TechCrunch
Tobii And Synaptics Partner On Ultrabook Prototype With Eye Tracking Tech
You will gaze at your computer, and your computer will gaze back. That’s the inevitable path of progress in interface design, as evidenced by ongoing projects from companies like Leap Motion, Umoove, pmdtechnologies and more. Now, Sweden’s Tobii Technology is taking a step forward with its own approach, via a prototype ultrabook design created in partnership with touchpad company Synaptics.
The notebook will incorporate Tobii’s eye-tracking tech with Synpatics’ touch sensitive input methods to preview how the two can be used together to further the cause of new input methods. The purpose of the project is to showcase to OEMs how they might be able to use the same tech in their own products. Tobii and Synaptics will be touring with a roadshow of the prototype devices throughout July and August, showing off exactly how the two technologies work in tandem.
For Tobii, which has been showing off its Tobii Gaze technology since its introduction last year (and which was in development for many years before that in some form or another), this is a chance to finally start getting eye-tracking built-in to more mainstream devices. There’s been a lot of attention paid to how gaze tracking is a part of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 device, and other startups like Umoove are trying to market their own products to other consumer electronics makers, so the time is right for a major sales push.
Partnering with Synaptics is a good way to hitch Tobii’s wagon to a player with strong existing relationships with virtually every Windows PC manufacturer, as well as makers of mobile devices. The touchpad company has been in business for a long time, and survived the transition from cruder, simpler pressure-based input mechanisms to the more sensitive capacitive and hybrid systems now in place in most modern devices. Synaptics will be using the prototype to shop around its own ForcePad solution, a new product offering that incorporates per-finger pressure detection into the mix for even greater sensitivity.
The jury’s still out on whether any one company will dominate gaze detection and eye tracking the same way that Synaptics has done for touch-based input on PCs, but clearly Tobii (which raised $21 million from Intel last year) is making a play for the crown. This push likely means we’ll see a lot of familiarly named PC makers trot out this kind of tech (or some kind of motion detection) in their prototype products and concepts at CES next year, so keep an eye out for that, and for the Tobii name.
Aiming To Disrupt Payday Lending, Andreessen-Backed LendUp Now Offers Instant Online And Mobile Loans
Y Combinator-incubated LendUp launched in October with backing from Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Kapor Capital and others, to bring a fresh solution to an old problem: You have to pay your bills now, but you don’t have the money to pay them. Rather than turn to predatory lenders and banks, with their high interest rates, borrow money from friends or cover your eyes and hope they go away, what do you do?
It may seem like a situation that only befalls the chronically irresponsible, but in fact, 15 million Americans turned to payday lenders to borrow money last year. Instead of ending up saddled with long-term debt from hidden fees, Draconian terms and costly rollovers, LendUp wants to give those looking for a speedy fix to a short-term financial conundrum a way to borrow money without hidden fees, costly rollovers and high-interest rates.
The lending space at large has begun to brim with startups — like BillFloat, Zest, Think, Kabbage, On Deck and Lending Club — each of which is trying to make it easier for consumers and small businesses to get access to capital without having to jump through a million hoops. LendUp, in contrast, is positioning itself as a direct lender, using technology and Big Data to allow consumers with poor or no credit to get access to small-dollar, short-term loans (of up to $250 for 30 days) and build their credit while doing so.
Unfortunately, most credit agencies turn their backs on payday loans, so even if people are able to pay them on time, it doesn’t help their credit scores and the cycle of bad credit keeps on spinning. Most banks won’t touch these kind of loans because they’re high-risk, but like On Deck Capital (which lends to small businesses), LendUp uses Big Data to do instant risk analysis and evaluate creditworthiness, weeding out those who have bad credit for a reason from those who may have become victims of the system.
Along with eschewing hidden fees, rollovers and high interest rates, LendUp streamlines the application process for loans — which traditionally takes forever — by customizing the process. In other words, rather than make everyone submit bank statements, credit reports and so on right from the beginning, it crunches available data and approves those with good credit instantly. It only requests more information from you if questions arise, approving or rejecting as soon as it has enough information to make an informed decision.
Co-founders Jacob Rosenberg and Sasha Orloff tell us that they’re able to build a dynamic application that changes in realtime based on customer risk profiles and segment with a higher level of accuracy by utilizing data sources that most banks or credit bureaus don’t consider. That could be data from social media or other lesser-used credit institutions.
