Monday, January 23, 2012

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Kickstarter: eye3, An Affordable Aerial Photography Drone Top
eye3A couple years back, I got to take part in the production of a music video being shot locally on a RED and filmed partially on board a custom helicopter build. It was interesting watching the operator and director work using the rig, but I was struck by how very specialized the copter was. Built from scratch by AerialPan Imaging, it was far from a personalized or affordable solution. A new Kickstarter project called eye3 intends to make just that: an affordable aerial platform that can automated and controlled from afar, yet is robust and customizable enough to meet the demands of serious photographers.
 
Megaupload Bust Causes Cyberlocker Panic – But It's Only Temporary Top
floppyOh god! Megaupload has fallen and its brethren are dropping like flies! The age of the cyberlocker is passing. No longer will we be able to host a large file somewhere for free and have someone else download it. Actually, it's not quite so dire, but it's true that a number of major file hosts have either shut down, closed part of their service, or changed the way they operate. It's not the first time that file-sharing tools have received a shock to the system, though, and this little contraction is less the end of an era and more a winnowing of the herd. That's a good thing.
 
A Tale Of Two Cities: Silicon Valley And Hollywood Top
Image (1) hollywoodsign.jpg for post 102542Silicon Valley and Hollywood: so close geographically, yet so distant digitally and philosophically. You would think we'd understand each other better. In the Valley, we circulate pitch decks. In Hollywood, they shop around scripts. We strive for exits, while they sell distribution rights. They have record labels, we have venture capitalists. They have agents, we have recruiters. People on Sunset Blvd. obsess over the next "hit" that will draw viewers, ears, or butts in seats. On Sand Hill Road, we toast to market disruptions and business model innovations.  Ultimately, both are working towards bringing transformative experiences (content and apps) to market. Yet for all the apparent ecosystem similarities, our two worlds are surprisingly at odds. Hollywood's creators and the Valley's innovators could achieve so much together. Instead, we're clashing, and neither viewpoint is wrong.
 
5 Things RIM's New CEO Absolutely Must Not Do Top
man-with-stop-sign-in-front-of-his-faceWhenever a company appoints new leadership here in the tech world, the blogosphere seems to unanimously post about what the new top dog needs to do to make his or her company better. I promise, you'll see dozens of headlines today talking about what Thorsten Heins must do in order to save BlackBerry. In many cases, I agree with what's being said. RIM's in trouble, and without a new vision the company risks slipping even further behind the competition. You know... "the other fruit company." So rather than list out all of the things Heins needs to do to save the company (which, we can all agree, would take a really long time), I'm going to tell you guys the five things that Mr. Heins absolutely must not, without a doubt, under no circumstances... do. That is, if RIM wants to keep selling smartphones.
 
Gobbler Grabs $1.75 Million To Help Musicians Keep Track Of Their Files Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-23 at 2.42.47 PMIn the same digital asset management space as ResourceSpace and Northplains, Gobbler -- sort of like a fancy Dropbox built specifically for backing up, transferring and organizing high bandwidth media files like music, videos and photos (Mike writes a lot about why it's cool here) -- has raised another $1.75 million in financing. Investors include ff Venture Capital, Black Ocean Group, Mindjolt CTO Aber Whitcomb, Facebook VP Dan Rose, Former Googler Jermey Wenokur, Science's Mike Jones, and LowerMyBills founder Matt Coffin among others. This new money brings the LA-based startup's total funding to just over $3 million.
 
The TechFellow Awards: Nominate Innovators To Win $100K Angel Funds Top
2011 TechFellow AwardsThe TechFellow Awards is different. Rather than just recognizing outstanding innovators, each of its 20 winners receive $100,000 to invest in a startup of their choice. Its purpose? To fund the next generation of high-tech entrepreneurship. Today, Founders Fund, TechCrunch, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) announce the opening of nominations for the third annual TechFellows Awards. From now until February 17th, visit the new TechFellows website and click "Nominate a TechFellow". There you can submit the name of a great leader, disruptive visionary, product genius, or engineering wizard who deserves a greater chance to shape the future.
 
