisfying than offline collecting.”

And it seems to be working. Since launch in 2012, NeonMob users have collected more than 4.8 million pieces of digital art.

The company has raised a total of $2 million in seed funding from investors such as Max Levchin and Dragoneer Investment Group.

You can check out NeonMob here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/d8kGP4SCKzM/
via IFTTT

Dopay Banks $2M To Launch A Cloud Payroll Service For The Unbanked

Dopay, a London-headquartered startup that offers a payroll service for the unbanked, has closed a $2 million seed. Investors in the round of funding include global private equity firm ACE & Company, plus a syndicate of angels from the banking, private equity and hedge fund industries.

Dopay went through Barclays London-based fintech accelerator last year, as part of its inaugural cohort of startups. Barclays partnered with TechStars for that program — and the latter’s VC arm, Techstars Ventures, is also investing in DoPay’s seed round now.

Dopay’s product is a cloud-based payroll service that employers can use to calculate and remit salaries electronically to staff who don’t have bank accounts of their own (and also to those who do have bank accounts). Unbanked employees receive their salary in a dopay account, which comes with a debit card.

They can also manage access to their dopay account via an app which lets them view a real-time balance, as well as send money to others, and top-up prepaid mobile. If users can’t access the Internet there is also a call centre option for accessing their accounts. Part of the funding will go towards developing more features for the app, dopay said today.

The first market for the service is Egypt, where dopay soft launched this week with a couple of companies. Founder Frans van Eersel tells TechCrunch the team will also be using the new funding for a full launch there in June, and to expand into additional markets — in the Middle East, Africa and India. The size of the market it’s attacking is the roughly two billion people globally who have jobs but no bank account.

Dopay accounts, which are being powered by Barclays and Visa, do not accrue any interest for the account holder. If the employee leaves their workplace they can retain their dopay account and have a new employer deposit wages into it. Deposits are also possible via direct debit from another bank account.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/fx1Lg9XJIPc/
via IFTTT

Zero’s New Email App Can Help You Reach “Inbox Zero”

A new mobile email application called Zero is launching today to help users power through their inbox on the go, in order to achieve the often sought-after state of “inbox zero” – meaning an inbox that has no unread emails. Aimed at heavy email users who receive a lot of inbound email, an app that promises to speed up email processing by 30% or more sounds too good to be true. But while still far from perfect in its present state, Zero has developed a clever way to work through your emails with an interface that’s reminiscent of scrolling through a social app’s feed.

The idea with the new app, explains CEO Alexander Volkov, previously the Director of Business Development at ImageShack, is to address a pain point that a number of professionals today face: mobile email. With Zero, the app is designed to let you move through your inbox faster by turning the emails themselves into a feed that you scroll through vertically, one-by-one, using swipe gestures.

That’s a different approach than most email apps today which present users by default with a birds-eye view of their inbox, allowing them to pick and choose which messages they want to read.

While it seems like looking at each individual email would take longer, that’s surprisingly not the case. For starters, Zero presents the information in a card-style layout that allows you to preview email summaries as text-only for faster reading. As you swipe up on the message to move through your feed, the emails are automatically archived.

From this feed, you can also reply to an email, tap a star button to keep it in the inbox instead of having it archived, or move the email to a designated folder – helpful for those who actually like to organize emails to some extent. Other buttons at the bottom of the app let you view your inbox, your folders, or search across all your messages. And if you need to view your email attachments, you can simply tap on the attachment icon at the bottom of a message in order to load them.

Though I’ve personally shied away from a number of email “triage” apps, including the ever-popular Mailbox, because of their lack of flexibility, Zero is the first email app that I could actually see myself using…well, at some point. When testing it, I found that I was able to quickly jet through a crowded inbox, and its “social feed” format made it feel like I was just reading and responding to updates on Twitter, rather than having to craft lengthy email replies.

