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TechPinas Exclusive!

One of the things I love doing on weekends is visiting gadget stores in malls and giving freshly released gizmos a test run.

And nothing elicits a wider smile from me than being approached by the sales staff in the middle of all that tinkering to give me an extensive demo of the gadget I'm holding - even if I don't particularly look like someone who'd buy it on the spot. I totally appreciate this because frankly, there are sales reps in other gadget stores who won't even look at you - more so, talk to you - if you don't appear to have enough moolah to purchase whatever it is they have on their shelves. It's sad, really - but that's how it is.

So kudos to Nokia Store Glorietta 3 Digital Exchange sales staff for doing their job and for being kind enough to give me a very masterful and extensive demo of Nokia Lumia 610 in front of the camera.

Thumbs up!

I visited the store a few weekends back to check the availability of the Windows Phone powered Nokia Lumia 610 at retail outlets. They told me 'the smartphone has been out for a few days' and even offered to give me this demo. "Can I film it?" I asked, "I'm going to show the video to my mom." I didn't really tell them I'll be posting the clip on my tech blog; I hope they don't mind.

So here you go, TP Friends --

Cool phone, kind and knowledgeable staff! What more can one ask for?

You can get Nokia Lumia 610 at all Nokia Stores and authorized retail outlets across the archipelago for only Php 10,990. It comes in several youthful colors namely Cyan, Pink, White and Black. Kindly read the complete technical specifications and learn more about Nokia Lumia 610 Philippines via our exclusive TP feature.

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

2012-05-27T17:03:00.001-07:00

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

Angry Birds Land finally launches in Finland

Posted: 27 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT

Rovio of Finland has certainly come up with a hit of game with the Angry Birds franchise, and here they are with their latest launch, the Angry Birds Land which recently opened up within Sarkanniemi Amusement Park itself in Tampere, Finland. This is officially the first theme park of its kind that is based on the Angry Birds franchise, going great lengths to show just how far the addictive smartphone game has become. Of course, we did hear about an unlicensed Angry Birds park appearing in China last year, but this is the real deal here in Finland.

According to Sarkanniemi Adventure Park CEO Miikka Seppala, “We wanted to create a unique themed area and associate it with a strong and well-known brand." I guess they have pretty much cornered the market in terms of a well known brand, as the Angry Birds franchise too, will be going through the paces in being developed into a major motion picture. Would you prefer going to Disneyland or the Angry Birds Land?

Source

[ Angry Birds Land finally launches in Finland copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Babolat Play & Connect interactive tennis racquet

Posted: 27 May 2012 07:43 AM PDT

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, which is why it makes perfect sense for one to indulge in some form of sports or physical activities even when your work schedule has already kept you occupied to the maximum. While there are many different kinds of sports to get involved in, you would do well to choose just one and be specialized in it. For tennis buffs who have long enjoyed the run at the top by Roger Federer, and are now checking out the kind of competition that Djokovic is receiving from Rafael Nadal, et al, might be interested in the Babolat Play & Connect interactive tennis racquet.

This unique interactive tennis racquet was specially designed in order to look and resemble whatever else you will find from Babolat, the French sporting manufacturer. What makes this different from the rest would be the inclusion of plenty of sensors as well as electronics that are able to record data concerning a player’s game, enabling one to analyze their performance. All the collected data can then be downloaded over USB, or you can always catch up on the live statistics over a wireless connection to a computer, tablet or smartphone.

According to Babolat, they are working with movement analyzing firm Movea in order to produce the racquet, and this special racquet has already been in the pipeline for the past 5 years. Not only that, this is the first MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) technology enabled racquet which will feature the integrated ability that enables it to gather and analyze game data.

Just what is the objective of the Play & Connect racquet? Well, it was developed in order to help tennis players, whether one is a pro and amateur, to be able to access the information as and when required in order for them to analyze their game, ranging from the strokes that they have played (forehand, backhand, serve), ball spin, the position of the ball on the string bed, power during play and service speed. This treasure trove of information can then be viewed live or retrospectively, while raw data means performances can also be compared by players or their coaches.

Source

[ Babolat Play & Connect interactive tennis racquet copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

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2012-05-27T09:35:00.001-07:00

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How Rod Stewart helped me get the attention of VCs and angels

2012-05-27T09:27:00.001-07:00

Posted: 27 May 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Spent some time feelin’ inferior
standing in front of my mirror.
Combed my hair in a thousand ways
but I came out looking just the same.

For some of you, that feeling Sir Rod sang about is the same one that venture capitalists can cause you to feel. The name "venture capitalist" alone can send shivers down one's spine, conjuring images of well-dressed men poring over company statistics and shooting holes in your vision.
Our company, EquipRent.com, has pitched to these guys many times this past year to raise capital. As we became more comfortable with pitching, what used to be an intimidating interview scenario slowly turned into a conversation, and we have learned a lot more about the scary men behind the table in the process.
The first thing we noticed was how short of an attention span these guys had. After five minutes of talking, three of them were already looking at their phones. They really didn't care much for the story of how our company was founded, who a typical customer was, or even the pages of statistics that clearly showed why we were a great investment opportunity. Over time, we learned to keep our pitch concise, relevant, and full of engaging imagery … and pictures.
After much fine-tuning, it dawned on us that Rod was on to something: the best way to tell your story is through a picture. We creatively put together a colorful investment infographic, or "InvestFoGraphic," on a handout. This completely complied with our goal of keeping our pitch concise, relevant, and exciting. Check out our capital-raising infographic.

Source: EquipRent

Detail of EquipRent’s capital-raising one-page infographic (click for full version)

The previous handout that we had given them (a typical 1-page executive summary) was heavy on words explaining in great detail what our company did and how successful we had been. Our new handout was riddled with bold and exciting claims about our company and our industry. The underlying theory behind using the infographic was to hook them first, and then be ready to talk business once they were paying attention.
One of the most necessary considerations when pitching a venture capitalist firm is to view the pitch from their point of view. What makes a great investment? What specific qualities do investors look for in a presentation?
We found that investors love disruptions and hate distractions. They love getting first dibs at untapped potential in huge markets. So, we focused our pitch from this angle. Instead of our old tagline "leading market service for equipment rentals," which was an accurate description of our company, we decided to go with "disrupting the $28B market for construction equipment rental."
The infographic we handed out contained VC-friendly buzzwords like "scalable model" and "fast, profitable growth." Each of these claims was accompanied by a picture, since pictures are much more likely to stick in someone's head than a paragraph of big words. Long, wordy paragraphs are distractions. There is a time and place to get down to the nitty-gritty and go over the numbers, but that is is not in your first encounter with a potential investor.
The reaction to our new infographic one-pager was very positive. “I liked it…I can quickly see what is different about this company than reading a typical one-page executive summary,” one investor said.
“I have never seen anyone use an infographic for investor purposes before, other than to distinguish market trends,” another one said.
“It sets you apart…it’s like a cool and different resume,” said another one.
The exciting news is that we are now in final discussions with several investor groups to close our first round (series A) funding. We know the infographic wasn't the main reason for getting to this final phase, but we do know that differentiating yourself makes you more memorable and shows investors you and your company plan on being different.
Remember the advice that the great Mr. Stewart gave years ago:
Every picture tells a story, don't it!
Roberto Guerrieri is the chief executive of EquipRent.com. This is his fourth startup. Previously he was the founder and chief marketing officer of Incentive Logic, a loyalty platform for online market research panels. He has also worked for early-stage companies in mobile marketing, lead generation, and in consumer marketing for Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
Image: Album cover for Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells a Story”

Filed under: Entrepreneur

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Microsoft warns Windows XP costs 5X more than Windows 7 to support

Posted: 27 May 2012 08:06 AM PDT

In its latest bid to convince organizations to upgrade from Windows XP, a Microsoft-sponsored report claims that companies end up paying more than five times in support costs by refusing to upgrade to Windows 7.
The report from IDC points to rising annual costs in hardware and software support that ultimately makes the 11-year-old Windows XP a huge time sink for IT staff. While the results obviously sound very self-serving for Microsoft, they could serve as a kick in the pants to organizations that have delayed Windows 7 deployments for too long.
Shockingly, IDC found that 42 percent of the commercial Windows install base is currently running Windows XP. With Microsoft set to kill all support for Windows XP in April 2014, many of those companies will be forced to upgrade within the next few years anyway — there won’t be anymore Windows updates or security fixes, after all.
“The bottom line: IDC's research finds businesses that migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 will see significant return on investment over 130 percent over a three-year period,” writes Erwin Visser, a senior director for Windows, in a blog post on Thursday. “Moreover, Windows 7 gives businesses back hours of user productivity. Additionally, migrating now to Windows 7 will set businesses up well to embrace Windows 8 in the future, as IDC found that all indications at this time are that the move from Windows 7 to Windows 8 will be seamless for applications and non-impactful to existing hardware.”
As someone who used to work in IT, I can understand why organizations would be hesitant to upgrade. Many companies skipped over Windows Vista completely (a wise decision), and instead waited for Windows 7 to become stable enough to deploy company-wide. By now, Windows 7 has proven itself as the fastest and most stable version of Microsoft’s OS yet, so it’s about time Windows XP-powered firms decided to upgrade.
Via Computerworld

Filed under: VentureBeat

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Electric cars equal $1 a gallon gas for life + $1,200 cash a year

Posted: 26 May 2012 04:00 PM PDT

Car buyers are notoriously fond of focusing only on the purchase price of new vehicles, without much thinking about the total cost of ownership.
For electric cars that may cost twice or more what a similar-size gasoline vehicle does, that’s a problem.
Still, two separate pieces of evidence begin to make a compelling case for the huge running-cost advantages of plug-ins.
They’ll prove useful in conversations over the next few years, as friends, relatives, and neighbors question electric-car buyers about their new vehicles: why they did it, how much hassle it may be to plug in, and–of course–how much it cost.

Gasoline vs. electricity price in $/gallon equivalent, under 3 scenarios (by Max Baumhefner)

First is a post entitled Buck-a-Gallon Gas for Life?
Author Max Baumhefner, a Natural Resources Defense Council staffer, simply plots the equivalent cost of gasoline and electricity under different oil-price scenarios.
Gasoline is high, higher, or very much higher; electricity stays cheap regardless of what happens to oil prices.
Even more compelling is a chart (at top) from the Edison Electric Institute, showing the volatility of gasoline prices and the minimal variation in electric costs over the same period.
In other words, plugging in your electric car to recharge it is the equivalent of paying a dollar a gallon for gasoline–forever.
Second is State of Charge, a study issued last month by the Union of Concerned Scientists on a variety of electric vehicle issues. (We’ll cover more of that study later on.)
It found that electric-car owners in 50 of the largest U.S. cities who cover 11,000 miles a year will save from $750 to $1,200 annually compared to traveling the same distance by buying gasoline at $3.50 a gallon.
While most early electric car buyers have other reasons than saving money, the running-cost advantage has to be better explained if plug-in cars are to reach a broader audience.
And while payback may still be hard to achieve, the lure of “buck-a-gallon gasoline forever” or “$1,200 a year in your pocket” may be enough to get fence-sitters more interested in plug-in cars.
Whereupon they may go for test drives, and discover one of the benefits that automakers (inexplicably) haven’t focused on: Electric cars are simply nicer to drive.
What do you think? How would you make the case that electric cars can save someone money?
Leave us your thoughts in the comments below.
This article originally appeared on Green Car Reports, one of VentureBeat’s editorial partners.

Filed under: green

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Has adaptive design failed? Of course not

Posted: 26 May 2012 03:20 PM PDT

Yesterday morning I read Peter Yared’s provocative article, 'What's next for mobile now that adaptive design has failed?' which is based entirely on the misassumption that mobile users don't scroll. If that were true, the reasoning might be valid, but it's not. It's utter nonsense.
As if this misassumption wasn’t bad enough, Peter’s agenda is disproportionately skewed towards the impact on advertising. In fact, you could very easily translate the whole article into: 'listen, we need to get designers and developers to use pages instead of scrolling, because ads get hidden below the fold in a scrolling scenario, but with pages the ad can actually be a full page itself, which means we can make loads more money from advertisers.'
Okay, let’s not blame Peter for his bias. He is, after all, CTO of a company whose primary revenue stream comes from advertising. Of course he’s going to be concerned about the impact of ads. But I — as both a content creator and a content consumer — take issue with two key points; namely:

that responsive web design (a term he mistakenly refers to as interchangeable with ‘adaptive’ design) has somehow failed; and
that it’s somehow possible to judge success of failure of a design methodology by ad revenue alone.

Please allow me to address some claims that are, in one way or another, wrong:

We [...] are learning the hard way that a one-size-fits-all solution delivers a subpar user experience.

Not only does this completely contradict the notion of what responsive design actually is (the core content might be the same, but the design should be flexible enough to allow for multiple adaptations without needing to know specific device details), but saying it delivers a subpar user experience is akin to claiming all oil paintings are inferior to all watercolour paintings. Criticising the tools is a fruitless exercise.

The tablet is essentially a magazine form factor.

Actually, my iPad’s form factor is closer to my chopping board, but I’m hardly going to prepare dinner on it. Tablets may have magazine apps, and ebook apps might also use swipeable pages rather than vertical scrolling, but it’s only one type of interaction. And if we’ve learned anything about tablet-based publishing in the last couple of years, it’s that recycling print-formatted magazines into an app is a bad, bad idea (unfortunately, most of the major publishers have yet to be enlightened). And it’s nothing to do with pages vs. scrolling.

Users are perfectly happy to swipe through an article that is split into several pages.

This behaviour, right here, is the bane of the internet. Do users enjoy reading articles on websites that are split across multiple pages? Hell no, we don’t. The only reason this exists is so ad people can sell more ads.

Users are not perturbed at all to see a full page interstitial ad stuck into the mix while paging through content.

Oh yeah, sure! I just love having my reading experience disrupted by a full-page ad! Actually, I’ll admit that in some scenarios, this is okay. I don’t mind this too much if I’m reading a magazine-like app, and if the ad itself is relevant. But as advertising is very rarely relevant and very frequently infuriating, suggesting this behaviour should become some sort of norm is all kinds of wrong. It is of benefit only to ad execs. See the pattern emerging here?

It is painful for engineers to have to support three different use cases for three different form factors.

And finally, we have it: solid proof that Peter Yared does not understand responsive design. (And I’m sorry, Peter. Perhaps you’re a very nice man, but I’ve got to call you out on this.) The web is not experienced simply through desktop, tablet, and phone; it is experienced in every shape and form imaginable, and some unimaginable. True responsive design is not about catering for specific device pixels — whose dimensions become outdated with every new model that appears on the market — or labelling an experience as ‘this type’ or ‘that type’. It is about creating designs so fluid and adaptable that specifics are not needed; so organic and open that the notions of desktop and mobile and TV and whatever else are blurred. After all, my 11″ MacBook Air is far closer to a tablet than my 24″ iMac, so the ‘desktop’ label no longer applies. Yet my iPad’s pixel dimensions are far closer to my iMac’s, so ‘mobile’ no longer applies. And let’s not forget that browsing the web on Mobile Safari is a wildly different experience to doing so on other, less advanced mobile phones.
Sometimes, sites work well across the board with only minor adjustments. The simpler the design, the less work has to be done. This is certainly the case with my site, Trent's, Tim's, or Zeldman's. And it’s not because we’re lazy designers — our sites are this way because the emphasis is on content; on cutting away the cruft regardless of the platform. (Zeldman said it best.) And yes, of course there is a lot more work involved on some websites and applications. But to tar everyone designing responsively with the same brush shows nothing but a gross misunderstanding of the term itself. And, as Fernando Mateus said to me on Twitter this morning, 'The last person [who thought] a webpage was like a magazine was a 7 year old child.'
So, ladies and gentlemen, we have a high-profile ad executive at a high-profile company who doesn’t understand the web from anything but an advertiser’s perspective. Who knew?
Responsive design is absolutely the future. Sadly, for many people, it has yet to become the present.
The original version of this article was published on elliotjaystocks.com.
Elliot Jay Stocks is a designer, speaker, and author from England whose portfolio includes work for clients such as Virgin, Microsoft, Brooklyn Beta, Founders Fund, Smashing Magazine, and MailChimp. He is the editor of typography magazine 8 Faces, co-founder of Viewport Industries, and a regular contributor to publications such as Codex: The Journal of Typography, .Net, and Computer Arts. Follow him on Twitter at @elliotjaystocks.

Top photo by Dirk Vorderstraße/Flickr

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How sensors can lead us to better self-knowledge

Posted: 26 May 2012 01:57 PM PDT

Like nerve endings which translate senses into electrical impulses in your nervous system, sensors can translate the physical world into the digital. In the process, they can help humans become more aware of ourselves.
The “quantified self” is an increasingly popular term. It means using algorithms to correlate all these sensor data, and provide valuable information for better living. In an earlier article "Internet of Things: Not Just a Fund Raising Concept Now," we talked about sensor technology as one of the fundamental drivers for the development of the “internet of things.” Key factors for sensor technology adoption depend on the maturity of the technology, cost, and most importantly, experience. Innovative application of existing sensors is also an important factor in the scaling of the industry.
In this article, we will introduce a few interesting life science sensor technologies and their “quantified self” applications. Some of them are still in research labs, while others are ready to go for the market.

The science of breathing

However, we are most excited about newer technologies that go beyond "what we are doing" and dive deeper into how we relate to the world. The Calming Technology Lab at Stanford University was founded on a simple premise: to reduce the stress in our always-connected world. They asked: "How can we use new technologies such as the quantified self to bring more 'calm' into the world?"
Led by Neema Moraveji, their breakthrough project involves using breathing sensors to obtain a user's breathing pattern and extract its relationship with stress levels. Initial papers published by the lab have used breathing-based feedback to increase productivity and reduce stress of office workers. They believe this model can be extended, leading to a systematic reduction in stress and improved health. Moreover, ancient art forms focused around meditation, such as Taiqi, martial arts and Yoga, may get scientific explanations for their results.

Sweat sensors for traditional Chinese medicine

Chinese medicine has been a mysterious system of knowledge for thousands of years. No one can really explain clearly what it is, but the treatments do deliver results. We don't want to dig into its theory bases here, however, the diagnosis methods used to tell a patient's treatment status are interesting. Sweat is one of them. After a patient has taken medication, the amount and timing of her sweat are valuable information for doctors to tell if the medication has the expected impact. However, such readings have depended on the intuition of the doctor, limiting the impact to those who can access an increasingly small number of skilled practitioners.
Engineers at GuoHao, a Beijing-based sensor technology company, have developed sensors to monitor sweat for medication analysis. Doctors can, for example, remotely access a patient's account, look at his sweat records, and decide the subsequent treatment. Although this technology faces obstacles in user education for adoption, it holds the potential of bringing traditional medicine to a broader audience with greater results.

“Tattoo” for non-piercing glucose testing

People with type I diabetes must prick their fingers several times a day to test their blood sugar level. Though the pain is minor, the chore interferes with daily life. Researchers in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering have been working on a new type of sensor to detect glucose levels without the need of finger pricks. The sensing system consists of a "tattoo" of nanoparticles designed to detect glucose, injected below the skin. A device similar to a wristwatch would be worn over the tattoo, displaying the patient's glucose levels. The "tattoo" would last for a specified length of time, probably six months, before needing to be refreshed.
The sensor is based on carbon nanotubes wrapped in a polymer that is sensitive to glucose concentrations. When this sensor encounters glucose, the nanotubes fluoresce, which can be detected by shining near-infrared light on them. Although this technology is still years away from human trials, it may soon start trials in animals. If this technology appears in real products, people will be better able to prevent diabetes caused by irregular daily activities such as taking meals, drinks, and medications, through instant glucose level notifications.

Brainwave monitoring and meditation lights

What are you thinking? Are you nervous? Modern technologies can help you easily become a “mind-reader,” and brainwave technology is one of them. NeuroSky, a U.S.-based EEG chipset company, has been focusing on spreading brainwave sensors to the mass market. The company has applied brainwave technology into various industries, such as sports training, education, and entertainment. In recent activities, they translated brainwaves to a hardware LED light. Users can see their brainwave status through the colors of the light. For example, your state of mind will be indicated as “Peace & Soothing” when your brainwave light is blue. Yoga exercisers can use it as a tool to indicate meditation status. "You can easily control your stress by adjusting your breaths," says Priti, a 20-year yoga practitioner and teacher. "I am happy to see my light keep blue, this can certainly help bring meditation to a scientific level."

Other sensors for increasing self-awareness

We see many exciting sensor technologies to improve life science intelligence. Some of them help explore the mysteries of the human body, some fundamentally change the way people obtain their own information, while others apply commonly-used sensors to innovative usage. For example, Brainpage has been working on a PC/Mac-based application to help professionals prevent repetitive stress injuries (RSI). The Anti-RSI program includes a client software and graphing tools. Through analysis of users’ keyboard and mouse usage, the client application will remind people to take breaks when work intensity could cause RSI. The program also allow users to understand their performance through Web graphs, for example, help users find out their professional skill level comparing to other people.

We believe that in the near future, innovative sensor technologies can greatly help humans understand more about ourselves. We hope to see more of such these intriguing projects happening, and more importantly, put to practical use for better living.
This article originally appeared on TechNode, a VentureBeat editorial partner based in China. It was written by TechNode Guest Editor Dr. Wenzhe Zhou, co-founder of Brainpage, which is a big data processing and analysis startup, focused on creating a cloud-based engine for time series data and sensors. The company's Hadoop-based service provides developers and industry partners easy-to-use, scalable and flexible database and analysis solutions.
Top photo: Sergio Alvarez/Flickr

Filed under: VentureBeat

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Facebook’s first week is the worst of any IPO in 10 years

Posted: 26 May 2012 12:14 PM PDT

Facebook’s first five days as a public company saw its value drop 13.1 percent, the worst first-week performance of any initial public offering in a decade.
That’s the sorry picture compiled by Bloomberg at the close of trading yesterday. In contrast, Visa’s 2008 IPO resulted in a first-week bump of 45.4 percent, putting big smiles on the faces of anyone lucky enough to buy stock on that company’s first day of trading.
Of course, small investors’ loss is Facebook’s gain. As we explained yesterday, Facebook and its underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley, pegged its opening price at the top of its range, $38, even though it was privately telling select investors that its revenue forecasts for the coming year were on the “low end” of its previous guidance. That message didn’t get out to the wider market — including smaller investors — until after the IPO. In other words, Facebook maximized its IPO raise, even though its actions would torpedo the stock as soon as the full revenue predictions became public.
While a first-day or first-week “pop” may look nice, and get big headlines, it actually leaves money on the table: It’s a sign that the company didn’t set its IPO price at the correct market price. By contrast, Facebook may have set its IPO price a little too high, but that’s the smart thing to do, from the accountant’s point of view.
Facebook now faces an embarrassing series of investigations and the difficulty of keeping employees’ and investors’ spirits up in the face of a sinking share price. On the other hand, it has $18.4 billion in IPO proceeds to console it for suddenly being the most unpopular tech stock on the block. (That’s because the company got $16 billion for the initial IPO allotment, plus another $2.4 billion for the “greenshoe” option that its underwriters exercised last week.)
It will be interesting, and more relevant, to see how Facebook’s stock looks after 30 days of trading. As the chart below shows, Digital Domain had the worst 30-day performance of any IPO in the last year, sinking 39.2 percent in its first month. Skullcandy dropped 23.5 percent in its first 30 days. By contrast, Yelp and Guidewire Software were up about 80 percent after their first 30 days, and Brightcove was up 92 percent.

