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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

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INTRO Wants To Be The LinkedIn Of The Ambient Location Apps

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 08:49 AM PST

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Just when you thought this space couldn’t get any more saturated, yet another ambient location app throws its hat into the ring as SXSW prepares to kick off. Introducing INTRO. But wait, before you groan “enough already!“, you should know that INTRO at least has a unique take on the location-based social introductions market. Unlike the majority of this year’s crop of location-based networking apps, INTRO’s angle is business introductions. Built on top of LinkedIn, the app lets you specify who you’re looking to meet by both industry and profession, then enables you to make that connection.

The app shares a lot in common with others in this newly-hot space, but offers a unique selection of features which the company hopes will give it life beyond the social blowout that is SXSW.

“SXSW is a great place for us to launch, but the social side of things always gets the biggest hype there,” explains INTRO co-founder Anthony Erwin, “but while we’re incredibly useful for events and conferences – and we’ll be great at SXSW – we’re more interested in promoting the side of us that’s really useful for startups, which is to specify exactly who you’re looking for.”

Like competitors Highlight and Glancee, INTRO runs in the background, alerting you to people nearby who you may want to meet. But unlike most of the competition, INTRO requires that you sign into the app using your LinkedIn account. The entire experience here is built on LinkedIn – the app uses your LinkedIn profile data to determine what industry you’re in, and suggest possible matches nearby.

However, once signed up, you can also connect your social networking accounts from Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, so you’re not limited to seeing only those who are on INTRO’s network. In this way, the app is like Sonar or Banjo, tracking check-ins and geo-tagged tweets to see who’s nearby. These are included in a separate section of the app.

To get started with INTRO, you first configure a user profile which allows you to facilitate business introductions. This makes the app more of a competitor to something like the business-focused Mingle, for example. But Mingle lacks the “social proof” provided by INTRO – that is, INTRO tells you how many connections/friends you have in common on social networks, which helps when you’re trying to reach out to people you don’t know.

In your profile, you specify your job title, as well as the titles of others you want to meet. This is all done using a smart tagging system – no typing needed. (Hooray!) On your profile, where it reads “I am in the _______ scene and work as a _________” you can tap on the fields to switch industries (e.g. “Tech,” “Media,” “Marketing/PR, etc.”) and title (e.g. “Journalist/Blogger,” “Director/Founder,” “Architect,” etc.)

You then do the same for the “Looking to Meet” section below, optionally specifying the industry and/or the job title you’re in search of. When INTRO finds possible connections, you can view all their data, including name, bio, distance, tweets, what they have in common with you and who you both know.

INTRO also has a cool “teleport” feature that lets you virtually travel to any place you want in order to network. So if you can’t actually attend SXSW, you can still reach out to those who are there. This feature is free if you invite 3 friends to INTRO, but will be a premium offering in the future.

Because the app is meant for business, not dating or social networking, there’s a layer of privacy to the experience, too.

“Privacy is actually a unique feature, which seems completely nuts to me,” Erwin laughs. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.”

You can reach out to others using INTRO, but unless they accept your invite to connect, you can’t message them in the app, he explains.

Lastly – and perhaps most importantly – INTRO uses proprietary server-side technology that aims to increase the battery life of location-based apps. While the details are being guarded, Erwin’s explanation of how the app knows when to smartly shut off the phone’s GPS, for example, sounds a lot like what the social tracker Glassmap was up to.

The company, co-founded by Anthony Erwin and Mike Small, is the newest member of Dogpatch Labs in NYC. Both founders have previous entrepreneurial experience, specifically with dating service StreetSpark, and have worked with location technologies for the past two years. The London- and N.Y.-based team, which also includes three developers, came together five months ago to create INTRO.

INTRO is currently bootstrapping, but is planning on raising seed funding soon.

The app is available on the iPhone here, and the Android version will launch in about a month, with Windows Phone to follow.

Samsung Intros New Smart Touch Remote And Keyboard Alongside ES8000 LED Smart TV

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 08:27 AM PST

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Samsung revealed back at CES that it had some awesome things in store for its Smart TVs. The new models would virtually be able to “see, hear, and do” whatever you asked them to thanks to voice recognition and a front-facing camera. And today at Samsung’s media event in NYC, things get even smarter.

But the big question today is whether or not Samsung wants to dump the remote control, and the answer is that they won’t. The Smart Touch remote uses touch controls on an edge-to-edge touch surface that comprises the remote itself. The remote also comes with a built-in mic to let you talk into it should swiping your finger up or down become too tedious.

Samsung is also announcing the universal Bluetooth keyboard, which will let you interact with the new Smart TVs in a more internet-centric way, rather than having a focus on media consumption.

But Samsung is also giving us a universal remote. No, not a little box with a billion buttons or a touchscreen. The remote comes by way of the software itself and Samsung’s new TVs, including the dual-core processor toting ES8000 LED TV, which will turn virtually any Samsung device and/or yourself into an input method.

Joe Stinziano, Senior VP of Samsung Electronics took the stage, to announce the ES8000 with Smart Interaction (a combination of voice control, facial recognition, and gesture controls). It has that thin bezel and a U-shaped stand, just as we heard it would back at CES.

The camera on the ES8000 LED lets you swipe through apps with your hand, and all you have to do is close your hand to click. The camera also has a built-in microphone, so you can change the channel and perform other commands without even lifting a hand. That means you could be Skyping from the couch on a big screen. It’ll also come equipped with a Bluetooth IR Blaster.

The ES8000LED also comes with Samsung’s new Evolution Kit, which will allow users to update the software platform and other goodies without having to upgrade their hardware.

Evolution Kits will come to market in 2013.



LG’s Hefty Optimus Vu Released In Korea, World Tour To Follow?

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 08:08 AM PST

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Remember LG's squarish, Gingerbread-powered Optimus Vu smartphone? The Korean company's new handful debuted at this year's Mobile World Congress, and thanks to its… ahem… unique industrial design, it turned its share of heads on the show floor.