Virtual Styling And Fashion Community Polyvore Raises $14M From DAG Ventures, Goldman Sachs And Others Top
PolyvorePolyvore, the startup lets web shoppers pull their favorite items any online store and mix and match to create personalized outfits online, has raised $14 million in Series C financing led by DAG Ventures and with participation from Goldman Sachs, Vivi Nevo (NV Investments), Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners. This brings the company's total funding to over $22 million. The funding was originally reported by the New York Times. Polyvore allows users to create fashion "sets," which are digital collages that users create by combining their favorite products from across the web. The site says it has 13 million unique monthly visitors, an 80% increase over last year. And the Polyvore user community creates on average one Polyvore set every two seconds, a total of 1.4 million sets per month.
 
Google+ Allows Pseudonyms, But Only If They're "Established" Top
name tagGoogle's Bradley Horowitz just announced that as part of a more "inclusive" naming policy, Google+ will now be allow people to employ pseudonyms as their user names. The company's previous insistence on real names has been the subject of much discussion — and Google itself said earlier that it's trying to refine the policy to encompass different use cases.
 
Facebook And Twitter Engineers Fight Google "Search Plus Your World" With "Don't Be Evil" Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-23 at 1.45.13 PMSometimes the nicest of people, when faced with the pressure of competition, make evil stupid decisions. That's pretty much what happened to Google when it realized that Facebook was about to eat its lunch with regards to of social data on the web -- so it started doing dumb things, like building Google Buzz, Wave and most recently rolling out "Search Plus Your World" which to the rest of the world just looks like "Search Plus Google+."
 
No "Drastic Change Needed"? Looks Like RIM's Stockholders Disagree Top
RIMGood news: You've been promoted to CEO! Bad news: Public perception of your company has tanked over the past few years, and your stockholders are looking at you to save the day. What ever you do first, just hope that you don't give the world that sound bite that suggests you think everything is okay and that nothing at the company needs to change. Whoops! Less than 24 hours after RIM's executive shakeup, the company is already seeing its first "drastic change": its stock price.
 
Sony Claims New RGBW Sensors Improve Exposure, Low-Light Performance Top
stackedSony has announced a new line of image sensors that will, in all likelihood, end up in dozens of smartphone models. The improvement is not in megapixels, which have more or less hit a ceiling, but in the actual layout of the light-sensitive wells that make up the pixels in the image. The new sensors have, in addition to the usual red, green, and blue-filtered pixels, an unfiltered pixel element as well that will accept any wavelength of light. It can't be used to determine color, but it will add (they say) to both sensitivity and brightness. Essentially what they're doing is including a hard luminance-detecting element. This is good, much more accurate than taking the average from the RGB elements, and should in fact make low-light photography significantly better.
 
Does Your Business Need Mobile Apps? Bizness Apps (& More) Give You The Premium Tools Top
screen-shot-2011-08-27-at-8-46-22-pmLet's say you want to give your small business a mobile presence. You'd like to develop some mobile apps, but you don't have the time, money, or technical skills to do it yourself, and you're not too excited about the idea of paying a developer an armload to do it for you. Of course, on the other hand, you may be willing to pay a little more of a premium to have someone else do the work for you, work with you directly, and walk you through the process, customizing your app as you go.
 
Thanks To Santa, Tablets And E-Readers Are (Almost) Everywhere Top
pew tablet ereaderOwnership of tablets and e-book readers saw a big spike over the holidays — in fact, it nearly doubled in the United States, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. The study was based on telephone surveys conducted in mid-December and January, which found that ownership of both device types nearly doubled in just a month. Now a total of 29 percent of US adults own a tablet or an e-reader, or possibly both.
 