That said, the app currently lacks the ability to “flag” an email, which is a categorization system many email users today, myself included, rely on. Instead, the “star” button only saves an email from being archived. And because of its focus on achieving inbox zero status, there’s no option for marking emails read or unread – which is something that email users do from time to time to make sure they don’t forget to respond to an important message that they can’t deal with at the present, or one that requires a longer reply.

Plus, the feed itself today mirrors your inbox itself, which means if you rely on other apps’ “priority inbox” views (like that in Gmail or in Microsoft’s Outlook mobile app for iOS and Android, for example), you may find yourself dealing with less essential messages first.

But Volkov says that a number of these concerns will be dealt with in future releases. In fact, plans to prioritize the emails in your main feed are already in the works, but just weren’t finished in time for launch. However, in the meantime, the lack of support for one feature or another could be a deal breaker for some email power users who can be very picky about losing functionality they depend on.

The startup’s plan is to keep its application free, but to eventually launch a marketplace for email plugins that target business users’ specific needs – like the ability to track emails, or integrate with a company’s CRM system, for example. The team is also starting to look at a way to port the app to the new Apple Watch platform, as well.

Zero is backed by a small amount of angel funding, including investment from ImageShack CEO and ex-Googler Jack Levin, Eugene Malobrodsky (co-founder of Anchorfree), and Luc Demont (VP of Corporate Development at Dailymotion). The startup is now raising seed funding.

Since January, the app, which works with most major email services, has been in private beta testing with 180 people, but is now live for anyone to try from the iTunes App Store.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/tkPV2TJCtlg/
via IFTTT

Airtable Launches Its API And Embedded Databases

Two months after launching its unique organizational tool, Airtable is rolling out two new features that’ll make it easier to share your personal spreadsheet/database hybrids with others in a way they’ll find useful.

In addition to sharing direct read or edit access to the relational databases you create in its app, Airtable is today letting you draw from the underlying data using a powerful API, so you can embed that information in an application or website in a way that seamlessly blends into the experience. If that’s a bit outside of your skillset, Airtable is also rolling out the ability to share your data as an embed that you can customize and share as simply as you would a YouTube video.

For those unfamiliar with the startup, Airtable’s app makes it easy to handle the non-calculation tasks people sometimes jam into Excel — organizing lists of participants in an event, links to relevant materials for a project, or a list of restaurants in your area you think would be nice to try, organized by price or style.

Instead of just making it easier to put together rows and columns of arbitrary text and numbers on your phone, Airtable put a relational database behind the scenes so your information can be logically linked together to provide a broader organizational structure.

Professionally, a team might use it to replace a legacy CRM so everyone can keep track of their leads without using an app that somehow managed to forget the design lessons of the last decade (you know what I’m talking about, person who has used any CRM application ever). Or a production studio might use it to keep everyone on the same page for shooting schedules, combing lists of crew, cast members, locations, props, and scenes into something cohesive.

In a visit to TechCrunch earlier this week, Airtable co-founder Howie Liu also showed me how he’s been using it for personal organization. In a similar fashion to the movie production use case, Liu organized a camping trip, tying together the people going, groups going in different cars, and who was bringing which supplies.

Liu used this example to demonstrate the new embed system. While the list of camping supplies was created for a specific trip, the supplies themselves are useful for a wide variety of outdoors-y situations. So maybe you want to share that list on your blog as recommendations for others — you could open up Airtable, bring up the embed interface, cut out irrelevant data, and have an embed code ready in less than 30 seconds.

Airtable is hoping that people will adopt the app for themselves, and then bring it to their workplace, and vice-versa. To promote such adoption, the startup watches for users coming up with neat ways to use the app, and when it finds something that could be used broadly, adapts the custom solutions made by users into templates that others can build from. Liu says he wants the template options to one day evolve into something resembling an app store, with Airtable itself getting out of the way but enabling customization for power users willing to dig in to its features and integration with other services.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/RUtRiU0B6Ls/
via IFTTT

Amazon Brings HD And Cellular Streaming To The iOS Instant Video App

Amazon has answered a long-standing request with an update to Amazon Instant Video that delivers streaming of HD resolution content, and allows streaming over cellular connections, rather than just Wi-Fi. The new 3.0 update also lets you beam the Amazon Instant Video library of movie and TV shows to your Apple TV via AirPlay in HD.