But will the ability to cause people to do double-takes translate into real sales? We should have the answer soon, as LG has announced that the Optimus Vu has gone on sale in its native South Korea.

The Optimus Vu has garnered more than a few comparisons to the Galaxy Note, but it’s definitely a peculiar take on the concept that Samsung has been running with. Most notably, the Optimus Vu features a 5-inch IPS display with a 4:3 aspect ratio, which accounts for the device’s boxy frame. A quick peek inside the device reveals a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, all of which is housed in a 8.5mm-thick frame.

There's no word yet on whether or not the Optimus Vu will embark on the same sort of world tour that its Samsung contemporary is currently enjoying, but my gut says LG will eventually rebrand the thing and push it into other markets. It's not like there isn't a precedent for a device like this — Samsung has sold over 2 million Galaxy Notes globally since it launched in October of last year. Not too shabby for a device that tech critics and pundits have generally come down hard on, though more than a few consumers seem to have taken a shine to the thing.

Will the Optimus Vu be able to replicate that level of success? LG certainly hopes so — they've poured gobs of money into their once-flagging handset division, and is in dire need of a real hit. With the hybrid phone/tablet market still in its infancy, the Optimus Vu may give LG a much-needed kick in the pants, though its relatively dumb stylus may hamper people’s enthusiasm.



Quattro Co-Founder Launches SessionM To Gamify Mobile Apps

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 07:00 AM PST

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Lars Albright, co-founder of Quattro Wireless, announced his new company SessionM nearly a year ago. Now he’s ready to talk about what it actually does.

Quattro, of course, was acquired by Apple, which used the mobile ad network as the foundation for its iAd program. Albright, who led business development for iAd and is now SessionM’s CEO, describes the startup as an attempt to tackle one of the biggest problems he saw in the mobile industry — engagement and retention. He says that mobile consumers now have “so many choices, so many different options to choose from,” that can be hard for any one app to hold their attention. SessionM’s solution? Game mechanics and rewards.

Specifically, SessionM customers can create different achievements, which are then unlocked by users as they visit an app and perform specific activities. Those achievements confer status within an app’s community, but they’re also worth mPoints, which can be redeemed for gift cards, discounts and other rewards. Initial publisher partners include Viacom Media Digital Networks, The Weather Channel, Demand Media, Fox Sports, and Glam Media.

SessionM works as an HTML5 layer on top of an app, so publishers don’t need to change their designs. Albright says the goal was to make it “lightweight” and customizable for publishers. The publishers decide what kind of activity they want to reward, and they can even integrate it with other mobile platforms like gaming social network OpenFeint.

Albright says he also wants to create a compelling environment for advertisers, offering them units like video ads and branded mini-games. Honda, Tyson Foods, and Volvo have all signed on as advertisers.

That sounds good for publishers and advertisers, but mobile consumers might be less thrilled to find that an extra layer of interaction and ads has been introduced to their favorite apps. Albright says that the initial response has been positive, with high engagement rates. If you don’t like it, you can opt-out, and there are even automatic opt-out capabilities for users who don’t engage with the SessionM features after a certain number of times.

SessionM is backed by Highland Capital Partners (which also invested in Quattro) and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (where it’s part of the iFund).

Mobile App Marketplace Verious Announces New Platform, Partnerships & Developer Network

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:46 AM PST

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Mobile component marketplace (and Disrupt finalist) Verious is announcing the launch of its App Services platform and Mobile Developer Network today, as well as a number of new partnerships. With the new platform, the company is introducing several pre-built software modules created with APIs from its new partners, which can be used by app developers in their mobile applications.

This platform includes components from partners like CityGrid Media, The Sports Network and Weather Decision Technologies, whose data has been included in the software components.

According to Verious CEO Anil Pereira, the moves represent Verious’ evolution into supporting enterprises and service providers targeting mobile as a growth area.

“After our launch out of beta, we received a ton of interest from larger companies–everyone is trying to crack the mobile opportunity,” Pereira explains. “So we started to focus on ‘supply’ from larger companies while still keeping the ‘demand’ and distribution side of the equation focused on the broader universe of mobile developers (the independent ‘app store’ developers as well as enterprise developers at larger companies). Add to this the millions of web developers that are going mobile and you have a pretty big demand side,” he says.

The first new components being introduced today include Local Search and Branded Store Locators, both built using CityGrid’s APIs, Sports News (from The Sports Network), and Weather Conditions and Forecasts (from Weather Decision Technologies).

Like mobile backend services, the idea in providing these modules is to help developers speed time to market by providing bits of commonly-used software code, so they don’t have to write their own.

For developers attempting to build cross-platform applications, time saved is maybe one of the biggest benefits in using pre-built code. Had they wanted to build similar modules themselves, Pereira explains, a lot more work would be involved:

“A developer would first need to understand the schema, figure out how to parse a feed, then write code to handle it, integrate it into an app, display it appropriately, etc. And for each mobile platform, they would need to create separate libraries (Objective-C for iOS, Java for Android, etc.),” he says. “Each Rich API component represents thousands of lines of code, months of development effort in some cases, plus putting together the business’ side of things.”

All of the modules are being made available to developers as free trials, which can later be licensed either on an annual or lifetime basis, if the developer chooses.

The announcement coincides with Verious’ other big news: the arrival of its Mobile Developer Network. Launched in partnership with iStockPhoto, iPhoneDevSDK.com, Conference Hound, Wireless Industry Partnership Connector and others in the mobile community space, the network allows app component sellers who list their software on Verious to target a larger audience through a syndicated network of websites, forums, as well as through relationships with direct e-marketers and conference organizers.

This network provides developers selling on Verious the opportunity to reach a larger audience than they would if only relying on website visitors to Verious’ marketplace. The agreement allows Verious to market its components, SDKs and other listings on the partners’ sites, and also includes co-marketing agreements where it can feature listings, promote sellers in e-newsletters, etc.