Top chart: Bloomberg. Bottom chart: NASDAQ

Filed under: VentureBeat

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Ford unveils “overclocked” turbocharger in 2013 Focus ST

Posted: 26 May 2012 11:33 AM PDT

Similar to the way that hardcore PC enthusiasts overclock their CPUs to squeeze out extra performance, Ford is preparing a car with an “overclocked” turbocharger.
The 2013 Ford Focus ST will have a turbo that provides extra power for longer than normal, giving drivers up to 15 seconds of extra power for passing cars, accelerating quickly to highway speeds, laying rubber, or otherwise impressing people in the passenger seat.
Turbos work by forcing extra air into the combustion mixture, by using a very high-speed turbine. Because this turbine spins so quickly (150,000-200,000 RPM), it can burn out if it runs too long. As a result, most turbos are designed to add an extra boost of power when it’s most needed, then bleed off extra power before the turbine melts. In most cars, that happens between 3,000 and 4,500 RP (the rotational speed of the engine, not the turbo).
With the Focus ST, by contrast, the turbo remains engaged, even beyond 4,500 RPM — but only for 15 seconds at a time.
"The turbo itself is specified for sustained, high output performance, but they've programmed the ECU — the car's equivalent to the CPU — to dial in more boost past 3,000 RPM to give it that extra something," said Lisa Schoder, engineer and Focus ST Marketing Manager, in a press release from Ford.
Car enthusiasts have been accomplishing similar things themselves on turbocharged cars for years. This is done by installing custom ECUs (or reprogramming the stock ECU) in order to play with the power curve and extend the range at which the turbocharger engages, a technique also known as “chipping” the car. However, that runs the risk of damaging the turbo (or the engine itself) — and it plays havoc with emissions, too.
“This is a factory-overclocked car,” Ford spokesman Chris Terry told VentureBeat. “But unlike these homespun things, the cooling system is very, very robust. Ford expects people to drive the hell out of these things and not have them blow up.”
The Focus ST is aimed at performance enthusiasts in other ways. With a top speed of 150 mph, it not only offers turbocharged acceleration, but high speeds and sports car handling. That’s pretty good for a four-door sedan.
Although the car won’t be available until August, Ford is accepting pre-orders today. Adding a little extra incentive for the geeky, overclocking, gadget-loving crowd, Ford will throw in a GoPro HD Hero2 camera for the first 1,000 people to place an order. The Focus ST will also be on display at the upcoming E3 video game convention in Los Angeles, June 4-7. VentureBeat’s games crew will be providing tons of news from E3, so watch this space for more updates.

Filed under: offBeat

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Why early-stage investors should be pumping up their startups with data

Posted: 26 May 2012 10:00 AM PDT

“Startups are the sum of the decisions made by the people who run them,” Future Simple founder Uzi Shmilovici wrote in a recent post.
Uzi’s absolutely right — the earlier startups begin collecting data, the better their decisions will be. There’s only one catch: Most startups don’t have expertise in analytics. The time startups spend on developing clear success metrics, actionable campaign tracking, and automated reporting is time they DON’T spend developing a minimum viable product and pivoting to find their market — effectively leaving startups with limited or no real ability to compete on analytics.
The Big Idea
What if VCs provided centralized analytics and data management resources as part of their investment in startups? Giving startups the tools and resources they need to compete on analytics would give investment firms and their startups a huge competitive advantage. Startups would grow revenue faster, reducing their level of technology debt, and giving them access to specialized skillsets typically available only to better-funded players. Investors would see a significantly enhanced probability of return.
A/B Testing and Statistical Modeling
Startups that are actively working to find their market niche have a huge advantage with access to statistical modeling and analysis resources. Extreme examples exist — such as Demand Media’s use of machine learning to build a billion-dollar business by beating Google at its own game. However, even a simple A/B test can easily return gains of 10%; a one-to-one marketing model may increase conversion by well over 20%; a price optimization study may return 30% or more incremental revenue. A business rule optimization, gained from detailed analysis of customer behavior, can be a complete game-changer.
Most startups don’t have the resources or bandwidth to kick-start an analytics group. With access to centralized analytics services early in their life cycles, startups can maximize conversion opportunities, conduct site tests with minimal investment in development hours, and bank strategic data-capture opportunities for future returns.
Set Up Databases with Growth in Mind
Startups are anxious to get things done quickly, which frequently leads to setting up an open-source database so they can start throwing records at it immediately. While this works in the short-term, it leads to scalability issues and lost opportunities to store transactional and behavioral data.
It’s at this point in the startup’s lifecycle that it makes sense to evaluate the existing database schemas, identify opportunities for strategic expansion and optimization, and plan appropriately for anticipated growth. This vital investment reduces the amount of technology debt the startup carries and, if done effectively, provides greatly enhanced ability for the startup to identify otherwise-unseen market opportunities and inflection points that suggest a potential pivot.
Offload the Distractions
Startups are beset by distractions that can be a huge drain on productivity. These are activities that experts can provide more efficiently and more effectively. Three prime offenders:

Web Analytics. Few organizations make tagging a formal or required part of their release process; it often doesn’t get done. Instituting a clear process in the early stages helps integrate a data-driven culture into the startup’s DNA.
Search Engine Optimization. It’s often thought of as “get your meta tags right and produce a lot of content;" a more strategic implementation purposely directs internal page-rank flow toward specific marketing objectives. This provides a framework for VCs to provide high-level marketing guidance while making it easy for startups to determine “which marketing efforts go where.”
Database administration. Performance tuning, backup, and data security are vital tasks that require significant, ongoing time commitments. Expert implementation reduces the risk of a data breach or unrecoverable data loss.

Putting It All Together
Startups with the resources, infrastructure, and expertise to effectively compete on analytics will have a significant competitive advantage. VCs have the opportunity to improve their ROI — and to differentiate themselves — by providing these resources. By adding centralized analytics and data management resources as part of their investment in startups, VCs will be positioning themselves — and their startups — for maximum growth and success.
Jeb Stone is a 14-year Internet veteran with depth in database marketing, business intelligence, predictive modeling, and marketing research. He has established and led the applied analytics organizations at leading Web properties including Match.com, Selloscope, Socialyzer, and FareCompare. Jeb holds a PhD in experimental psychology with a specialization in marketing.
[Top image credit: Zurijeta/Shutterstock]

Filed under: deals, VentureBeat

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Be a better boss: 12 tips to help you encourage innovation

Posted: 26 May 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Many entrepreneurs dream of starting their own company so they can be their own boss, call the shots, get the ~~corner office~~ nicest table in the co-working space. Turns out, being in charge is a lot harder than just ordering people around and having someone fetch your lattes. To make a startup successful, you have to encourage an atmosphere of constant innovation.
We asked these upcoming entrepreneurs for their best tips on how to be a boss boss.

Allow for change and spontaneity

Working hard to keep your company from becoming rigid helps keep innovation flowing. The longer you have a business, the easier it is not to try new things — such as payment systems or even where an afternoon meeting should be held. Changing things up every now and again because of suggestions from your team shows you care about keeping your workplace full of ideas.
Caitlin McCabe, @caitlinmc, Real Bullets Branding

Be hands off

Hire great people and give them responsibility. Avoid micro-managing in favor of letting your team surprise you with their creativity!
Lisa Nicole Bell, @LisaNicoleBell, Inspired Life Media Group

Budget for innovation

No one likes to ask for money, but when they have money as an available option, they are willing to go ahead and spend it on things they think will be worthwhile. As the boss, you can enable your team to take new ideas and develop them into profitable ventures. For example, tell them they can spend a few hundred dollars a month on any cool thing they wanted to.
Danny Wong, @blanklabel, Blank Label Group, Inc.

Flat organization

Everyone, from the CEO to the intern to the secretary, should be pushed to always be thinking about how to make the business better. Reward those who speak up and demonstrate creative thinking. You never want someone in your office to be afraid to share their ideas. Foster that open environment where everyone has the confidence to speak up, and you’ll see innovation coming to the surface.
Nathan Lustig, @nathanlustig, Entrustet

Expose yourself

Innovation is driven by exposure to new ideas, people and work. One of the keys to being an innovation-driving startup leader is to encourage yourself and your employees to constantly learn.
Doreen Bloch, @DoreenBloch, Poshly Inc.

Keep time for actually working

Especially in creative ventures, it’s easy to quickly outgrow being able to work on the cool projects that lead you to start the business in the first place — turning you into a cranky boss. It’s good for your team to see you getting your hands dirty, but it will also keep you in touch with what you really want to accomplish.
Thursday Bram, @thursdayb, Hyper Modern Consulting

Empower your employees

Innovation starts with being encouraged to make choices. My employees are always responsible for their decisions, so they weigh them carefully, and when they don’t like the possibilities in front of them, they often find ways to do things differently. They feel empowered because their choices matter, and my company benefits from their perspective.
Vanessa Nornberg, @VanessaNornberg, Metal Mafia

Open workflow

Promote and encourage an open workflow. If you have an open workflow and hire the right employees, it creates an environment where you trust your employees. If employees fill like they have freedom to be innovative, they will, and that starts with their working environment.
John Hall, @JohnHallCOMO, Digital Talent Agents

Opportunities knock softly

Listen carefully to yourself, your clients, your employees, and the media. You might hear something that will create new ideas to execute. People who care about your business will constantly give advice. Listen to them, write down ideas, and execute the ones you are passionate about. Not only will people feel empowered, but you will be seen as the one with great ideas by being a great listener.
Nancy T. Nguyen, @sweettsalon, Sweet T

Allow failure

Let people explore and make mistakes. Be good with failure — as long as there is learning in the end.
Brent Beshore, @BrentBeshore, AdVentures

Rally a vision

Without any brand equity, your startup will likely field mediocre talent — unless you’re paying them too much or giving away all of your equity. But there is hope. Any team rallied around an articulated vision and stoked with sense of greater purpose can defy the impossible and achieve great things. Your job is to be a coach and a cheerleader in one, very inspiring personality.
Christopher Kelly, @ThoughtsOnBiz, Sentry Centers

Hire the right people

In my experience, it is much easier to find the people who match our company culture rather than try to learn a new company culture to match our people. As a leader, you have a set of inherent personality traits. Select people who gravitate to and respect those traits, and then build a team around them. The innovation-driving culture will come from the people, not from a preconceived plan.
Lucas Sommer, @audimated, Audimated
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization composed of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment and provides entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of their business's development and growth.
I heart my boss art via ShutterStock

Filed under: Entrepreneur, VentureBeat

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MicroVentures gives investors access to early stage startups

Posted: 26 May 2012 02:00 AM PDT

This sponsored post is produced by MicroVentures.
Startup investing used to be only for the rich, only if you knew the right people, and only in deals in your city. Those factors left many interested investors on the sidelines.
But today, it's a lot easier to become an angel investor due to crowdfunding, micro lending and investment sites like MicroVentures which allows you to invest smaller sums alongside others and to invest in deals stretching from Boston to Silicon Valley.
Gone are the days where you have to risk $50,000 or more, receive a personal invitation to invest from a friend and only see a limited number of deals from the few available in your area.
MicroVenture helps investors learn about companies they may never have heard of, and to invest smaller sums, which is virtually unheard of with traditional investing.
The service matches companies seeking money with investors looking to invest anywhere from $1,000 to $30,000 or more. MicroVentures helps investors with the initial due diligence process by filtering startups and then providing documents to help investors conduct their own due diligence prior to making a final investment decision.
The key to winning at angel investing, of course, is to invest in the right startups. To get there, you need:
1) Good deal flow, allowing you to spot potential winners from many potential options.
2) The ability to invest in multiple deals so you gain experience.
3) A knack for spotting potentially successful companies, and more importantly, management teams and entrepreneurs that will succeed.
Getting good deal flow is often the stumbling block for the average person looking to get started in angel investing. And it's one of the reasons Bill Clark launched MicroVentures. He wanted to begin investing, but didn't have access to good deals.
Like others thinking about becoming angels, Clark wanted to invest smaller sums in more companies, allowing him to spread his risk and also increase his chances of picking a winner. And he wanted access to great companies outside of Austin, his hometown.
Today, Clark invests alongside the more than 3,500 investors from 20 states that have joined MicroVentures. To date, investors have put more than $3 million into 15 companies.
If you'd like to join the more than 3,500 angel investors getting in on new deals via the MicroVentures platform, be sure to put "VentureBeat" in the referral code when you sign up and we will send you a $100 gift card after you make your first investment.

A Tried and True Legitimate way to earn Cash from Home and You can Start Now

2012-05-27T08:33:00.001-07:00

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GeekAlerts: “The Start of a Beautiful Friendship T-Shirt” plus 6 more

2012-05-27T05:16:00.001-07:00

GeekAlerts: “The Start of a Beautiful Friendship T-Shirt” plus 6 more

The Start of a Beautiful Friendship T-Shirt
DC Comics Batman Plush Backpack
Steel Rainbow: The Legendary Underground Guide to Becoming an ’80s Rock Star
Star Wars Darth Vader Acrylic Cup
Storm Trilogy Watch
NBA Cookie Gift Baskets
Gong Alarm Clock

The Start of a Beautiful Friendship T-Shirt

Posted: 27 May 2012 03:32 AM PDT

Have you ever wondered how Ronald McDonald got involved with a shady character like Hamburglar? Well, The Start of a Beautiful Friendship T-Shirt gives us a pretty good idea. Available in sizes S – 2XL, ladies fit or regular fit and in three colors, this McDonald’s themed t-shirt leaves Ronald wondering…Where’s Grimace when you need [...]

DC Comics Batman Plush Backpack

Posted: 26 May 2012 04:30 PM PDT

Batman fans are sure to have a great summer this year. The Dark Knight Rises will be in theaters, you can wear your Batman Bikini to the beach (or the theater ) and now the DC Comics Batman Plush Backpack provides you with the perfect carry case for the food items you plan on sneaking [...]

Steel Rainbow: The Legendary Underground Guide to Becoming an ’80s Rock Star

Posted: 26 May 2012 02:20 PM PDT

If given a second chance, a lot of us would choose the path of rockstardom instead of our current, non-glamorous cerebral professions that pay the bills now. The rock stars of the 1980′s had it all; fame, fortune, fun, and fabulous hair. Trends like the glam rock tend to return as retro. Since there’s a healthy chance that Hair Metal could be [...]

Star Wars Darth Vader Acrylic Cup

Posted: 26 May 2012 12:30 PM PDT

We’re all trying to do the right thing, even the guy that’s trying to destroy everyone’s freedom…No, I’m not talking about him…I’m talking about Darth Vader and this Star Wars Darth Vader Acrylic Cup. This 18 ounce acrylic travel cup is the perfect way to do some good for the environment and to look really [...]

Storm Trilogy Watch

Posted: 26 May 2012 11:41 AM PDT

We at GeekAlerts, like many of our readers, enjoy fine watches and we’ve shown you quite a few in the past; but this all new Storm Trilogy Watch offers something a little different. The Storm Trilogy incorporates two levels into its design, the second level being a traditional three-handed clock bolted onto the bottom level [...]

NBA Cookie Gift Baskets

Posted: 26 May 2012 09:54 AM PDT

If you happen to have scored some extra cash from placing playoff wagers on your favorite NBA teams, maybe you have enough to splurge on an NBA Cookie Gift Basket. Any NBA team you choose can be glorified in the form of a sugar cookie. You can have basketballs, scoreboards, hoops, and your team’s logo, as well [...]

Gong Alarm Clock

Posted: 26 May 2012 06:43 AM PDT

Everyone wants to wake up to the sound of a gong, which is why there’s such thing as the Gong Alarm Clock. My current clock only has nature sounds on it, which is very soothing. Only problem is, nature sounds don’t startle you enough to jolt out of bed. In fact, they make you fall back into a [...]

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

2012-05-26T17:02:00.001-07:00

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

V-MODA Crossfade M-80 White Pearl headphones announced

Posted: 26 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT

Are you in the market for a new pair of headphones? You will not go wrong then, if you have a couple of Benjamins to spare, with the V-MODA Crossfade M-80 White Pearl headphones. After all, this pair will come in a color that most of you would go nuts over, especially when the white iPod was first released all those years ago, followed by the white iPhone that kept consumers on the toes with anticipation and excitement. This stylish new color is composed of white with silver metal accents for that added a touch of class.

This smart and sophisticated design has been masterfully crafted in order to match just about any ensemble that brings any fashion, music and mobile technology under one roof. This particular pair of headphones have been authentically tuned by a legion of legendary musicians, Grammy-Award winning producers and audiophiles, delivering professional acoustics, natural noise isolation, ultimate ergonomics and military-level ruggedness without sacrificing on comfort.

Not only that, there is the inclusion of new SpeakEasy microphones that are said to deliver crystal clear calls even when the world around you is crumbling down in the face of an alien invasion. I’m kidding here, it actually means it works great even if you are in a loud environment. After all, it was specifically designed and tuned for voice recognition apps such as Siri, so the M-80 would be the ultimate symbol of sophistication in sound and style.

Val Kolton, founder of V-MODA, said, "The M-80 has won over the audiophile community with hundreds of accolades, reviews and awards. Now we're widening the appeal to fashionistas with an 'ABCP' philosophy, Anything But Circles and Plastic. Headphones have become an essential accessory like fine watches, shoes, and handbags and we feel you shouldn't wear carbon-copy cheap plastic around your head. Additionally, we felt it was imperative to focus as much on the microphones as the sound so that you can have a conference call or command your voice apps while walking down the street. Our new SpeakEasy microphones are as superior as the M-80's sound."

Press Release

[ V-MODA Crossfade M-80 White Pearl headphones announced copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Project Glass video caught in the act

Posted: 26 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Google has just released the first video ever shot with their Project Glass, an eyewear concept that seemingly hails from the future. The video was recorded with the wearer having some fun, jumping around and performing 360-degree flips on a trampoline. Heck, there was at least one instance where a backflip was performed, and I must say that the Project Glass performed admirably, as it remained stuck to the wearer throughout the entire duration. Wearing this during a roller coaster ride, however, might prove to be a very different story altogether as the G forces might work against the pair of Google glasses.

Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin have already been caught wearing a pair of these in the past, while other images of the Project Glass being worn has also been captured for posterity’s sake in the past. This, a video, is a first of its kind, and looks set to make Internet history. Google did reveal, however, that a commercial release of Project Glass happening this year is highly unlikely, so do not waste your time keeping your fingers crossed for a pair to be released later this year.

Source

[ Project Glass video caught in the act copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

VentureBeat

2012-05-26T09:06:00.001-07:00

VentureBeat

iOS, Android, HTML5? How to pick a tablet platform for your app
VBWeekly gets a visit from the undead, which is appropriate since we’re talking Facebook
Disgruntled gentleman honestly thinks he can strip Google of its trademark
Instagram picked up 78 percent more uniques in April — thank you, Facebook
Yahoo actually makes a good decision with death of Livestand
Cisco kills its business-focused Cius tablet
GamesBeat Weekly Roundup
Facebook games now playing in News Feed and Timeline
For Vivid Live, YouTube gets an Instagram-like tool for the livestream
Video game series contract will be tough for Bungie, easy for Activision
Facebook testing new “star your close friends” feature
Facebook’s next big buy could be browser maker Opera
Size matters: Steve Ballmer’s office has an 80-inch Windows 8 tablet
So long, blind buys: Consmr’s iPhone app gets 100K downloads in just two weeks (exclusive)
Dell in acquisition talks with Quest Software, report says
Legal battles erupt over Dish Network’s commercial-skipping DVR box

iOS, Android, HTML5? How to pick a tablet platform for your app

Posted: 26 May 2012 09:00 AM PDT

This story is brought to you by Sourcebits, a Global leader in Strategy, User Experience & Engineering for Mobile & Cloud. Follow Sourcebits on Twitter for recent news and updates.

You’re building a tablet app, and you need to make decisions on what platforms to support. Here’s how to pick the tablet platform that’s right for you … and will result in the most sales of your app.

The choices are well-known:

iOS
The acknowledged market leader for scale and monetization
Android
The strong contender for second place, but with fragmentation concerns
Kindle Fire
Android under the skin, but walled off by Amazon, with its own app store
Windows 8
The dark horse: an intriguing option, but scale and penetration are open questions
BlackBerry
The dead horse?
HTML5
The one ring to rule them all … but perhaps a little lost in a deep cave in the Misty Mountains

For some people, the choice might be obvious. But sometimes there can be market advantages to targeting a less-obvious platform. Let’s look at the alternatives.

Why you would pick iOS

Apple’s iOS is the acknowledged leader in tablet sales. According to Gartner, the iPad will destroy the competition with 61 percent of sales in 2012. So it’s pretty obvious why you’d develop for iPad: that’s where the users are. Not only are the most people on iPad right now, but the types of people are attractive to app developers. Simply put: they have money and they’re not afraid to spend it. That’s an attractive user base.

Also, there’s very good infrastructure in the iOS ecosystem: coding tools, developer ecosystem, publishing and distribution paths, and monetization options.

On the downside, there is a lot of noise in the iOS world. With more than 500,000 apps for iPhone and 200,000 for iPad, your app faces some major challenges getting noticed. That said, if you are a major brand or have deep pockets, you can likely break free from the pack.

Why you would pick Android

If iPad is the leader, Android is the very strong contender … and there’s recent history to suggest that Android may not always trail iOS in the tablet market. After all, Android leads in the smartphone market, after initially trailing the iPhone. According to the same Gartner study cited above, Android will make up about 32 percent of tablet sales in 2012, growing to 37 percent in 2016.

So Android has a very significant number of users. A third of a large market is still a pretty large potential audience, and Android is expected to account for about 35 million tablets this year. (For a caveat about these numbers, see Kindle Fire below.)

There are other reasons to choose Android for your tablet app. There’s less noise in the market — fewer dedicated tablet apps — which means that yours has a better chance to be seen. In addition, if your app is well-designed and user-friendly, it will stand out in stark contrast to other Android apps, which, unfortunately, largely suck.

But also, if you want more control of what you’re developing and how to market it, the fact that there are multiple Android markets and fewer ecosystem constraints mean that you have more freedom in how to build and market your app.

Why you would pick Kindle Fire

In the Android section above, I listed a caveat, and for a good reason: the Kindle Fire accounts for easily 50 percent of all Android tablet sales. That’s one reason for breaking it out from the larger Android pack, but the more important reason is that Amazon pre-loads a Kindle-fire-specific app store on all devices it ships. The Amazon app store makes Kindle Fire a cross between Google and Apple: Android inside, but with an an Apple style, curated, send-us-your-apps-for-approval market.

That said, it’s hard to ignore two things: the sheer number of Fires being sold, and Amazon’s amazing ability to move product. With Kindle Fire users making up large percentages of overall tablet web traffic, it’s clear the devices are in use.

Pick Kindle if you’re an Android developer and you want another sales opportunity for your app, or if you think that your app will monetize better in Amazon’s garden. Content apps would seem to be a good bet with Amazon’s core user base, and some developers see opportunity in the platform.

One caveat for Kindle Fire: be aware that Amazon does implement some questionable marketing tactics which could affect your app’s sales … such as offering it for free.

Why you would pick Windows 8

Windows 8 Tablet is a true dark horse: Currently, there are almost no sales. However, HP is restarting its tablet adventure with Window 8, and Gartner says that Microsoft will move about five million units in 2012.

That number won’t make any developers jump for joy, but Microsoft has a history of being persistent, and it’s got the largest installed base of them all with the Windows PC market. As those customers upgrade to the latest version of Windows, there’s a good chance many of them will move to Windows 8 on tablets, and you might want to be there, waiting for them, when the market takes off. On top of that, the Windows 8 platform, whether on phone or tablet, is definitely an interesting and different take on interfaces of the future.

The best reason to develop for Window 8 right now, however, might be this: Microsoft may be willing to pay you. Or guarantee a certain level of revenue.

Just don’t expect huge download numbers.

Why you would pick BlackBerry

This is a tough one. Projected sales for BlackBerry tablets are even lower than Windows 8 tablets, at under three million. And while the underlying operating system, QNX, is geekishly interesting, those numbers will not make your finance department happy.

The one reason to pick BlackBerry: similar to Microsoft, RIM may finance your development as it struggles desperately to remain relevant in the tablet space. But don’t be shocked if the platform disappears under your feet before the end of 2012.

Why you would pick HTML5

I wasn’t sure I would include HTML5 in this list, as it’s not a platform in the same sense as the above ecosystems. However, it deserves a mention.

Pick HTML5 if you believe that the app explosion we’re currently seeing in mobile is a passing fad, and that the power of the internet will eventually triumph over each niche ecosystem.

Theoretically, all the tablet platforms listed above support HTML5 applications. But while in theory there is no difference between theory and reality … in reality there is. Be aware that there are differing levels of support for HTML5.

Perhaps worse, there’s no defined distribution, marketing, or monetization model. But if you can solve those problems, you can sell your services to just about anyone: tablet users, web users, even smartphone users.

Making your selection

Ultimately, the platform you choose will determine how you build your app, and how you market it. Most importantly, it will determine who you can sell it to. Almost certainly you will choose, either initially or later in your app’s life cycle, a multi-platform strategy.

Picking the first platform well is your key to success.

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

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VBWeekly gets a visit from the undead, which is appropriate since we’re talking Facebook

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:25 PM PDT

This week’s VBWeekly got a little goofy, while our anchor Jolie O’Dell was traveling to the East Coast. We hit on some serious stories, including more on the Facebook drama unfolding post IPO, and a sexual harassment lawsuit that hit venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. But that was all interrupted when some undead buddies showed up to chat with GamesBeat Editor in Chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu.

Also, there’s a chance I’m crying in a veil.

