Wednesday, June 26, 2013

CrunchGov Essential: How The Internet Helped Gay America Come Out Of The Closet




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CrunchGov Essential: How The Internet Helped Gay America Come Out Of The Closet



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CrunchGov Essential is a scannable roundup of technology’s influence on the day’s big issues. Below a feature post, we present the most thoughtful, outrageous, and inspiring stories told through the web’s best content. Sign up for the morning newsletter here.


How The Internet Helped Gay America Come Out Of The Closet


The U.S. has always included a sizable population of gay citizens. Without a way to coordinate their latent collective powers, discrimination and isolation forced them into the shadows. As the U.S.

slowly inched its way toward tolerance, the Internet, as a soapbox for young liberals, became a

powerful platform to expose otherwise oblivious Americans to their gay neighbors, backed by the full force of unrelenting digital activism.


As social media explodes in celebration over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, it’s important to look back at how the Internet built the momentum for this historic occasion: The liberal bias of the Internet helped dominate the discussion online and then transform previously conservative institutions with the power of their own gay members.


Opposition, Erased From The Online Conversation


The Internet has always been a haven for young activist liberals, especially it’s early ivory-tower adopters. Compared to the rest of the U.S., Twitter and Facebook are environments that welcome recently outed gay citizens and promote equality. To the extent that the Internet is becoming the epicenter of national dialogue, the overwhelming liberal bias tips public policy in favor of equality.


To get an idea of just how liberal the Internet is, Pew found that the average sentiment of Twitter updates was 25 percent more positive about Obama’s re-election than a national representative public opinion poll. On marriage equality, Twitter was decidedly more favorable (33 percent vs. 46 percent) and there was virtually zero negative sentiment (44 percent vs. 8 percent).



Twitter isn’t the only social-media friend of gay rights. A comparison of the Facebook fan counts between gay rights-related pages reveals a struggling religious right. A top Facebook page in favor of marriage equality, Gay Marriage USA, has more than three times the fans as The Family Research Council (300,000 vs. 100,000). A fan page to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) has 30 times more fans than ones dedicated to keeping DOMA intact.




Engagement for Gay Marriage USA is overwhelming. A picture of a rainbow-painted house sitting conspicuously across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church has 100 times more shares than a top update from the Family Research Council, a prayer for the Supreme Court.



The religious right has struggled to spin its issues that users feel comfortable sharing. “Defense of marriage,” and “pro-life” are still stuck with hateful undertones. Straight marriage defenders don’t want to speak up, liberal voices take their place in the conversation vacuum and, as a result, the opposition to gay marriage is being erased from online discussions.


A Latent Power Inside The Boy Scouts


No one was more shocked by the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay scouts in the late 90s than their own regional leaders. “It never dawned on me that we weren’t supportive of gay scouts,” says Mike Harrison, a former chairman of California’s Orange County Boy Scout Council. “We’re just busy serving kids and running a program.” Discrimination abruptly entered their world when the Scouts expelled decorated Eagle James Dale.


According to a few voting members of the Scout leadership that I spoke to, the initial ban on gay students was more a product of ignorance than discrimination. The obsessively representative executive board conducted a series of surveys to understand whether their intuitions were correct and, up until 2012, internal surveys showed that a slim majority did, indeed, support the ban.


So without much deliberation, the executive council maintained the position. Then, the backlash started: veteran leaders quit, corporate sponsors pulled out, and an army of activists continued to erode the once morally pristine student organization.


A flood of Change.org petitions continued to get headlines, as heartwrenching stories of banned gay Scouts amassed millions of supporters. One petition alone, to reinstate banned lesbian den mother, Jennifer Tyrrell, swelled to over 300,000 signatures.


“The reason online petitions made such a big impact — Change.org in this instance — was that it gave petition starters a platform to tell very effective stories,” said gay rights activist Zach Wahls. Instead of faceless rumors of expelled Scouts, petitions highlighted real people in their own voices.


Indeed, Wahls himself became a civil rights icon after testimony he gave about his lesbian mothers in front of the Iowa legislature went viral on YouTube (currently over 17 million views on the main video).



Despite the internal surveys, the overwhelming online pressure forced the scout leaders to hold a more deliberative conversation before the eventual vote that overturned the ban in May.


Behind the closed-door discussions, the Internet played a hand, as well.


Northeast executive board member Jay Lenrow recalls one voting member quoting a study from the anti-gay American College of Pediatrics, which ominously predicted that allowing “gays in would lead to boy-on-boy sex and bullying by older gay scouts, of young scouts trying to force them into a gay lifestyle”.