Basically, this means you finally have the full control over your own streaming destiny that should be your right as a streaming media service subscriber. Amazon’s decision to ease back on the handholding has ramifications, however, since using the highest level of streaming quality over a cellular connection will easily break the back of most users’ data plans.

Still, it’s nice to have choice, and the HD option is plenty useful over Wi-Fi connections. As a Prime member, I’m looking forward to being able to dig into the collection on the go, especially since it also works with the Apple Digital AV Adapter to playback content in HD over a hardwired HDMI connection, which is super useful for bypassing the expensive and ugly in-room entertainment system offered at most hotels.

The universal Amazon Instant Video update is available free via the App Store.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/UNLK3x5j6FE/
via IFTTT

Mobile Action Raises $2 Million To Help App Makers Attract More Users

Getting apps discovered in an increasingly packed app store is a challenge, which is why a number of firms in recent years have launched services that help app publishers figure out how to better optimize their app’s search result ranking when users type in various keywords into the app store’s search interface, as well as gain other competitive intelligence. One such firm, San Francisco-based Mobile Action, has now closed on $2 million in funding led by Felicis Ventures to continue to grow its business.

Others participating in the round include Streamlined Ventures, 500 Startups, 500 Mobile Collective, CrunchFund* and various angel investors.  (*Disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington also founded CrunchFund.)

According to Mobile Action founder and CEO Aykut Karaalioglu, his business has been doubling every month since December 2014, and is now used by the developers of over 70,000 apps representing over 4 billion downloads and more than $1.5 billion in app store revenues. The service, which also offers a freemium tier, is used by a number of well-known brands, including StubHub, Runtastic, Raise, Frankly, ZipRecruiter, Fitbit, CareerBuilder, Pic Collage, Golf Channel, The New York Times, Slice, Panjo, Glassdoor, SoundHound, Tictoc, Zipcar, Edmunds, and Ticket Fire.

While there are today several competitors on the market when it comes to offering ASO (app store optimization) services and other app store market intelligence services, including industry leader App Annie for example, what makes Mobile Action different is its development of the “App Visibility Score.” This metric – a letter grade ranging from A+ to F – gives app makers an easy way to determine their app’s overall visibility in the app store using a combination of factors including its keyword search score, keyword rankings, reviews, seasonality, and category ranking calculation.

1. 14 days trial for Premium

2. Historical Visibility Score

3. Review Analysis

4. Recommend Actions Page

Mobile Action then uses this score to offer customers “actionable” recommendations that help them improve their ranking. For example, it may suggest the best time to run a campaign. It can also leverage competitor data and other insights to improve its suggestions.

Pricing for the paid tiers starts at $499 per month, which offers customers the ability to download data for five countries. Enterprise packages with more options are also available. Mobile Action reports it continues to be cash-flow positive.

Today, the firm tracks over 3 million apps across the iTunes App Store and Google Play, and uses over 8 billion data points to make its recommendations. But now, says Karaalioglu, a former growth hacker who decided to productize his knowledge in the form of a business (and sold his first client before the company launched), the plan is to expand Mobile Action to include the top 10 Chinese app stores as well.

That’s a notable expansion for the startup, which currently has offices in San Fransisco, New York and Turkey, and soon, Asia, as the Chinese app stores combined with other Android app markets are now delivering more revenue potential than Apple’s App Store alone. Mobile Action also plans to expand to support the Apple Watch and other “internet of things” devices in the future, too, the founder says.