Here’s the recap:

Kleiner Perkins partner Ellen Pao made light of a lawsuit she filed against the venture firm this week. Pao claims she was sexually harassed and retaliated against when she brought the issues to light.
Facebook can’t catch a break following last week’s IPO. The company is being sued by its shareholders and is considering a switch from the NASDAQ stock exchange — which delayed its IPO by 40 minutes due to technical issues — to the New York Stock Exchange.
Zombies come to chat with us after a San Francisco Zombie Walk put on by gaming company Zynga.

Hope you enjoy the show!

Filed under: VentureBeat, video

Disgruntled gentleman honestly thinks he can strip Google of its trademark

Posted: 25 May 2012 04:52 PM PDT

Over in the land of slightly crazy lawsuits, a man from Arizona filed a lawsuit Friday to make “Google” a generic word, Paid Content reports.

David Elliot filed the complaint in the United States District Court of Arizona. Elliot is a ”third-party beneficiary” of Chris Gillespie, who lost a lawsuit against Google earlier this month. The search engine filed a complaint against Gillespie for registering website names with the name google in them, including “googlegaycruises.com," “googlestarbucks.com,” and "googlechevron.com.” Gillespie was forced to hand over more than 750 domains.

Now, Elliot is countering, saying the company name has become a common transitive verb that refers to searching the Internet for content. The exact wording from the suit is as follows:

“The term ‘GOOGLE’ is, or has become, a generic term universally used to describe the action of internet search with any search engine.”

He has a point — most of us don’t say “I’m going to Bing it” — but it’s hard to prove that we use the verb “to google” in reference to other search engines.

Google won the trademark for its name in 1997 and has continued to earn several trademark certificates to keep ownership of the term “Google”. But a trademark is not a lifetime guarantee, and companies can lose the legal rights to a word if it becomes synonymous with a generic product or service. In his suit, Elliot mentions a 2010 report from Google in which the company allegedly said it was well aware of this risk.

Examples of once trademarked terms include aspirin, escalator, and even heroin. Once people began calling every moving set of stairs an escalator, the company holding that trademark lost its legal rights to the term. Several brands, including Kleenex, Xerox, and Band-Aid, have used extensive campaigns to prevent their trademarked terms from becoming so generic that they’d lose legal protection.

In order to retain control of the trademark, Google has to keep the term “google” associated with its company, search engine, and other services. Considering that when most of say we are “going to google something,” we actually go to Google.com to conduct our search, it might not be hard for Google to win this case. You can read the full filing below.

View this document on Scribd

Google sign image via Flickr user Niall Kennedy

Filed under: VentureBeat

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Instagram picked up 78 percent more uniques in April — thank you, Facebook

Posted: 25 May 2012 04:26 PM PDT

A billion dollars will buy you a lot of things, and, in the case of Instagram, one of those things happens to be exposure to millions.

In April, Instagram’s website saw a 78 percent uptick in unique visitors in the U.S., making the web property of the photo-sharing phenom the highest gaining site on the Internet for the month, according to analytics firm comScore.

Instagram.com, comScore found, had nearly 14.6 million unique U.S. visitors in April, up from 8.2 million in March. The unique figure and the massive gain are remarkable feats considering that Instagram’s bread and butter is its mobile applications for iPhone and Android.

click to enlarge

April was quite the month for the photo-sharing app. On April 3, Instagram released its long-awaited Android application. Just days later, Facebook announced that it was buying the young company for roughly $1 billion in cash and stock (we found out later the exact breakdown is $300 million in cash and 23 million shares). Both events likely contributed to an onslaught of Instagram activity that enhanced the service’s already powerful network effect — users post photos in the app and push them out to other social networks where folks click to view images on the web.

So there you have it: Facebook plus Android equals Instagram as top-gaining web property.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for Instagram. Sure, we suspect the company-within-a-company now has well over 50 million users, but founder Kevin Systrom and crew might not be tickled by the fact that the purchase price, which isn’t official until the deal closes later this year, is yoked to Facebook’s currently underwhelming share price. The Instagram deal, for instance, was valued as high as $1.27 billion when Facebook opened at $42 a share. Now, at $31.91 a share, the deal sits at $1.034 billion, a difference of $236 million.

Photo credit: Ashton Pal/Flickr

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Yahoo actually makes a good decision with death of Livestand

Posted: 25 May 2012 01:51 PM PDT

After all the turmoil Yahoo has gone through in the past month, the company is finally making moves on a legitimate plan to consolidate its resources on a handful of successful products and services crucial to its bottom line.

Today Yahoo announced that it’s shutting down digital magazine news app Livestand, which it only launched back in November 2011.

“When we discontinue products, it will be so that we can focus on opportunities where we lead and where we can create the most meaningful experiences for people using our products, and for our partners, developers and advertisers,” Yahoo stated in a blog post. “One of the first decisions we’ve made along these lines is to discontinue our personalized digital newsstand app, Livestand for iPad.”

Livestand was facing plenty of more popular competitors, such as Flipboard, Editions by AOL, Pulse News, Zite, and Google Currents. But even in a crowded market, Yahoo didn’t need to be focusing its efforts on side projects like this. The company said it still plans to focus on creating a more mobile web-friendly experience for its existing products. As we said at the beginning of the year, Yahoo can start by revamping Flickr.

It’s nice to see new CEO Ross Levinson actually doing something to lessen the company’s glut of useless services and products. But the work is far from over.

Fortunately, we’ve comprised a list of 10 products Yahoo needs to immediately shut down. (Well, it’s actually only a list of nine, since Livestand is now dead.)

Filed under: media, mobile

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Cisco kills its business-focused Cius tablet

Posted: 25 May 2012 01:15 PM PDT

Cisco plans to effectively kill off its misguided Cius enterprise tablet, the company has announced in a blog post.

“Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what's available today,” OJ Winge, a Cisco Senior VP, wrote on the company’s Collaboration blog. “However, as we evaluate the market further, we will continue to offer Cius in a limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases.”

The Cius tablet debuted in June 2010 as the first Android tablet that was meant for the enterprise market. The tablet was bundled with Cisco software like WebEx, Cisco Quad, Cisco Show, and an application for instant messaging. It was also capable of 720p HD video with Cisco TelePresence.

But like many other Android tablets, the Cius never really took off. Instead, Apple’s iPad has come to dominate the enterprise for tablet usage. With apps as inventive as data visualizer Roambi and LinkedIn's surprisingly sexy social experience, there seems little reason to invest in a tablet that can’t access all that.

Now that Cisco has acknowledged that it lost the tablet battle (which we called in mid-2011), it will instead place a higher degree of focus on developing software.

“Moving forward, we intend to double down on software offerings, like Jabber and WebEx, that provide the anytime, anywhere, and any device experiences,” Winge wrote. “We will leverage key learnings and key collaboration experiences native to Cius in our other collaboration products.”

Cius photo: Cisco

Filed under: enterprise, mobile

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GamesBeat Weekly Roundup

Posted: 25 May 2012 01:14 PM PDT

If you follow VentureBeat but don't regularly check our GamesBeat site, here's a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, game developer 38 Studios laid off its entire staff after ongoing financial troubles, BioWare laid off a number of people working on Star Wars the Old Republic, Take-Two faces a larger than expected financial loss, and Blizzard announces its first patch for Diablo III.

You’ll also find previews for Defiance, Kingdom Hearts 3D, and When Viking’s Attack.

The DeanBeat: Playstudios launches myVegas social casino games with MGM as a partner

Blizzard announces first Diablo III patches and delays the real-money auction house

Kingdom Hearts 3D welcomes casual fans back into the series (hands-on preview)

Bringing back Tomb Raider: Our need to fill the old archeologist's shoes

38 Studios lays off its entire staff

Sony's When Vikings Attack offers goofy street combat (hands-on preview)

Konami kicks off pre-E3 character battle (gallery)

GameFly buzzes into mobile publishing

GREE mobile gaming platform enters open beta, plans two new Moshi Monsters games

Diablo III sets launch-day record

ShootMania Storm is geared for mass, competitive gaming

Take-Two CEO says product delays signal an "unwavering commitment to quality"

Marvel Heroes' online game world will let you smash evil for free

SOE announces free-to-play shooter, Bullet Run…which sounds a lot like Super Monday Night Combat

What does a game "producer" do, exactly? (exclusive)

Plant a money tree in Farmville as Zynga and American Express launch new rewards program

ArenaNet president discusses careful monetization of Guild Wars 2, the least greedy Western MMO

Twilight Zone table to rise again in Pinball Arcade with the help of crowdfunding

Origin offers 90 days of free distribution to successful Kickstarter games

VentureBeat:

Video game series contract will be tough for Bungie, easy for Activision

Square Enix's Mike Fischer says Activision was "crazy" to abandon True Crime: Hong Kong (interview)

Gaming art for your Facebook Timeline (Part 5: Social and Mobile)

Nvidia expects a "breakout year" for mobile chips

Nvidia CEO describes strategic importance of cloud graphics

THQ releases Metro Last Light cinematic story video

Seagate agrees to acquire LaCie for at least $186M

Take-Two disappoints Wall Street with larger-than-expected loss

Activision reacts to fan response to Call of Duty: Black Ops II (video interview)

BioWare lays off staff on Star Wars: The Old Republic, EA to shift employees [updated]

Trion's Defiance is one story told in an online game and SyFy TV show (hands-on preview)

YoYo Games unveils GameMaker: Studio for cross-platform development

RocketFrog wants to revolutionize online gambling with real-world prizes

How Ghost Recon is gunning to take over the hardcore and social markets (interview)

Are You a Human replaces annoying CAPTCHAs with games

Game of Thrones Ascent aims to please fans with a Facebook game (exclusive)

Filed under: games

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Facebook games now playing in News Feed and Timeline

Posted: 25 May 2012 12:55 PM PDT

Leave it to Facebook to invent yet another way to keep us all glued to the site. The social network has made the status update stickier with the addition of embedded games that people can play as they skim the News Feed or a friend’s Timeline.

Friday, Facebook launched “feed gaming,” or the ability for users to anonymously play miniature versions of Facebook games in the News Feed or on Timeline with just a single click.

Feed gaming is both a feature for application developers and users of the social network. Application developers, with a few code tweaks, can now embed sample versions of their games into the story updates users already post to Facebook, and thus use the game-lets to hook new users.

So Joe Gamer plays Angry Birds as he normally would, but now when he gets a score he’s especially proud, he can post an update to Facebook challenging his friends to try to one-up him. The status update gets distributed, via News Feed and Timeline, to Joe’s friends who can then play the same level inside the update.

Game makers actually have a few choices here, so keep an eye out for mini-games, game replays, and level high-score challenges. Angry Birds, Idle Worship, Tetris Battle, and Bubble Witch Saga are a few games already employing feed gaming, Facebook engineer Gareth Morris said in a blog post on the new feature.

The addition of in-feed gaming is the logical next step for the social network, which has openly expressed interest in helping its games grow. Carl Sjogreen, director of product management for Facebook Platform, said at a conference in February that games are the reason millions of users keep coming back to the site.

“It's critically important to us that games are successful,” Sjogreen said at the time. “We have a whole Platform team focused on just making sure games are going well. That includes building games-specific features … to create discovery for games.”

Of course, this all boils down to a new paradigm for game discovery on the social network. Facebook games find you and beg for just a second of your attention. A second turns into the promise of a few coins and soon you’re off installing the full version of the application to collect your rewards. Next you know, you’ve wasted away the workday trying to beat your buddies. Genius, right?

Photo credit: Matt Harnack/Facebook

Filed under: dev, games, social

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For Vivid Live, YouTube gets an Instagram-like tool for the livestream

Posted: 25 May 2012 12:17 PM PDT

YouTube is no stranger to live streaming popular events, such the Coachella Music Festival back in April. But for its upcoming live stream of Australia’s annual Vivid Live music event held at Sydney Opera House, YouTube is showing off a new tool called Frontrow commissioned by the event organizers to help enhance the experience.

The Frontrow tool mixes elements of Instagram with the exclusivity of big-ticket concerts, and you engage in the experience without ever leaving home. You can zoom in and out using the Frontrow camera tool and snap pictures using filtered views. You can then share those images with friends, post them to social networks, etc. You can’t record clips of the concert and apply those filters in the same way you can with a service like Viddy, but it does give people an additional reason to check out the live stream.

I’ll be curious to see how many of these filtered Vivid Live concert photos end up on Google+, which is currently making a push to become a major competitor to pro photo site Flickr.

The Vivid Live live stream is free to access, and we’ve included a screenshot and short demo video showing off the new Frontrow tool below.

Update 5/25/2012 (2:00 p.m. PT): An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Frontrow was created by YouTube. The Frontrow tool was actually commissioned by the Vivid Live organizers for use on YouTube’s livestream.

Filed under: media, social

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Video game series contract will be tough for Bungie, easy for Activision

Posted: 25 May 2012 12:00 PM PDT

The contract between Bungie, the celebrated maker of the Halo series, and Activision Blizzard was unsealed this week in litigation related to Activision’s feud with the co-founders of Infinity Ward, creator and former developer of the Call of Duty series.

As the Los Angeles Times reported, the 27-page document is the most detailed revelation of how to cut a modern deal between a super game studio and a giant game publisher. And based on a look at the contract, it seems like the deal is quite favorable to Activision and very challenging for Bungie, which signed with Activision after spending a decade working on Halo with Microsoft. The deal says that Bungie will make four massively multiplayer online (MMO), sci-fi, fantasy, action shooter games for Activision. The contract speaks volumes about publisher-developer relations.

The contract designates these as Destiny Games #1 through #4. The first game debuts in the fall of 2013, with a sequel following every two years. A major downloadable content (DLC) title (code-named Comet) also debuts in between major releases. Initially, Destiny will be an Xbox exclusive, but the PlayStation 3 version will come out in 2014. Bungie itself will hand off the PS 3 version to another developer. Bungie will own the intellectual property.

But in exchange for that, Kirkland, Wash.-based Bungie gave up a lot. Observers believe the games could easily cost $40 million to develop, with marketing budgets equal to that. If you add in 10 percent for overhead, the breakeven number for sales would be about 4.7 million units, according to one source who declined to be named. To get all of the bonuses, the average Bungie Destiny game might have to sell 13 million units or generate $804 million in revenue including the expansion pack’s sales.

Ben Schacter, an analyst at Macquarie Equities Research, said in a note that the bonus and royalty structures in the Bungie-Activision contract are “meaningful and quite positive for long-term investors” in Activision Blizzard. The game series as a whole must hit an operating margin of 25 percent before Bungie is eligible for meaningful royalties. That means that employees may have to stick around for years before they see a big bonus, and it could be tough for Bungie to hold on to its talent for a long time.

The contract was dated April 2010, so it is possible that it has been amended. In the document, the royalty payments are based on a series of operating income thresholds. The operating income hurdle is operated as a deficit account. That means that the deficit in one year will be subtracted from the following year’s operating income before calculating any royalty payments. Operating income is the money left over after you subtract game-related development, marketing, advertising, promotion, production and distribution expenses from net revenue. Activision can also terminate the contract if the first game does not sell 5 million units within the first six months.

The contract shows that Bungie is very confident that it can hit the 25 percent operating margin hurdle. For operating income up to $100 million, Bungie will receive a quarterly royalty of 20 percent. For operating income of $100 million to $400 million, the royalty rises to 24 percent. For $400 million and up, Bungie gets 35 percent. If the series hits $750 million in operating income, Bungie gets $25 million. It gets $25 million more if the operating income tops $1 billion. Activision can reduce the royalties if the games come out late. Bungie is contractually required to focus most of its resources and key people on Destiny, and the release of the games may come as either digital downloads or physical disks. The Destiny game is expected to debut on both the Xbox 360 and its successor.

If Bungie’s games hit a 90-plus rating on GameRankings.com, a review aggregator, then it gets another $2.5 million. That tells you that ratings for games aren’t viewed nearly as important as the operating income targets. In other words, making a ton of money from consumers is more important than pleasing the critics.

The contract also showed that Bungie is working on a successor to Marathon, the original Bungie game that became a cult hit after it was published in 1994 on the Mac. But Bungie can devote no more than 5 percent of its staff to work on the Marathon title. In 2018, Bungie is free to work on action shooters other than Destiny as it wishes. And while other developers may work on the DLC, Valve, Gearbox, and Epic are banned from doing any Destiny or Comet adaptations.

Other miscellaneous contract stipulations include: The game will fit into a “teen” rating, each Bungie employee can only receive two Activision games as gifts each year, and Bungie also has to disclose all Easter eggs, or secret rewards, hidden in the game.

We’ve asked Bungie and Activision for further comment on the contract and have not heard back from either party yet.

Filed under: games, VentureBeat

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Facebook testing new “star your close friends” feature

Posted: 25 May 2012 11:11 AM PDT

Facebook users who logged in last night may have caught a glimpse of a new feature on Facebook. The largest social network in the world is testing “Star Your Close Friends,” an experimental feature that will ensure you see more of your closest friends’ status updates.

Star Your Close Friends is simple and intuitive to use. A new area simply appears at the top of your news feed with the title “Don’t Miss the Good Stuff.” When you move your mouse over your friends’ images, you see a grey star. Click and the star turns yellow: you’ve starred that friend.

Now more of his or her status updates will appear on your Facebook wall.

A Facebook representative contacted by VentureBeat told us that Facebook is trying to help users customize what status message they receive: “Yesterday we started rolling this out for some users to help them easily group their close friends into a list.”

Facebook seems to be fairly intelligent about who it presents to users as potential “star-ees.” When I saw the feature last night, the friends I most often interact with were shown by default. But people can also search for specific friends to add ones that are not seen.

One important thing to note: Your friends will not know whether or not they’ve been starred, eliminating a potentially sticky privacy issue.

This new feature potentially solves two problems for Facebook: unseen status updates for close friends, and easy friend categorization.

A starred friend.

The first has been a problem for some time. As we know from Facebook itself, only 10 percent of your friends may actually see any given status update from you. The challenge is so severe that Facebook was actually testing a feature to allow you to pay to ensure that your status updates were noticed. But now, Star Your Close Friends will allow people to make sure they see important news from the friends they care about most, solving a large part of that problem, if only from the perspective of the person getting the status updates.

The second problem, friend categorization, is more of a competitive pressure from Google+. Circles, the way Google+ helps you categorize your connections, has widely been admired and praised. Facebook tried to address this with Smart Lists, but not with any great degree of success. Star Your Close Friends, however, is extremely simple and quick — in fact, it’s easier and more intuitive than Circles. Instead of multiple circles, overlapping circles, and circles with different levels of status update visibility, Star Your Friends is simple and binary: friends are either in or they’re out. And a single click is all it takes.

After starring friends, Facebook adds a new list in the Friends: Close Friends. A helpful pop-up tells you that “Now you can jump straight to your close friends’ photos and news. You’ll also get notifications whenever they post.”

Interestingly, Facebook seems to be trying to limit how many friends you star. Not by imposing a hard limit, but by visually indicating in the interface that the user is almost filling up a limited space. Here’s what you see as you add friends before hitting the recommended maximum, and what you see after continuing to add friends. The +2 seems to indicate that you are possibly adding more than Facebook recommends.

Star Your Close Friends is a very interesting new development. Would you welcome this change? I know I would.

Photo credit: UggBoy/Flickr

Filed under: social, VentureBeat

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Facebook’s next big buy could be browser maker Opera

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:53 AM PDT

Facebook may be looking to buy browser maker Opera Software, according to a new report.

A source told Pocket-lint that the social network wants to expand into the browser space and is looking to acquire Opera to do so. VentureBeat cannot independently confirm Facebook’s interest in Opera, and Facebook declined to comment on this story.

Opera is a Norway-based public company traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The company reported revenue of $46.9 million in the first quarter of 2012, and has roughly 700 employees spread across eleven offices, including a satellite office in the U.S. Opera makes an extremely popular mobile browser, including Opera Mini for iPhone. Opera Mini had nearly 200 million users across Opera branded, co-branded, and operator-branded installs of the mobile browser in Q1 2012.

While details on Facebook’s Opera interest are slim, we are certain that Facebook wants a piece of the browser pie, especially on mobile. In fact, months ago we heard a whisper that the social network was actually building its own browser.

That rumor makes sense when you consider a few things. First, the company is expected to release a Facebook-branded phone this summer running some type of custom Facebook operating system, said to be a fork of the Android OS. It follows, then, that Facebook would want to control — read: profit from — how users browse and access its social network on mobile. A Facebook phone running a Google browser doesn’t sound quite right, now does it?

There’s also this key detail: Facebook’s director of product, Blake Ross, if you recall, co-founded Mozilla Firefox and helped build the Firefox browser. The browser guru came to Facebook after his startup Parakey was acquired by the then young social network back in 2007.

But back to Opera. Here’s the kicker: Opera makes money on mobile, the very place where Facebook desperately needs to monetize now that it’s a public company. The software maker said it made $3 million in first quarter revenue from its mobile consumers — up 253 percent year-over-year — and $1.8 million from mobile OEMs. The company also netted $6.9 million in Q1 2012 revenue, up 303 percent year-over-year, from mobile publishers and advertisers.

“Opera expects to monetize this user base and the billions of daily web page traffic generated by these users to a greater extent in 2012 compared to 2011 from advertising, applications and search,” the company said in its earnings report.

But the fat lady has yet to sing in this acquisition play, so stay tuned.

Filed under: deals, mobile, social

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Size matters: Steve Ballmer’s office has an 80-inch Windows 8 tablet

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:18 AM PDT

Big and small, Microsoft has some pretty major plans for Windows 8.

On the larger end of the spectrum is the hulking 80-inch tablet that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer keeps in his office. The display, which is likely similar to the one seen in the background of the photo above (from Microsoft’s Windows 8 preview event several months ago), has allowed Ballmer get rid of his phone and note paper, Microsoft VP Frank Shaw told Wired UK.

The existence of the device is fueled by Microsoft’s desire to make pretty much every screen a computer, ”Every screen should be touch, every screen should be a computer and should be able to see out as well as see in. That is the way the world is heading [and] those screens are going to be big, small, wall-sized and desk-sized,” Shaw told Wired.

Microsoft says that it has no plans to directly sell such a large device, but that it’s very possible that third-party vendors will pick up the slack. If anything, it proves that Windows 8 can scale from netbooks and tablets, to giant screens.

The notion should sound a bit familiar. Microsoft’s previous attempt at a similarly large display came with Microsoft Surface, touch-enabled tabletop that, while impressive, hasn’t quite hit the mainstream consumer yet.

Via The Verge<

Filed under: mobile, offBeat, VentureBeat

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So long, blind buys: Consmr’s iPhone app gets 100K downloads in just two weeks (exclusive)

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:03 AM PDT

Shopping apps are nothing new, but New York City-based Consmr has a grander vision beyond price comparisons: to inform consumers with an in-depth library of product reviews for things like health, groceries, beauty, and baby items. Think of it like a Yelp for consumer products.

Shoppers are clearly biting: the Consmr iPhone app has received over 100,000 downloads in its first two weeks, CEO Ryan Charles told VentureBeat exclusively.

Charles, the former head of mobile at Zagat, launched Consmr’s website a year ago with the goal of populating the site with user-contributed product reviews. By the time Consmr’s iPhone app launched on May 9th, the company had amassed a collection of over 100,000 reviews.

“That was the plan all along,” Charles said in an interview yesterday. He noticed that many competing applications had launched without an extensive review library, and he wanted to offer Consmr’s users something more valuable.

It also would have been more difficult to garner a huge amount of reviews if Consmr launched first on mobile, Charles said. (He points out that the popular foodie app Foodspotting also hit the web first to gather reviews, before going mobile.)

Just like the Consmr website, you can use the iPhone app to search for product reviews. But the Consmr app also allows you to scan a barcode, like so many other shopping apps, to instantly access a product’s page. For such a young app, it’s surprisingly fast and well-designed. It’s simple enough for mainstream consumers to use, but it’s slick enough to impress user interface geeks.

You can share reviews with your friends, and also follow other users to get a sense of their tastes. Consmr taps into your Facebook and Twitter accounts, allowing you to easily find your friends on the service. There are also a handful of celebrities using Consmr, including the online wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk. You can also create private shopping lists on the service (which will likely be shareable in the future).

Charles tells me that he has a passion for curated content in the mobile space. At Zagat, he was responsible for major deals, like the review guide’s partnership with Foursquare.

He was also inspired by how online retailers like Amazon were able to increase sales by letting customers review products. “It [reviews] increases consumer confidence,” Charles said, which was his biggest problem when shopping in retail stores where you have to sift through tens of thousands of product choices.

Consmr is based out of the WeWork Labs in Soho, and the company hasn’t revealed any funding yet (though Charles discussed raising funds last year).