The company tells us that the combined reach of the network is over 1 million mobile developers at launch, including 500,000 combined in e-newsletters. These are outlets that focus on iOS, Android, and HTML5, Pereria says, and the company expects to reach 3 million developers by the end of Q2.

All the new features are rolling out starting today, including an updated homepage which now houses over 30,000 app components.

More Guests At The Social/Enterprise Party: IBM, Escorted By Harmon.ie

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:28 AM PST

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IBM may not be the only one among B2B companies offering more social features to its clients, but it is definitely trying to make sure it stays in game: today it announced that it would extend the social media features it offers through IBM Connections — roughly, the company's enterprise equivalent of a social network for work colleagues and contacts that has been around since 2007 — to include integration with Microsoft Outlook email, courtesy of a partnership with Israel-based enterprise startup harmon.ie.

The new service will see IBM Connections appear as a sidebar for those who use Outlook. That will give people the ability to do things like access SharePoint documents, see who is online and message them while still remaining in the email application.

(And to draw a line between what IBM is doing in enterprise with what's happening in the consumer market, this is somewhat equivalent to Facebook offering a desktop messaging app to use when you're not directly on its site.)

IBM says the new feature is being offered as an add-on (not automatically) to all businesses already using IBM Connections, with some of the current customers including TD Bank, Cemex, Electrolux and BASF.

The move is a mark of how IBM is trying to draw in users of third-party software to use more of its new social networking features — a newish area of business for the company, but one that it would like to see grow rather than get cannibalized by smaller and faster-moving startups (such as, ironically, harmon.ie itself):

"Just because a company chooses to use another email platform does not mean they should miss out on becoming a social business," said Jeffrey Schick, VP of social software for IBM.

Email use among consumers has declined as a result of the rise of Facebook and Twitter, but in the workplace, it remains the primary mode of communication: more than 80 percent of business users ranked email as the most important "collaboration tool" in a recent survey from Forrester Research.

That makes it an important service to loop into IBM's Connections service to encourage adoption: "To have a truly social strategy you have to be inclusive of all enterprise users," said Yaacov Cohen, CEO of harmon.ie. "Email is the lowest common denominator."

Harmon.ie and IBM would not say how many users are on the IBM Connections network, but on its own the Israeli-based startup has already picked up one million users of its social email product: 500,000 who use a pared-down free version of the software and another 500,000 who pay for a premium edition.

[Image: Ladybugbkt on Flickr]

Social Networks, How Do They Work? JuggaloBook Brings The Clowns To Town

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:15 AM PST

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True social networks bring multiple birds of a feather together across vast expanses of time and space. Look at Facebook – it’s mostly for finding bullies you went to grade school with, allowing you to gloat over their misfortune. Now there’s another, decidedly more positive social network: JuggaloBook, a social network for those down with the clown.

The site is fully-featured with video chat systems, announcement walls, and friending capabilities. It is based on phpfox, an open social network project, with a few unique additions. It is up and working – albeit a bit slowly.

JuggaloBook is pretty much what social networks were originally supposed to be. It’s open, it’s vibrant (at least for now) and its users genuinely like (or “Whoop Whoop”) each other. Arguably it’s a little goofy, but it’s a lot of fun and it’s interesting to see how this group has essentially taken a few off-the-shelf tools and created a new online hangout in a few months.

It appears the site has been around for a while but it really gained traction last month and the admins have been improving the speed and performance over the past few days.

Say what you want about the music and/or the posturing but you have to admit that the ICP are a force for good in many people’s lives and, as evidenced by documentaries like American Juggalo, the community is strong and vibrant. In the end, it helps bring together folks who may be overlooked or avoided at home or school and that, in truth, is what most social networks strive to do but can’t.

Social Collaboration Platform For Classrooms Edmodo Opens To Third-Party Developers With New API

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 06:01 AM PST

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Edmodo, an online social learning and communications network for teachers and students in K-12 schools, is opening up its API to third–party web developers to enable the creation of educational applications built on top of the platform.

Edmodo, which just raised $15 million from Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital, is a free service that allows teachers to create and maintain their own safe and secure, collaborative classroom communities across mobile and web platforms. It’s sort of similar to a Facebook for the classroom. But Edmodo is completely private and secure, and allows teachers to also manage class content, collaborate and more within the platform.

Teachers can share educational content, manage projects and assignments, handle notifications, conduct quizzes and events, and facilitate other engaging learning experiences with students. Schools and districts can claim unique Edmodo web addresses for added communication and customization. And teachers can build profile pages on Edmodo, which they use to meet and stay in contact with other educators, sharing best practices and top resources. Students can use Edmodo to interact with their private site, take quizzes, participate in games, ask the teacher questions and more.

Now, there will be apps created for the platform, which now counts 6 million users according to CEO Nic Borg. Teachers can connect these apps to Edmodo features like badges, assignments, and quizzes in order to create more engaging learning experiences for their students.

The initial platform launch features over 35 partners that have developed apps leveraging Edmodo's API. These include everything from educational games to other subject-specific learning applications. Developers can offer free and premium apps to teachers and schools.

Edmodo is also launching a Teacher-Developer Exchange to connect educators directly with application developers so that together they can create the apps most needed in today's classrooms.

Greylock’s Reid Hoffman, who serves on Edmodo’s board, says of the platform and the API: "Edmodo has established itself as the network for the classroom…The Edmodo API will become the most effective way for developers to create content and tools that will help teachers take K-12 education to the next level."

Fellow investor and Benchmark Partner Matt Cohler agrees, telling us that the addition of the API is “about enabling broader and deeper functionality within the Edmodo platform.” He believes the social education market is a “significant opportunity.” “The potential is enormous and Edmodo is leading the charge.”

Next up for Edmodo, says Borg, is international expansion.

Alltel Wireless Taps Nuance To Power Voice2Text Voicemail Transcription Service

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 05:54 AM PST

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Alltel Wireless, a Little Rock, Ark.-based carrier that serves six states, has today announced that it will use Nuance’s Dragon Voicemail to Text transcription to power its own Voice2Text service.