The additional funding will be used for hiring staff in sales, biz dev, and in engineering and make product improvements, including the support for insights related to app users’ demographic data (“personas”), the integration of third-party analytics services into the Mobile Action dashboard (like Flurry or Localytics), and more. The company will also be working to expand its partnerships with those who resell its service.  The now 22-person startup expects to reach 35-40 people by year-end.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/anQID2kEmN0/
via IFTTT

Go Ahead, Play Prince Of Persia In This Tweet

If you want to relive your classic MS-DOS gaming experiences, you need venture no further than Twitter. The Internet Archive’s website-embeddable games also now work directly in tweets, when you’re viewing them on the web, or in native embed like the one below. Jordan Mechner’s classic Prince of Persia is a good place to start, if you ask me, but anything in this collection should work just as well.

I was already reeling about the demonstrably cool arrival of classic X-Wing and TIE Fighter games on Steam, but this is next level. Think about it: These games used to sometimes span multiple floppy discs, and now they’re just living inside tweets almost as an afterthought.

Hope you were prepared to fall down a nostalgia hole today.

Via TNW.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/LgHWsisbsyM/
via IFTTT

Apple Looking Into Built-In Telephoto iPhone Camera Lenses

Apple’s iPhone is just about the best smartphone camera you can get, but a new patent application provides a good indication of how it could get even better. The patent is for a “small form factor telephoto camera (via AppleInsider) and describes how the company might make a camera with a narrower field of view, but a much higher magnification factor, and also how such a camera might be paired with a wider angle unit like the one that’s already used in your current iPhone to give you a range of options on a single smartphone device.

The patent describes the mechanics behind creating a small lens suitable for use in a device like the iPhone, or the iPad and mobile Macs. In one version, the small camera would be built in such a way that you could adjust zoom using different focal ratios for true optical magnification. Apple’s current iPhone camera uses digital zoom, but this results in far more degradation of quality vs. true optical magnification like those food in DLSR telephoto lenses, and compact cameras with traditional zoom lenses.

Apple’s patent application document mostly dives into the nitty gritty around how it would achieve different magnifications and what materials it would use, along with specific dimensions needed to construct the proper lenses involved in the system. The mot interesting piece may be that Apple includes a provision that would allow this new telephoto lens to be used right alongside the kind of general purpose wide-angle camera that’s currently found in the iPhone, which gives a much more expanded field of view suitable to more general everyday photography.

The patent application is a relatively new one, first filed in October 2013. On paper, it seems like a very worthwhile thing to pursue for Apple, since it would provide a significant lead in the mobile photography arena where it already has a reputation for outshining its competitors. Two factors that might affect whether or not we ever see it actually implemented include component cost, and space within the case. Here’s hoping they do eventually ship it, so something like it, however, since built-in telephoto would pretty much eliminate any need I have to carry a dedicated camera.

Photo: Olloclip third-party accessory.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/dAiWND64ir0/
via IFTTT

Micro Tug Robots Can Pull Objects 2,000 Times Their Own Weight

Like the noble ant or the sassy-yet-lovable tugboat, Micro Tugs can pull more than their own weight. The robots, which come from Sanford’s Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab, use a “controllable adhesive” plate that sticks to surfaces only when shear pressure is applied. In one case a 12 gram robot was able to pull objects 2,000 times its own weight.

“This is the equivalent of a human adult dragging a blue whale around on land,” wrote the researchers.

How does it work? The robot uses two simple wheels to scoot around and then drops onto its sticky belly when it needs to pull an object. A built-in winch then pulls the object briefly, allowing the little robot some slack to move forward a little on its wheels. It can repeat this process ad nauseam, allowing it to pull huge objects without much trouble.