Immediately, Harris’s friend, a board certified orthopedic surgeon, “stood up with his iPhone,” and began to school the crowd about the difference between a faux group and a recognized medical institution, the American Academy of Pediatrics. He proceeded to dispel the gay agenda rumors, reading directly from the research that AAP produced.


Dispelling myths blunted the spread of doubt. Ultimately, however, academic research doesn’t change minds — but having a gay family member or friend does. National support for marriage equality has steadily climbed from 33 percent to a slight plurality (49 percent) a decade later. Of those who changed their minds, one-third (32) “say it is because they know someone – a friend, family member or other acquaintance – who is homosexual,” according to a Pew poll.



“What the power of the Internet does is allows people to connect with each other,” says Wahls. “For many young gay kids, growing up 20 or 30 years ago, they thought they were the only ones. But today, in 2013, you can discover very, very quickly that that isn’t the case.” Online support has fueled a cycle of coming out and acceptance, exposing more and more Americans to their gay neighbors, friends and family members.


Fascinating enough, the demographic that has made the greatest percentage gains in support of marriage equality is the “silent generation,” those born before WWII ended (1925-1945). True to course, the deluge of Scouts coming out of the closet made its way to one of the organizations oldest and respected members, Jack Coughlin. A Scout of 77 years, Coughlin had one of his four sons come out to him shortly after the James Dale decision. After educating himself about homosexuality, he came to understand it as biological fact of life — a perspective he shared with his skeptical colleagues during crucial regional meetings leading up to the May vote.


Coughlin argues that widespread associations with gay friends and family members were “a major factor” in the decision to eventually overturn the ban. After Coughlin’s regional meeting, his colleagues approached him saying, “I’m going to vote for change, because I have a gay daughter.”


Three months later, the Boy Scouts would accept gay Scouts and one month after that, the Supreme Court would make equality the law of the land.


Essentials: 5 Items



1. Viral Texas Filibuster Defeats Anti-Abortion Bill [Wonkblog]



  • Texas State Senator Wendy Davis went on an 11-hour marathon filibuster to block a Texas law to close abortion clinics.

  • #StandWithWendy quickly became a trending topic on Twitter, including a retweet from President Obama.

  • Late last night, more than 180,000 people were reportedly watching the YouTube live stream.


2. Putin Protecting Snowden [CBS]



  • Russian King/democratically elected President Vladimir Putin indicates he will not extradite NSA whitsleblower Edward Snowden.

  • Snowden is currently holed up in a Moscow airport and is reportedly en route to Ecuador for asylum.


3. Social Media Boosted Organ Donation Registration 2,000 percent [thegovlab]



  • The American Journal of Transplantation found that allowing Facebook users to broadcast their organ donation statuses vastly increased donation registration.

  • “Facebook push produced a rather mind-boggling 21-fold increase in organ-donor registrations on the first day of the campaign, with 13,012 people signing up to become organ donors, compared to the usual daily average of 616.”


4. Immigration Vote Set For Wednesday (Politico)



  • A crucial Senate vote on border security within the comprehensive immigration reform bill is slated for Wednesday.

  • The so-called “border surge” amendment would vastly expand border security in an attempt to bring security hawks on board with the struggling immigration-reform bill.


5. Internet Loves Love


The Internet is going crazy over the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down DOMA and uphold a lower court ruling to overturn California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. Here are the funniest and most inspiring and thoughtful updates:






















Microsoft Opens Up Bing As A Platform For Developers



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At its Build developer conference today, Microsoft announced that it is opening up quite a bit of Bing‘s advanced functionality to developers. As Microsoft corporate VP Gurdeep Singh Pall noted, developers are already using Bing APIs, of course, but apps can now use Bing’s entities and knowledge, natural user interfaces and new mapping and visualization capabilities (including Microsoft’s just-announced 3D imagery for maps).


As Singh Pall noted, Microsoft has been using all of these capabilities privately already, of course, but he thinks that “if we can do something with an API that is good, third parties can do something that is dynamite.”



Bing, he said, “is not just a great search engine, but the team has built some great capabilities.” Bing, after all, is pretty good at understand user intent, unstructured content on the web and other queries and data types that are not trivial for a developer to implement.


The team, he said, always believed that Bing could do a lot of things that can “actually be very valuable outside of the search box. For a long time, we’ve now thought that you could use these capabilities to create some great experiences.”