The service will basically let users read their voicemails straight from their inbox, rather than waiting through voice prompts and having to sit through a message. The beauty is that once a voicemail is transcribed, you no longer feel the need to call the person back. Simply respond to the text and save both parties a little talk time.

Dragon voice recognition technology has been used all over the place. For one, it’s the technology behind Siri, but Dragon is also used for voice dictation in Swype virtual keyboard and Nuance recently launched its own Dragon TV offering, letting you speak commands into the television.

Currently, you can sign up for the Voice2Text service with a free 60-day trial. After that, the service costs $2.99 a month.

Facebook Too Confusing? Scan Yearbooks and Find Classmates With schoolFeed’s 10M Users

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 05:50 AM PST

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Reconnecting with high school classmates is such a popular social networking feature that schoolFeed has managed to carve a registered user base of 10 million out of Facebook in the year since it launched. Today it opens a new feature where users can mail in their yearbooks, have them scanned and uploaded to schoolFeed, and mailed safely back to them.

Led by former co-founder and CEO of RockYou Lance Tokuda, schoolFeed wants to beat Facebook and competitors like Classmates.com by nailing a single critical use case with a free product.

In Facebook’s early days, its Find Friends feature for discovering high school and college classmates was one its biggest draws. With time, though, Facebook has buried the feature in the cracks of its People Search, and it doesn’t always work properly. For older netizens who might be less savvy, that doesn’t cut it.

schoolFeed makes finding those classmates as easy as possible. It builds directly off of Facebook Connect with its standalone website and Facebook Canvas app. The first thing users do is enter their high school and class year, and they’re immediately shown names and faces of their old chums. Users can browse a class roster, and follow the activity feeds of anyone they like. Tokuda’s viral chops are evident in features like the schoolFeed Bingo game.

The yearbook scanning feature costs $40, but users technically get their money back in virtual currency to spend on schoolFeed. It’s a clever move for the site. It gets paid, it makes the uploader deeply invested, and it gains valuable content it can dangle in front of the uploader’s classmates. They can view the yearbook — but only if they unlock the pages with in-app activity.

Interview: Andrew Bird And The Concept Of Cultivated Precariousness

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 05:23 AM PST

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On the surface this may seem like an unlikely interview. I mean, we're a tech blog and Andrew Bird is a musician. But beneath the organic and strikingly analog sounds of Mr. Bird's beautiful music there is this whole sea of technology at work — especially during live solo performances.

Andrew was kind enough to take some time out of his touring schedule on the eve of the release of his new album called Break It Yourself in order to tell me a bit more about the different gadgets and pedals he uses to achieve his unique sound and also about his vision and approach to making music. An approach where technology is involved, but is certainly not the master.

TC:
Before we get started, I thought maybe you could, in your own words, describe your music for people who may not be familiar.

AB:
Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin. I also play guitar. I will often times loop my violin to expand the instrument beyond its linear restrictions. So I do a lot of live looping and manipulate the instrument to get a wider set of sounds — from double bass to metallic sounds.

I loop my voice as well. I also play with a drummer who is a master looper, so there's a lot of "on the fly" expanding of our instruments on stage. It's not like we're trying to replace a band or anything, we're just using it as a tool to expand our instruments. So there's a lot of improvisation and a lot of going off-script.

TC:
This is probably true of most live performances, but especially so with yours…because of the way you have loops set, every performance could be totally unique?

AB:
Yeah, I mean not only is there improvisation, but there is that element of the unknown with the looping. Nothing is "on time". Nothing is fixed or fit to a grid or corrected. It's all subject to human error. So I could loop a pizzicato pattern and then I'll press the button again and I'll keep recording on top of it and I can create these polyrhythmic patterns.

Then I'll try to find a way to fit new parts into these patterns. And you end up with this big tapestry of sound that you wouldn't get from a traditional band setup.

My drummer has his own looping pedals and keyboards and sometimes I sync with the loops he makes. In other cases, I am just making a loop and hoping for the best with the rest of the band. But to answer the original question…it's quite different from night to night. It's almost like a cultivated precariousness.

TC:
That leads to my next question. There is this really "human" element to your music. There is all this looping and sampling going on, but there seems to be some kind of dichotomy between all the vintage instruments you play and then this abundant technology that you use to create your music at the same time. So, I guess I was wondering if you think that is a dichotomy or does that matter at all? How do you feel about that?

AB:
I never really thought of it as a dichotomy. I've always found that anything that makes the process too ceremonious — like going across the room and pressing play and record — changes the music (and not always for the better).

So there's something about it being un-fussy and intuitive. I mean, it's just a click of a button with my foot. And the other key thing is it doesn't save my ideas. If I want to get a new idea, the thing I am currently playing has to be erased. Something about that keeps it just ephemeral enough that you don't get to precious about your ideas…and it just remains "on the fly".

So I think of it almost like a robotic arm or something with my nerve endings kind of attached to this piece of technology that lets me go beyond the linear restrictions of the violin.

TC:
It's an extension. Something you still control.

AB:
Yeah. It's become very second nature. I hardly play the violin without [the loops]. You know, the violin, for years, was just kind of grafted onto my arm and that was second nature. And now this technological extension…I'm still physically involved in making the sounds happen [e.g. it's not like it is all electronics and sequencing]. Now its just integrated into how I play.

TC:
Now onto the "geekery" question. I was watching one of your performances. The one at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. There's a shot where you can see about twenty five pedals at your feet. What is one of those key pedals in your setup?

AB:
There aren't really that many. A lot of guitarists have more than I have. But basically I have two rigs, meaning, I have two streams. There's one looping pedal — a Line 6 [DL4] — that goes to one amp (and that's for pizzicato playing) and then I have another Line 6 pedal that's going to another amp with a spinning speaker that's for arco playing…for the bowed stuff. So one is rhythmic and one is ambient.

So the Line 6 pedals are the key instrument in that setup. And then I use an analog octave pedal to get bass sounds and fairly realistic sounding cello sounds. And then I use these custom pedals that turn the violin into almost an African imbura…kind of a percussive, filtered sound. And really that's about it.

