TechCrunch
Google Launches The Chromecast To Bring Chrome To The Living Room
Meet the Chromecast. As the name suggests, it’s powered by Chrome and is designed to bring Google’s browser/OS to the biggest screen in the house.
The Chromecast is designed first to be a streaming device. It’s supposed to be the easiest way to get YouTube and Google Play on HDTVs. Think Apple TV, but rather Google TV with another name (because, well, Google TV is already a thing).
The Chromecast is the first expansion of the Chrome operating system out of traditional forms of computing. Up until now, Chrome OS was a desktop operating system, designed for use on a laptop or monitor. Google retooled it for the living room and tapped mobile operating systems to provide the content.
The Chromecast uses an AirPlay-type system to provide content to the device. From Android or iOS, users simply hit a button on YouTube to load the video on the other screen. Quick and easy.
The device itself is a small HDMI stick similar to the Roku Steaming Stick. It’s powered by USB and Google TV VP Mario Queiroz bragged that it features quick and easy setup.
Tile Grabs $2.6M Via Selfstarter For Its Lost Property-Finding Bluetooth Tags Plus App
Tile, a connected objects startup that’s trying to fix the problem of finding lost property with a Bluetooth tags plus app combo, has raised a massive $2.6 million via its Selfstarter crowdfunding campaign. The funding considerably beefs up to the $200,000 Tile gained from being incubated out of Silicon Valley mobile accelerator Tandem Capital. It’s also a massive 130x bump on the $20,000 it was looking to raise on Selfstarter to fund initial production of its connected gizmo.
Tile’s twist is to combine Bluetooth tags which users attach to their valuable objects with the power of a community of app users. Its vision is ultimately for each individual Tile user to benefit from a distributed network effect as other users’ smartphones can be used to trace their lost items. Each Tile app is capable of picking up the location of any Tile, regardless of its owner, if the phone passes close enough to the lost Tile — which means that once a Tile is marked as lost, the whole network is alerted to be on the hunt for it. Should another Tile user then pass within range of the lost item their smartphone will (privately) record its location and send a background notification to the owner of that Tile.
Initially, of course, that network effect will be limited. But the success of Tile’s Selfstarter campaign is a positive sign for building out a large-enough community to start creating a truly useful connected network. Tile’s Selfstarter campaign, which we covered last month, ran for 34 days and gained close to 50,000 backers — all apparently seeking a reliable way to retrieve lost valuables. Tile’s units are due to begin shipping in Winter 2013/2014. In the meantime Tile is still taking orders for the matchbook-sized, $25-a-piece tags via its website.
Commenting on the conclusion of the funding campaign in a statement, Tile co-founder and COO Mike Farley said: ”The enormous, positive response we’ve received from everyone during the Selfstarter campaign has been very exciting and encouraging. The Tile community has grown significantly over the past month, and we’re very much looking forward to significantly increasing its reach in the years to come.”
Tile’s Selfstarter also marks a new funding record for Selfstarter, exceeding the record set by the prior most successful campaign on the platform, Lockitron, which raised $2.2 million from more than 14,500 backers.
Android 4.3 Available Today For Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Nexus 10 And Galaxy Nexus
Today at Google’s event, VP of Android Hugo Barra introduced the new Nexus 7 as well as Android’s newest version — Android 4.3. While the new tablet will ship with Android 4.3 today, other Nexus devices will receive the 4.3 update as well, as soon as today.
Android 4.3 features new restricted profiles for kids, OpenGL|ES 3.0 for game developers, a redesigned camera interface, Bluetooth Low Energy support and general performance improvements. It’s not clear whether all of these devices will receive the update today or only one device at a time. The old Nexus 7 should get the over-the-air update today while other Nexus devices could receive the update in the coming weeks.
Recently, Google announced that it would sell the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One with a pure Android version. Google could update those devices pretty soon as well, even though the company didn’t mention those devices.
Google didn’t announce any release date of Android 4.3 for third-party device makers. OEMs may have to test their UI layers first before rolling it out to their users.