Developers will get access to much of Bing’s data, including it web index and relevance engine, as well as its knowledge base and understanding of entities. The Bing team has also worked on lots of natural user interface technologies, including voice recognition, which will also be available for developers to add to their apps.















Microsoft Will Bring 3-D Imagery To Bing Maps For Windows 8.1



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Microsoft just announced that the Bing Maps app for Windows 8.1 will offer 3-D imagery, just like Google Maps and Apple Maps. This previously unannounced feature, Microsoft’s corporate VP Gurdeep Singh Pall said while demonstrating some new capabilities of Bing for developers, will launch with Windows 8.1, though it’s not in the preview version yet.


Microsoft, he said, developed its own cameras to create these 3-D images. It’s not clear what kind of coverage these 3-D maps will provide, yet, but we will follow up with Microsoft and update this post as we learn more. Developers will be able to use all of this imagery in their own apps, too.


The demo Microsoft showed today was actually quite impressive and at least on par — if not better — with what its competitors are currently doing. The fact that all of its competitors had already added 3-D imagery to their maps did make Bing Maps look somewhat behind the times, but it looks like Microsoft is starting to catch up again.
















Revel Systems Raises $10.1M To Help It Grow iPad Point-Of-Sale Business Internationally



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Revel Systems, purveyor of iPad-based point-of-sale systems for restaurant, retail and other customer-service facing businesses, announced its $10.1 million Series B funding round today. The new investment comes from Tim Tighe, former CEO of Hungry Jack’s and SVP of McDonald’s Southeast Asia, and Sean Tomlinson, serial entrepreneur. Both are private investors based in Asia, and the source of the funding reflects Revel’s larger goals.


The SF-based Revel aims to continue its growth both at home and abroad, but will be opening new offices in both Asia and Australia with the help of this round. The new offices, combined with continued efforts to grow at home, will require a significant headcount increase, according to Revel, with its San Francisco-based staff set to increase by 50 percent immediately on the tail of this raise. Another target for domestic investment from the funding is a west coast distribution center for the iPad-compatible hardware that Revel provides its customers, which include countertop terminals, printers, scales and cash drawers.


Tighe joins Revel’s advisory board as part of the deal, and Tomlinson gets added to the Board of Directors. Both bring the kind of experience Revel needs to help smooth and accelerate its international positioning, which is a key part of the company’s business strategy after having expanded successfully across a number of different market verticals at home in the U.S. I asked about the challenges Revel faces moving into new markets, and how additional expertise will help.


“Each of the countries that we are moving into is more strict than the USA, since most of them are already using EMV [chip card payment standard],” Revel co-founder Lisa Falzone said in an interview. “However, Revel already has a good year head start on EMV, since we were the first iPad POS to announce EMV processing earlier this year… The nice thing about the UK and EU is the new payment players that are making it easier for new POSs to enter the market. For example, we can connect into SumUp and Ayden and be good for almost all EU and UK with one six-month integration, which is really nice since it makes the time to entry a lot less.  ”


Other challenges include negotiating language localization and tax rules, but Revel is able to tackle these through allocation of new funds and with the help of expert local advisors. Existing players in the market like Micros are also a challenge, but Revel says it has little in the way of internationally based competitors when it comes to those offering similarly disruptive use of technologies like the iPad.


This round is all about stepping up the rate at which Revel can expand, according to Falzone. The company has talked previously about its success and ability to stand on its own, but taking on additional investment really opens up what it can do in relatively little time.


“[The funding] really accelerates the pace,” she said. “Revel has proven that it can do a lot with a little – we are profitable as of December of last year and are growing as funds allow. Now that we can have an abundance of funds, we’ll really be able to speed up the process.”


Coming up on the product side, Revel is looking to build out its enterprise options with new features, Falzone says, though she wasn’t able to share any details. Adding more for larger businesses is another key part of Revel’s growth strategy, however, so expect to see this help with its efforts to court larger brands and companies.















Google Play Edition Samsung Galaxy S4 And HTC One Now Available, Will Start Shipping By July 9



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Despite plenty of rumors that attested to the contrary, Google didn’t show off any new Nexus phones at its I/O developer conference. Instead it trotted out a version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 that ran a largely untouched version of Android 4.2, and Google SVP Sundar Pichai followed up with an announcement about a similarly unfettered HTC One. The announcements left Android fans (myself included) slobbering in anticipation.


Well, the wait is over — the so-called Google Play Edition S4 and One are available in the Google Play Store for $649 and $599, respectively, and Google says they’ll start shipping by July 9. A bit expensive, sure, but you’re not locked into a long-term contract with a carrier (throw in a GSM SIM and you’re golden) so arguably the good outweighs the bad here.


