BestTechie

Emaze: The cure for the common presentation?

Shawn Farner — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:08:33 +0000

Is it fair to say that a lot of slide decks are pretty boring? PowerPoint has been around for a long, long time, and almost anyone can slap together a bunch of slides with the headline and bullet point templates. We had a brief escape from that monotony back in 2009 when Prezi launched, but now we’re back to the same old, same old. Now an Israeli startup called Emaze is trying to tackle this familiar problem and make slide-based presentations bearable once more.

Emaze is the brainchild of a three-founder team — Motti Nisani, a former VP of Marketing at NICE Systems; Shai Schwartz, a graphic designer; and Arial Lipshin, Emaze’s CEO and resident Ph.D. All three gave presentations extensively in their past lives and noticed a fatal flaw in the process — the slides weren’t very engaging.

“A good presentation is like a good story,” Nisani said. The content is extremely important, but good visuals can help keep the audience interested and focused on the presentation. The three found that the default PowerPoint slides weren’t cutting it, and doing anything better required some extensive knowledge of the application.

Emaze, which closed an $800,000 seed round back in January, is focused on helping the most basic users create good-looking presentations. The service is based in HTML 5 and aims to work on multiple platforms and devices. Theoretically, the app should work on your iPad, though I couldn’t get it to. I’ve been told the team does have plans for native iOS and Android apps at some point in the future.

In the drab land of PowerPoint and Google Drive slides that most of us are subjected to, Prezi does stand with Emaze as an alternative. But the Emaze team saw some problems with Prezi, too. Nisani pointed to that product’s learning curve as well as the fact that a lot of the presentations generated with Prezi have a similar look and feel.

“One VC that we spoke with told me last year that every founder came with a Prezi presentation,” he said. In no uncertain terms: it got old.

Emaze also hopes that its growing list of slide template options will lure users over to its service. As Nisani told me, “Prezi is a template inside Emaze,” meaning that if you want to create a Prezi-style presentation, Emaze will let you do that. But there are many other styles, such as one that pastes your slides on the sides and roofs of buildings, jumping between them as you advance. At this point, the list of slide templates includes Desktop, Infographics, City 3D, 3D Lounge, Portfolio and Simple Slides (for those who want a more PowerPoint-esque experience).

You’re probably wondering: does it cost anything? Right now, no. Emaze is currently in beta, a state which Nisani expects to go about two more months. The company then plans to switch to a freemium model, where free users will be limited to 10 presentations that can’t be made private. The premium tier should cost around $24 per year and won’t include any limits.

You can check Emaze out at emaze.com.

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Idea: Let’s Turn Flickr’s 1TB of Storage Into A Cloud Drive

Jeff Weisbein — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:45:03 +0000

By now you have likely seen the revamped Flickr, which includes a brand new design and a 1TB free storage offering that is tough to rival. With that much storage space available, I couldn’t help but think how cool it would be if someone created an extension/app that would allow you to turn Flickr into a cloud drive for files other than just photos. Similar apps have been created in the past, the most relevant one I can think of is the Gmail Drive shell extension, which turned your Gmail account into a cloud drive that you could access from your computer.

While I think this would be a really cool idea, I do realize there may be some inherent issues. When it comes to Gmail, any kind of file could potentially be an attachment, so that makes it easier. Unfortunately, Flickr can tell when a file you try to upload isn’t an image file, so you would need to come up with a way to trick Flickr into accepting a file that isn’t an image.

If this is even possible, I’m not sure — but it would be cool if it was. It would be even cooler if it was able to be done and Yahoo allowed it.

Even if there was no way to get Flickr to allow non-image files, I would settle for just having the ability to browse through your Flickr photos in some kind of file browser, similar to that of Google Drive and Dropbox. It would also be great if you could use folders as a way to easily create Flickr Sets within the file browser, because when you’re dealing with that many images, things can definitely get a bit messy.

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Square Cash Lets You Send Money To Your Friends Via Email

Jeff Weisbein — Mon, 20 May 2013 20:11:39 +0000

Square, the mobile payment startup, founded by Jack Dorsey announced today that it is launching a new service called Square Cash. The new service, which will be rolling out in the coming weeks, will allow people to easily send money to their friends via email. Sound similar? That’s because it is. In fact, we recently covered a startup called Venmo which has been doing this type of friend-to-friend transactions for over a year. I guess Square wants in on the action.

How does Square Cash work?

It’s actually very simple. According to the Square Cash help page, it works as follows (you have to be a Square user for this to work):

Draft an email with the recipient’s email address in the “To” field.
CC pay@square.com.
Enter a dollar amount in the subject line. For example: “$10″
Send the email.