With its foundations in place, today the startup is taking its formula one stop further, offering instant online loans. This means that LendUp now has the ability to deposit money in your account in as little as 15 minutes, so that consumers not only can apply for and get approved quicker than than they normally would, but they now have near-instant access to that loan.
LendUp loans are also available on mobile, so unlike its aforementioned lending competitors, LendUp deposits that money into your bank account, which you can then access from your laptop or while you’re on-the-go.
Orloff, who has nearly 15 years of experience working in credit analysis at the World Bank, Citigroup and others, says that the biggest problem inherent to the current lending process is that it can take up to four days for people with good credit to be approved for loans. When you need money right away because of impending deadlines, when it’s an emergency, that’s too long to wait.
By depositing loans directly into your bank account and making that capital available while you’re on the go, the founders believe that they’re removing one of the last advantages of going to a payday loan store rather than borrowing online. Participating banks offer instant direct deposits and loan decisions through LendUp, while users with non-participating bank accounts will receive loans the next business day.
It also hopes to incentive users by offering financial education through its “LendUp Ladder,” which aims to help borrowers with poor credit improve their credit scores by using LendUp to pay their loans on time.
With its new announcement today, LendUp is removing one of the last barriers that stands in the way of short-term, payday lending that actually offers fair terms to the consumer. So, while the word “disruption” is overused in Startup Land, LendUp has begun to create a service that seems like it could have real disruptive potential in the predatory world of payday lending.
Find LendUp at home here.
Snapchat Has A Patent That Could Help It Become The Defacto Camera App
While larger competitors struggle to differentiate themselves with different video lengths, Snapchat could use a different weapon to be the first camera app opened: speed. And unlike filters, this one will be more difficult to copy.
Snapchat has a patent, “Single mode visual media capture,” on its technology that allows the user to take a picture by tapping the camera button and a video by holding down the same camera button. Photos are simply taken by the tap, and videos end when you release the camera button, or after ten seconds.
The app always opens directly to the camera screen, and this single camera, single button for both photo and video makes capturing moments simple, and very fast. Vine’s recording interface is most similar, and is also quite quick, but it only does video.
By comparison, to move from photo to video in Instagram, you have to hit the video button, wait for the camera to shutter for a few seconds, move to a new screen, then press and hold to record. In Poke, Facebook’s Snapchat clone, you have to select camera or video camera before you see the capture screen; and, again, there’s loading time for the camera to open before you can capture something. Even in the standard iPhone camera app, you have to slide the dial from camera to video, wait for the camera to shutter for a couple seconds, then shoot.
Figure 2 of the patent shows the processing operations behind Snapchat’s photo and video taking apparatus.
This might seem like a trivial difference, but waste a couple seconds to switch to video or to wait for your camera app to load, and the moment you were hoping to share could be over.
The patent could also help Snapchat settle a pesky lawsuit. Frank Reginald “Reggie” Brown is currently suing Snapchat and co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy; Brown claims he was a co-founder of the company and was forced out by Spiegel and Murphy.
In a lawsuit filed in February 2013, Brown alleges,
“In addition, at this time [summer of 2011], Brown undertook the responsibility of drafting and filing a patent application for the technology used in the Application, which named Brown and the Individual Defendants as co-investors. Brown prepared the patent application and filed it with the United States Patent Office on behalf of the joint venture/partnership.”
As I wrote in March, this original patent led to a major argument:
“There was a big argument over patent filing,” the first source tells me. “Then there was a huge fight where each person said terrible things about the other and then Spiegel changed the passwords and Reggie just sat and waited to file…it was something to do with who’s name was listed first. Literally a pointless argument. The bigger thing was what happened after. I really don’t think the patent ended up being a problem. It’s pretty much just a fight between friends and people calling each other out. Not much basis for why they actually had a big split up.”
Nearly a year later, in August 2012, Spiegel and Murphy filed this patent.
Until recently, patent searches for Brown, Spiegel, Murphy, Snapchat, and even the company’s early names like Picaboo and Toyopa Group, came up with nothing.
A representative from the United States Patent Office tells me an “inventor can ask for an application not to be published at all until the patent is actually issued.” The patent eventually gets abandoned if it is never issued; the representative noted that if an application has multiple inventors, any of them can file a non-publication request.
A call to Brown’s lawyer’s office was not immediately returned.
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