I have a vocal mic that I also feed into the Line 6 looping pedal. Sometimes I whistle into it to get it into the loop. And then sometimes I send a feed to my drummer on stage for him to alter with his own looping pedals.

For the Guggenheim thing… that was all solo. We just did the Sonic Arboretum show in Chicago and for that we hooked up my pedal board to a Tascam X-48 Hard Disk Recorder and you have 48 [lines] out, so we could create this matrix of channels going out to these groups and clusters of [speaker] horns.

It's still on the fly, except I'm working with this engineer who is taking my ideas and refining them to different outputs. He can pan them and mix them so it creates a different movement coming from the stage. So that is the next phase we are working on now with extending the instrument through technology.

TC:
Yeah, in the Guggenheim video, there are all these Victrola-esque speaker horns everywhere. All throughout the audience. Some were turning and had motors on them.

AB:
That's called the Janus Horn — more like a Doppler effect. We're working with Ian Schneller who makes these horns and is developing new shapes like spiral helix horns. Some are like pendulums. But many of the horns are just static speakers.

TC:
What's one of the ways you search for new sounds? Are you a pawn shop guy looking for old vintage pedals?

AB:
I've slowly gathered these pedals and I am careful about adding any more. I'm careful about going overboard with the pedals. I try to keep it within the realm of what I can manage. There's a lot of sound I am trying to manage and it needs to be streamlined.

So I'm not a gear head. I don't search out pedals, but now that I have my palette to work from…you know, it has to be a Boss OC2 which they don't make anymore. So I do have to seek out these pedals on eBay. Or the Blister Agent…there are like 30 in existence, so I have to find the guy who makes them and order more.

I don't even go as far as to get a volume pedal. I still just take off my shoes and and dial with my toes. For some reason I just thought adding that volume pedal would put me over the edge of what I could still manage.

In that sense there's that dichotomy again. I don't want technology to take me so far that I don't have to use my brain anymore. It's like GPS taking over and losing your internal compass. It's always got to be tactile, still organic. There still has to be the possibility that it could all come crashing down.

I am working with my brother, who is an electrical engineer, and we are working on a custom looping pedal that has some special features that I could use.

TC:
Tell us about the new record. When is it coming out.

AB:
It's coming out March 6th. It's called Break It Yourself. It was all recorded in one room with four musicians and an old Tascam reel-to-reel tape recorder. It had seven working tracks, so we recorded the whole record with seven tracks.

We used a Yamaha board — really, nothing fancy even in a vintage sense. It was decent and well-maintained equipment from the early 70s. We had seven tracks and that's a lot of limitation to make a recording. Again, the looping is all in there. It was all live and was captured so it sounds like more than four musicians. There are no overdubs.

TC:
Really? That's pretty interesting. All that happened live and "before the board"?

AB:
Yeah.

TC:
Impressive.

AB:
Yeah, I had this argument with a french journalist from an electronic music magazine. I said, "there's no production on this" and he said "you're lying". It's like you said it's "before the tape" and I don't consider that production.

That's the way I make music on stage and I don't think of that as production. I mean, anything can be "production" and that is a mentality of a lot of modern music…"we'll just fix it in post-production". And a lot of producers work that way. It's terrible for music.

TC:
I agree. It's sort of the easy way out these days. The "cut and paste" thing.

AB:
Yeah. It really leads to a kind of static, stale, everything-on-the-grid sound. It sounds like a series of choices instead of music. So I just wanted to avoid that feeling at all costs.

TC:
On the new record, Hole In The Ocean Floor, Eyeoneye and Danse Caribe are some of my favorites. Even some of the interludes like Polynation are very interesting and ethereal and haunting. Is there one on the new record that is your favorite?

AB:
I really like Fatal Shore because it has such a nice feel to it. It is so far back on the beat. It's a really illusive kind of thing to nail and I just like the way Martin [Dosh] is playing on that song. It was really late at night and everyone was exhausted and it’s just got that unhurried, humid sound to it.

TC:
Worn out?

AB:
Yeah.

TC:
Where can people find more information about this new record?

AB:
You can go to andrewbird.net. There are also some interactive features there. Like, one of the jams from the barn recording…we separated the tracks and you can mix the sounds yourself and interact with it.

TC:
Ok, Andrew Bird, thanks very much for taking the time to talk with us here at TechCrunch and we'll look forward to seeing you out there on the road somewhere looping some great songs.

AB:
Ok, thanks Jay.

YouSendIt Debuts Workstream, A File Sharing Platform For The Enterprise

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 05:03 AM PST

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Cloud collaboration company YouSendIt is debuting a new product today called Workstream. Designed specifically for enterprises, Workstream is a file sharing platform for businesses, and offers deeper integration with Microsoft SharePoint and helps users securely share content beyond the firewall and across mobile devices, desktops and the Web.

For background, YouSendIt was one of the pioneers of file sharing, offering a service that mainly appealed to behind-the-firewall customers who were unable to send large files via email due to Microsoft Exchange limitations.

Workstream integrates with Microsoft Active Directory and Outlook and aims to make, accessing, sharing and managing content between customers, suppliers or partners from inside and outside the firewall easier and more secure. The company also offers a SharePoint plug-in so users can seamlessly and securely share files externally with partners, customers and vendors straight from SharePoint.

The file sharing platform has support for sharing across iPhone, iPad, Android, desktop (on Mac and Windows) and the Web. Workstream also enforces encryption on mobile devices and provides policies such as mobile application passcode enforcement and remote wipe of application data.

Currently, YouSendIt has 28 million registered users worldwide.

Assurant Direct-Backed Protect Your Bubble Launches In The US, Wants To Insure Your Mobile Gadgets, Pets, And Trips

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 05:00 AM PST

protect-your-bubble-travel-insurance

“Small things in our lives are important to us. Our pets are important. Travel is important. It’s the small thing that means everything.”

