Sunday, September 30, 2012

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Adobe's Acrobat XI Boasts New PDF Editor And Touch-Friendly Interface — Upgrades Start At $139 Top
Content Editing-AXIAdobe is ready to share the details behind Acrobat XI, the latest version of its product suite for creating, editing, and viewing PDFs. The company demonstrated the product at a press event earlier this month, where the big emphasis was collaboration and productivity - more specifically, the "productivity gap" created by the challenges of working with documents. The company is releasing an IDC study that it commissioned showing (for example) that a company of 1,000 spends an average of 3.5 hours a week compiling different files and formats into one format, 3.7 hours gathering and consolidating feedback, and 3.4 hours consolidating data from forms. That adds up to an annual productivity cost of $15.9 million per year, the study says.
 
Testing Out Bodymetrics, The Startup That Wants To Be A Denim Shopper's Best Friend [TCTV] Top
Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 8.32.01 PMFew industries with mainstream visibility and appeal have remained as unplugged from serious tech disruption as apparel and fashion. Of course, the realm of shopping has had major shifts, as has the marketing of clothing from the runway to the mall clothing rack. But the way that clothes are actually made has remained surprisingly unchanged in many ways. When it comes to the incredibly popular category of blue jeans, for example, clothing samples are typically designed to the proportions of a single human "fit model." Then, versions of that design are replicated in smaller and larger sizes to be sold to the masses. If you as a customer want more customization for fit, you better have a good tailor. A technology company called Bodymetrics is keen to bring a bit more personalization to this whole process.
 
Up Close With The Next Big Home Commodity: LED Lighting Top
LED_book_Cangeloso-Decontructed_PhilipsSal Cangeloso is the editor of Geek.com and wrote a new book on an odd topic. It's called LED Lighting: A Primer to Lighting the Future and it focuses on the upcoming explosion in LED manufacturing, offering a basic understanding of the technology and an interesting look at the history of LED lights. You can buy LED Lighting: A Primer to Lighting the Future here and the first three commenters below gets a copy of the book. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of the book discussing the growth of lighting from old-timey incandescents to modern LED technology. The incandescent bulb is a good place to start with any talk about lighting. This design has had tremendous longevity (over 130 years) and it makes for a cheap, versatile bulb. Unfortunately, this design is also power-hungry, inefficient, short-lived (with some exceptions), and fragile. They produce a minimum amount of lumens-per-watt, though they've made appreciable gains over the years, and are highly sensitive to power conditions. For example, a 5% reduction in voltage could double the life of a bulb while only decreasing light output by 20%.
 
Cloning Instagram For Video Will Not Revolutionize Mobile Video Top
Sandeep CasiEditor's note: Sandeep Casi is founder and CEO of Cinemacraft. Previously, he worked on Virtual Reality at General Motors, led the Systems Group at Industrial Light + Magic (a division of Lucasfilm), and was a research scientist at Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Lab. He currently lives on a plane traveling between Tokyo and San Francisco. You can follow him on Twitter. Peter Csathy's recent article on TechCrunch does an excellent job of addressing the requirements of mobile video sharing and the need to rethink how video services are built. Peter is right about the six "ingredients" that will make an "Instagram for video" a success, but there is a critical point that should be added to his list: the inherent difficulty of video discovery, access, and engagement.
 
(R)evolution Top
Millet, GleanersI love my iPhone. I love connectivity. I hate the resulting obligation of connectivity - and that removing one's self from it now makes you the crazy person, the weirdo in the room. I recently saw a girl on some Bravo reality TV show the other day - entirely by accident, I swear* - talking about men she would and would not date. "I don't want someone who's not on Facebook," she said. "I don't want a man who doesn't have an iPhone or an email that isn't Gmail. If he has Yahoo or Hotmail, I think that's a big no-no," she added. Profound social commentary, actually: participate appropriately, or be abandoned by society. Become the un-dateable. The loser. The left behind. But our obsession with technology, the right and wrong of it, the speed with which we have to create, consume, and engage with it, is not sustainable. People aren't meant for this, not forever.
 