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

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Dell in acquisition talks with Quest Software, report says

Posted: 25 May 2012 09:57 AM PDT

Dell is in talks to buy network applications maker Quest Software for more than $2 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Quest originally agreed to be acquired by Insight Venture Partners for $2 billion, but those talks may have faltered. Quest’s backup and security software could complement Dell’s products well. BMC, Microsoft, and Oracle are all potentially bidding on Quest too.

Quest’s shares on the Nasdaq exchange are up nearly 4 percent in mid-day trading, bringing the company’s market cap to $2.12 billion. Dell would need to offer up a premium on this pricing to win over the company.

Dell photo: Flickr/Dell

Filed under: deals, enterprise

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Legal battles erupt over Dish Network’s commercial-skipping DVR box

Posted: 25 May 2012 09:48 AM PDT

When Dish Network debuted its new “Hopper” DVR box for subscribers of its satellite television service, the assumption was that it would help grow the viewing audience — not help people avoid the insanely long commercial breaks between recorded programs.

But the Hopper box actually does just that, Authops over the commercials, which prompted broadcast TV stations Fox NBCUniversal, and CBS to file lawsuits against Dish yesterday.

“We were given no choice but to file suit against one of our largest distributors, Dish Network, because of their surprising move to market a product with the clear goal of violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem,” Fox said in a statement (PDF) to Dish. "Their wrongheaded decision requires us to take swift action in order to aggressively defend the future of free, over-the-air television.”

But it gets better. Dish has also decided to file its own lawsuit to get approval for its DVR commercial-skipping technology. Dish’s suit also wants the courts to confirm that its DVR Hopper box does create unauthorized copies of broadcaster’s programing that violates copyrights.

In a statement (PDF), Dish Network SVP of Programming David Shull said “consumers should be able to fairly choose for themselves what they do and do not want to watch. Viewers have been skipping commercials since the advent of the remote control; we are giving them a feature they want and that gives them more control."

It’s hard to argue with Shull’s statement, because that majority of people probably do fast forward through the commercial breaks when given the chance. Commercial interruptions have only gotten longer in the last decade, and with the advent of ad-targeting technology available online, those same commercials seem even more out-of-place since they don’t know exactly who’s watching a program.

The main takeaway from all of this? Commercials are too long and don’t apply to the individual viewer. Rather than to continually force the viewing audience to fast forward, switch the channel, or play on their iPhone during a commercial, maybe broadcasters should just address the real issue — make commercials more palatable.

Kangaroo photo via Dave Mitchell/Shutterstock; Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Filed under: media

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GeekAlerts: “Wonder Woman Cami and Panty Set” plus 11 more

2012-05-26T05:20:00.001-07:00

GeekAlerts: “Wonder Woman Cami and Panty Set” plus 11 more

Wonder Woman Cami and Panty Set
Angry Chewie & Han T-Shirt
Bicycle Rearview Camera
Light Ranger Secret Agent Flashlight
Star Trek Beach Towels
Star Trek Starfleet Command Cufflinks
Robeez Soft Soles Star Wars Yoda Slippers
Lord of the Rings Keychain: The One Ring
Mini Mummy & Monster Spatula
Game of Thrones Season 2 Coaster Set
CameraTab Tripod & Windshield Mount For iPad
Day of the Dead Corkscrew

Wonder Woman Cami and Panty Set

Posted: 26 May 2012 03:38 AM PDT

The Wonder Woman Pajama Set we featured recently is perfect for cool and breezy nights. But now that the mercury is rising, you might want a lighter, more summery option regarding Wonder Woman gear. Here is a fabulous Wonder Woman Cami and Panty Set that almost looks like the Underoos we cherished as kids. Everyone calls you a [...]

Angry Chewie & Han T-Shirt

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:20 PM PDT

GeekAlerts has shown you some cool Star Wars Mash Ups in the past and this Angry Chewie & Han T-Shirt is no different. Designed by SevenHundred, this t-shirt brings two of our favorite pastimes together, Star Wars and Angry Birds. This t-shirt is perfect for the person wondering what Chewbacca and Han Solo would look [...]

Bicycle Rearview Camera

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:26 PM PDT

If looking backwards while riding your bike has nearly caused you to lose your life on many occasions, it’s time to get yourself a Bicycle Rearview Camera. Just like those in-built rearview camera options that are available for cars, bike riders want in on that technology too. We don’t have eyes in the back of [...]

Light Ranger Secret Agent Flashlight

Posted: 25 May 2012 05:35 PM PDT

Need to light up an area that no ordinary flashlight can handle? That sounds like a job for the Light Ranger Secret Agent Flashlight. I don't know about you, but I never pictured something so versatile being so cute. The bendy body is super flexible, allowing the Light Ranger to wrap around just about anything, [...]

Star Trek Beach Towels

Posted: 25 May 2012 05:04 PM PDT

As illogical as going to a crowded beach may seem, harmful UV rays, crowded parking lots, hairy guys with gold chains, etc., we all know why we do it…Women enjoy showing off new summer bikinis, like Batman and Wonder Woman, and guys enjoy staring at the woman while they do just that. Eventually you’re going [...]

Star Trek Starfleet Command Cufflinks

Posted: 25 May 2012 10:11 AM PDT

When attending formal Starfleet functions it is best to make sure that your uniform is clean, free of wrinkles and that you have your Starfleet insignia on your uniform. It also doesn’t hurt to wear these Star Trek Starfleet Command Cufflinks. Everyone in attendance will notice what a good officer you are and compliment you [...]

Robeez Soft Soles Star Wars Yoda Slippers

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:43 AM PDT

These Robeez Soft Soles Star Wars Yoda Slippers will make a Jedi out of your infants and toddlers. Experience the softer side of the Jedi Master. You will get one Yoda for each foot with gentle suede uppers and outsoles and an elasticized back. They are not only comfy,but cute. And you will be able [...]

Lord of the Rings Keychain: The One Ring

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:39 AM PDT

This Lord Of The Rings Keychain: The One Ring is a super geeky way to keep your keys together. It can be your precious. Just make sure that you don’t become corrupted by the ring. You might end up like Gollum. This may be the simplest keychain ever, since it is a ring, but it [...]

Mini Mummy & Monster Spatula

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:27 AM PDT

I can’t cook a boiled egg, but I know that some people are real monsters in the kitchen. For those people who want to have a monster mash in the kitchen, check out this Mini Mummy & Monster Spatula. It’s perfect for Halloween or whenever you just want to add some fun to your baking. You [...]

Game of Thrones Season 2 Coaster Set

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:24 AM PDT

Fans of the Game of Thrones series will want to set their mugs of meed on these coasters from the Game of Thrones Season 2 Coaster Set. Especially if you have already bought the original Game of Thrones Coasters that we showed you awhile back. You get a set of 4 coasters that display the [...]

CameraTab Tripod & Windshield Mount For iPad

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:09 AM PDT

If you need your iPad on a tripod, or on a windshield, then the CameraTab Tripod & Windshield Mount For iPad is the perfect solution. The tripod is sold seperately, but this Universal Tripod Adapter will allow you to sit your iPad 1, 2, or 3 directly on to your Tripod. That could come in very [...]

Day of the Dead Corkscrew

Posted: 25 May 2012 05:41 AM PDT

The Day of the Dead is an annual Mexican holiday celebrated on November 1st where family and friends gather to remember loved ones that have died. However, you can celebrate it every day with a bottle of wine and this Day of the Dead Corkscrew. Even if you’ve never heard of the Day of the [...]

TechPinas

2012-05-25T17:28:00.001-07:00

TechPinas

And The BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry Curve 9360 Power Pair Goes To...

Posted: 25 May 2012 08:58 AM PDT

After several days of carefully reading your essays (Yes, all 153 of them), I've finally a chosen a winner for our TPGBPPE!

But before that, I'd like to say 'Thank you so much!' to everyone who joined our contest and took time to write down their thoughts. There were a lot of really amazing and heart-warming entries that made realize that TechPinas actually has very smart readers (And that makes me feel extremely proud, really). Believe me, if I can give a prize to all of you, I'll do it -- but of course, I have to choose only one person who will take home the BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry Curve 9360 powerhouse pair.

Now, without further ado, the sole winner our TechPinas Gadget Bonanza BlackBerry Power Pair Edition is...

DJ Fabian

We received a ton of truly incredible entries but I chose DJ because, in his winning essay, he was able to clearly convey not only his purpose in life (and how he daringly went for his 'new' yet clear goal - even while still in school) but also how BlackBerry was able to create actual opportunities for him to make a name for himself in his chosen field. Also, it doesn't hurt that he's a true BlackBerry loyalista (I even checked his Twitter account and I saw that he actually updates his status using a BB - every single day!);

[...] funny thing is, i've lost two blackberries in the past, stolen but i've kept true to the blackberry loyalty. and mind you, i just have the basic 8520 curve right now but it's been doing what it's meant to do without too much flash and unnecessariness. [...]

I really hope he'll be able to use the BlackBerry Power Pair to its full potential in his budding career as professional photographer and videographer.

Believe me, it wasn't an easy decision to make but there can only one winner. I'm not really used to judging contests and it always makes me feel bad not to be able to give something to everyone who joins a competition where I'm a judge but I guess that what future contests and giveaways are for.

TP Friends, allow me to share a few entries that went very close to bagging the grand prize --

1. BlackBerry for the 'slashed' individual
2. On Becoming a Person of Purpose
3. More than just a smartphone
4. I want to keep my BlackBerry
5. Achieving my purpose in life with BlackBerry
6. How BlackBerry can change an IT student's life
7. I'm a BlackBerry mom

I also love the original illustrations on KeywordSpeak and ItsMeChampy's entries. Thumbs up!

Again, thank you so much to all TP Friends who joined this contest. Hopefully we can launch a new TechPinas Gadget Bonanza soonest.

Bmorn V16 : Very Affordable Android 4.0 ICS Ultra-Thin Tablet! Has 7-inch Glass Capacitive Touchscreen, Metal Back Case!

Posted: 25 May 2012 03:19 AM PDT

TechPinas Exclusive!

Most of the Android tablets currently out in the Philippines still run the borderline-dated Android Honeycomb operating system - and not to mention, their price tags are also a bit on the steep side.

Now, if you want to experience the latest version of Android and you're on a tight budget, then you might want to check out this tablet that Martin, my friend from WidgetCity, sent me last week --

Priced at only Php 6,500, Bmorn V16 runs Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich OS with its 1.5 GHz processor and handles multitasking with 512MB of RAM. It flaunts a 7-inch glass capacitive touchscreen and a back case made of anodized aluminum!

Here's how it looks in the flesh --

As you can see, the tablet has a button-less face and even comes with a 0.3 MegaPixel front facing camera which you can also use for video calls.

But - putting its Android ICS OS aside - what I love about Bmorn V16 is how thin it is. Measuring only 8.8 millimeters on its thickest side, this tablet is almost as thin as the far more expensive iPad2. Also, like Apple's slate, it comes with a durable and elegant full metal back case, giving it a totally solid feel when you hold it in your hand.

I mean, how many sub Php 10,000 tablets look as good as this?

Let's turn it on!

Sure, Bmorn V16 doesn't have the ultra-crisp-and-bright display, full range of sensors and dual-core processor of the more expensive Android tablets available in the market; But all things considered - its super pocket-friendly Php 6,500 price tag, Android ICS operating system, support for practically all Android apps out there, gorgeous design and durable construction - Bmorn V16 is a slate that's very hard to ignore.

If you're interested in getting this tablet, feel free give WidgetCity a ring at 0905-400-0733 (Globe), 0939-905-3500 (Smart), or 0922-805-6005 (Sun), and look for Martin Bornilla. Tell him you heard about the tablet via "Mark of TechPinas", who knows you might even get a discount.

Wrapping this up in true TechPinas fashion, allow me to present the complete technical specifications of Bmorn V16, 7-inch Android ICS tablet --

TechPinas Tablet Technical Specs Table (TTabTST)
Name	Bmorn V16
Type	Tablet
Price Category	Entry Level
Dimensions	192 x 121 x 8.8mm
Weight	670 grams
Available Colors	Anodized Metal Back Case, Black bezel options
Operating System	Android v4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich
Display	7-inch, 800 x 480 pixels resolution, TFT Capacitive Touchscreen
Processor	1.5 GHz Boxchip A13
Camera	0.3 MegaPixel front-facing camera, no camera at the back
Video Capture	Front camera: VGA (to be confirmed)
Video and Audio Playback	Video: Support Full HD video decoding (2160, 1080, 720,480P), such as H. 264, H. 263, VC-1, MPEG-1, 2, 4, DIVX-3, 4, 5, 6, XVID, H263, WMV7/8, VP6, AVS, etc. Audio: MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, APE, AAC, AC3, ATRA, DTS, etc.
Ports	3.5 mm audio jack, microUSB v2.0
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth wireless technology 2.1 + EDR
Memory	8GB internal memory, expandable via TF card slot, supports up to 32GB
Sensors	Accelerometer
Battery	Li-Po
Uptime	Around 5-6 hours uptime
Value-Added Features	Ultra-thin form factor, Android 4.0.3 OS, Metal Body
Announcement	May 2012 - Manila
Availability	May 2012 via WidgetCity
Price	Php 6,500

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

2012-05-25T17:03:00.001-07:00

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

Voicepic – Your Pictures Speak a Thousand Words (well 30 anyway)
iTwin – Your Computer, Wherever You Need it.
LG’s “Ultimate Display” OLED TV looks stunning
Nokia delivers live traffic advice and geocoding to Bing platform
Aqua Force Blaster might give you the upper hand
Inflatable Walk On Water Mat

Voicepic – Your Pictures Speak a Thousand Words (well 30 anyway)

Posted: 25 May 2012 11:17 AM PDT

When I send anyone a picture, I always try to send a little caption with it. I know that when it reaches the intended recipient that something is lost in the translation. Its one thing to get a picture that says I love you.. It’s another to actually hear theses words spoken by your loved one, and nothing says ‘cool’ like a picture of you at a rock concert with a little audio snippet of some hot tunes and a cheering crowd slapped on your Facebook page.

Well, Smartphone users can now easily let their pictures speak for themselves with this brand new photo sharing app, Voicepic, which allows you to add a 5 second audio recording to any of your photographs and then share them to Facebook or on the Voicepic website, almost instantly. Voicepics can also be shared via your regular e-mail account, Twitter or other social outlets.

Voicepic brings us a much more multi sensory form of communication, it allows us many unique personalization options and a whole bunch of creative messaging opportunities than we ever had before. Birthday greetings and thinking of you notes will never be the same.

Voicepic is pretty simple to use, and easily lets us create customized Voicepics to be sent to friends or uploaded to social media sites in seconds. Once an image is shot, the user can create a completely customized 5-second voice recording that will play along with the image. Whether it is a comedic soundtrack, a heartfelt message, or a simple birthday message, Voicepic is the picture perfect new way to share your life with friends, family and colleagues.

Voicepic will be available for iPhone users for free, beginning today, right from the iTunes store. Let your pictures be heard.

source

[ Voicepic – Your Pictures Speak a Thousand Words (well 30 anyway) copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

iTwin – Your Computer, Wherever You Need it.

Posted: 25 May 2012 11:05 AM PDT

Imagine that you could carry everything that’s on your computer right in your pocket. What if you could just plug in and access the contents of your entire hard drive? Would it be useful to you to be able to view, edit and upload data to AND from your remote computer? What if it was completely safe, and easy, and you weren’t getting charged any monthly fees?

Then you should check out iTwin, a very cool double-sided thumb drive that splits apart in the middle and works like a double sided cable, (without the cable, of course) just plug one half into one computer and the other half into a different computer (both Internet connected) and Voila! the computers are connected, your files are instantly available.

The iTwin doesn’t actually store the data, it just enables an Internet connection between the 2 computers, so no one can gain access to your information without physically having possession of the 2nd half of your iTwin device, and you always have the option to password protect access.

Your data remains on the primary computer and is not processed through any third party cloud server so everything remains safe and secure, and don’t worry, if you accidentally lose half of your iTwin, you’ll even be able to remotely disable that half, so no one will be stealing your new bestseller, accessing your naughty pictures or checking out your confidential drug trial information.

So use it to share files with a friend or family member, or to bring your business files home, use it for student group projects, business presentations or just simply to work where and when you want to. Also go check out the new iTwin Multi, enabling you to share your info with LOTS of people. The single iTwin is available now, in lime green or gunmetal gray for only 99 dollars at iTwin.com.

Source

[ iTwin – Your Computer, Wherever You Need it. copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

LG’s “Ultimate Display” OLED TV looks stunning

Posted: 25 May 2012 06:30 AM PDT

LG Electronics of South Korea has just ushered in a spanking new era of TV after unveiling the world's largest and slimmest 55-inch OLED TV, where the event took place in Europe at Monaco's world famous Salle des Etoiles. This particular unveiling happened right in front of an audience of 400 dealers, journalists and special guest F1 champion Sebastian Vettel, where LG officials has a mission statement in their career to churn out the most advanced commercial OLED TV in the market. I suppose they have done a pretty good job at it, and LG is also proud to be the first company to deliver these TVs to European consumers sometime in the second half of 2012.

Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG's Home Entertainment Company, said, "In the history of television, there have been very few innovations as impactful as the coming of OLED TV. We say THE ULTIMATE DISPLAY because LG OLED TV is truly above all expectations and beyond everyone's imagination with uncompromising picture quality and beautiful design. This year, we plan to make OLED synonymous with LG."

This 55-inch behemoth will feature WRGB technology that is touted to be the culmination of years of research and development at LG. Incidentally, LG broke new ground by being the first company in the world to deliver the first commercialized 15-inch OLED TV back in 2009. LG's 4 Color Pixel technology which relies on a white sub-pixel is there to achieve a perfect color output. A Color Refiner further enhances the image, leaving you with pictures which are the most vibrant, natural and comfortable to the human eye.

The screen is also said to offer a perfect viewing experience without any form of distortion or loss of contrast, regardless of ambient brightness or viewing angle. OLED TVs are different from LCD or LED displays that require backlights, as OLED TVs generate their own light, hence doing away with the need for any backlighting. Not only that, the use of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) for the exterior enables LG engineers to create a final product with a thickness of only 4mm, while tipping the scales at just 10kg. This is definitely going to cost a bomb, that’s for sure.

Press Release

[ LG’s “Ultimate Display” OLED TV looks stunning copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Nokia delivers live traffic advice and geocoding to Bing platform

Posted: 25 May 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Nokia has certainly come a long way, and while they have jumped into the smartphone game a little bit later than the rest, that does not mean that Nokia is well and truly beaten despite resting on their laurels some years back. No sir, their alignment with Microsoft to deliver the Windows Phone operating system on their smartphones has proven to be quite the masterstroke, as the fluidness of the operating system has certainly won over the hearts and minds of many people. Well, this time around, Nokia’s collaboration with Microsoft continues, with the Finnish smartphone manufacturer delivering live traffic advice as well as geocoding capability to the Bing platform.

Nokia’s partnership with Bing to deliver the best location-based services and apps has yielded with what was recently announced – Bing Maps is now using the Nokia Maps traffic information and geocoding algorithms, where it will take latitude and longitude information while connecting that to a readable address, to boot. The power of Nokia's Where Platform which was outlined last month will see action here, where Nokia is also offering compelling, market-leading functionalities to third parties so that they are able to quickly and easily create their own app experiences using location-based features.

Nokia's Where Platform will also empower Bing Maps to offer similar traffic information which is currently available at Nokia Maps in two dozen countries – namely Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, UK and the US.

Folks living in the above mentioned countries will be able to check out the incidents which might disrupt their journeys, while traffic information in the US which was previously available on Bing Maps will now include side streets. Even more notable is the fact that Bing Maps is now using Nokia Maps geocoding in select countries to deliver better routes and directions for those around the globe.

Press Release

[ Nokia delivers live traffic advice and geocoding to Bing platform copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Aqua Force Blaster might give you the upper hand

Posted: 25 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT

So you are about to get involved in a water balloon fight, and you are quite sure that your opponent is not going to play clean, hiding a Super Soaker behind the bushes to turn the tables on you right before you are about to deal the coup de grace. With the £14.99 Aqua Force Blaster, there is at least a chance of fighting back on even ground, where the Aqua Force Blaster is capable of launching bombs across the length of, well, five bottlenose dolphins. It is ready to fire right out of the box, where it sports a rather hefty 'pull-and-release' action which will let you let loose long-range liquid missiles of up to 50 feet.

Apart from that, each purchase also comes with a vinyl target which allows you to zero in your Aqua Force Blaster, allowing you to be quite the sharpshooter before summer kicks off. Be the envy of your kids’ friends with this puppy as you fire away as though you have got a built-in laser targeting system.

[ Aqua Force Blaster might give you the upper hand copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Inflatable Walk On Water Mat

Posted: 25 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Jesus and Peter walked on water, although the latter only managed a few steps before he had a crisis of faith and starting to function like a true blue mortal. Well, you might not be the Son of God, but you can also invoke supernatural powers the natural way with the $999.95 Inflatable Walk On Water Mat, allowing you to walk, run, and lounge about like a lizard – right there and then in the middle of a pool of water.

The Inflatable Walk On Water Mat is a 90′ sq. float that is capable of holding up to half a dozen adults, as long as their collective weight do not surpass the 1,000 lbs. mark, otherwise it will end up like the Titanic. You can sprint on it, perform cartwheels, and even be a human cannon ball to jump straight into a lake (make sure there are no human eating fish in there first!). One of the reasons as to why it is so durable is the material – the Inflatable Walk On Water Mat is made out of reinforced 500-denier fabric that is fused with layers of 28-oz. PVC, allowing it to withstand even the most vigorous play.

[ Inflatable Walk On Water Mat copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Use Facebook to Throw a Party Without Making Everyone Hate You

2012-05-25T15:02:00.001-07:00

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VentureBeat

2012-05-25T09:15:00.001-07:00

VentureBeat

Ripped from Star Trek: Researchers say lasers could create tiny tractor beams
The DeanBeat: Playstudios launches myVegas social casino games with MGM as a partner
Square Enix’s Mike Fischer says Activision was “crazy” to abandon True Crime: Hong Kong (interview)
Hackers release untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.1.1, works on most iOS devices
First video taken with Google’s Project Glass shows off trampoline skills
How Roambi became one of the hottest business apps for the iPad
So much for open source webOS: HP’s core Enyo team goes to Google
SpaceX Dragon successfully captured by International Space Station
The inside story: How Facebook panicked and botched its IPO
Yahoo! TimeTraveler: a travel app whose time has come
Zebit closes $25M in venture funding for microlending website
Groupon is testing a payments offering to compete with Square and PayPal
DARPA invests $3.5M in TechShop to create pop-up weapons factories
LivingSocial attempts a more hands-on approach to local commerce
App competing with Apple’s AirPlay removed from App Store
Funding daily: Predict the future with tweets
Fitness gadget maker Basis to BodyMedia: Your lawsuit claims are invalid
Gaming art for your Facebook Timeline (Part 5: Social and Mobile)
AOL is an unsuccessful media company that overpays its executive team, activist investor says
Facebook acqui-hires usability experts behind Bolt Peters to bolster design team
Who are the top New York City tech influencers? Get your nominations in now!
Pinterest taps Facebooker Barry Schnitt to lead comms
Nvidia expects a “breakout year” for mobile chips
Google Transparency Report reveals Microsoft has the most copyright removal requests
PayPal partners with Verifone, Equinox to accept mobile payments in-store
Not dead yet, Flickr adds life to its 1.5M groups
Solving the energy storage problem, Liquid Metal Battery Corp raises $15M with support from Bill Gates
Facebook launches stand-alone camera app for iPhone
Nvidia CEO describes strategic importance of cloud graphics
Senator tells critics to stop treating Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin as a ‘patron saint’ for dodging taxes

Ripped from Star Trek: Researchers say lasers could create tiny tractor beams

Posted: 25 May 2012 08:26 AM PDT

Star Trek science, meet the real world.

A group of researchers at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute has possibly figured out a way to take the fictional tractor beam and make it real.

Light’s ability to push objects has been known for some time, but what has evaded researchers so far is a way to create backwards force from a forward-moving beam.

The A*Star team has figured out how to do just that. The key to the discovery is the Bessel beam, a laser with particular distribution of light intensity. Instead of scattering backwards, the light of a Bessel beam can, with small enough particles, actually scatter forward, pulling the particles back towards the observer. So, while the beam of light is moving forward, the particles are moving backwards. Hello, tractor beam.

That’s the theory, anyway. The team says the idea could be used to manipulate smaller objects like biological cells, which don’t need all that much energy to be moved.