That’s what Stephen Ebbett, President of Protect Your Bubble, told me in a phone interview last week. And I agree. The little things are important and worth protecting.

Protect Your Bubble is probably a new name to most Americans but the Assurant Direct company launched in the U.K. in 2009 where it now insures 400,000 consumers. Starting today the service is available to US consumers as well. This version of Protect Your Bubble is slightly different ‘cross the Pond. Here in the states the company promises “simple but comprehensive” plans for gadgets, pets and trips.

With plans starting at $2.99 a month Protect Your Bubble will insure most gadgets including smartphones, tablets, game systems and TVs. Coverage even includes a guaranteed 24-hour turnaround for a replacement phone or tablets. The company also plans on launching an Android app that will allow for remote locking, wiping and location.

But often a person’s so-called bubble extends to pets and travel. The company has plans for these items as well. Protect Your Bubble will provide 90% reimbursement for vet fees at any licensed vet across the country. There are multiple plan options based needs with 10% discount given for covering multiple pets. Unlike most other travel insurance companies, Protect Your Bubble offers a multi-trip plan for frequent travelers. Coverage includes trip cancellation, interruption, medical and loss of baggage as well as rental car coverage.

Ebbett indicated to me that the company plans aggressive marketing focusing mainly on large metro areas including TV spots and mobile and digital activity. If you got a bubble, this company wants to protect it.



With $1.2M Of Seed Funding, A SoMoLo App For Augmented Reality Fans: Wallit

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 04:53 AM PST

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From Foursquare to Pinwheel and Highlight and many, many more besides, we’ve seen a lot of apps created for users to share location, information and pictures with friends and like-minded people. So it seems inevitable that to help set themselves apart from the pack, newer launches will start coalescing more and more around particular features.

The latest is Wallit: a new app that, yes, lets users check in at particular locations and leave messages for others; but also has the added bonus of letting users add augmented reality-style photos to get their points across more visually.

Wallit comes from the mind of Veysel Berk, a Berkeley-based post-doc candidate in image processing, who has taken some of his know-how to give the app an AR twist. So far, Wallit has raised a round of seed funding totaling $1.2 million from a host of backers including Masao Tejima, president of OpenTable Japan; ex-HP and Netscape exec Sharmila Mulligan; David Kellogg and Daniel Terry, CEO, Pocket Gems. The angel round also included participation from Storm Ventures, Tenex Capital Fund, DBO Capital and Orrick Venture Fund.

The app works like this: there are a number of “walls” set up around specific places, where people can leave messages for others. They can be in the form of texts, photos, augmented reality photos, videos and audio clips. The idea comes from the places that you might come across at a historical site, where people scribble their names or messages for whomever follows behind.

Users can use the app to see who else is around at the same time as they are, and they can look at walls anywhere around the world, but they can only post to the ones where they are physically located.

The app kicks off today with 700 walls pre-created in different spots around the world — cities include London, Istanbul, Tokyo, Paris, Milan, Rome, San Francisco, NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami.

The idea is that this number will grow as usage increases. And while we will see a number of new apps base their debut around the SXSW event in Austin, Wallit is focusing on another key event this week, the launch of the iPad, to bump that figure up in the coming weeks: it will create a “super wall” for all 320+ Apple Stores that will chart the debut of the new tablet — banking on people waiting in lines and socializing using their iOS to boost activity.

To me, Wallit sounded a bit counter intuitive: if you want to be heard, you have to post on a quiet wall, but then no-one reads what you write; on the other hand, if you are on a “busy” wall, how does your update get seen apart from the pack? Berk says that when things get too busy, the posts will be rated via a “social character index”, with certain services like video getting a higher rating than an audio post, or a photo post scoring higher than a text post. Users can also select to view only certain types of posts, for example from their Twitter/Facebook social networks, or their own private networks created in the app. There will also be higher priority placed on posts from higher profile people (e.g., celebrities).

Despite the fact that “Wallit” sounds an awful lot like “wallet,” the company assures me that there is no immediate intention to add an e-commerce element into the mix for the service (never discount a pivot, though..). But that does not mean it does not have a business model, which is this: The app is free for consumers, but it plans to sell a monetization element to brands, the terms of which, Berk says, are still being finalized. The walls for each brand location, or even their super-walls, will allow advertisements, partner promotions and other marketing messages in the form of video, audio and text, he says.

Dollar Shave Club Launches Razor Subscription Service, Raises $1M From Kleiner (And Others)

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 04:31 AM PST

DSC Homepage

There are few things in my life that seem less exciting than razors, but a new startup called The Dollar Shave Club thinks it’s time for a little disruption. And some of the big names in the venture world, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, are backing its vision.

Dollar Shave Club is relaunching today and announcing that it’s the latest company to emerge from Science, Inc., the incubator whose partners include former MySpace CEO Mike Jones and Color co-founder Peter Pham. The basic model is simple — at pricing that starts at $1 per month (plus $2 for shipping and handling), customers get a monthly shipment of razors delivered to their home.

Founder and CEO Michael Durbin argues that the high-end of the market has gotten ridiculously overpriced, with “a vibrating handle, a back-scratcher, and all of that stuff.” On the low-end, he says that people with “well-developed self images” don’t want to walk into a K-Mart or Wal-Mart to buy a pack of cheap razors. (I buy disposable razors at my local Walgreens, but I’m a tech journalist, so my self-image is screwed up in all kinds of ways.) When it comes to price, it’s hard to beat $1 a month, and when it comes to convenience, it’s hard to beat a delivery to your doorstep.

Strangely, Dolar Shave Club isn’t the first startup to offer razor deliveries — the memorably named Manpacks is offering a monthly package that includes razors as well as other necessities like underwear. Durbin argues that Manpacks is looking at things “a little too broadly,” because it’s hard to predict exactly what you’ll need from month to month. Shaving, on the other hand, is “one of the most regular things we do. It’s a no brainer.”

Dollar Shave Club has raised more than $1 million in a Series A led by Kleiner and Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Andreesen Horowitz, Shasta Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Shervin Pishevar, Dennis Phelps, and David Honig.