The goal of the project is to create a robot that can drag heavy objects into difficult areas and thanks to the controllably adhesive pad it can drag objects across any relatively smooth surface. While you won’t be able to go crawling in the grass, tile, glass, and concrete are fair game.

via RoboticsTrands

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Px5iYmVBmmE/
via IFTTT

Apple And IBM Team With Japan Post To Address The Needs Of An Aging Population

Japan Post CEO Taizo Nishimuro was on stage with Apple CEO Tim Cook and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty at a special event aimed at the enterprise today in New York. The event was designed to highlight some of the fruits of the IBM/Apple enterprise partnership, through which IBM is developing software and support for large businesses, as well as helping to provision Apple hardware to corporate clients. Japan Post is leveraging that partnership to try to tackle some of the challenges associated with Japan’s aging population.

Nishimuro opened the event talking about how Japan Post is 100 percent owned by the Japanese government, and about how the company is looking to go pubic by the end of this year. It also intends to morph into becoming a more “integrated lifestyle support group,” meaning the Japanese postal agency is looking to expand its role in the company’s healthcare (it has provided services in some capacity or another since 1871, according to Nishimuro), and will do so with the help of IBM and Apple.

Japan’s aging population provides ample motivation for this kind of move, with a forecasted increase in person aged 65 or order from 20 percent in 2006 to 38 percent in 2055. Japan Post is using two major approaches to extend its range of senior support services, and iPad is a key ingredient to the first of those.

The company will be designing iPad-based experiences that are “very easy to use for seniors,” something Nishimuro told the audience today that the iPad is “famous for,” and they’ll be using IBM’s help to develop app analytics and cloud services around these apps. The apps are designed to help connect Japan’s millions of seniors with both the healthcare services community and with their families, with a target of serving 4 to 5 million families by 2020. The second part of Japan Post’s plan is to integrated said services with its existing offerings.

The issue of an aging generation is “most acute in japan we need real solutions,” Nishimuro said. It was a statement echoed by Rometty, too, in follow-up comments where she pointed out that an older population will also be something the U.S., and the world needs to address. 21 percent of the world’s population will fall into the “senior” category by 2050, Rometty said, with 64 countries seeing 30 percent of their population hit that mark by the same time.

Rometty outlined the goals of IBM’s work with Japan Post to address this need as three-fold. First, they’ll be working on “quality of life apps,” both by building some themselves and by integrating others, all of which will be aimed at accessibility first. The key targets will also be iOS, since it’s a mobile-first strategy in keeping with our changed computing habits. Second, they’re working on developing additional accessibility features not yet available, and third they’re helping Japan Post with the service layer required to deliver this.

Tim Cook called the initiative “groundbreaking,” saying that is “not only important for Japan, but [also] has global implications. Together, the three of us and all the teams that work so diligently behind us will dramatically improve the lives of millions of people.”He added that the “courage and the boldness and the ambition that Taizo-san and Japan Post are showing by being first in this is incredibly commendable.”

For Cook, this Japan Post initiative shows the “enormous potential” of the Apple/IBM partnership, and he also delved into a discussion of Apple broader goals with respect to user health. He brought up the examples of HealthKit and ResearchKit, and added that this program with Japan Post to help seniors is perfectly in line with its goals with those existing initiatives.

The Apple CEO talked about how iPad features “help people that are marginalized in some way, and empower them to do the things everyone else can do.” He cited a UC Irvine study which details how remote monitoring and connection with loved ones via iPad help instill a sense of confidence and independence in seniors. He added that he believes what they’re doing in Japan is also scalable around the world.

A demo of the Japan Post offering showed how the iPad could extend the current practice of Japan Post employees checking in on senior customers. In the demo, an employee sits down with an elderly client and helps her set up the iPad’s features, as well as book a doctor’s appointment and arrange for both a prescription and a package pickup. There’s also a questions button that looks to work somewhat like Amazon’s Mayday service for Kindle tablets. Service providers are included, each of which is pre-screened and can provide things like plumbing.