Higher level applications like cars or people, on the other hand, are seen as more or less impossible: One, moving something on that scale would would require far too much energy, and two, the ensuing Besssel beam would likely be powerful enough to damage — or, in the case humans, kill — whatever it was moving.

In short, a Bessel beam vacation would not be a fun trip.

Filed under: offBeat, VentureBeat

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

The DeanBeat: Playstudios launches myVegas social casino games with MGM as a partner

Posted: 25 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Social casino game startups are the cliché of 2012. Everybody is either starting a new company in this hot market — on the bet that the U.S. will allow online gambling sites again — or spending a lot of money acquiring casino game startups.

But Playstudios believes it is different because it is a blend of Silicon Valley and Las Vegas. The company was founded by Andrew Pascal (pictured right), a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former casino empire executive. He has rounded up some talent, such as ace casino game designer Nicholas Koenig (pictured left).

Together, they’ve played both sides in the intersection of a market where most new entrants come from either Silicon Valley or Vegas, and they’ve signed up MGM Resorts International, which owns 80 percent of the casino properties on the Las Vegas Strip, as their marketing partner.

“The idea is to capture the fun and excitement of a Las Vegas weekend,” said Pascal in an interview with GamesBeat. “Here’s an interesting fact: More people will play slot machines on Facebook this month than visit Las Vegas this year. The profile of the player is very similar — affluent, middle-aged women, with an above-average education.”

Today, the company is revealing the result of its work. The myVegas app on Facebook is a social gaming destination, where players can come to enjoy games such as Blackjack or slot machines. You can earn virtual currency by playing the games and earn real rewards such as trips to real-world casinos. Then you can build out your own fantasy version of the Las Vegas Strip in a kind of meta-game (pictured at top).

The best thing about the new games is that they’re authentic casino games with high production values. The app is in closed beta testing now and will be available in the summer. In one of the cool games, you can play Bet the Farm, a slot machine with an isometric 3D viewpoint. When you click on the slot machine play button, the wheels roll by in a pseudo 3D look.

In the meta-game, you design your own casinos and then populate the world with your friends. You can click on your friends as they walk down the street and you’ll see their stats or the games they’ve played recently.

Playstudios has raised $12 million in two rounds of funding since early 2011. The company has launched free-to-play casino games, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual currency, which they can trade in for rewards.

Many companies, such as Caesars Entertainment and IGT, are looking at creating gambling empires that stretch from the free-to-play Facebook games to the offshore online gambling sites to the real-world casinos. Caesars bought Playtika. IGT paid $500 million for Double Down Casino, a 70-person development studio that makes casino games for Facebook. Such hybrid companies will become the norm.

But Pascal, who has two decades of experience in games and gambling, believes that the social casino game market is a great business on its own. Roughly 65 million of Facebook’s 900 million users play casino games on the social network.

“We are focused on virtual currency-based social goods gambling,” Pascal said. “A lot of people are very excited about for-cash gambling as an opportunity. It is an enormous prize when it gets sorted out. Everyone will position themselves for it. But having been in that business, I fully appreciate its complexity.”

His team has put a lot of work into polishing the company’s games, such as the slot machine title Lost In Time: Jules Verne (pictured above). In that game, you play a slot machine. But once you hit a certain level, you can play a bonus round where you pick out objects hidden in a scene.

Once you win earnings, you can get loyalty prizes, including a weekend at MGM Grand, a chance to choose the song for the Fountains of Bellagio show, an intimate dinner at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant and tickets to the latest Cirque du Soleil show.

Pascal said that Las Vegas itself was the “very first social game.” It is a widely “shared experience that relies on alternate currencies.” He should know because he was the former president and chief operating officer of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, two of the biggest properties in Vegas.

He worked for casino magnate Steve Wynn when he owned only the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas. Pascal helped open the Mirage hotel in 1989 and watched as it reinvented Las Vegas. Then he left to do the startup thing again in Silicon Valley, where he grew up.

“I felt I was too insulated, wasn’t learning as much,” he said. “I connected with a couple of guys who were enamored with gambling. We felt the content of the industry wasn’t changing. So we reinvented the slot machine.”

The problem in the recent past was that many games in real-world casinos stagnated. The one-armed bandits were pretty boring, but Pascal started a previous company, Silicon Gaming, to attack that problem by using computer and game technology to make casino games more fun. He sold Silicon Gaming to the world slot machine leader, IGT, in 2005.

After he sold that business, Pascal returned to Wynn and opened the Wynn and Encore resorts in Las Vegas. At its peak, he ran a business that had 14,000 employees and $1.4 billion in revenues. But he got the startup bug again and incubated another company, WagerWorks, in Europe, where internet-based online gambling became legal.

He Left WagerWorks in 2010 and started exploring social casino games in the spring of 2011. At that time, he attended his first Game Developers Conference and was struck by how the social game makers talked about their customers as if they were chasing high rollers in Las Vegas.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Pascal said. “I was thinking, ‘Am I in Las Vegas or at the Social Gaming Summit?” He added, “There are just so many interesting parallels.”

At Playstudios, Pascal assembled a team that included Monty Kerr, a casino game veteran and former executive at Hi5. Rather than just build a game, they decided to build a full platform to launch a bunch of games. Playstudios previously operated under the stealth name incuBET. But now it goes by Playstudios and has 30 employees.

Under the marketing partnership with MGM Resorts International, Playstudios gets the exclusive social and mobile gaming rights for big Las Vegas properties, including ARIA, Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, The Mirage, Monte Carlo, New York-New York, Luxor, Excalibur, and Circus Circus.

Bill Hornbuckle, MGM Resorts International’s chief marketing officer, said, "We have actively watched the explosion of the social gaming landscape and evaluated the options for extending our brands through these increasingly important channels. In partnership with Playstudios, we have created a platform that will engage and entertain existing MGM Resorts customers, attract new ones, and allow us to strengthen our brands in a new and relevant fashion."

MGM Resorts International hopes to drive its tens of millions of customers to the social casino games. In turn, those games will feed customers to Las Vegas hotels. It’s a cycle, and Pascal says we are very early in it.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat's fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry's latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your early-bird tickets here.

Filed under: games, social

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Square Enix’s Mike Fischer says Activision was “crazy” to abandon True Crime: Hong Kong (interview)

Posted: 25 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Mike Fischer is the president and chief executive of the U.S. division of Square Enix. The Japanese parent company is the publisher of hit video games such as the Final Fantasy series, but it isn’t satisfied with just a strong position in Japan and Europe. The company is “westernizing” its content much the same way that Japan’s Sega tried to do. But Square Enix, which bought Eidos and has a number of North American game developers, is having an easier time crossing borders and is cherry picking the titles that make the most sense. The Japanese company is still making money (while others are losing money), and Fischer says he can choose the best of the content from Japan and Europe and then republish it in North America. But Fischer is also aware that the video game market is changing, and big publishers have to change with it. Among the big titles coming is Sleeping Dogs, which Square Enix picked up after Activision canceled it (under the previous name True Crime: Hong Kong). Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.

GamesBeat: You have a big line-up coming. How do you view these games in terms of westernizing your content?

Mike Fischer: I think this is a great time to be answering this question. It would have been a lot harder a year ago. We had MindJack and Lord of Arcana (pictured right) to brag about. I think you’re seeing a couple of different trends and a couple of different strategies all coming to fruition at the same time. One of them is obviously the blending of East and West. So you’ve got Kingdom Hearts here for the 3DS right up against Hitman Absolution and Sleeping Dogs (two major upcoming titles).

I’m really lucky to be in charge of the U.S. market and getting the benefit of these big investments made by Square Enix Europe, which used to be Eidos of course, and Square Enix Japan. I’m supplement that by adding games that we’re sourcing and producing here in the U.S. The great thing for me is, because I have the benefit of these massive triple-A blockbusters, I don’t have to try to replicate that. So I can go out and sort of seek lower-risk, smaller-scale intellectual property investments that obviously I hope will eventually, over time, grow into big franchises of their own. You take a look at something like Quantum Conundrum (pictured below). We’re small enough so that we can really give a title like that the attention and love that it deserves. But we’re big enough that we can put the resources behind it so it gets an enormous amount of attention. That’s the kind of added value that I’m looking to bring to the company.

GamesBeat: The range is from a small iPhone game all the way up to a console title. That’s the amount of freedom that you have?

Fischer: That it is. I don’t go in and say, “I want an iPhone game,” or “I want an Android game,” or “I want a downloadable game.” I’m simply looking for great IP investments. And finding the right platform to fit them. And the great thing for me is there are just fewer business model limitations than we’ve ever had in the past.

GamesBeat: What’s the state of progress into those games and those business initiatives?

Fischer: So far so good. Ultimately the consumer’s going to judge, right? The two examples that you see here today are (name withheld) and Quantum Conundrum. And they’re very different. Quantum Conundrum is a downloadable game, it’s from Kim Swift, the creator of Portal, it’s a very whimsical puzzle platformer game. (Name withheld) is a very abstract. I don’t want to give it a blank-meets-blank type of explanation. B, you know, it’s a very unique, fun, quick to play phone game, but it also incorporates some user-generated content opportunities that put it in a class of its own. We’re not looking for one model of success. Our point is that these new platforms allow us to reach audiences that, up until now, have either been very difficult to reach or very uneconomical to reach. We’re always going to need the scale of these big blockbusters like Hitman and Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and Kingdom Hearts, to really give us the scale that we need to make all of these games successful.

GamesBeat: EA has this approach where they seem to want a certain percentage of revenue to come from digital, in a certain time frame. They’re in a big rush. They think all of the industry is going in that direction. Do you guys have that same sense of urgency, that maybe the revenue mix is going to change drastically for the whole industry?

Fischer: To EA’s credit, I think they’ve invested. I can only speculate on their actual motivations. But I think it’s a great way to create a call to action internally for teams. I’m a content guy, not a platform guy. I’m simply seeing these platforms as opportunities to bring content to market that wasn’t possible before, and to monetize audiences that were out of our reach in the past.

I’m not trying to set an arbitrary goal. I think the retail market is still dominant. Hitman, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Kingdom Hearts are all massive retail hits. I don’t think it’s an “or” solution anymore, it’s an “and” solution. I think we could have a big online hit tomorrow and shift a massive proportion of our games online. And then we could have a massive retail hit the quarter after that and the bar swings the other way. That’s kind of like asking yourself, you know, is Warner Bros. or Fox primarily a theatrical company or primarily a home video company? What percentage of their revenue is the right mix? I think they just want a hit movie. I just want a hit game.

GamesBeat: How about on the other trend of titles moving from east to west, or west to east?

Fischer: It’s fascinating for me to look at the difference in approaches that creators take for their games. I think the western developers tend to be built around the paradigm of the independent studio contracted with a big publisher, payments made on a milestone schedule, based upon a massive game development document. You ask a western developer, ‘why is this game going to be great?’ Boom, here’s a 400-page document.

I’m exaggerating for effect. I remember a conversation many years ago where someone asked one of the Japanese developers I was working with, “Why do you think this game is going to be great?” And he said… “Ore no game dakaran da yo!” Because it’s my game! Because I made it! There was a sort of auteur model. ‘I’m going to shut the doors and come out when it’s great.’ I think the ideal scenario is somewhere in between there. Getting it just right is like balancing on a ball. I think it’s like the platforms, I don’t think there’s any one model that’s right for every developer. But what I’m seeing that’s really nice is, some of the best practices from each team getting shared with the others, and some of the creative dialogue that can happen as you have folks that are more exposed to different ways of making games.

GamesBeat: Sleeping Dogs (formerly Activision’s True Crime: Hong Kong) has an interesting history there. How did you redirect that games and put it on its current path?

Fischer: The game was, in a sense, discovered. I’m making air quotes: ‘discovered’ by the folks in Wimbledon. The minute they showed it to us, we really felt like we had found a diamond in the rough. Obviously the game was originally True Crime: Hong Kong from Activision. I can’t speak to why they let that go. I’m not going to speculate on their behalf. All I know is, they’ve gotta be crazy. Because this game is just fantastic. The scale and scope of the game really encompasses all of everything you’d want to do in Hong Kong. The acting, the story, the characters are very deep.

There’s clearly a lot of inspiration from [the movies] The Departed and Infernal Affairs. You play an undercover cop who starts to feel mixed loyalties. But the open world feels like Arkham City, the combat feels as good as a fighting game, the driving is as good as a Need for Speed, and the story is every bit as rich as compelling as a Mass Effect. All in one game. In a sense it reminds me a little bit of Dead Island, which Square Enix America did the sales and distribution for. Nobody had heard of that game coming into E3, and in the U.S. alone it sold over 2 million units. It’s great to have a sleeper.

GamesBeat: Because of the great trailer for Dead Island?

Fischer: The game had to deliver at the end of the day. It offered, I think, role-playing-game-style upgrades, online co-op play, the zombie setting. It’s not a digital masterpiece, but it’s what everybody wanted. It’s great to bring out a Tomb Raider or a Final Fantasy, but the challenge there is, everybody expects it to be so great, right? Just meeting expectations is a challenge. Surpassing them requires masterful work.

The thrill that I love in bringing out a game like Sleeping Dogs is when nobody sees it coming. And then, boom, it’s the surprise of the holiday. The game’s coming out early in the year, so it has time to find its audience. We’re in a world where everything’s about social media, word of mouth. And yet you still see marketing presentations that are built around how big your TV campaign is. And again, it’s not an either/or. You have to have both components.

But we live in a world where word of mouth about a great game like Sleeping Dogs, combined with what I expect will be very good reviews and a strong marketing campaign, coming out early in the year, we’ve got the elements for a success. There’s something wrong when someone can tell you 12 months out what all the great games are going to be the next holiday. That means there’s no surprise, there’s no innovation. So it’s nice to come in here with big franchises like Hitman and Tomb Raider that everyone’s known about, Kingdom Hearts, everyone’s expecting. But also to bring in new stuff like Sleeping Dogs and Quantum that bring a little bit of innovation and hopefully will show our industry that consumers are still hungry for something new.

GamesBeat: I imagine Hitman: Absolution has a lot of buzz already. Something like that may not need that kind of help; it’s already got the ball rolling.

Fischer: You know, we’re a publicly traded company, so no matter how big people’s expectations are, it’s my job to beat it. So all that means is… [laughter] the numbers that I have to deliver are just that much higher. I wish there was a game in my lineup that I could just kick my feet up and let itself. There’s no game that big, and probably never will be.

GamesBeat: Has it seen a smoother development than, say, Sleeping Dogs?

Fischer: Hitman has been in development a long, long time. Some of that’s been smooth; some of that hasn’t been. But the fortunate thing is, we gave this game the time and the resources that it needed to be great. You saw the Glacier engine mentioned at the beginning of the trailer. The crowd dynamics that you saw — where the guy’s just having to literally push his way through people — show all of them reacting individually. That’s not just like walking down a busy street. That’s like being in a really crowded concert type of environment. That type of technology takes time to get right, and we took our time to get it right. The same thing applies to Tomb Raider, right? We just announced the game’s going to be coming out in 2013. We could ship that game now, it’s so good. So imagine how awesome it’s going to be when it hits the market.

GamesBeat: Is there an explanation for that, too? As far as why it needed to go out further?

Fischer: I can look you in the eye and tell you, honest to goodness, we want this to be the best game of the generation. And the time that we’re giving it is going to allow that to happen. Look, you’re going to see the game at E3. Tell me if you think I’m blowing smoke your way. It’s really that good.

GamesBeat: Yeah, I think as long as it doesn’t go to three E3s, right…? [big laughs]

Fischer: I think there is kind of a three-E3 rule. No game has ever been to three E3s and turned out to be a hit. You’ve got a good point there.

GamesBeat: We waited nine years for Diablo III…

Fischer: Yeah, but was it at E3?

GamesBeat: I don’t think so. Not until the last couple years. So yeah, it’s a diverse lineup; it’s a big slate. You guys are one of the only Japanese companies to make some money last year.

Fischer: It’s a hit-driven business. If there was a formula to success, all the companies would be equally successful. I think one of the things that’s helping us out is we do have a broad base of development now. We’re making games in Japan, in North America, and in Europe. That’s helping us develop a consistent line-up that’s not only cross-border,but it’s also going from casual to hardcore. And hopefully now we’ve smoothed out our release cycles so you’re not going to see as many peaks and valleys as maybe you have in the past.

GamesBeat: I assume most of your developers are in Japan, some are in Europe, and the smallest number is in North America?

Fischer: Well, it depends, because again, North America covers the Eidos Montreal studio, which is actually pretty significant. Of course we’re making Sleeping Dogs in Vancouver, but that’s an independent studio, United Front Games. We have the headquarters staff in Wimbledon, we have the IO studio in Copenhagen. I think there are certainly more individual developers in Japan than any other region. The net, east versus west, I can’t say.

All these studios are really sharing resources. Which I think is unique to a company like ours. You see a lot of western companies sharing resources, but we’re actually doing it in Japan now as well. The Hitman trailer you saw, the end at night, that was actually co-produced by our Visual Works studio, that’s famous for doing all the computer-generated imagery work in Final Fantasy. It’s not just about where it’s made. It’s how it’s made.

Filed under: games

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Hackers release untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.1.1, works on most iOS devices

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:45 AM PDT

You just can’t stop those wily jailbreak hackers. Today new software has been released that will fully jailbreak almost any iOS device running the latest iOS update, including the iPhone 4S and new iPad.

Hackers from the Chronic Dev Team have released Greenpis0n Absinthe 2.0, which offers a completely untethered jailbreak — meaning the hack will stick with your device even if you have to reboot it. There have been tethered jailbreaks around for some time, which are more cumbersome since you have to jailbreak every time your iOS device restarts.

Jailbreaking your iPhone allows you to run unauthorized apps and customize your phone in an assortment of ways. It's a direct affront to Apple's heavily locked-down app ecosystem, so the company has made each new hardware and software release more difficult for hackers to jailbreak.

The tool is compatible with just about every iOS device, except for iPad 2 models running Apple’s new 32-nanometer chipset.

As always, tread carefully when jailbreaking your device: backup first, and be vigilant when installing unauthorized apps. Though jailbreaking allows for more flexibility with your iOS device, it also opens you up to all sorts security vulnerabilities.

Via BGR, Jailbreak Untethered

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat

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First video taken with Google’s Project Glass shows off trampoline skills

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:28 AM PDT

Google has debuted the first video taken with its new set of eyewear from its Project Glass project.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, Project Glass' sci-fi-looking glasses allow a person to do many of the same things you do with your smartphone, except without the need of a separate device. The eyewear displays user interfaces for different programs, allows you to snap pictures, and as we said, even record live video (in this case, it’s a bit nausea-inducing).

Over the past week, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and others from the company have been field testing the eyewear and taking pictures to show off what it can do in a real life setting.

We’ve embedded the video below of a Google employee performing flips on a trampoline. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Photo via Google

Filed under: offBeat, VentureBeat

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How Roambi became one of the hottest business apps for the iPad

Posted: 25 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT

If there is one application that personifies how Apple’s mega-popular iPad is transforming the enterprise, it could very well be the intuitive, luscious, and just-plain-cool Roambi, a business intelligence app that brings mundane data to life in unimaginable ways.

Roambi, which has attracted $30 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, lets you show your company’s SAP, Oracle, or Salesforce data on the iPad in bright charts and graphs. Each report is available for online or offline viewing, so you can always bust out your iPad for presentations or routine queries.

And unlike business intelligence players with iPad app support like MicroStrategy, IBM Cognos, or SAP BusinessObjects, Roambi does not tie you down to a single data source. “Roambi is unique because it is designed to aggregate across different data warehouses,” Forrester mobility analyst Ted Schadler told VentureBeat. “They pull it all into a single data dashboard for an executive.”

The Roambi app serves more than 230 large enterprise customers, charging $795 per user per year, and more than 4,000 mid-size customers with its Pro offering, charging $99 per user per year. Its large enterprise customers have purchased support for between a hundred and several thousand employees, meaning the company is bringing in strong revenue.

Roambi comes from San Diego-based development firm MeLLmo. The company’s founders originally picked the odd name to throw off the competition, but they are stuck with it now because all their contracts use the name. They try to make the best of their funny name and in some ways they are affectionate toward it — in the office, the guys are “MeLLMen” and the ladies are “MeLLmettes.”

A bold bet

Roambi stems from the day MeLLmo chief executive Santiago Becerra (left) stood in line to get his hands on the first-generation iPhone in June 2007. A lifelong fan of Apple products, Becerra had the time to stand in line because he had sold a startup eight months prior and was taking a break from work. He deeply identified with the idea of the iPhone and loved the concept of using a flat touchscreen display for interacting with applications and the web.

“I remember that first day of playing with the iPhone and the pre-loaded apps like the stock widget,” Becerra told VentureBeat. “It was truly different because it required no instruction manual. At the time, I asked myself ‘How long before business people will want to see data on this device?’”

Becerra was so excited about the idea of enterprise applications for the iPhone that he called up and pitched a few friends and business colleagues on the idea. A few people shied away from the idea, but he found a solid founding team that believed in it, including Quinton Alsbury, David Becerra, and Jaime Zuluaga.

Alsbury, now MeLLmo’s president of product innovation, loved Becerra’s idea from the start. He wasn’t the lifelong Apple fanboy that Becerra was, but he was excited about the iPhone’s potential.

“It seemed obvious to anyone looking at the phone — there was no way that it would be relegated to just a consumer device,” Alsbury told me. “Apple being a computer company meant that they had everything they needed to make it a computing platform. It seemed obvious that the evolution of the iPhone would make it into a computing device. Motion and visual graphics didn’t exist in this form before.”

So Becerra, Alsbury, and the others talked about the idea until they finally formed MeLLmo as a stealth LLC in January 2008. Their goal was to create a touch-based data visualization app exclusively for the iPhone. But as they were just getting started, the team knew they’d have to overcome a host of obstacles, including convincing people their idea was sound. The biggest problem they had was that no software development kit existed for iPhone apps. The App Store didn’t even exist yet to distribute those apps.

From the outset, the team made two bets: One, that business users would eventually prefer using iPhones over BlackBerrys. And two, Apple would soon offer a distribution model for other applications.

Development and launch

The MeLLmo team started recruiting on the sly that January. Alsbury said the company chose the slogan “Bringing social networking 3.0 to web 2.0″ because, like the company name, it would not hint at what the company was building. Many developers and business folks saw the slogan and contacted the company about job opportunities. When the prospective employees came in, the team revealed they were actually working on a business app for iPhone. Some of the earliest prospects jumped at the idea and still work for the company today.

The most critical early hire for the company was Alex Schaefer, a part-time developer who created the popular app ApolloIM, which ran on jailbroken iPhones. Jailbreaking your iPhone opens the door to installing unapproved applications and using the phone on other carriers. Early in the life of the iPhone, jailbreaking was especially popular because Apple didn’t yet offer the ability to install apps, and people understood that the iPhone could do much more than it was allowed to do. Schaefer’s ability to work around Apple’s limitations was important for MeLLmo, since the team wanted to build an app without an SDK.

“[Schaefer] in himself is an interesting story,” Alsbury said. “He wasn’t even a full-fledged developer. He was a poetry major with two years of computer science. But we needed someone to take some of these early ideas and see what was even possible. We needed someone who could jailbreak and start messing around. When we hired him, we gave him the title of ‘iPro.’”

So about month before Apple released its first iOS SDK on March 6, 2008, MeLLmo was already hard at work figuring out app development and how its data visualization app would function. Becerra describes the earliest months of development as “difficult” because there were no rules and no playbook for creating these apps. There were only a few apps for the iPhone at that point, so designing an interface with touchscreen functionality was tedious.

“It was really a new paradigm,” Becerra said. “To us, the hardest part was to forget about the past and center on a new platform and new ways of thinking.”

The company remained in stealth mode until May 19, 2009. Just before coming out, the team met with bloggers, journalists, and analysts to preview the product, which MeLLmo expected to sell directly to corporations. They were met with lots of skeptical looks and some “well-known bloggers” told then it wouldn’t work.

“They told us we wouldn’t be successful unless we were on BlackBerry,” Alsbury said. “They said ‘No enterprise is going to buy software institutionally for the iPhone.’ They didn’t believe anyone would buy iPhone software.”

When the company finally launched Roambi for iPhone, many businesses complimented the intuitiveness of the design and realized that touch-based data visualization could add some pizzazz to sales calls, presentations, and meetings. Those businesses weren’t exactly lining up to get their hands on Roambi at first, but the response was generally positive. In fact, business users were slowly ditching their BlackBerrys in favor of more powerful and versatile iPhones and starting to find ways to use it for work and play alike.

“We were surprised how fast companies were buying into it at the beginning,” Becerra said.