By now, there’s been plenty of ink (digital and otherwise) spilled on the two devices — consider our lengthy GS4 and One reviews — but it’s worth noting that these devices aren’t running a strictly stock version of Android (hence the non-Nexus monikers). Sure, the overwrought skins and UI elements endemic to Samsung’s TouchWiz and HTC’s Sense are nowhere to be found, but certain tidbits from the original software had to be migrated over in order to keep some of their more compelling features intact. That means that, among other things, the Google Play Edition One retains its Beats Audio profile to keep its twin front-facing BoomSound speakers pumping out the audio, while the GS4 still plays nice with Samsung’s curious notification-revealing flip covers.


We’re still waiting to get our hands on some demo units to really put these things through their paces, but it’s heartening to see Google and its OEM partners take our pleas for (mostly) stock Android on premium hardware seriously. Of course, the fact that nearly all of the software differentiators between the two have been given the axe means that the quality of hardware may weigh more heavily in people’s purchasing decisions — maybe HTC’s One will finally find the success the company needs it to.















With Windows 8.1, Microsoft Wants To Own The Kitchen, As Well As The Living Room And The Office



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Microsoft is adding a bunch of new things to Windows 8.1, as the first part of its “rapid release” plan for its desktop OS. One aspect of the update is the new Food and Drink app for Windows 8, which is all about those two things, as you might’ve guessed. It’s a small addition, but one that uses a fairly ingenious interface gimmick to really make using it in the kitchen environment easier.


The Food and Drink app provides easy access to recipes, ingredients, grocery lists and more, but it also uses your device’s camera to operate a hands-free mode that lets you scroll through recipe steps with swipe gestures that don’t require touching the actual screen. It’s like the no-touch gestures built into Samsung’s latest Galaxy S4 smartphone, but built for a specific use case where someone might actually, you know, want to use it. Messy hands covered in egg, flour or salmonella don’t mix with touchscreen devices, after all.


On its own, this seems like a fairly small app addition to Windows 8, but the bigger picture here is that Microsoft is building kitchen-friendly features into its primary OS, which is in turn a good candidate to power not only a range of tablet and other devices, but also potentially connected home gadgets like fridges and more somewhere down the line. So far, there hasn’t been much in terms of adoption of Windows 8 in those kinds of appliances, but Microsoft is set to start pushing into more intelligent system integration with Windows Embedded through 2013.


Whether in consumer tablets or “dual purpose devices,” as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called the Surface and its ilk on stage today, Windows 8′s new food and drink focused features illustrate a desire for whole-home domination, and MS isn’t leaving it to third-party developers to make that happen.















Storefront Gets $1.6M To Grow Its ‘Pop-Up Shop' Marketplace For Short-Term Commercial Rentals



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Storefront, a startup that launched this past fall out of San Francisco startup accelerator AngelPad focusing on helping businesses find short-term real estate rentals for “pop-up shops” and other temporary stores, is set to announce today that it’s taken on $1.6 million in seed funding.


The investors in the seed round include Mohr Davidow Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, 500 Startups, David Tisch’s BoxGroup and Sand Hill Angels, among other angel investors.


Storefront’s co-founder and CEO Erik Eliason said in an interview that the new funding will be put toward helping the service expand beyond its native San Francisco, where over the past six months the company has helped over 100 large and local brands open pop-up shops (including the Storenvy space which we recently profiled for TechCrunch TV) and listed over 3 million square feet of retail space. That geographical expansion is already underway, with the recent launch of Storefront listings in New York City.


The funding will also be used to add more hires to Storefront’s team, which currently has six full-time staff.


The idea behind Storefront is to help make it just as easy to open a brick-and-mortar shop as it now is to sell stuff online, matching up sellers looking for retail space with existing real estate owners who are currently facing 10 percent vacancy rates.


Eliason put it this way:


“Our bigger vision is that it’s really easy to open a store online with Etsy or Storenvy. But offline there are still so many friction points with setting up a store. Things like Square make things like payments easier, but finding the space, securing the space, furnishing the space — it’s not an easy process.”


As for the competition? Traditional commercial real estate brokers are not focused on the short-term rental space for the increasingly popular “pop-up” market, because it’s not as lucrative for commissions, Eliason says. Craigslist has short-term real estate listings, but those come with all the hassles that exist for, well, everything on Craigslist.