Developing…
White House Photographer Pete Souza Takes His Photography To A Broader Audience On Instagram
Today the well-known and liked chief White House photographer Pete Souza announced that he has joined Instagram, taking parts of his work to a new digital realm. He confirmed in later tweets that he will only upload photos to the service that are taken with smartphones, though he appears unsure of what model his current handset is.
The content of the Instagram account will be separate from the White House’s Flickr account. In his first hours on the Facebook-owned platform, Souza has racked up a respectable 2,300 followers. That figure will be five digits by the end of the day.
You can follow Souza here on Instagram.
Souza matters, given his deep access to the Obama administration’s operations. He took, by way of an example, the iconic picture of the White House picture showing the Situation Room awaiting news on the raid that lead to the death of Osama Bin Laden. It has accumulated 2.7 million views on Flickr alone:
The content of Souza’s Instagram appears to be more pedestrian than his other efforts. His first image of the Seal of the President is almost cliché, but perhaps more appealing to Instagram’s younger audience:
As The Verge notes, that Souza is on Instagram isn’t much of a surprise, given that the Obama administration is exceptionally engaged across the Internet. Others have worked to emulate that success, such as when Ann Romney joined Pinterest.
Perhaps we can take Souza’s move as indicative that Instagram is now roughly as cool as Facebook.
Top, First Image Credit: The White House
Video Site Viki Adds Blake Krikorian And Dave Goldberg As Its Newest Strategic Investors As It Passes 400M Words In Its Crowdsourced Subtitle Catalog
Viki, a startup based out of Singapore that is vying to be the “Hulu for the rest of the world” with a combination of premium video supplemented by crowdsourced subtitles, is today announcing two new investors that should play a useful role in achieving that.
Blake Krikorian, founder of Sling Media and now corporate VP at Microsoft overseeing XBox, and Dave Goldberg, CEO of Survey Monkey, are making a strategic investment in the company, already backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and more (it was Marc Andreessen who originally made the intro to Krikorian, while another existing Viki investor, Chamath Palihapitiya of Social + Capital Partnership, was the initial connection to Goldberg), having raised $24.3 million in publicly-disclosed funding.
Razmig Hovaghimian, co-founder and CEO of Viki, says the amount of investment is not being disclosed now, although it will likely be rolled into he the company’s next round — a Series C, which will start to get raised sometime between now and 2014.
Viki has already passed 400 million words translated by its users over 163 languages, spanning content from 100 partnerships with premium brands and millions of views on its most popular programs. The company, he says, has cornered Southeast Asia and now wants to conquer other non-U.S. markets, specifically Europe and Latin America.
Hovaghimian tells me that Kirkorian and Goldberg are each bringing some much-needed firepower in a couple of key areas such as expanding into new products like XBox and music, and for much-needed, expanding networking in Silicon Valley and Hollywood, crucial as Viki approaches its next stage of growth. Viki has to date focused just on premium video delivered through PCs and mobile (where its apps have had nearly 11 million downloads, with 7 million of those in the last six months). The company to date makes all of its revenue from advertising that runs alongside its premium content. This looks like it will be the mainstay of its revenues going forward.
“There is no paid content on our platform,” he said. “We syndicate some [the deal with Netflix for example gives Viki some revenue] but our basic business model is instream ads, where we work with brands like Samsung and Coke.” He says the CPMs on these ads are healthy, “like Hulu in some regions,” with some campaigns coming in “north of $50 on CPMs” and inventory in some
regions completely selling out.
There is also a question of big data analytics. As more U.S. studios license their content to Viki, and it gets consumed on that platform, Viki is picking up a lot of data about its users and their watching behavior. It wants to come up with better ways of harnessing that and providing it in better and smarter ways for those content partners, who have been clamoring for it (this is the same kind of social media data that Twitter is tapping into with its own plays around video and online conversations). This is where Goldberg, with his expertise in analytics from Survey Monkey, will come in particularly well.