Page two: How the iPad changed everything and where the company is headed next

Filed under: dev, enterprise, mobile, VentureBeat

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So much for open source webOS: HP’s core Enyo team goes to Google

Posted: 25 May 2012 06:43 AM PDT

The main coders working on HP’s Enyo — the HTML5 application framework first seen in the HP TouchPad — have jumped ship and are headed to Google, the Verge reports.

This puts a huge dent in HP’s plan to open source webOS, which admittedly was weak from the start. HP only announced that it was opening up webOS after it failed to find a suitable buyer. We reported that HP tried to sell its Palm assets for $1.2 billion — the same price it initially paid for them.

Sources tell the Verge that the departing crew wrote “99 percent of the code” for Enyo, and that also includes Matt McNulty, who headed the Enyo team. HP planned to release the first version of Open webOS later this year, but without the Enyo folks I can’t really see that happening. (In a statement to the Verge, HP said everything was on schedule.)

HP announced earlier this week that it’s laying off 27,000 employees — which likely gave the Enyo crew the impetus to move on.

The news doesn’t mean that we’ll start seeing great webOS design influences and features in Android. The Enyo team was instead focused on making it easier for developers to create apps for the platform. It’s still unclear where they’ll end up at Google, but it will likely be either the Android team (though Android apps are built in Java, not HTML5) or Google Chrome (which could use a robust HTMl5 app framework).

Filed under: dev, mobile, VentureBeat

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SpaceX Dragon successfully captured by International Space Station

Posted: 25 May 2012 06:38 AM PDT

The closely watched SpaceX flight, the first private spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station, has been successfully captured by the robotic arm of the ISS.

The capture occurred at 9:56 a.m. ET Friday and was broadcast by NASA on UStream. The mission took about 3 days and 6 hours to complete. Next up will be the ISS installing the capsule so it can access on-board supplies.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off carrying a Dragon capsule full of supplies on Tuesday morning. SpaceX hopes replace now-retired American Space Shuttles with missions to space, and eventually the private company hopes to send humans into space.

The ISS has a robotic arm that reached out and grabbed the SpaceX Dragon capsule. (See photo above.) “We’ve got a Dragon by the tail,” NASA astronaut Don Pettit said after he used the arm to capture the capsule. (You might remember Pettit from this awesome Angry Birds Space video.)

Check out the gallery below to see more photos of the Dragon capsule capture, NASA’s reaction at mission control, and more.

Filed under: VentureBeat

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The inside story: How Facebook panicked and botched its IPO

Posted: 25 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

There's been a ton of coverage about the Facebook IPO disaster, but very little of it looks at the crucial point two weeks ago where things went terribly wrong. It's becoming increasingly clear that Facebook itself messed up at that juncture.

Facebook CFO David Ebersman

The screw-up resulted in a major disappointment in Facebook's stock debut: The stock's 15 percent decline since the IPO last Friday may not in itself be tragic. But worse, lawsuits are flying saying that legal guidelines weren't followed. And there's the sad fact that regular mom-and-pop investors were apparently left with the more losses on average than large institutions who got privileged information. This all was aggravated by a separate annoyance: glitches in the Nasdaq stock market trading process, which caused delays in trade and cancel confirmations, among other things.

However, based on a number of interviews VentureBeat has had with observers and other sources close to the process, it's apparent that Facebook itself may be most to blame for the fallout. Facebook chose to be more furtive in public announcements about its business than it was in private talks with large investors.

The decisive action by Facebook came on May 9, three days into the "roadshow," which is the time when Facebook and its bankers visit major investors in hopes of getting them to buy the IPO stock. On that day, Facebook’s executives, led by chief financial officer David Ebersman, signed off on new language in the company's updated IPO prospectus.

In that May 9 update, Ebersman decided to use vague language when describing how the company’s second quarter was looking. According to the filing, specifically on page 57, Facebook said that it was experiencing the same trend in the second quarter that it had seen in the first quarter, that growth in “daily active users” (DAUs) was increasing more rapidly than the growth in ad impressions, driven by many users’ shift to mobile devices.

The exact wording is here:

Based upon our experience in the second quarter of 2012 to date, the trend we saw in the first quarter of DAUs increasing more rapidly than the increase in number of ads delivered has continued. We believe this trend is driven in part by increased usage of Facebook on mobile devices where we have only recently begun showing an immaterial number of sponsored stories in News Feed, and in part due to certain pages having fewer ads per page as a result of product decisions.

Now Facebook is generally growing quickly — and its ads are growing, even if they are growing more slowly on mobile — and so this update itself didn't send any alarm bells to most investors, and it shouldn't have. After all, Facebook had long warned about this mobile problem, ever since the first IPO prospectus filing on Feb 1, that revenues could be negatively affected by its huge mobile growth, because monetizing mobile hadn't been proven. (Indeed, VentureBeat was the first to report this on the day of the IPO filing.)

Facebook's lawyers may, in the wake of the legal mess it has gotten into, try to argue that the new May 9 language about "DAU's increasing more rapidly than the increase in number of ads delivered" pointed to something more significant than Facebook had released before. But the reality is that this wording was just too vague to be construed by normal people as meaning anything more than what had already been mentioned before. The sad things is, this was such an important update for Facebook, its team must argued about it a hundred times before publishing. So why was it written as though it was purposefully trying to obfuscate? More on that in a sec.

There's been sloppy reporting about the May 9 update, by the way. The WSJ, the leading publication for many bankers, for example on Thursday implied that the May 9 update was the first time Facebook disclosed that the mobile risks "may negatively effect results." But the WSJ is wrong. That wording had been in Facebook's S-1s from the beginning. Take a look for yourself at the original February filing. (See pages 5 , 13, and 46.) The fact is, there is nothing within the S-1 update on May 9 that would give normal investors the sense that there had been a material change about Facebook's revenue prospects.

The more significant point is, on the next day, May 10, Facebook made private statements to a select group of banking analysts, telling them the revenue prospects had changed. This was arguably material information at the time — a big no-no.

Here's what happened on May 10: Facebook got on the phone with a select group of 21 analysts, including analysts of its IPO underwriters, and briefed them on what was really going on behind the S-1 update. Facebook executives guided those analysts through much more explicit material than the S-1 update contained, according to our sources, saying that Facebook now expected the second quarter to be on the "low end of the range" of the financial guidance Facebook had previously given them. VentureBeat has confirmed this wording with someone with direct knowledge of those talks.

Of course, this new information prompted the analysts to take a look at the guidance Facebook had previously given to them, then estimate where the "low end" was, and revise their own forecasts accordingly. They did this beginning on May 10, as disclosed by leaks to Reuters. The banks now forecasted 30.4 percent year-on-year 2012 revenue growth on average, instead of the 36.7 percent growth previously expected. (Compare that to 2011, when Facebook’s revenue grew 87.9 percent year-on-year to $3.71 billion.)

Let’s back up for a second. When Facebook gave its original guidance to analysts in March and April, at the start of the IPO process, it was on firm legal ground in doing so. Indeed, this guidance is a normal part of the process, described in good detail by Henry Blodget, himself a former Wall Street analyst, in his good post about the IPO process Tuesday. He covers a lot of ground that I won’t go over again here.

However, Facebook's subsequent guidance to analysts, made on May 10, "to the low end" of the earlier guidance, was not on firm legal ground, because this was clearly new information not already in the S-1. It was also clearly different than the general guidance made originally to analysts.

The bankers' downgrades beginning May 10 were significant, as we previously reported, and were shared with a limited circle of investors. The analysts also released lower earnings-per-share estimates, as well as lower revenue forecasts for the second quarter. The estimates ranged between 5.4 percent to 7.3 percent lower revenue for the second quarter than previously.

Here’s are the second quarter revenue estimates, as leaked to Reuters:

Morgan Stanley — $1.111 bln (new) from $1.175 bln (old)
Bank of America — $1.100 bln (new) from $1.166 bln (old)
JPMorgan — $1.096 bln (new) from $1.182 bln (old)
Goldman Sachs — $1.125 bln (new) from $ 1.207 bln (old)

Of course, this clearly became material information for investors. Facebook and its bankers, led by Morgan Stanley, were forced to respond to questions from key clients about the changed reports. We see that these key investors, once informed by these roadshows and reports, started to slash the number of shares they intended to buy. One example was Los Angeles-based Capital Research & Management which cut the number of shares it wanted after talking with the company and underwriters, according to the WSJ.

But not every potential investor was privy to these revised reports.

The mood of investors in IPO stock

The question of what constitutes "material" information is an interesting one. The definition of material information is that "which would be likely to affect a stock’s price once it becomes known to the public." SEC guidelines are that a company is not allowed to issue information that is materially different from that already in its S-1 prospectus.

Now we're hearing from sources that Facebook is arguing that guidelines around what constitutes materiality is disputed when it comes to the issue of financial guidance. Facebook could arguably say it didn't know if its new guidance on May 10 was going to end up being material or not. Indeed, the Facebook IPO is unprecedented because this sort of change in guidance has never happened before, at least it has never happened this late in the IPO process. But precisely since that is the case, because Facebook was on shaky unknown ground, because SEC guidelines haven't been tested specific around this particular area, Facebook should have made doubly sure to err on the side of caution.

Indeed, a source at one of the underwriting banks we talked with could not give us a clear reason why Facebook should not have updated the S-1 with firmer trend data.

(For more on this topic, see Bloomberg's reporting on material information. It's good as far as it goes, but it’s missing a clear reference to the fact that Facebook chose a weaker statement in its S-1 update than what it gave to analysts afterward.)

We're seeing all kinds of reporting about how the IPO legal process is a mess, and it's true that IPO guidelines are frustrating. SEC guidelines do not allow analysts to print anything between when an IPO prospectus is filed until 40 days after the IPO. Yet they're allowed to speak verbally to a select few of their clients. The bizarre rules are a result of previous regulation, created a decade ago, after abuses made by investment bankers in written reports during the dot com era.

What Facebook should have done on May 9 is either update the S-1 with clearly-stated quantitative data, go forward with the IPO, and deal with the lower stock price — or else pull the IPO filing altogether and wait for a better quarter so as to get a better stock price.

So why didn't Facebook do either of those two things? Well, that's the $100 billion question. One can only imagine the huge amount of pressure that the company was feeling. Facebook, a web site that prides itself on being able to see real-time data about users, traffic and advertising, clearly knew how the quarter was progressing. The roadshow came halfway through the quarter, and Facebook’s update on May 9 was clearly a sign that it realized it needed to say something about its deteriorating revenue situation.

Now the following is just speculation, but it's possible Facebook felt that if it was too explicit, the wording could torpedo the healthy IPO it had put so much work into (indeed, the CFO had been preparing for the IPO for at least a year).

Facebook bear Sam Hamadeh

This is interpretation taken by Sam Hamadeh, chief executive of PrivCo, a company that issues research about private companies. He says Facebook should have been clearer about the shift to mobile users, and tried to quantify the potential revenue in some way. Instead, he says, Facebook executives — led by Sheryl Sandberg and David Ebersman — initially appeared during the roadshow to blame the first quarter drop mostly on seasonal trends, and he bases this on sources he's talked with who were present during the roadshow. He takes the skeptical view, which is that Facebook executives buckled under the pressure, and decided to try to sweep the seriousness of the mobile ad revenue situation under the rug, at least when it came to the S-1. It’s true that Hamadeh has been consistently bearish on Facebook, almost predictably so, and so it’s important to keep in mind he presents just one view.

Whether or not this is true — that Facebook decided to say the bare minimum because it feared the consequences of doing otherwise — it's the events that followed that made Facebook's fumble on May 9 look so devastating.

That subsequent analyst downgrades — and the realization that mobile problems were bigger than expected — suddenly shed a new light on previous Facebook actions on the mobile front. And this light doesn't make Facebook look so good. Back on April 9, but already in the second quarter, Facebook announced a deal to acquire Instagram for $1 billion, and reports emerged afterward documenting that Zuckerberg had moved to seal the deal in a matter of days. Could this have been driven by panic reaction to internal metrics? The motivation around the Instagram purchase is relevant because it was so important in mobile. Facebook clearly had seen mobile usage growing quickly, and in particular had noticed Instagram's mobile photo-sharing usage becoming a bigger and bigger portion of all stories posted on Facebook. This of course directly tracked the negative mobile trend in revenues, since photos are so hard to monetize with ads.

And then there's the Facebook acquisition of AOL mobile patents that came on April 23 for $550 million. Was this another panicked move, driven by a growing mobile problem, the seriousness of which only Facebook was aware of?

That's just the beginning. There are more questions than answers raised by the timeline released by PrivCo's Hamadeh Tuesday evening on this site (scroll down).

On Wednesday, May 16, two days before the IPO, Facebook chose to increase the IPO share offering by 25 percent. These 83.8 million extra shares came from insiders, including folks like Peter Thiel and Jim Breyer, who are on Facebook's board, and who are almost definitely privy to the company's true financial position. They more than doubled the number of shares they intended to sell. The private equity arm of Goldman Sachs, one of the lead underwriters, doubled the number of shares it offered for sale. Of course, no intent can be drawn from these actions alone. There may be other reasons they chose to release the extra shares. But it looks really bad given that Facebook executives now knew that the most U.S. investors weren't fully privy to Facebook's real, downgraded revenue outlook.

"This stinks to high heaven," says Hamadeh, of the extra share allotment.

Facebook also set the number of shares it planned to offer to normal mom-and-pop investors — known as retail investors — to about 25 percent, much higher than is normal for IPOs. The cap was also raised for individual investors, so that they could now own 5,000 shares, up from 500 shares.

Finally, Facebook CFO Ebersman decided to set the price of the IPO at $38, at the very top of the price range, which itself had already been increased from an earlier range. This, even though Morgan Stanley has since made statements that the $38 price took into account the lower revenue guidance data.

Confused? You should be. The underwriting banks and Facebook have stayed mum on further commentary.

The rest of the story is known: Since trading started Friday, Facebook's shares have fallen hard. They opened at $42, and then fell and have languished in the low $30's. Facebook shares closed at $33 yesterday. Facebook had misjudged demand, and it now has a lot of angry investors. Facebook now has a bunch of investigations and lawsuits on its hands. Investors filed suit Wednesday in Manhattan federal court and in San Mateo county superior court in California, alleging that the company and underwriters failed to properly disclose changes to analysts forecasts made at the underwriting banks. Facebook faces claims that could be at least $1 billion or more.

To add insult to injury, as less-privileged investors complained about their investments going south, it emerged Wednesday that the main underwriting banks made $100 million in trades from the IPO, over and above the $176 million fee they charged for the process.

Facebook declined to comment for this story.

Yes, the legal process around IPOs is incredibly frustrating, and urgently needs to be looked at closely for ways to be reformed. But it's also clear Facebook should have much been more forthcoming about its real financial fundamentals. If it had, it could have avoided this mess.

[Chart image credit: Yahoo; Mood image: Kevin Dooley, Flickr]

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Yahoo! TimeTraveler: a travel app whose time has come

Posted: 24 May 2012 09:18 PM PDT

Question: what would you do with six hours in Amsterdam? Dubai? Barcelona? That is precisely what Yahoo TimeTraveler was created to answer.

A few years ago I stopped for six hours in Amsterdam en route to a conference in Cairo. I took the train from Schipol airport into the city, picked up a ride on a canal boat, dawdled through the ancient streets by the Oude Kerk, and toured the Anne Frank house. But did I see the best of Amsterdam? Hard to say.

Yahoo, which seems to be on a bit of a roll in the past few weeks, releasing “killer” mobile browsers and reinvigorating Flickr groups, released TimeTraveler for iPhone and iPod Touch today. With TimeTraveler, I’d have had a much better chance of seeing the best of Amsterdam that fit in my 6-hour slice.

Using TimeTraveler is easy: input your destination, your starting point, and the time you have available. TimeTraveler will do the rest, finding points of interest, tourist destinations, and historic monuments. It will then map them into an itinerary tailored to your available time and desired route, which can be shared with friends via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Yahoo calls it “timed travel” … hence the app’s name.

Part of the technology behind TimeTraveler is, interestingly, Flickr. Apparently, photos uploaded to Flickr with date, time, and geographical metadata are used in the calculation of what destinations you can expect to visit within a set period of time. As Shouvick Mukherjee, a vice-president for Yahoo India told The Business Standard, Time Traveler “computes through Flickr images which people have uploaded in the past and tells him the destinations he would visit, say in an hour."

Another clever feature is the ability to save your trips in the cloud. Once you publish your trips to Yahoo, they are accessible online as a permanent record of your adventure.

Available cities include London, New York, San Francisco, Bangkok, Rome, Paris, and 23 more. More are undoubtedly on the way. Actual time travel, alas, is not.

Image credit: Dave Highbury/Flickr

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Zebit closes $25M in venture funding for microlending website

Posted: 24 May 2012 08:56 PM PDT

If you're looking to expand your business and/or purchase something you desperately need, but your credit is low, take a look at Zebit. The San Diego-based data platform that supports micro-lending businesses from start to finish, raised $25 million in a series D funding round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures along with Leapfrog Ventures, QED Investors and Crosslink Capital.

Launched in 2011, Zebit's mission is "to help people buy the things they want, when they want them, on terms that best suit their needs." The company helps businesses work with customers with low access to credit and enables them to make purchases using a single, customizable platform by using Adaptive Data Fusion.

"This is a science that has been used traditionally in military and wireless sensor applications – taking big, complex streams of data from multiple sources and transforming them into actionable inferences that are superior to using the data streams individually,” Michael Thiemann, CEO, said in a press release. “We've applied this to Zebit, the first platform that performs underwriting on a per-transaction basis – because each customer transaction is inherently different, involving a unique purchase, unique variables and a distinct point in time — the holy grail of risk management."

Global Analytics Holdings, Inc., a parent company, will use the funding to help Zebit grow its platform. To date, the San Diego company claims to have completed more than a million transactions.

Photo via 401K

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Groupon is testing a payments offering to compete with Square and PayPal

Posted: 24 May 2012 07:46 PM PDT

Groupon is testing out an offering of its own in the increasingly crowded payments space, according to an email I was forwarded by a business that was solicited for the service. (Disclosure: I have various puts against Groupon.)

The pricing is extremely aggressive, with a 1.8% transaction fee and a 15 cent per transaction charge for transactions processed through the terminal. Square charges 2.75% with no per transaction fee. PayPal Here and Verifone Sail charge 2.7%, also with no transaction fee. Groupon is charging 2.3% for AmEx transactions [update: a groupon insider tells me the AmEx pricing is 2.7, not 2.3]. Square and PayPal don’t charge extra, and Sail charges 3.7% for AmEx.

Unlike the other players, Groupon is offering an iPod Touch and card reader to merchants free of charge. (The others provide only the readers for free — that’s Square’s reader pictured above.)

The email hints at a forthcoming point-of-sale system for iPod and iPad and says the terminal is already in use in several places in the Bay Area.

Asked what he could tell me about the offering, Groupon spokesman Paul Taaffe replied, “Nothing.”

Groupon’s offering has the potential to put a lot of pressure on Square and could leave it with the least profitable customers. For customers whose typical transaction exceeds $15, it makes sense to use Groupon’s offering. On a $100 Visa transaction, Groupon would charge $1.95 vs. Square’s $2.75. That’s a 41% premium for Square.

Extremely low dollar transactions, such as the $4.34 I spend to buy an empanada at El Porteno, are money losers for Square because what it charges merchants doesn’t cover its transaction costs. (A crafty merchant looking to minimize fees could also put high dollar transactions on Groupon and run the $5 transactions on Square. That would be good for Groupon and bad for Square.)

Today’s announcement that PayPal will partner with terminal providers to target mid-market and large retailers could also limit Square’s ability to move up the food chain.

In March, Groupon acquired FeeFighters, a comparison shopping service for merchant accounts.

Although I have typically advised merchants to avoid most Groupon products, this pricing is compelling. The quality of the app is something I haven’t been able to assess yet.

It’s unclear what this means for Groupon as a company. It suggests that Groupon is trying a lot of different things. But payments processing is a highly competitive industry, and winning won’t be easy.

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DARPA invests $3.5M in TechShop to create pop-up weapons factories

Posted: 24 May 2012 06:59 PM PDT

A fundamental tenet of the modern maker movement is that everyone wants to build something. Especially the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Today DARPA took a break from funding next-generation weapons systems, advanced hypersonic aircraft, and frickin’ laser beams to put $3.5 million into TechShop, the paradise for “inventors, makers, hackers, tinkerers, artists … and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don’t have the tools, space or skills.” TechShop currently operates 5 locations around the US, giving members access to a vast array of tools, building space, and lessons.

In authentic military tradition, the project has a funky acronym: iFAB. The Instant Foundry Adaptive through Bits partnership between TechShop, DARPA, and the Department of Veteran Affairs is intended to “create a foundry to rapidly design and reconfigure manufacturing capabilities to support the fabrication of a wide array of military vehicles.”

In other words, DARPA wants to create insta-factories for weapons systems and military vehicles. Think a pop-up shop that follows the military through a battle zone: instead of new equipment manufacturing, repairs, and upgrades taking place thousands of miles away, military hardware could be built and serviced near the war zone and returned to battle within days.

“Supporting initiatives that expand the number and diversity of talent contributing to the nation's defense is critical to DARPA's efforts in advanced manufacturing," DARPA director Kaigham Gabriel said in a statement. "The resources made available through this effort enables more people to 'make,'—the DNA of creativity and innovation."

According to BusinessWeek, the funding will enable TechShop to open two new locations in Washington, DC, and Pittsburgh, joining locations already in Menlo Park, Raleigh, San Francisco, San Jose, and Detroit.

The Veteran Affairs also gains from the partnership. TechShop announced that, as part of the partnership, 2000 one-year memberships which typically cost over $1000 each, will be made available to veterans. Jonah Czerwinski, director of the VA's Center for Innovation, said that iFAB supports the VA’s goal of "finding new ways of providing veterans with resources that help them serve an important role in America’s economy."

Photo credit: cell105/Flickr

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LivingSocial attempts a more hands-on approach to local commerce

Posted: 24 May 2012 06:44 PM PDT

In its latest experiment in local commerce, LivingSocial is getting hands on with a new events space in downtown DC. Called 918 F, the space hosts a variety of events including cooking classes, zumba sessions, pop-up restaurants, and painting classes with wine.

When LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy described it to me, I said it sounded like an adult education program.

“It’s a pretty unique experience,” O’Shaughnessy replied, promising something more.

It definitely is. The space is the most luxurious adult community center I’ve seen.

It’s housed in a beautiful building built in 1890 for the National Union Insurance Company. The alley alongside is the one John Wilkes Booth used to escape after assassinating President Lincoln. LivingSocial bought the building last year and completely renovated it. It features a beautiful cage elevator that was once manually operated (but has since been converted to push buttons. The walls are exposed brick and remnants of steel tubing from the original construction are still evident.

The place features multipurpose rooms, a bar, a lounge, a showroom, a restaurant-grade kitchen, and a cooking classroom with cameras that automatically zoom in on what the instructor is doing at the moment.

The front desk resembles that of a luxury hotel. More than the daily deals that the company is known for, the venue exemplifies what I think of when I hear the words “LivingSocial”.

The company has partnered with a variety of local businesses to make it happen. The space has featured pop-up restaurants from DC’s culinary avante garde, including chef Mike Isabella, who tested the concept for Bandolero, a new Mexican restaurant that is scheduled to open today in the district’s Georgetown neighborhood.

O’Shaughnessy sees 918 F as a way for LivingSocial to provide more revenue opportunities for local businesses. Restaurants have high fixed costs for space and can’t easily expand. They also have high marketing costs for testing new concepts. With the flexible space that 918 F provides, restaurants don’t incur the space cost. Using LivingSocial’s mailing list to attract customers, they also don’t have upfront marketing costs.

For LivingSocial, it’s a way to entice people on its mailing list who might not have been interested in discounts. “It’s about introducing the brand to people on the list who haven’t purchased before,” said LivingSocial spokesman Andrew Weinstein.

“It’s not about the discount, it’s about the experiential,” said Robert Hannigan, who oversees 918 F as the general manager. He was previously a general manager at Kimpton Hotels, a boutique hotel chain. Talking to him, it’s clear that he has a passion for hospitality and connection among his guests.

“We’ve seen friendships growing out of these events,” Hannigan said.

As a consumer, I’m a big fan of the space. If I still lived in DC, I would probably go there several times a month. I would love to try their sippin’ and paintin’ class, which combines painting with wine. I’d take my eight-year-old niece to their cooking-with-kids class. I’d probably hang out at the speakeasy. It’s a much classier experience than I had when I took Indian cooking classes at Arlington County’s adult education center, and some place I might consider taking a date. (I only took a tour of the space with Hannigan and Weinstein.)