Developing…

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/wVK-y9ertMU/
via IFTTT

Dufl, A Service That Packs And Ships Your Suitcase, Is A Traveler’s Dream

The absolute worst part of traveling, whether it’s for business or for pleasure, is packing and unpacking a suitcase. The work it takes to pack a bag is negligible, but having a clean inventory of clothes each time you pack takes far more planning.

Dufl, a service that launches today, is looking to change all that.

The idea behind Dufl is that frequent travelers waste a lot of time trying to clean and prep their clothes for each trip, especially when those trips are pretty much back-to-back. With Dufl, the user never has to pack a bag or clean their travel clothes ever again.

Here’s how it works:

An interested user downloads the Dufl app and signs up. Soon after, a Dufl-branded suitcase will appear at that user’s door, ready and waiting to be filled with the clothes that user most commonly travels in — for a business man who often wears suits, this task should be relatively easy.

Dufl then picks up the bag through its partner FedEx, takes inventory of all the clothes in your suitcase and takes professional photographs, and repacks the bag with the precision of a Four Seasons housekeeper. Now that the virtual closet is set up, users have the option to book a trip. They simply tell Dufl where they’re going, which hotel they’re staying at, and virtually pack through the app, choosing the clothes they’d like to have with them on this trip.

Dufl ensures that the user’s suitcase beats him or her to the hotel, and when the trip is over, Dufl has FedEx pick up the used luggage and take it back to Dufl’s central storage location.

Dufl washes or dry cleans the clothes, puts them back in your virtual closet, and you arrive home with no laundry to do or even a bag to drag along behind you.

Storage in the virtual closet costs users $10/month, and each trip costs a flat fee of $100, which includes shipping to and from your destination as well as cleaning and folding of the clothes.

1. dufl

2. dufl1

3. dufl2

4. dufl3

5. dufl4

Dufl says that users can swap out clothes from their virtual closet at any time at no cost, and that Dufl can even overnight items you asked for the night before, thanks to that FedEx partnership. After all, you won’t arrive home in the same outfit you wore on the plane, so the Dufl closet is always organically swapping in one outfit for the next.

Dufl has raised a total of $2.5 million in seed funding and has been operating a beta of around 100 users. The company now plans to go live across the country, with hopes to go international very soon.

You can check out the Dufl website right here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/V0Ryu7cjHVw/
via IFTTT

Campus Job, Connecting College Students With Employers, Raises $7.8 Million In Series A

Nearly eight months after launching a platform to connect college students with local job opportunities, Campus Job has raised a $7.8 million Series A round of funding led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from Index Ventures, Box Group, SV Angel, Slow Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and others.

The company originally launched with a model that allowed students to sign up on the platform and look for part-time work nearby, while companies who were looking to hire had to pay to unlock each listing they posted once qualified applications had come through. Over the summer, the startup pivoted to a new model that asked companies to pay extra for more advanced search criteria, upping the cost of unlocking applicants’ profiles.

Campus Job has also recently added full-time job search for seniors, with partners that include Snapchat, Zenefits, and Yelp. The company says that it’s seeing 10,000 new students each week and processing more than 12,000 job applications each month. In total, there are more than 125,000 students on the platform from more than 2,200 universities, with employers like Dropbox, Starbucks, Postmates, T-Mobile and Oscar seeking applicants on the platform.

Campus Job recently graduated from Y Combinator accelerator.

Cofounder Liz Wessel said that the biggest challenge right now is maintaining the balance of the marketplace.

“With so many students signing up so quickly to Campus Job, we are working our hardest to get as many employers on board as possible,” said Wessel. “However, the network effect is infinitely stronger among students (who hang out at parties and live together) than it is among HR people, so it’s definitely a challenge that we’re focused on conquering by scaling our sales team.”

Wessel added that this new funding would be significantly invested in building out a sales team to build awareness among employers.

Campus Job has raised a total of $9.1 million to date. You can check out the platform here.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0PdLdgNd5v8/
via IFTTT