#BlackoutSOPA: How 87,000 People Taught Us About The Future of Online Activism Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-23 at 11.21.15 AMAt 1pm on Monday January 9th, Greg Hochmuth and I launched #BlackoutSOPA, a site that lets you alter your Twitter profile pic to display SOPA opposition. 15 minutes later the site went down due to more traffic than we expected. That demand was just the beginning. Over the next 10 days, tens of thousands of people used the tool to reach tens of millions of their followers. Since then, #BlackoutSOPA has received coverage in the Wall St Journal, TechCrunch, the New York Times and several other prominent sources. And the community members ranged from Ashton Kutcher to Occupy Wall Street. There was no 1% or 99% - just 100%. #BlackoutSOPA started because Greg and I wanted to see how we could find other people who cared about stopping the flawed "anti-piracy" bill, but it ended up teaching us about the future of online activism. Here's some of what we learned, plus a few thoughts on what SOPA was trying to do, and why were we fighting it.
 
News Aggregator Wavii Wants To "Make Facebook Out Of Google," Bring Relevant Content To You Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-23 at 10.12.00 AMThe problem of how to find relevant content on the web has yet to be solved on a mass scale. You've got cyborg news aggregators like Techmeme and Google news and social aggregators like Reddit and Digg competing with Twitter and the Facebook Newsfeed, all of them trying to get you the news that you want to know, as fast as possible. The Seattle-based Wavii, which has been in super stealth mode until now, takes a different approach to the problem. The startup uses natural language processing and machine learning to parse far corners of the web and bring users personalized content based on their Facebook Likes and feedback. Upon entering Wavii via Facebook Connect, you are asked to pick a combination of 12 topics that pertain to you and rinse, repeat. Wavii picks these initial interests by processing your Facebook Likes, and adjusts itself as you give it more data.
 
Supreme Court Rules Search Warrants Needed For GPS Tracking Top
supreme_courtThe U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously decided today to uphold citizens' Fourth Amendement rights in the GPS tracking case which would have allowed the U.S. government to track a suspects' cars without a warrant. The court states that the Fourth Amendement's protection of "persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," extends to vehicles.
 
Evi Arrives In Town To Go Toe-to-Toe With Siri Top
Screen Shot 2012-01-23 at 17.43.57When Siri arrived on the iPhone 4S I thought to myself, who else could do this? It would need to be a search engine with natural language processing, but also behave in the manner of artificial intelligence and respond to voice recognition. One company that sprung to mind was True Knowledge. I pinged them. Are you working on a Siri type application, I asked? Interesting question, was their response. And then they went quiet. Now they can reveal what they've been building. Evi is a new iPhone (iTunes link) and Android app in Beta (link) which might just give Apple's Siri a run for her money.
 
1-Month Old BuzzDoes Scores $750K For Mobile App Marketing Platform Top
buzzdoes10LastSmallBuzzDoes, a newly launched word-of-mouth marketing tool for mobile app developers, has secured $750,000 in seed funding from angel investors and Proxima Ventures. The tool, which operates as a drop-in SDK (software development kit), allows developers to add a viral recommendation feature to their application using a single line of code. Once installed, app users are "incentivized" (meaning rewarded), for recommending the app in question to their friends.
 
Nimble Goes After Salesforce, Wants To Be The "Pandora Of Contacts" Top
Jon-Ferrara_largeJon Ferrara thinks Salesforce is doing it wrong when it comes to social. The founder of Goldmine, a CRM company he sold for $100 million nearly a decade ago, is attacking the market a different way with his latest startup, Nimble. "We are effectively Salesforce but social," he says, taking a jab at what is now the 800-pound gorilla. Salesforce would counter that it has Chatter and Radian6, but punching up is always a good way to get noticed (just ask Marc Benioff, who became a billionaire tussling with Microsoft and Oracle). Ferrara just hired away the product director who made Chatter Mobile, Jason McDowall, who will now head up the team building Nimble's mobile apps.
 
Asus Transformer Prime Users Still Reporting Major GPS Issue After Official Fix Top
primeRight on cue, Asus started rolling out Ice Cream Sandwich to Transformer Prime tablets last week. The update not only brought Android 4.0 to the tablet, but also a fix for the lackluster GPS performance. But apparently the GPS is borked for some. Users are still experiencing poor performance and worse yet, some are even stating that the GPS no longer works in ICS when it did prior to the update.
 

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