It costs $0.50 per transaction to send money, and costs nothing to receive money.

In terms of functionality, Square Cash is not nearly as polished as Venmo (at least not yet), and it doesn’t appear it will be baked into the Square app at the moment, though I expect it probably will be at some point. Plus, Venmo doesn’t charge any transaction fees for payments sent (unless you use a credit card). I think Square Cash still has a way to go to reach Venmo standards, but it’s cool to see the friend-to-friend transaction space starting to heat up.

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Enigma Takes on Public Data Search, Wants to be the Google of Public Data

Jeff Weisbein — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:55:31 +0000

Earlier this month at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, one company walked away as the winner of the Disrupt Cup — that company was Enigma. I had the opportunity to drop by their offices and get an inside look at what they are building, and let me say — it’s impressive. But before we get to what the Enigma team is working on, let’s identify the problem they are looking to solve: public data.

Public data is far from easily searchable, in fact it’s all over the place. To solve that problem, Enigma has indexed over 100,000 data sources and billions of documents, which they work to keep as up-to-date as possible. The ultimate goal for Enigma is to have their data be as current as the source. Right now, Enigma says they are about 85 percent there, and that it is something they are working very hard to accomplish.

Using Enigma you can see things such as how many government contracts Boeing has in a particular year, as well as how much they are for (monetary amount). You can see how many patents Google has been granted and what they were for, you can see how much money a particular company gave to a political candidate, you can see health and/or safety violations — essentially, you can find anything that is public record. Enigma presents the information in an easy to read layout (like a spreadsheet, which you can also export), but in addition to the spreadsheet layout, you can also view the original documents. In addition to indexing all that public data, Enigma plans to turn unstructured data (like SEC filings) into their own proprietary data as a way to offer their customers even more value.

The company, which raised a seed round back in April 2012 to start building out its team, has come a long way since that time. Obviously, launching at Disrupt NY and then subsequently winning the Disrupt Cup helped propel them and generate more interest in the company. In fact, I was told by the team that after they won Disrupt, they were overloaded with requests to try out the service.

In addition to having people pay for a license to use Enigma, the company plans to offer a white labeled version of its service, which I believe will be extremely popular in the financial services industry as well as the legal profession. The company also plans to target universities and media organizations with its white label offering. Additionally, I’m told that we should expect to see more premium features start rolling out, such as the ability to live link within presentations.

The company also believes its service could be a great addition to apps like Siri and Google Now. Could you imagine having every piece of public data available to you with a simple voice search? That would be incredible. In terms of the integration, think of it as similar to the way Siri currently incorporates WolframAlpha data into its responses. Another type of integration Enigma is looking to offer is the option to embed the data within an article, which would be great for news sites such as BestTechie and even The New York Times (which is also an investor in Enigma).

Media/news companies could utilize the data on Enigma in various ways, for example, I could keep an eye on patents granted to tech companies. Apparently, The New York Times used Enigma after the explosions in Texas to see if there were any health/safety violations at the plant or if the owner did anything illegal. Just imagine the kind of story they could have ran if there were known safety violations — that’s powerful stuff.

It’s clear that Enigma wants to be the Google of public data, so does the company view the Mountain View search giant as a threat? ”We think we have a huge advantage in terms of tech and design and are going after an audience that is more narrow that what they [Google] normally focus on,” says Enigma CEO Jeremy Bronfman. And based on what I have seen I would agree with Mr. Bronfman, if you take a look at Google’s public data search tool, it pales in comparison to Enigma’s offering, which makes paying to use Enigma a much simpler decision. If Google ever gets serious about public data, I’m thinking we might have a potential acquisition on our hands.

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Upgrading Gmail Chat to Hangouts will kill Google Voice calling

Shawn Farner — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:18:33 +0000

Google Hangouts, the Web messaging tool launched by Google last Wednesday, is available on Android, iOS, as a Chrome extension and as a feature inside Gmail. In fact, Hangouts replaces Gmail’s Google Talk chat feature completely once you upgrade to it, but doing so comes at a cost: you’ll lose the ability to make Google Voice calls inside Gmail.

Know what you’re getting into before clicking the “Try Hangouts” option. Doing so will remove Google Voice integration from your Gmail account.

This news, first reported by The Verge, has been confirmed after our own testing. There is no phone dialer present for you to make phone calls from your inbox. Calls that are made to your Google Voice number, though, will work and will also route to any phones you’ve activated. For a service that is supposed to bring all of Google’s messaging efforts together, the removal of one half of this important feature is kind of a bummer.