As an advocate for small businesses, my views are more mixed. I like that 918 F is focused on selling experiences rather than discounts. Competing on price is a fool’s errand, unless you’re Wal-Mart. It’s better and more sustainable if you can offer differentiated experiences that people are willing to pay a premium for.

But I worry that in some ways it can be competitive with the local business community. If I spend time and money at a LivingSocial event, I’m not spending it directly with a small business.

Hannigan said the experience has been additive for some businesses. Restaurateurs would see the same customers dropping by their main dining room after an event at 918 F. After a cheese event, several people followed the cheesemonger across the street to the Cowgirl Creamery and bought cheese.

Some businesses have complained that LivingSocial is using their brand and disintermediating them.

“I blogged before how Yoga studios using living social was a bad idea,” wrote Mike Graglia, a yoga instructor in DC. “Now they seem to be getting into the business directly. This is bad news for Yoga studios. To the 575 people who bought this deal (as of 5 pm the day it came out), please go, there will be great teachers. But you could have spent half as much and gotten 3 intro classes at the actual studio…”

“I think many of his peers would disagree with him on the value of an expandable space to reach new customers,” responded Weinstein. “We are working closely with local artists, instructors, chefs, and other entrepreneurs who want to use our space to reach new fans, introduce their craft, and make money, all at the same time. If you run a small Zumba or yoga studio, you might not be able to handle a couple thousand new clients from a regular daily deal, so we give them an easy and low-cost way to do so.” Weinstein also said the complaint came from opening week, so there were glitches in communications.

But I have the most trouble with 918 F when I put on my investor hat. It may be a great small- or medium-size business, but it doesn’t seem like a venture-scale business. As a technology investor, I wouldn’t want to be putting money into a food and beverage operation. (Technically, the events space is set up as a joint venture.)

I just don’t see it scaling in a meaningful way. As of right now, LivingSocial is running two events a day on weekdays and five to eight events across Saturday and Sunday. Classes draw 25-40 people; pop-up restaurants draw 75-80 people per seating with up to 3 seatings per night, said Weinstein.

As I was walking around DC wearing my newly acquired LivingSocial T-shirt, I encountered two people who stopped me to say they worked at LivingSocial. One was a dishwasher and the other a bartender at 918 F. And I gave Groupon flak for not being a technology company.

You can view more pictures of the venue in the following gallery.

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App competing with Apple’s AirPlay removed from App Store

Posted: 24 May 2012 06:20 PM PDT

Rogue Amoeba, creator of the Airfoil Speakers Touch, an app that lets you send and receive audio from an iPhone to many devices, was removed from Apple’s app store today. The reason? Apple didn’t say.

Airfoil Speakers Touch acted similarly to Apple’s own Airplay feature in iOS 5. The feature lets you stream audio and video from your iPhone or iPad to a high-definition television or speakers using AppleTV — the set top box that accepts the stream. Unlike the Airfoil Speaker Touch, Airplay does not let you receive content from other devices to your phone. It does, however, directly compete with the product, making it safe to assume that’s why Apple didn’t want the app in its store.

Apple contacted the company two days ago with notice that the app was going to be taken down but gave no explanation as to why, according to Rogue Amoeba. The company has filed an appeal with Apple’s App Review Board, and Rogue Amoeba insists that the app was — to the best of its knowledge — compliant with Apple’s developer guidelines.

We have not recently submitted a new version for approval, so this removal was not connected to any pending review caused by an update. Indeed, the removed version (3.0.0) already went through the review process, and was approved back in April. Further, Airfoil Speakers Touch has been repeatedly approved by Apple's review process since its introduction way back in 2009.

Apple has the right to add and remove any apps in the App Store. This means Rogue Amoeba wouldn’t be able to sue Apple or otherwise seek to force its app into the store.

This goes to show that while mobile application developing has become a very lucrative business for the likes of Instagram and FourSquare, it’s still a very young and vulnerable business. An app with too much success that winds up threatening Apple could have its business pulled right from under it.

via The Verge; Amoeba image via Shutterstock

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Funding daily: Predict the future with tweets

Posted: 24 May 2012 06:13 PM PDT

Happy Thursday! Check out the companies raking in funding today. If you want to stay on top of funding news as it happens, subscribe to our Deals Channel RSS feed either by clicking the red RSS icon at the top of this page or by adding the Deals Channel feed link to your favorite reader. And as always, send funding news our way at tips@venturebeat.com.

Huddle raises $24 million to promote collaboration

Huddle, the startup that's bringing simple tools for collaboration to huge companies around the world, has just sealed a sweet deal: $24 million in new venture capital. This is Huddle's third round of institutional funding. Jafco Ventures led the round, with participation from DAG Ventures and existing investors Matrix Partners and Eden Ventures. Read more on VentureBeat: Huddle raises a huge $24M round for unsexy, wildly profitable enterprise software.

Liquid Metal Battery Corporation gets a $15M charge

Liquid Metal Battery Corporation raised $15 million Thursday to store renewable energy. Cleantech investor Khosla Ventures led the round with participation from Total and investor Bill Gates, who returned for this second funding round. Read more on VentureBeat: Solving the energy storage problem, Liquid Metal Battery Corp raises $15M with support from Bill Gates.

Recorded Future looks into its crystal ball, finds $12M

News and social media content aggregator Recorded Future helps predict the future by using data it finds all over the web. It pulls from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and government sites to predict what might happen in, say, Israel in the next 60 days. The company announced today it has raised $12 million, bring its total to $20 million. New investor Balderton Capital led the round, joined by existing investors Google Ventures, Atlas Venture, IA Ventures, and In-Q-Tel. Read more on Boston Business Journal: Recorded Future raises $12M to expand its prediction tech.

Scoutmob finds a $3.25 million deal

Mobile coupon and deals startup Scoutmob has closed a $3.25 million round. AOL Ventures, Capitol Broadcasting, Cox Enterprises, Inc., Ben Lerer of Thrillist, and New Atlantic Ventures were named as investors. Read more on the Scoutmob Tumblr: Scoutmob Continuing to Disrupt Local Mobile Discovery with $3.25 million in Financing and First Data Payments Integration.

Zebit lands $25 million

Big data platform for financial transactions Zebit has raised $25 million in its fourth round of funding. The company helps finance big purchases that you don’t have the cash to buy outright. Mohr Davidow Ventures led the round, joined by Crosslink Capital, Leapfrog Ventures, QED Investors, and a few private investors. Read the press release here: Zebit Lands $25 Million in Venture Funding.

GreenPocket finds 3.5 million euros in its pockets

European smart meter software provider GreenPocket has raised a 3.5 million euro second round of funding. The company develops smart meter and smart home software to improve energy efficiency. Schwetje Digital, Rheinland Venture Capital, KfW Bankengruppe (ERP-Startfonds), the GreenPocket Management, and the NRW.Bank contributed to the round. Read more on the company website.

Crystal ball image via Flickr user Outdated Productions

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Fitness gadget maker Basis to BodyMedia: Your lawsuit claims are invalid

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:04 PM PDT

It’s fitness gadget maker against fitness gadget maker. In February 2012, BodyMedia, maker of the FIT armbands that promote weight loss and health, filed a patent infringement civil action against competing fitness gadget maker Basis. On Monday of this week, three months after the suit was filed in court, BodyMedia served the lawsuit to Basis. Thursday, Basis countered back, telling BodyMedia that its lawsuit claims are invalid.

Basis filed an Answer and Counterclaims with the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, stating that BodyMedia’s claims of patent infringement are invalid.

"We believe these allegations are baseless," said Jef Holove, chief of Basis, in an interview with VentureBeat. "One, we are not infringing [on BodyMedia's patents] and we are haven’t even launched a product yet that would show we have infringed on anything. Second, there is a plethora of prior art for BodyMedia’s patents. From a larger point of view [the lawsuit] appears to be a tactic to hinder our launch."

Holove argues that BodyMedia’s patents are invalid because of prior art for fitness gadgets that promote health and weight loss. Prior art refers to ideas and information that were public before a patent was obtained. The company also says that now that these patents have been brought to light, it intends to prove they were invalid to begin with.

Basis provided some context for why it feels BodyMedia’s lawsuit is inappropriate, and some of the reasons are a bit odd. It says that BodyMedia noticed the positive attention Basis was attracting at CES and asserts that BodyMedia filed the suit just to release a press release that the company had filed a lawsuit.

BodyMedia, which has been around since 1999, holds 17 patents for body sensing technology. In the patent infringement filing from February, BodyMedia contended that Basis violated six patents. One patent is for an armband to be worn on the upper arm that can detect health information with an accelerometer and a heat flux sensor. The other patents named in the filing related to sensors used in a health tracking device.

BodyMedia has a line of fitness armbands, under the name FIT, which track movement, skin temperature, sweat, and heat dissipation to give an overall picture of your health and daily fitness levels. The company recently closed a $12 million funding round.

Basis is in the process of developing a fitness wrist band with an accelerometer to track movement and sensors to track heart rate, temperature, and sweat levels. The company debuted its device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year. It has raised $9 million in funding from Norwest Venture Partners and DCM.

VentureBeat has reached out to BodyMedia for comment and will update the post when we get a response. The full filing is below.

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Gaming art for your Facebook Timeline (Part 5: Social and Mobile)

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:00 PM PDT

Facebook’s Timeline is here to stay. And although not everyone loves this new layout, we can agree that the option to display a big image at the top of your profile is pretty cool — especially if it lets you show off your favorite video games.

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme, that you can use to decorate your Facebook profile:

Sunday: The Modern Era
Monday: Modern-Retro
Tuesday: The Indies
Wednesday: The 8/16-bit Era
Thursday: Social and Mobile (today)
Friday: Arcade
Saturday: Future Games

Today’s batch of covers features 10 addicting games from mobile devices and social networks. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the pictures, then right-click (or ctrl-click for Macs) them and hit “save image as” to save to your computer.

Angry Birds Space

Bejeweled Blitz

Plants vs. Zombies

CityVille

The Sims Social

Fruit Ninja

Hidden Chronicles

Words With Friends

FarmVille

Doodle Jump

Check back tomorrow for more Timeline covers.

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AOL is an unsuccessful media company that overpays its executive team, activist investor says

Posted: 24 May 2012 04:16 PM PDT

Unlike Yahoo, AOL’s activist shareholders won’t be able to boot out the company’s CEO due to false information on a resume.

Instead, Starboard Value LP, which owns 5.3 percent of AOL, decided to create a 96-page presentation outlining all of the missteps the company is currently making in regards to its media business.

Similar to what it has done in the past, Starboard highlights that AOL spent about $668 million on acquisitions since 2009 for the purpose of boosting its display advertising business. These acquisitions include the $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post, which generated about $30 million in revenue with a staff of about a hundred in 2009. HuffPo revenue is currently up, but so are its expenses. Starboard isn’t necessarily calling the Huffington Post a bad investment, but it does accuse AOL of mismanaging the property so that it became woefully unprofitable. (See table below.)

The most damning point in the report relates to AOL’s focus on turning its hyper-local news property Patch into a profitable business. Patch is returning $13 million in revenue this year (a number Starboard is convinced is padded), after AOL spent over $160 million. Based on interviews Starboard commissioned, the majority (70 percent) of advertisers admitted they didn’t renew their ad deals with the service after the first contract ended.

Starboard estimates that AOL’s overall display ad business is losing about $500 million per year and has already lost $1.3 billion cumulatively.

So, what do the activist investors propose should happen to change all of this?

Well, for starters, Starboard wants to replace three directors on AOL’s board so that the board will better represent the interests of shareholders. It also wants to kill Patch immediately. I imagine it would probably consolidate the number of properties AOL currently owns to only those that can be profitable on their own, without the help of pushing ad campaigns from other more successful properties.

One other thunderous slap to the face: Starboard wants to change the compensation of its executive team to mirror that of a media company — not a tech company. This makes perfect sense, especially since AOL recently laid off a large swath of employees in its email and instant messaging communications department. It also sold a very valuable chunk of technology patents to Microsoft. Starboard points out that AOL’s current board is allowing the company to compare itself to the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

You can check out the full hulking 96-page presentation via the SEC. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.

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Facebook acqui-hires usability experts behind Bolt Peters to bolster design team

Posted: 24 May 2012 04:08 PM PDT

Could Facebook improve the experience of its web and mobile applications? Most certainly, and now they’ll have the usability, user experience, and interaction design expertise of Bolt Peters to do just that.

The social network picked up some of the six-person team behind the ten year-old research and design firm in an acqui-hire deal, Bolt Peters announced and Facebook confirmed.

“For more than ten years, Bolt Peters has worked with our clients (plus a robot and clay dinosaurs) to improve the design of their sites, apps, devices, video games, and cars,” head honcho Nate Bolt said in a blog post. “But the time has come for our next adventure — at Facebook.”

Bolt Peters was founded in 2002 and has completed 238 projects, a book, and a real-time research recruiting application called Ethnio, according to its website. The firm’s client list spans automotive, finance, gaming, healthcare, music, and — ding, ding, ding, ding — mobile categories, and includes everyone from Twitter and Zynga to name brands such as Levis, Sony, and Volkswagon.

The Bolt Peters team will be joining Facebook’s design team, headed by director of design Kate Aronowitz. The company has spun out Ethnio into a separately held entity, but will be shutting down all other operations on June 22.

“We’re absolutely thrilled the Bolt Peters team is joining Facebook,” a Facebook spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Facebook’s talent get underscores the newly public company’s commitment to making its products better — especially its mobile apps, which could use a little work and a whole lot of creative ad placements. One of Bolt Peters expressed strengths is in mobile research; the company takes an ethnographic research approach to “uncover how people use mobile interfaces, the ways they adapt to the logistic and technological limitations of those interactions, and how the interfaces perform.”

The social network also recently acquired mobile, social-gifting startup Karma. Expect more strategic buys in the weeks and months ahead. With IPO money lining Facebook’s now deep pockets, we certainly expect the company to pick up the pace on its already aggressive acquisition and talent plays.

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Who are the top New York City tech influencers? Get your nominations in now!

Posted: 24 May 2012 04:00 PM PDT

There’s something special going on in New York City’s vibrant technology scene: startup ideas (and money) are flowing freely, big tech companies are beginning to claim a bigger presence, and the tech community has never been stronger and more supportive.

To help celebrate technology in NYC, we’re looking for the most interesting and influential people helping to shape this scene. We’re taking nominations now and will name the Top Silicon Alley Techie at an event in the city next month.

After living in Brooklyn for the past three years, and seeing the dramatic changes the tech community in NYC has gone through in that short time, it feels like we’re on the cusp of something great. (So much so that we convinced VentureBeat Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall to move out here for several months to drink it all in.) That wouldn’t have been possible without intelligent and disruptive people shaking things up.

How to Nominate

Fill out this form for the person that you’d like to nominate as the “Top Silicon Alley Techie” in 2012.

We’re looking for people — not companies — who’ve helped shape tech scene in the New York City metro area into what it is today. Nominees can be entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists, and just about anyone alive who has made an impact.

Nominate yourself, if you're brazen enough, but make sure you give us a good reason to consider your nomination. Whoever you nominate, please include contact information so we can reach you (and the nominee, if you represent that person).

The deadline to submit nominations is Thursday, June 7, at 5pm Pacific time.

We’ll then invite you to vote on the short list of nominees, but since it’s so easy to game online polls, they won’t be binding. We’ll be factoring your results into our judges’ decision, which will announced at an event in New York City in late June (details are still being worked out).

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Filed under: VentureBeat

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Pinterest taps Facebooker Barry Schnitt to lead comms

Posted: 24 May 2012 03:33 PM PDT

Hot social media service Pinterest has hired Facebook Corporate Communications Director Barry Schnitt to lead communications and public policy, VentureBeat has confirmed. He will start in mid-June.

"Barry brings incredible relevant experience to Pinterest and will be pivotal as we grow our community,” a Pinterest spokesperson told us. “Pinterest has tremendous respect for Facebook and is grateful that Barry can apply his invaluable experience here at Pinterest."

Pinterest recently raised $100 million in new funding at a $1.2 billion valuation. That money appears to be going toward hiring people like Schnitt, and we’re sure many other folks are being looked at as the company expands internationally.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Schnitt has been the director of corporate communications and public policy at Facebook for the past four years. Before that, he worked a senior manager of communications and public affairs at Google for eight years.

Earlier in his career, Schnitt worked as a legislative aide to California State Senator Byron D. Sher, working on transportation, healthcare and education issues. Schnitt has a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Davis.

Hat tip to AllThingsD

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Nvidia expects a “breakout year” for mobile chips

Posted: 24 May 2012 03:12 PM PDT

Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of graphics chip maker Nvidia, said today he expects this year to be a breakout year for his company because years of investments in mobile chips will begin to pay off.

Nvidia’s business will grow thanks to growing acceptance of Tegra 3, a mobile processor that combines Nvidia’s high-end graphics with five computing brains. A leader in PC graphics, Nvidia has reinvented itself in the last five years to become a major player in mobile graphics chips. It competes with huge rivals such as Intel and Qualcomm, and it is holding its own on that front, Huang said.

“It stands to reason that because mobile and cloud computing are new paradigms, new computing paradigms would have to be invented,” Huang said. “There’s a new growth market in mobile.”

So far, Nvidia’s partners have shipped two phones with Tegra 3, including the HTC 1x and the Fujitsu Aero. This year, Nvidia expects that 30 Tegra designs will hit the market this year, compared to 15 last year, said Mike Rayfield (pictured), general manager of the Tegra business. In 2011, the Tegra 2 designs were used in 34 tablets and 67 smartphones. And that has generated a $400 million revenue business to date for Nvidia.

The Tegra 3 chip, which is five times more powerful in computing and three times more powerful in graphics than the

Nvidia has also just received AT&T’s certification for Nvidia’s LTE data modem chip. That means it could be used in phones that access AT&T’s LTE high-speed data network. That could help the company get off the ground in the U.S. market. The modem chips are built by Icera, a startup that Nvidia recently acquired.

Rayfield said that Tegra will be getting into sub-$300 tablets and smartphones. And the company is making progress in China. Rayfield said that five Tegra designs debuted in China last year, and 18 more will debut in China this year. Two carriers embraced Tegra phones in a big way last year, but dozens are expected to do so this year, Rayfield said.

Last week, Nvidia started talking about Kai, a mobile platform that could be the heart of an Android tablets that cost less than $199. And Nvidia has high hopes for Windows RT, the ARM-based software platform that Microsoft will release for tablet computers later this year. Those tablets are expected to give Apple a run for its money, finally.

“Mobility is going to be the most significant part of this new market,” Huang said. “These aren’t PCs. They don’t connect to printers. People don’t worry about that. It’s a different device from a PC.”

Nvidia had a tough time in the past quarter because it couldn’t get enough high-end 28-nanometer wafers from its contract chip manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The demand for chips was there, but Nvidia couldn’t get enough chips out to meet that demand, Huang said.

Nvidia is pushing mobile apps that make use of its chips. The Tegra Zone on Android devices has been downloaded more than 3 million times. Rayfield also showed a cool-looking game dubbed Dark Meadow: The Pact working on a Tegra 3 device. It had high-end 3D graphics and realistic lighting and shadows.

By next year, Nvidia expects to launch two new chips: one code-named Wayne for the high end and another code-named Grey for the low end.

Filed under: mobile

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Google Transparency Report reveals Microsoft has the most copyright removal requests

Posted: 24 May 2012 12:04 PM PDT

Google is rolling out a new section of its Transparency Report today that provides detailed information about copyright infringement removal requests.

“We believe that openness is crucial for the future of the Internet. When something gets in the way of the free flow of information, we believe there should be transparency around what that block might be,” Google stated in a recent blog post announcing the new section of the report.

The company first launched the Transparency Report about two years ago, which primarily focused on the number of URL or content removal requests — as well as requests for personal data of an individual — made by governments across the world.

The new section of the report details the companies and organizations that are asking Google to remove content or de-index a URL from search results on the basis of copyright infringement. In the past month, the report indicates that 1,246,854 URLs have been targeted for removal from over 24,000 domains. The top sites being listed are shady sounding domains, such as Filestube.com, 4shared.com, zippyshare.com, etc.

So, who exactly is requesting these removals? The report indicates that over 1,200 copyright owners have asked for removals (either directly, or from an organization representing them). Here’s he shocking part though.

While companies/organizations like NBCUniversal, Lionsgate, the RIAA, and BPI (the British version of RIAA) are all at the top of the list for copyright infringement URL takedown requests, none of them come close to the top company — Microsoft, with a total of 552,252 requests.

Google also says the number of requests has been increasing rapidly, and that its not unusual for the company to receive more than 250,000 requests each week. That’s more than what copyright owners asked it to remove in all of 2009.

“Fighting online piracy is very important, and we don't want our search results to direct people to materials that violate copyright laws. So we've always responded to copyright removal requests that meet the standards set out in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA),” Google states. “At the same time, we want to be transparent about the process so that users and researchers alike understand what kinds of materials have been removed from our search results and why.”

The company said it will eventually provide information about content removal requests, such as those made through its video site YouTube.

In terms of how Google goes about these copyright infringement requests is pretty reasonable at least on YouTube. Once contacted by a copyright holder, it removes the content in question and contacts the user responsible. That user can then appeal the infringement claim, and if Google hasn’t heard back from the copyright holder after a two weeks, its restored.

With its search results, it’s not as easy, but Google said it’s working hard to better identify the legitimate requests and discard all the others.

Copyright stamp photo via filmfoto /Shutterstock

Filed under: media

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PayPal partners with Verifone, Equinox to accept mobile payments in-store

Posted: 24 May 2012 11:11 AM PDT

At an event at eBay’s headquarters Thursday, online and mobile payment company PayPal announced partnerships with several point of sale system companies to integrate mobile check ins, electronic receipts, and PayPal integrated cash registers.

“In-store payments are a natural extension of what we’ve done. As mobile has become important, retailers have gotten interested in how they can use mobile as a connective tissue the consumer,” said PayPal’s vice president of retail Don Kingsborough in an interview with VentureBeat.

PayPal has cut deals with VeriFone Systems and Equinox Payments to integrate the company’s payment system into cash registers already present in many retail stores. Both company’s point of sale equipment is found in many large- and medium-sized chain stores, along with smaller businesses.

Verifone has entered “a comprehensive licensing, marketing and implementation agreement” with PayPal for its cash registers. Initially, PayPal’s digital wallet will integrate with Verifone systems, as an alternative payment option. Likewise, the deal with Equinox enables customers to pay with PayPal’s mobile app.

The payment company has also partnered with smaller point of sale system companies Vend, Erply, Shopkeep, and Leapset. Small businesses use their POS software to run their business and accept in-store payments. PayPal’s partnership with Vend and others focuses on mobile payments and check-ins. Customers can check into a store using Vend, Erply, Shopkeep, or Leapset cash registers, pay with the PayPal mobile app, and receive email receipts.

PayPal announced partnerships with several retailers, including JCPenneys, Office Depot, and Jamba Juice, to process mobile payments and offer mobile offers, such as coupons.

The news could threaten mobile payment company Square, which offers payments processed with a smartphone but only with Square-enabled cash registers. Right now, the majority of businesses using Square are small and localized. Now that PayPal has partnered with POS companies whose terminals are used in major retailers, it could hamper Square’s potential growth into larger-scale retailers.

Image Sarah Mitroff/VentureBeat

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Not dead yet, Flickr adds life to its 1.5M groups

Posted: 24 May 2012 11:00 AM PDT

Trying to prove that its not dead yet, Yahoo owned-Flickr is releasing yet another batch of updates, but this time with the emphasis on improving its Groups.

Thursday, Groups on Flickr, the site’s community-shared photo pools, have been gifted with the acclaimed “Justified View” (pictured above) for a richer, more impactful photo-browsing experience. The Groups experience also now features a right-hand sidebar for additional photo context, and allows for direct photo uploads. Flickr has even released new Group APIs for third-party app developers.

Just how popular are Flickr Groups? There are more than 1.5 million groups on Flickr with a total of 1.2 billion photos spread across them, and 850,000 photos are added to groups each day, a Flickr spokesperson said.

The most arresting update to Groups is the introduction of the Justified layout, which features group photos in an image-centric, collage-like grid. The view reveals high-resolution images on scroll-over and includes a light-box option for a full-screen view of a selected image. Flickr members were first introduced to the Justified view three months ago when Flickr rolled out a revamped Contacts page.

The new Group sidebar is an interesting addition to the Groups experience and should stimulate conversation for the photo-sharers still active in their Groups. The sidebar, a part of the Justified view, surfaces the most recent discussions happening in a group, and highlights the top group contributors and tags.