So what makes this a venture-backed business with big potential, rather than a novelty? Well, there’s the size of the personal grooming market, which Jones estimates at $2.6 billion (in the press release). Durbin says he can take a significant portion of that market by building a memorable brand. The company’s first promotional video is a good example of the “very irreverent, smart, fun, very Internet” identity that Durbin wants to create. You can watch the video below. I kind of love it — it is, after all, titled, “Our Blades Are F***ing Great.”

Durbin also hopes to create a stronger relationship with consumers as Dollar Shave Club expands the product line. It’s already adding new types of blades with the relaunch — the 4X blade for $6 a month and The Executive for $9 — and when it gets into shaving cream, the company will actually ask people to vote on the formulas on its website.

“I want people to see us as one of the first online-only power brands in the category,” he says.

Jumptap: Android, iOS Now 91% Of All Mobile Ad Traffic, Kindle Fire 33% Of All Tablet Use

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 03:59 AM PST

Screen shot 2012-03-06 at 11.22.44

The onward march for Android and Apple continues apace, and leaves a big question mark for how other platforms can hope to compete, at least in the U.S. market: New figures out from Jumptap indicate that in the month of January, the two combined made up 91 percent of all smartphone traffic on its U.S. mobile ad network — representing a new high for the two most-dominant mobile phone platforms.

But while Apple has seen a huge jump in smartphone users following the launch of the iPhone 4S last year, Jumptap’s figures indicate that in tablets it has a strong competitor in the form of the Kindle Fire, which now accounts for 33 percent of all tablet traffic on the network.

While these numbers do not exactly speak to how many Kindle Fire devices there are in use compared to iPads (we have a bit more on that subject here), it does point to the fact that people are using their Amazon devices for a whole lot of ad-based services.

Jumptap’s numbers indicate that while Apple (at 32.2 percent) and Google (at 58.8 percent) are dominating across its U.S. ad network of 95 million monthly users, the weak appear to be getting weaker: RIM’s BlackBerry platform is at a “new low” of 6.7 percent share of impressions, while Symbian accounted for 1.4 percent of impressions, and Windows Mobile for even less: 0.5 percent.

Jumptap’s prediction is that despite gains that Microsoft may make as a result of Nokia’s new line of Windows Phones, collectively the bottom three will not have more than 10 percent of impressions at any point this year. Still, that is actually leaving room for some growth…

In tablets, Amazon is proving to be a strong competitor, at least in the area of usage. In January, it accounted for 33 percent of all tablet traffic, and as you can see from the table below, that share has risen quickly over the last three months, outpacing even the growth of tablet traffic itself. Apple’s share, meanwhile, is at its lowest in four months, at 48 percent. Ditto the collective force of all of the other tablet makers.

This is a key point, because it indicates that those who are buying the Kindle Fire are also buying into the whole service-led proposition behind it: content is something that Apple has, up to now, been able to say that it does better than any other Android tablet maker, but Amazon’s mix of its appstore apps, plus offerings of streamed content and more besides appears to be giving that idea a run for its money. That also indicates to developers that this is a potentially strong platform to develop for.

What remains to be seen is whether Apple has another “new launch” effect in the coming months, as a result of its news on Wednesday. It’s expected that Apple will reveal a new iPad and in the process could see the same effect on the tablet market that the introduction of the iPhone 4S had on its market share in smartphones last quarter — when, by most accounts, its share jumped quite significantly compared to those of other device makers.

In Mobile Apps, Free Ain’t Free, But Cambridge University Has A Plan To Fix It

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 03:05 AM PST

free sign

The issue of information privacy around free services like some mobile apps and social networks has often been met with a rebuttal from the other side of the argument: if the service is free, you the user are the product, and so you shouldn’t be surprised when your information is “sold” as part of that business model, the so-called “hidden cost” of free.

That can seem like an uncomfortable arrangement, however, so now some academics at Cambridge University in England are coming up with a way of fixing that, and are revealing some striking research about data collection in apps as part of their effort.

If you are among those concerned by how your information is shared, app stores are a ripe target. Focusing on the Android Market, the researchers devised an API to analyze free and paid apps in the store. Combing through more than 250,000 of them, they found that 73 percent of the apps were free, and that of those, 80 percent relied on targeted advertising as their main business model.

Within those apps using targeted ads, the Cambridge researchers found that 70 percent of them are collecting data that is not relevant to the apps themselves.

Free applications are far more popular in terms of downloads, they note: only 20 percent of paid apps get more than 100 downloads and only 0.2 percent of paid apps have more than 10,000 downloads, while 20 percent of free apps get 10,000 or more downloads. Still, not even paid apps are immune to superfluous data collection, it seems: 40 percent of them are collecting information that isn’t actually needed for the app to work.

Some examples: within the comics category, 35 percent of free applications requested access to a user’s location; in other cases, games collected a user’s phone number and contacts. Other “sensitive” data collected by apps that is not actually needed for the app itself to work included access to a user’s messages (e-mail/sms), contacts, calendar, phone number and IMEI.

The issue with blocking everything that is not needed, though, is that it would impact how developers could build a business on free apps. That’s where the Cambridge researchers a proposing a solution: separate app information from ad information, and make sure that the ad networks get only what they need to work, and nothing more. Their term for this is “decoupling”.

“Then the apps wouldn't use ads as an excuse to collect information,” explains Dr. Ilias Leontiadis, one of the researchers. “An app would collect just what it actually needs.” Taking the idea further, personal information that was not necessary for an ad to display would get automatically blocked.

The problem with the current model, he says, is that developers are responsible for the collection of everything, including location, demographics and the rest, which they subsequently forward to the advertising networks. “You don't know if the data is for the app or the advertiser, and you don't know how it would be used.”

Leotiadis says a service that separates the information could take the form of a filter that comes in an app itself, or potentially could be incorporated into a mobile platform to work by default: Leontiadis says he would prefer to see a platform provider offer this by default. In any case, he doesn’t think it would be realistic to ask developers to manage this themselves: “There are over 52,000 developers in the market but only eight big ad networks,” he says. “It's easier to control those networks than those developers.”