An Analysis Of Market Demand For Web Programming Languages Top
MarcGayleEditor's note: Marc Gayle is a Rails developer and founder of 5KMVP, where he builds Minimum Viable Products for just $5K. Follow him on Twitter.  A few months ago, I got the idea that one way to get leads for remote freelance gigs was to scour Craigslist. So, after doing the manual work of 'crawling' through at least 100 job postings by hand, I wrote a Ruby script to do the heavy lifting and filtering for me.
 
The Kindle Paperwhite Is A Reader's Dream Top
IMG_0872The e-reader arms race moves at a glacial pace. Barnes & Noble does one thing, Amazon follows. Amazon adds a feature and, slowly but surely, B&N adds the same thing. While the Kindle itself has been updated five times since 2008, it seems like it's been around for decades and has only just now gotten much, much better. The latest e-ink Kindle, the Paperwhite, is a beautiful device, plays catchup, and arguably surpasses the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. The device is as small and compact as the previous Kindle and yet is more completely featureless. Like the Nook Simple Touch, Amazon has eschewed all front buttons for a very usable touch interface. To start the device, you tap a small button on the bottom and then swipe to unlock. This two-step process ensures the device doesn't wake up in your bag.
 
Soon-To-Be-Acquired BlueSprig's AirCover Family Locator Is An App That Lets You Track Those Close To You Top
aircover family locatorWe last heard about AirCover -- an app developed by Founders Den co-founder Jason Johnson's own startup BlueSprig -- when it launched as an all-in-one protection assistant, letting people secure their devices from viruses, back up files, locate a lost iPhone or Android handset, track family members, and more. Fast forward to today, and Blue Sprig is launching the first offshoot of that flagship product, AirCover Family Locator, which takes the people-tracking element and extends it into a standalone app. But while you often hear of spinoffs coming out of the success of the original app, it seems that the opposite is the case here.
 
Data Markets: The Emerging Data Economy Top
Gil ElbazEditor's note: Gil Elbaz is an entrepreneur and pioneer of natural language technology. In 1998, he co-founded Applied Semantics, which developed contextual advertising products, including ASI's AdSense. In 2003, Google acquired ASI, and after a four-year stint at Google, Gil found Factual in 2007. Follow him on Twitter.  The term data market brings to mind a traditional structure in which vendors sell data for money. Indeed, this form of market is on the rise with companies large and small jumping in. Think of Azure Data Marketplace (Microsoft), data.com (Salesforce.com), InfoChimps.com, and DataMarkets.com.
 
CoCoon, The Newest Home For Startups In Hong Kong Top
main_image01Editor's note: Brenden Mulligan is an entrepreneur who created Onesheet, TipList, ArtistData, MorningPics, and PhotoPile. He's a mentor for 500 Startups and several startups. You can find him on Twitter at @mulligan. I recently returned from a trip where I embedded myself in a few Asian cities and worked as if I were home. The goal was to explore how technology has enabled legitimate work / travel. The first stop was Hong Kong, where I spent August 30 - September 4 meeting entrepreneurs and working.
 
Imagine No Ads On Facebook. It's Easy If You Try Top
Facebook No Ads PeaceFacebook has to show more ads to make more money, right? Wrong. Or at least not necessarily. If it expands its new off-site ad network and Gifts ecommerce product, it could rely on its data, not its traffic, to grow its revenues. That would leave its site and apps uncluttered, designed to maximize enjoyment, the amount we share, and our feeling of connection instead of page views. You might say I'm a dreamer...
 
Microsoft Needs Windows Phone 7 – Not WP8 – To Win Significant Mobile Market Share Top
dirty dirty windows phoneMicrosoft's rebooted mobile OS, Windows Phone 8, arrives in a matter of weeks -- so it's a case of Windows Phone 7 is dead, long live Windows Phone 8 right? Not so fast. WP8 is certainly Microsoft's new weapon of choice for competing in the smartphone space -- with no further OS updates planned for WP7 beyond the customizable homescreen in the 7.8 release -- but the older of the two WP siblings could still have a vital role to play in helping Redmond gain significant marketshare.
 