Hangouts works a bit differently than Google Talk in other ways, too. For instance, you won’t be able to set an online, offline, busy or invisible status once you switch over. You also won’t be able to post a “status message,” which was sort of like Google Talk’s take on the away message. And, much like the iOS app we reviewed last week, you have no control over who shows up on your list, and online users are not separated from offline users.

One of the most requested features in the new Hangouts app is SMS messaging, according to Google. We have a feeling that Google Voice calling will be pretty high on the list once more people switch over and realize the feature is missing. Especially since Google is still offering free calling with the feature until the end of 2013.

Fortunately, if you’ve switched over and you’re not digging the new look or the missing Google Voice functionality, Google has made it pretty easy to switch back. Simply click on your name or profile picture in the Hangouts section and click “Revert to old chat.” How long will the previous version stick around? We don’t know for sure.

We’ll let you know if we hear any more about Google Voice’s fate inside Gmail.

Update: A Google+ post from Google Product Manager Nikhyl Singhal included the following info:

1) Today’s version of Hangouts doesn’t yet support outbound calls on the web and in the Chrome extension, but we do support inbound calls to your Google Voice number. We’re working hard on supporting both, and outbound/inbound calls will soon be available. In the meantime, you can continue using Google Talk in Gmail.

2) Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making/receiving phone calls is just the beginning. Future versions of Hangouts will integrate Google Voice more seamlessly.

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Coupons At Checkout Finds and Applies All Coupons With A Single Click

Jeff Weisbein — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:53:07 +0000

Shopping online offers great convenience, you can do it at any time and you don’t even have to get out of your pajamas. However, one of the benefits to going to a store to shop is being able to easily utilize any coupons you may have in your possession, whereas finding and applying coupons online can be a bit more of a hassle. That’s where this browser extension/plugin comes in, it’s called Coupons At Checkout.

Coupons At Checkout works with every major browser, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and even Internet Explorer. And it’s super easy to use. All you have to do is install the browser extension, start shopping, and when you reach out the checkout page with the coupon code field, if Coupons At Checkout has any coupons in its system that may work, the coupon code text field will have a red outline, click the text field and you will be presented with a list of coupons to try.

Each coupon in the Coupons At Checkout system has been manually tested and verified to work, so just click the coupon you want and it will automatically be applied. I should note that if you see one with a red dot next to it, it means the coupon has expired and likely will not work.

As of right now, the browser extension is better suited to sites that offer site-wide coupons as opposed to product specific ones. However, I was told that smart shopping basket recognition is something the developers are actively looking into. I’ve found that the extension works really well on sites like jockey.com, payless.com, and macys.com

If you shop online a lot and are looking for an easy way to save money, the Coupons At Checkout browser extension is for you. Additionally, we also recently took a look at Mavatar, an online shopping cart that also automatically applies coupons while you shop — that’s also worth looking into.

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Seamless and GrubHub join forces to take on takeout

Shawn Farner — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:18:08 +0000

While everyone was clamoring over Yahoo’s agreement to acquire Tumblr, two other companies decided to join forces. Online food ordering sites Seamless and GrubHub announced today that they’ll be merging to create one company that, according to a release, is “well positioned to drive more orders to restaurants, deliver a better experience for hungry diners and enhance services to corporate clients.”

Both companies have been operating in the space for a quite a while. Seamless originally launched as SeamlessWeb back in 1999, while GrubHub hit the scene in 2004. Seamless serves markets in both the U.S. and the U.K., while GrubHub has focused solely on the United States, offering its service in over 500 cities. Both also provide mobile apps to make ordering a little more convenient.

The merger of Seamless and GrubHub will likely mean that online food ordering will be able to roll out more quickly to underserved markets, but it also means that there won’t be much competition in the space. OrderUp is one competing service that continues to live on, though it has been rolling out slowly since its launch in 2009 and is only available in 25 markets across the U.S.

Aside from OrderUp, it looks like the largest competitors Seamless and GrubHub will face are the online delivery services run by restaurants and fast food joints themselves.

Despite the Web’s pervasiveness in the world around us, there are still a lot of restaurants that take delivery orders by phone but have no online system to speak of. The merger of Seamless and GrubHub promises innovation in the online ordering space and the ability to get more food-delivering restaurants onto the Web.

Let’s hope they can deliver.

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Samsung to school Retina MacBooks, Chromebook Pixel with new display

Shawn Farner — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:06:52 +0000

The high-resolution displays that Apple and Google have worked into their laptop offerings are pretty impressive, but Samsung isn’t about to give up without a fight. The Verge is reporting that Samsung plans to take the wraps off of a 13.3-inch QHD display with a resolution of 3200 x 1800. For those tracking pixels-per-inch (PPI) at home, that puts the Samsung panel at 276 — a good bit higher than Apple’s MacBook Pro 13 (227 PPI) and the Chromebook Pixel (239 PPI).