Notably, Cambridge’s investigation focused only on the Android Market. Leontiadis tells me that is because of how Google has set up permissions requests for users: these come up every time a user downloads an app — problem being that people tend to click OK without really looking at what they are agreeing to, he noted. Apple, in contrast, manages these independent of each download, and so would be more difficult to track.

[Image: kalbusta on Flickr]

Win Free Tickets To The London Web Summit, March 19, London

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 01:26 AM PST

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As you may know, we’re co-curating the London Web Summit on March 19, in The Brewery Venue, in London’s East End, already the single biggest cluster of tech startups in London. I’ll be working with Paddy Cosgrave and chairing the start up competition, which you can apply to enter here.

Niklas Zennstrom, one of Europe's top tech entrepreneurs and investor, has now confirmed he will be speaking and joins Google's Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora as one of a number of keynotes, including Shervin Pishevar, Lars Hinrichs, Jason Goldberg, Morten Lund, Ben Parr and Reshma Sohoni, among others.

LWS will demo 20 startups at the event with the winning startup sharing a prize package worth over £35,000 thanks to Orrick (£15k Legal Services), KPMG (£15k Advisory Services), HP (£4k hardware) and there is more to come.

There are now also four ways for early stage startups get over 60% off the ticket price. We’ll also have an exhibition area. We’re looking at over 500 attendees already signed up and over 100 investors.

But if you want to come free, here’s a way to do it:

We have 12 pairs (that’s 24 tickets total) for London Web Summit to give away.

The giveaway starts now and will end this Thursday 6pM CET. To enter, all you have to do is follow the steps below.

1) Become a fan of The London Web Summit on Facebook

2) Then do JUST ONE of the following:

- Retweet this post on Twitter (including the conference hashtag: #LWS )

- Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want to come, (and tick the box to post it to your Facebook stream).

The contest starts now and ends this Thursday, 6pm CET.

Make sure you only Tweet the message once, or you will be disqualified. We'll choose the winner at random and contact them by this weekend. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note this giveaway only includes two tickets to the ceremony and after party, and does not include airfare or hotel.

Daily Crunch: Big Cat

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 01:00 AM PST

Forrester: No Android Tablet Has More Than 5% Share vs iPad. How Does Amazon’s Kindle Fire Compare?

Posted: 05 Mar 2012 11:40 PM PST

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On the eve of what may well be the launch of a brand new iPad from Apple comes some new analysis from Forrester Research on the current competitive landscape in tablets — or lack thereof, as the case seems to be.

In short: despite the rush of tablets that have come out in the past year, many built on Google’s Android OS, Apple has managed to continue to run away with the competition, and how has 73 percent of the tablet market. No Android tablet maker, it notes, has more than a 5 percent share against it.

There is a caveat to Forrester’s research, however.

Forrester carried out its market research last September, before Amazon had started to sell its Kindle Fire tablet, and before Barnes & Noble had released its own tablet to compete against that. These devices have proven to be forces in the market, and are already having an impact on sales of another device in the food chain, e-readers. (More on that below.)

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble also use Android — albeit versions that have been customized and are no longer on Google’s upgrade track (and service track) as a result.

In Forrester’s analysis, Samsung has a 5 percent share; Motorola 4 percent and Acer a 3 percent share. HP’s TouchPad, now discontinued, had a 6 percent share, but that was during that series of crazy fire sales when everyone suddenly rushed to buy one.

So how would those numbers look with the $199 Kindle Fire in the mix? Unfortunately we still don’t know exactly: the last numbers that the company released were during its last quarterly results at the end of January, but even these were not concrete. Amazon said that sales of its Kindle products, including the e-readers, had grown 177 percent over the last year and that the Kindle Fire was the bestselling among them.

But others have parsed those numbers and have come up with their own sales estimates.

Mobile analyst Chetan Sharma tells me that he believes that Amazon sold around four million Kindle Fire tablets in 2011. That would put it behind his estimates for Samsung, at six million, for the full year.

But in the holiday quarter alone (the only quarter when the Kindle Fire was actually shipping to customers), Sharma believes Amazon would have come in second place to Apple, which reported that it sold 15.43 million iPad tablets. Others have guessed that Amazon sold more like six million Kindle Fire tablets.

Sharma’s estimates are also bolstered by would-be customer sentiment: Forrester, in its research, did ask what tablet those who did not own one intended to buy, and in that Kindle also placed second after the iPad — although in general the proportions are more generous to non-iPad tablets than those attributed to actual market share:

If you trust Forrester’s guess on these things, the role that companies like Amazon will play in the tablet market will continue to grow because of two reasons: price and content.

Although many Android tablets, such as Samsung’s Galaxy line or Motorola’s Xoom, have been launched with media services in an attempt to punch at the same weight as Apple, it seems that the offerings are not good enough to justify the prices, which have been on par with Apple’s iPad.

Amazon has made content a focus of its tablet, too, but at a much lower price point. That’s made the whole product significantly more attractive. Quoted in Bloomberg, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps notes: "Tablets are about services. That is where Amazon has succeeded where others have failed."

E-reader effect. Amazon’s Kindle Fire might not yet be denting Apple’s share by too much, but one area where it seems to be having more of an impact is on e-readers. Some research from DigiTimes estimates that shipments of pure-play e-reading devices will be down to only two million units this quarter, compared with nine million in the same quarter a year ago. It says this is down to the “substitution” effect of people opting for products like the Kindle Fire instead.

That kind of cannibalization, to be honest, seems only to spell good news for Apple, as it means that more people are looking for devices that are bigger than smartphones, yet still portable, but are loaded up with more features than an e-reader: that’s a market where Apple has consistently set the bar.

It’s still a market that is wide open for change: Forrester believes that by 2016, only about one-third of U.S. adults will own an iPad, and that’s before even considering what might happen in other markets.
at 9:31 AM

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