In terms of revenue, Storefront does not charge any commission on the rental of a space itself. The startup makes money by taking a referral fee for any purchases that it helps facilitate after the space has been leased, such as sales of furniture, fixtures, temporary staff, signage and insurance.


Overall, it’s a smart idea at a very smart time (with a catchy name to boot), so it’s no wonder that it’s gotten the attention of investors. If Storefront can execute its vision throughout the U.S., it could turn into something big.















Microsoft (Finally) Confirms WebGL Support For Internet Explorer 11



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Our own Frederic Lardinois noted that the new version of Internet Explorer wasn’t a major revamp, but it does play home to some very compelling changes under the hood.


Take WebGL for instance — nearly all of Microsoft’s major browser rivals have already jumped on that bandwagon, and now Antoine Leblond confirmed at Microsoft’s annual BUILD conference in San Francisco that Internet Explorer 11 (which should officially debut alongside Windows 8.1 later this year) will indeed support WebGL too.


Finally.


Granted, this tidbit won’t come as much of a shock to those paying very close attention — an early version of Internet Explorer 11 spotted in a leaked Windows Blue build this past March late last month basically confirmed as much, Microsoft posted a kooky Vine (seriously, with browser puppets and everything) that strongly hinted that WebGL support was in the works. All that said, this is a major win for proponents of the cross-platform graphics acceleration API, especially considering how dicey the prospect of universal adoption looked for a while. As one of the last major WebGL holdouts, Microsoft raised its share of concerns with WebGL — consider this pointed critique of WebGL’s security shortcomings from a few years back.


Leblond also took a few moments to talk up the implementation of MPEG Dash –a streaming video standard that has been slowly picking up steam among industry players — in IE11. It’s slowly been picking up steam among industry players, though Microsoft’s interest in it hasn’t exactly been a secret. After becoming a standard in 2011, Adobe adopted MPEG Dash in 2012 and Microsoft committed to it just a few months later.















Official Facebook, Flipboard, And NFL Apps Are Coming To Windows 8/RT



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At its Build developer conference in San Francisco today, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Facebook, Flipboard and the NFL are about to launch their apps on Windows 8 and Windows RT. As Ballmer notes, Microsoft believes that developers are doing great work on Windows 8 and that the number of apps “that are coming into the store is phenomenal.” He did, however, single these three apps out, which makes sense, given that they are indeed marquee apps for Windows 8 that were, until now, sadly missing from the platform.


Now that Microsoft is putting a new emphasis on small Windows tablets with Windows 8.1, apps like Flipboard will make a lot more sense on the Windows 8 platform.


Flipboard CEO Mike McCue argues that he doesn’t just want to build “the best app possible for Windows 8,” but that Flipboard wants it to be “the best version of Flipboard possible.”



As for the Facebook apps, Facebook tells us that it will first bring a Facebook for Windows 8 apps to the platform. The company is building this service itself and the focus will, for now, be on tablets.


Microsoft, Ballmer said, also “recently struck a deal with the NFL to bring its content and applications to a broad set of Microsoft devices, including all Windows tablets and PCs.” The first app to come to Windows 8, it seems, will be a fantasy football app.















Microsoft Adds 3D Printing Support To Windows 8.1 For Developers, Replicator 2 Coming To MS Stores



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Microsoft is doing its bit to help push forward the 3D printing revolution, by adding in native 3D printer support in Windows 8.1. A new API will let developers on its platform put 3D printing capabilities right into their apps, so that you’ll be able to print that elegant ashtray you’re modelling right on the spot. The API will help consumers using devices including those from Makerbot and Form Labs create their own stuff even more easily at home.


This is great news for the prospects of 3D printing becoming a mainstream thing, instead of just an enthusiast’s hobby. And Microsoft is clearly interested in attracting developers who are interested in 3D printing to the Windows software ecosystem. Whether that’s just a way for it to look ‘hip, cool and cutting edge,’ or a genuine big bet on the future of the tech remains to be seen, but at least it’s there to be taken advantage of.


Microsoft support along with the merger of Makerbot with Stratasys means there’s a lot of energy going into mainstreaming home 3D printing tech right now, from some of the largest players in the space. That doesn’t mean we’ll all be printing our own phones at home in two years’ time, but it does mean we’ll probably see a lot more investment focused on this area in the near future.


Microsoft’s Antoine Leblond called printing 3D “just as easy and seamless as printing in 2D” on stage today at Build, and demoed the process of printing a vase from a Windows 8.1 device to the MakerBot Replicator 2. The Replicator 2 will be available in Microsoft Stores soon, too, according to Leblond.












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