We’ll be sure to let you know when one of these Samsung displays makes it onto an actual device.

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Yahoo’s Board Approves $1.1 Billion Tumblr Acquisition

Jeff Weisbein — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:33:05 +0000

Yahoo’s board approved the plan for the company to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. The deal will be in all cash.

Additionally, previous reports said that Tumblr’s board had given the green light to Yahoo acquiring the company, so as of right now it looks like it’s a done deal.

To date, Tumblr has been anything but a cash cow, in fact, David Karp, founder and CEO of Tumblr only recently started to monetize the blogging social network. While Tumblr has just $13 million in revenue right now, it should be able to increase that revenue following the model of Twitter and Facebook. That may mean sponsored stories and other ad-based revenue models. Tumblr also has a theme marketplace where users can opt to purchase more unique designs for their blogs — another avenue for generating revenue I’m sure.

The Tumblr acquisition is going to be the defining acquisition of Marissa Mayer’s time as Yahoo CEO. It will either end really well for her, or turn into a complete disaster.

What do you think of the acquisition?

Update: Marissa Mayer has officially announced the Tumblr acquisition on her first Tumblr blog post where she writes, “I’m delighted to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Tumblr! We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO.”

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Why Google’s cross-platform push is brilliant

Shawn Farner — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:00:04 +0000

If someone were to ask me, “Which phone is the best for Google stuff?” I’d be very tempted to answer, “The iPhone.” This is in spite of the fact that Google actively develops the Android mobile operating system that competes with Apple’s iOS. But if you’re to believe what Larry Page said at the close of Google’s I/O keynote on Thursday, Google may compete with Apple, but competing doesn’t mean Apple has to lose for Google to win.

In Page’s exact words, “Most important things are not zero sum.”

It’s that philosophy that has allowed Google to transcend the typical idea of “competition” and truly take its apps and services cross-platform. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a Google app on Android that you can’t find on iOS, these days. One of the exceptions to that was Google Talk, but now that the company has transformed that service into Hangouts, it too can be found on iOS devices. Google Music is another, but with the announcement of All Access, we’re sure that one isn’t far off.

Google is able to take this position because the company does not push hardware. Google pushes apps and services. If you want the simple, streamlined experience that the iPhone offers, Google has apps for you. If you want more control over your device, Google has an operating system and apps for you there, too. Google knows that Apple is going to sell a ton of iPhones and iPads — it’s just a fact of life, and its the reason Google pays $1 billion a year to be the default search option for iOS. A presence on those devices is necessary.

(Notice that I’ve left Windows Phone out of this equation, along with BlackBerry. While Google might see iOS as an equal, it certainly has no intentions of helping another OS climb the ladder. Just as Google is wise to pay attention to Apple’s platform, it is also wise to ignore those who are trying to gain ground on Android.)

So what makes Google’s cross-platform push so brilliant, exactly? It comes down to services — more specifically, the ones Google hopes will compete with Apple’s iOS and Mac-exclusive services.

Apple’s iCloud apps, as well as Maps, Messages, FaceTime, AirPlay and so on are great (come on, Maps has gotten better). The problem, though, is that Apple has no intentions of bringing most of these apps and services to Android or Windows, or even onto the Web. These services were built as iOS and Mac-specific features in order to help Apple sell hardware, because selling hardware is how Apple makes money.

As I mentioned earlier, though, Google is all about apps and services.

Bringing almost every single Google app to iOS and the Web means that iPhone and iPad users can gain access to similar services that are free from Apple’s device lock-in. The Hangouts app is now just as capable as both Messages and FaceTime — if not more — and works whether you’re using an iPhone, an Android device or a Web browser. The same goes for Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Google Drive and pretty much any other category where Apple has tried to stake a claim.

Google has even worked to help other iOS developers use its Google Maps API over Apple’s built-in solution, and has started instructing its own apps to open links in Chrome instead of Safari. How long until other developers follow suit? Along that line of thinking, if Google launches a streaming set-top box as is rumored, its not a stretch to imagine a Google Mirroring API that lets iOS apps mirror to the box much like AirPlay does to an Apple TV.

From where I’m sitting, it looks like Google is fine and dandy with letting iPhones and iPads flourish alongside Android devices. But the company is hard at work replicating many of Apple’s core apps and services and is offering them not only on iOS, but on Android and the Web, too. Apple’s device lock-in may work for those who are 100% Apple across phones, laptops and tablets, but for those who aren’t, Google’s putting itself in position to pick up the slack.

Apple works with Apple. Google works with everything. It’s not entirely true, but its the message that the company seems to be sending. It’s pretty brilliant, if you ask me.

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