Open Source Fear Mongering Is Ridiculous With The Advent Of Open APIs Top
open-apisOpen source fear mongering is still a reality. But in today's world, it is nuanced with the belief that an open enterprise means open APIs. They are not the same and should not be confused.
 
Logitech UE Boombox And Mobile Boombox Review: Bluetooth Speakers With A Rich Sound Top
Logitech UE Boombox and Mobile BoomboxShort version: These two battery-powered bluetooth speakers are the first modern boomboxes designed by the newly created subsidiary Logitech UE. Acquired in 2008, Ultimate Ears is well-known for its in-ear monitors used by many musicians in concert, not for its speakers. Even though the Logitech UE Mobile Boombox is limited, it is no surprise given the entry-level pricing. The real surprise comes from the big brother, the Logitech UE Boombox.
 
You Don't Need A Prototype To Raise A Seed Round Top
Mike HirshlandEditor's note: Editor's note: Mike Hirshland is the founder of Resolute.VC, a seed-stage venture capital firm. Prior to Resolute, he was a General Partner with Polaris Venture Partners where he led the creation of Dogpatch Labs as well as Polaris's investments in companies including Automattic (WordPress), Quantcast, KISSmetrics and Q1 Labs (IBM). Follow him on his Resolute.VC blog and Twitter.   Back in the "old days" (as in 5 or 10 years ago) the very definition of a seed investment was investing before any product had been built or prototyped. Since then, the ability to build a startup on far less capital has made seed investing less risky. But, oddly, it seems that seed investors have become more risk averse.
 
Jason Calacanis' Next Act, And Another Pivot For Inside.com, As A 'Knowledge Community' Top
mahalo sept 12 logoSerial entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis appears to be gearing up for the launch of his next venture, which may also signify one more pivot for his information site Mahalo. And that next step also looks like a new chapter for an internet domain that itself has seen a couple of pivots. On a tip from a reader, we visited inside.com and found this:
 
Mass Persuasion, One User At A Time Top
bullseyeMarketers are increasingly personalizing their products and services to meet their customers' changing needs. But customization used in conjunction with powerful persuasion techniques is arming marketers with new weaponry to boost customer engagement and drive profits.
 
The Zooka Wireless Speaker Bar Turns Bad Audio Into Loud Noises! Top
detail_oLiving in the digital age is a privilege. All the content you could want, whether it's music, video, games, or apps, is at the tip of your fingers every time you fire up the old MacBook or iPad. But these portable devices - our smartphones, tablets and notebooks - aren't really prepared to deliver that content at the highest quality possible. In terms of visuals, Retina displays and the like have gone a way to improve this, but where sound is concerned...
 
Iterations: We Know About B2B And B2C, But Don't Overlook B2D Top
LegoConsumer and enterprise. Software and hardware. Infrastructure operations and user experience. Products and services. No matter the focus, innovation in technology, and especially around Silicon Valley, has ebbed and flowed across these areas. Some new companies focus on building solutions for the enterprise, and perhaps nowadays it's too easy to take the consumer route. The purpose of this week's column is to shed a bit of light on a growing class of new startups that are not selling directly to big companies or individuals generally, but focusing on software and infrastructure developers specifically. Selling into enterprise -- going B2B -- has been an attractive route for myriad reasons. There are barriers to entry in technological development, it takes real venture investment and time to build these products, and established sales channels and newer marketing avenues make the pursuit of these markets tantalizing. With the enterprise comes a promise of scale, size, and predictability, often in the form of pay-per-seat pricing models, built-in distribution, and lock-in.
 
5 Big Map App Issues Apple Must Solve Top
GrantRitchieEditor's note: Grant Ritchie is the CEO and founder of Locationary, which created the Saturn management and exchange platform for local business profiles and POI data. Follow Locationary here. The Apple iPhone 5 has been quite a story for a while with many "firsts": the fastest hardware, the most first-week sales, and so on. The device is also now famous for what it doesn't have: Google Maps.
 

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