Flickr members may also appreciate that they can now finally upload photos simultaneously and directly to their groups when using the new Flickr Uploadr tool. Why Flickr is just now introducing a direct-to-Group photo upload feature, however, boggles the mind.

The past three months have been jammed packed with Flickr feature updates, with development and vision spearheaded by head of product Markus Spiering who continues to promise significant changes to the product and user experience.

So far, Flickr’s feature-by-feature facelift has been as rejuvenating as an eyebrow lift or a chemical peel. Sure, there are some noticeable cosmetic improvements here and there, but the procedures, just as in real life, aren’t fooling anyone. A little nip and tick doesn’t appear to be the solution to bringing the photo sharing community back to the heyday of its youth.

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Solving the energy storage problem, Liquid Metal Battery Corp raises $15M with support from Bill Gates

Posted: 24 May 2012 10:42 AM PDT

Liquid Metal Battery Corporation, which says it found the solution to storing energy from renewable sources, is getting a new charge in funding.

Led by cleantech investor Khosla Ventures, the battery tech company has raised $15 million in a second round of funding. LMBC has also attracted the attention of energy company Total and investor Bill Gates, who returned for this second funding round.

The company is the brainchild of Dr. Donald Sadoway, an MIT professor who developed the battery technology to be low cost and easy to deploy.

“The way things stand today, electricity demand must be in constant balance with electricity supply,” Sadoway said in March during a Technology Entertainment and Design talk titled “The Missing Link to Renewable Energy.”

One big problem with renewable energy sources today is that there’s no good way to store power for when you actually need it (current battery technology hasn’t scaled well for this). LMBC’s liquid battery solves that problem, splitting energy demand from storage and allowing clean energy sources to have a hand in energy generation.

“With a giant battery, we’d be able to address the problem of intermittence that prevents wind and solar from contributing to the grid in the same way that coal and gas and nuclear do today,” Sadoway said.

One of the biggest advantages to the battery is that it can be added to existing systems, eliminating the need for further build outs. This, coupled with its flexibility, means that the system is cheap — a factor that has kept much of energy investment focused on established technologies.

“We need to think about the problem differently. We need to think big. We need to think cheap,” Sadoway said in the TED talk.

Filed under: deals, green, VentureBeat

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Facebook launches stand-alone camera app for iPhone

Posted: 24 May 2012 10:30 AM PDT

Facebook has launched a stand-alone camera application for the iPhone to help people share photos faster and easier on the massive social network, the company announced today.

Although Facebook paid $1 billion to acquire photo-sharing service Instagram, the Facebook Camera app seems focused on bulk uploading your photos from your iPhone to Facebook rather than helping you re-touch and add effects to photos. The new app does let you edit, crop, rotate, and add filters if you so choose. (We think i is a little weird to include filters when that’s Instagram’s big focus.) Besides uploading photos, you can also use the app to browse your friends’ Facebook images.

The app appears to be a response to Google+, which recently released beautiful new photo-centric apps for iPhone and Android. Google+ hasn’t caught on with users for status updates, so it hopes it get people to come for photo-sharing. Facebook isn’t going to just sit back, apparently.

However, the app also has clear ties to Instagram. Facebook Camera was likely in development before Facebook decided to buy Instagram, and it even looks a fair amount like Instagram. Since the Instagram deal has not closed yet, that team did not work on this app, but Facebook was clearly influenced by it. Once the Instagram deal does close, we expect the lines to blur even more.

You can download the new app here.

And you can watch a video outlining the Facebook Camera app below:

Photo credit: Facebook

Filed under: mobile, social

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Nvidia CEO describes strategic importance of cloud graphics

Posted: 24 May 2012 10:09 AM PDT

Nvidia chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang told analysts today just how important cloud graphics will be to the world. The company announced last week that its recently announced Kepler-based graphics chips are capable of cloud graphics. That means they can process graphics for multiple users in a data center and then dispatch the appropriate graphics as needed to the displays of distant remote users.

That allows big new applications for cloud computing in the enterprise. You can, for instance, use your own puny laptop to access huge visual projects such as engineering designs. Your computer will tap the graphics computing power in the cloud to render the images that your laptop could never display in real-time. One graphics processing unit (GPU) in the cloud can supply the graphics for at least four remote users today, compared to just one for prior chips. That makes cloud gaming and enterprise cloud graphics applications far more economical than in the past.

“Now we have a GPU for the cloud, a virtual GPU,” Huang said at Nvidia’s analyst day in Santa Clara, Calif. “What that means is that a whole bunch of users can see one GPU and use it as if it were their own.”

Nvidia has created a lot of software that enables the virtualized GPU, which can take graphics processing commands from a variety of users and process them on the GPU without regard for where those commands are coming from. No longer do the processing tasks have to come from just one computer.

This allows the graphics chip to catch up to the central processing unit, or CPU, which, when combined with hypervisor software originally created by IBM for sharing mainframe computers among many users, can serve many users from a single chip in a data center.

Huang said this cloud GPU will be valuable to the world’s 25 million product designers around the world. These users now buy Quadro-based graphics workstations in the millions each year. Power graphics users then make use of those designs and then share them. Other enterprise workers have to access high-end graphics, but in the enterprise, many of them don’t have beefy computers. Virtualization gets around that problem, so you can run high-end graphics applications on a device as simple as an iPad. Hundreds of millions of enterprise users could benefit from cloud graphics, Huang said.

“That is completely empowering,” Huang said.

The Nvidia technology can handle virtualization quickly. It doesn’t use a software layer, or emulation, because that approach is too slow. The hardware has been tweaked for virtual GPU tasks.

“We wanted to put this in the cloud and for the first time, a GPU needs to be aware that a display may not be directly connected to the GPU,” he said. “It could be anywhere in the world. You just tell the GPU an address, and the bits coming out of the chip are sent to that address” to display the graphics on a distant computer.

Huang demonstrated an iPad running Windows and other demanding PC graphics applications running on the cloud. The iPad was able to show a high-end design program displaying a photorealistic image of a car. A total of 1,536 Kepler cores were accessible to the iPad, so it could handle the computing task easily.

As far games, Nvidia wants to use cloud graphics to make games instantaneously convenient to play as TV shows. This taps a technology dubbed the GeForce Grid. You no longer have to download a big game for hours and have a powerful computer to play it. That’s similar to the vision that OnLive and Gaikai have, and both are partners with Nvidia in cloud graphics.

“This will do the same for video games what TV has done for video,” Huang said. “We think it could expand the market.”

Of course, high-end games that are played remotely could suffer from lag, where the inputs that a gamer makes aren’t immediately translated into actions in the game. So serious gamers are playing online games on PCs, rather than consoles, since the delays on a high-end PC are about 65 milliseconds and they are 166 milliseconds on an online console.

With the GeForce Grid powered by Gaikai, Nvidia can reduce the lag of the cloud graphics games to 161 milliseconds, or essentially just as fast as a game console. That could enable large numbers of casual gamers and non-gamers to play high-end games on relatively simple computing devices, Huang said.

Huang showed a demo of Hawken, an upcoming high-end 3D downloadable game, working in a cloud-based environment.

“For the game developer, we can expand their reach,” he said. “Today, you need to have the right hardware. But we can make it run on any hardware.”

On top of that, cloud-based games are piracy free, Huang said.

[Photo credit: Dean Takahashi]

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Senator tells critics to stop treating Facebook’s Eduardo Saverin as a ‘patron saint’ for dodging taxes

Posted: 24 May 2012 10:02 AM PDT

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hijacked the senate floor today to address critics of his recently proposed Ex-PATRIOT act legislation, which would impose new taxes on people who give up their U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes and bar them from re-entering the country.

Schumer, along with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), introduced the Ex-PATRIOT act (Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy Act) last week after the public had caught wind of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s decision to renounce his citizenship. The move ended up saving Saverin an estimated $100 million.

“When you renounce your citizenship to swell your bank account, you’re un-American,” Schumer said. “What Saverin is doing is free-riding on America, and dodging taxes from an IPO.”

The Senator also called out the Wall Street Journal for labeling him a vocal spokesperson in the “age of envy”, and scalded republican opponents of his legislation, saying “they make Eduardo Saverin into their patron saint.”

Honestly, I don’t think Saverin would argue with being called “un-American,” considering that he didn’t feel compelled to continue being a citizen. And while I agree that having the ultra rich dodge taxes is a bad thing for the country, Schumer’s plan for handling this situation is utterly awful.

Under the proposed bill, expatriates with either a net worth of $2 million or an average income tax liability of at least $148,000 (over the last five years) will be presumed to have renounced their citizenship for tax avoidance purposes. Any person who fits this description does have a chance to appeal to the IRS to prove they aren't just dodging taxes. Anyone who the IRS determines was indeed dodging taxes by renouncing citizenship will be slapped with a new tax on all future investment gains — no matter where he or she resides. The senators said this stipulation would eliminate any tax benefit/financial incentive associated with renouncing one's citizenship. Also, the rate of the new capital gains tax will be 30 percent, which is consistent with the current rate applied on non-resident aliens for dividends and interest earnings.

So to summarize, Schumer wants to tax people who give up their citizenship as if they were still citizens. And if they refuse to pay these taxes, they can’t come back into the country.

I highly doubt this is going to prevent people from giving up their citizenship. I do, however, think the Ex-PATRIOT act (if passed into law) would end up driving investment into Europe and Asia in the long run.

Please feel free to sound off with your own thoughts in the comment section.

Photo via Sen. Schumer/ Flickr

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GeekAlerts: “Maybe You Touched Your Genitals Hand Sanitizer” plus 11 more

2012-05-25T05:11:00.001-07:00

GeekAlerts: “Maybe You Touched Your Genitals Hand Sanitizer” plus 11 more

Maybe You Touched Your Genitals Hand Sanitizer
Geek Pride Day T-Shirts
Zero-Gravity Lounger
Cardboard Unicorn Head
The LomoKino MUBI Edition
Bug Pops
Bloody Knife Spatula
Ghostbusters Logo Cufflink Set
Star Wars LEGO Pens
Aqua Force Crossbow
Cat Silicone Case For Apple iPad 3rd Generation
Eye Glasses Digital Camera

Maybe You Touched Your Genitals Hand Sanitizer

Posted: 25 May 2012 02:22 AM PDT

We’ve already shown you quite a few Humorous Mints that you can use to have fun with friends. Now you have another opportunity to be funny with Maybe You Touched Your Genitals Hand Sanitizer. Next time you sit down for food or drinks with friends you can offer them a squirt of this hand sanitizer, [...]

Geek Pride Day T-Shirts

Posted: 25 May 2012 12:01 AM PDT

For those of you that didn’t know, May 25 is Geek Pride Day…Chosen because it commemorates the release of the first Star Wars film, this is the perfect day to show everyone that you’re a geek and proud of it. And one of the easiest ways to show your pride is with a very cool [...]

Zero-Gravity Lounger

Posted: 24 May 2012 09:19 PM PDT

The sun is out and the swimming pool beckons. All you need is the Zero-Gravity Lounger to complete your mission of laziness and leisure. Made from a rust-resistant steel frame that will withstand rain, snow, and chlorine, the Lounger responds to your body weight and reclines with you, allowing you to kick back a little [...]

Cardboard Unicorn Head

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:26 PM PDT

Not quite the real thing, but still worthy of mounting, this Cardboard Unicorn Head will make a fun addition to any believers room, office, or entertainment area. Made from recycled cardboard, you can spend a few minutes adding personal touches to the design as you build this puzzle….maybe eyes or some color? If you really [...]

The LomoKino MUBI Edition

Posted: 24 May 2012 01:40 PM PDT

GeekAlerts has shown you the cool style and designs of the Lomography Cameras in the past, and just a few days ago we should you the LomoKino 35mm Film Movie Camera. Since we always strive for the latest and greatest here, we figured you would want to take a look at this special edition LomoKino. [...]

Bug Pops

Posted: 24 May 2012 12:22 PM PDT

It will be summer soon so it will be a good time to cool off with some popsicles. Why not make a different kind of popsicle? Something fun and playful. Like these Bug Pops. You get of 6 popsicle molds shaped like bugs, so there’s no need to bug out when the heat gets to [...]

Bloody Knife Spatula

Posted: 24 May 2012 12:15 PM PDT

If you are planning some sort of Dexter themed kitchen or a horror themed restaurant, you’ll want to have this Bloody Knife Spatula in the kitchen. This spatula has a blood splatter print on both sides. The silicone head is scratch resistant and non-stick and is also heat resistant up to 600 °F / 315 °C. [...]

Ghostbusters Logo Cufflink Set

Posted: 24 May 2012 07:59 AM PDT

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? Hopefully someone wearing this Ghostbusters Logo Cufflink Set. That’s how you spot a professional ghostbuster. If you have these, you must be a part of the crew. Just pretend. The ladies will love it. These cute cufflinks will dress up any piece of attire. [...]

Star Wars LEGO Pens

Posted: 24 May 2012 07:33 AM PDT

When you combine LEGO with Star Wars the results are always awesome. Like these Star Wars LEGO Pens. These ballpoint pens write in black ink and you can mix and match the pieces. Several characters are available like Yoda, R2-D2, C-3PO, Darth Vader, Luke and more. These pens also feature a molded grip for writing [...]

Aqua Force Crossbow

Posted: 24 May 2012 07:30 AM PDT

Summer is coming so get out those water balloons and load them up in this Aqua Force Crossbow. Somebody is going to get wet. There is no better way to cool off than with water balloon warfare. This crossbow will fire right out of the box, with 'pull-and-release' action that will launch your projectiles up [...]

Cat Silicone Case For Apple iPad 3rd Generation

Posted: 24 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Those who have cats running around their home will fall in love with this Cat Silicone Case For Apple iPad 3rd Generation. What better way to protect your iPad than with a case with a built in cat. This blue case is compact, lightweight, & stylish. It has openings for the headphone jack, charging opening [...]

Eye Glasses Digital Camera

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:44 AM PDT

What looks to be a silly hip-hop accessory actually turns out to be a surprisingly sophisticated piece of electronic equipment in the shape of geeky eyewear. Introducing the Eye Glasses Digital Camera. At your next hip hop gathering, serve some funky cold medinas and don’t forget to add Hip Hopsicle ice cubes to them. When you wear your [...]

TechPinas

2012-05-24T17:33:00.001-07:00

TechPinas

Kid Cries Because Jessica Sanchez Lost American Idol Crown to Phillip Phillips : Captured on Video, Shared on Youtube!

Posted: 24 May 2012 12:46 AM PDT

Kids always tell it like it is; That's what we love about them.

By now, you should know how American Idol 2012 Finale panned out. Fil-Mexican and Pinoy Pride, Jessica Sanchez, lost the title to WGWG (White Guy With Guitar), Phillip Phillips -- that's despite Jessica's overwhelming social media popularity and Boy Abunda's consistent PR push for the girl, every night - for the last two months, in Bandila.

And while Phillip's fans are rejoicing and Jessica's loyal followers the world over are convincing themselves that runners-up tend to become more successful than AI winners anyway, some just won't let the moment pass by without expressing how they truly feel about the results. Take Laney, for example --

Crying buckets of tears and throwing a tantrum while rolling on her pink Rapunzel bed, Laney - who appears to be a 5-6 year old white girl - tells her mom (who captured everything on video and uploaded the clip on Youtube), "Jessica didn't win! [...] Jessica is my favorite! [...] I don't want to watch [Phillip Phillips]!"

Watch broken-hearted Laney tell it like it is:

So do you agree with Laney? Here's my take on this: Phillip Philipps may have gotten the AI crown but obviously, Jessica Sanchez has long won the hearts of people - regardless of race or nationality - the world over.

Congratulations, Jessica! You've made all Pinoys proud! We're looking forward to welcoming you here in the Philippines soon!

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

2012-05-24T17:04:00.001-07:00

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

Sphero – more fun than Angry Birds?
Fitbit Aria WiFi Smart Scales
Honda Unveils Seated Indoor Transport Vehicle
iFrogz Boost – Now you all Can Hear It!
ConnecteDevice cookoo watch hits Kickstarter
Holographic avatars in New York City’s airports

Sphero – more fun than Angry Birds?

Posted: 24 May 2012 06:30 AM PDT

Have you got enough of flinging a flock of angry birds from their perch to pop some green pigs that seem to have eaten something nasty, hence turning into such a shade? Well, I guess for those who feel that they are sick and tired of such casual games on their iOS or Android powered smartphones can always give the Sphero a go. We first took a gander at the Sphero a couple of years ago, and here we are with the real deal that is ready for purchase – the £99.99 Sphero has been touted to be one of the most keenly anticipated UK releases for this year, debuting at CES last year to rave reviews.

This might seem like a normal ball at first glance, lacking any buttons or interactivity of any kind, but the moment you shake it (and infuse it with kinetic energy), it will start to glow. Place it on the ground and start a free app on your smartphone, where the Sphero will then adhere to your commands sent via the smartphone. Basically, you now have a remote controlled ball robot. Use this to play a game where you try to evade a ball-mad dog or cat, it will definitely be far more fun than Angry Birds.

[ Sphero – more fun than Angry Birds? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Fitbit Aria WiFi Smart Scales

Posted: 24 May 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Man, does everything have to be so hi-tech these days? The ordinary bathroom scale has been turned into something different after being infused with modern day technology. No longer is there an analog dial to let you know how many pounds you have put on over the past couple of months, but rather, the £99.99 Fitbit Aria WiFi Smart Scales will feature a digital display, meausring your exact weight. While doing so, it will also send a small (and obviously harmless) electrical pulse through your body, where doing so will allow it to track your body/fat ratio. When you merge this with the Fitbit's current exercise, sleep and diet tracking process, there should be no excuse whatsoever to not adhering to your fitness program.

The elegant looking 'floating' glass surface might seem brittle at first glance, but rest assured, it is solid enough to handle even those massive WWE wrestlers. A quartet of load-cells are incorporated for precise weight measurement and ITO electrodes for bioimpedance analysis, which basically measures your body fat ratio in plain English. All information gathered will be automatically uploaded to the Fitbit website over a Wi-Fi connection for your future reference.

[ Fitbit Aria WiFi Smart Scales copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Honda Unveils Seated Indoor Transport Vehicle

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:44 AM PDT

You will all notice a pattern developing here. I just don’t care for exercise, I always drive by joggers, speed walkers, and bicyclists on the road and think to myself, where the heck are they going? In fact, I’m only up for hiking somewhere, if I’m going to see something pretty awesome, that I can’t drive to or fly over. Heck, I wish I had a little Segway I could tool around the house in…

Wait! Honda just came out with The UNI-CUB, an all-electric, self-balancing vehicle much like a small Segway, that utilizes a saddle instead of standing. The UNI-CUB cruises at about three miles an hour, for about 3 miles, and it can fold up for easy storage when not in use.

This new personal mobility device is guided by weight shifting and an odd little wheel that protrudes out the back. It was designed to be used to get around the inside of large buildings like airports and museums and it is pretty much based on Honda's other personal transport device, the U3-X, which was unveiled three years ago.

This small, saddle-style transport vehicle makes it easy for any rider to control speed, move in any direction, turn and stop, all by shifting their weight. Because of the enhanced maneuverability and it’s minimal width, riders can quickly and easily make their way around tight corners and zip around objects and other people.

So if this small footprint, handsfree transportation method seems like something you could use, please visit Honda.com for more information, to sign up for product updates or to see additional photos and video. Do these things come with a cup holder?

[ Honda Unveils Seated Indoor Transport Vehicle copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

iFrogz Boost – Now you all Can Hear It!

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:40 AM PDT

Sure were all in love with our Smartphones. I really can’t get to far away from mine without feeling moderate pangs of panic. Is the Smartphone perfect? Does it perform they way we would like in all situations? No, as with any relationship you take the good with the bad, and if you’re lucky, you find some nifty gadgets that help you compensate, like this next item.

Check out the iFrogz Boost Near-Field Audio Speaker, designed to pick up where your iDevice leaves off this handy little gizmo boosts the sound of almost any media device, iPhone or Android, and all without pesky wires, pairings or synching. Just put nearly any smartphone or digital media device on top of the Boost (with the external speakers playing) and your new Boost will magically amplify the sound.

No, its not a hidden speaker and it is not a pint sized megaphone, the Boost uses a patent pending technology that they’re calling NearFA, which works by syncing with the audio signal and then running it through the Boost’s high quality speakers, letting everyone hear your music, the way it was meant to be heard.

The iFrogz Boost will give you up to 15 hours of super portable play time (and 6 months of standby)when you use 3 AA batteries or it can be powered indefinitely by a Micro USB cord (sold separately). So why deprive your friends and neighbors of your awesome tunes by using earbuds? Get yourself a Boost for under 40 bucks from our friends at ThinkGeek.com

[ iFrogz Boost – Now you all Can Hear It! copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

ConnecteDevice cookoo watch hits Kickstarter

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT

The next time you wear your watch, you might want to take a closer look at it. Just how does your timepiece affect your everyday life? Apart from it telling you the right time when you need it at a glance, are there moments when you wished that it could have done more – much, much more? I believe the answer comes in the affirmative, and for those who feel that they want something different with their timepiece, here is the ConnecteDevice cookoo watch that has arrived over at Kickstarter as a crowdfunding project.

Just what does the ConnecteDevice cookoo watch do? Well, it should help you live out the Dick Tracy lifestyle, albeit you must admit that talking to a watch seems rather silly when you think about it. The ConnecteDevice cookoo watch basically functions primarily as a timepiece, while it also does the work of reducing the everyday hassles of a connected life by letting you view all the important notifications that your smartphone has received on the watch’s face itself at but a glance. No longer can you make the excuse of missing that call, email or text message, since all incoming notifications can be set to appear on the cookoo’s face, and that too, accompanied by a vibration or audio alert.

Just how does the ConnecteDevice cookoo watch connect to your smartphone? The answer is simple – it does so via Bluetooth, and with this Bluetooth wireless technology, you are able to know what is happening on your smartphone in real time, never mind that the handset is out of sight. After all, you might not be able to have your iOS or Android powered smartphone on hand at all times, so this is where the cookoo watch comes in handy, showing you the relevant information at a glance. It will play nice with the latest Bluetooth SMART READY devices such as the iPhone 4S, new iPad, HTC One X, and Samsung Galaxy S3, amongst numerous upcoming models.

You are able to configure the cookoo watch's COMMAND button according to your preferences thanks to the Connected App, letting you find your phone, check-in on apps like Facebook, tag your location on the Connected App's map, or take a group picture remotely, now how about that?

Expect the cookoo watch to come in a range of effable shades such as black on black, brushed stainless on black, blue on black, white on black, and green on black (special Kickstarter edition). The normal model will retail for $99.95, while blue and white color editions will cost $129.95.

Press Release

[ ConnecteDevice cookoo watch hits Kickstarter copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Holographic avatars in New York City’s airports

Posted: 24 May 2012 05:00 AM PDT

We have been living in the digital age for the longest time already (at least it feels like it), so it would be no surprise to see robots help around the house, in addition to virtual assistants springing up and offering their assistance to whoever needs them. The bustling metropolis known as New York City will see its three main airports receive virtual assistants that will help direct travelers to wherever they are. After all, this is a melting potpourri of people from all walks of life and countries imaginable, so it can get pretty tiring entertaining requests throughout the entire day. Why not let a digital assistant get the job done, who will not complain about the long working hours as well as standing up for the entire day?

This unique virtual assistant is able to answer travelers’ questions just about anything and everything concerning travel – ranging from luggage and gate assignments, to security and arrivals. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have proceeded with the installation of these virtual babes that are projected on a plexiglass cutout, and they will answer your questions ala Siri. Hopefully it can recognize the numerous accents that are spoken by tourists and those from outside of the city alike!

The cost does get prohibitive, however, where renting these will cost you $180,000 for 6 months’ “work”! Perhaps hiring humans will still be cheaper. What do you think of robots taking over the world in helping us be more efficient? Will there be a robotic revolution, where they become self-aware by sudden one of these days (and in retrospect, we would see that the danger signs are there all along), and start bossing us around? I do not think that a robotic apocalypse will happen, but having these digital avatars help lost tourists and passengers out at massive airports is definitely a good thing – at least they do not lose their cool and have a perpetual smile on their face, but the downside would be them being unable to answer any other questions unless if was programmed into them.

Source

[ Holographic avatars in New York City’s airports copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Meth Labs and Dead Dogs: How the Founder of McAfee Antivirus Went on the Run in Belize

2012-05-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

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Memorial Day Savings Save Big on Your Car Rental This Weekend

2012-05-24T12:17:00.001-07:00

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Winoptions.com - Options Trading Simplified

2012-05-24T10:21:00.001-07:00

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