Google Makes Android 4.3 Official, Offers Multi-User Restricted Profile Accounts And Bluetooth Smart
Android 4.3 isn’t an overly dramatic advancement over Android 4.2, but the new version of Google’s mobile OS announced today does bring a number of improvements that should appeal to both developers and end users. Highlights include the redesigned camera interface, general performance improvements for the OS including smoother animations, and long-awaited Bluetooth Low Energy support.
Muti-User Restricted Profiles
This builds on the multi-user accounts on 4.2, but adds Restricted Profiles. These make it possible to do parental controls on the tablet, by changing the performance of apps and other services based on who’s logged in. It also blocks out access to stuff like in-app purchases. There’s much more to this than just parental controls, however, including options for provisioning in enterprise settings.
Bluetooth Improvements
Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth Smart) makes it easy to connect accessories to Android devices without sapping too much battery. This is key for smart watch and other wearables, as well as health and fitness trackers.
OpenGL|ES 3.0
This is huge for game developers, as it allows for much better graphics rendering, which shows off very well in the demos Google showed off on stage. Now we can also see lens flares a la J.J. Abrams, and other very nice visual effects on future games. All of the above is rendered in real-time in native 1080p.
DRM APIs
Who doesn’t get excited about locked down media content? Serisously though, this is a boon for content providers and should help Google convince even more to offer up greater libraries, with the peace of mind that their stuff is safe. It does accompany the news that Netflix will deliver 1808p video streaming on Netflix, making the Nexus 7 the first Android tablet to get that.
Notification Access
You now can access and interact with notifications form the Android status bar, and use those to be displayed in another app or via Bluetooth on a connected device (like the Pebble) and you can change their read status and dismiss them, too.
The update is pushing out live today to existing Nexus tablet devices, in addition to shipping on the new Nexus 7. It's also going to be coming to Google Nexus handsets and experience devices soon.
Developing…
Google Unveils The New Nexus 7 Android Tablet, An iPad Mini Rival With A Super Screen Available July 30
Google today unveiled its new Nexus 7 tablet at a special event hosted by Android and Chrome chief Sundar Pichai. The tablet isn’t a surprise, thanks to a handful of early leaks, but it is an impressive device nonetheless. The Android 4.3-powered tablet ups the ante on screen resolution in a big way with a 1920×1200 display, giving it 323 PPI pixel density, much greater than that of the more expensive iPad mini.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the Nexus 7′s other salient specs:
- Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro 1.5GHz Processor
- 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi
- 2GB RAM
- 16GB or 32GB onboard storage
- 5.0MP rear, 1.2MP front camera
- Bluetooth 4.0
- 0.3-inches thin, 7.9″ x 4.5″
- 16GB Wi-Fi ($229), 32GB Wi-Fi ($269), 64GB LTE ($349)
- Wi-Fi models available in the U.S. July 30, LTE edition and global models “in the coming weeks”
It’s lighter, thinner and has a much smaller bezel than the original Nexus 7, and is designed all around for portability. The idea was to create something focused entirely on design, according to Google’s Hugo Barra. It’s the highest pixel density on a tablet display available on the market, and the color gamut offers 30 percent wider range of colors, too. Now there’s also a virtual 5.1 sound system in the device provided by Fraunhofer. Virtual surround is always more disappointing than it sounds, but better than mono audio.
The processor offers 1.8 times the processing power, and 4 times the GPU performance. There’s LTE built-in, which is an unlocked option that’s available only in the US. Batter life offers 9 hours of HD playbook and 10 hours of web browsing.
Google has once again tapped Asus as the manufacturing partner for its own-branded tablet, and that’s great news for that OEM as the previous generation was its best-selling tablet by most accounts. The new Nexus 7 definitely pushes the needle over and above the last generation, especially with that screen, but we’ll have to wait and see whether that drives more consumers in its direction, and away from Apple’s comfortable embrace.
The Nexus 7 has sold around 7 million units to date, if you believe estimates from generally reliable analysts. It’s an absolute drop in the bucket compared to Apple’s iPad success, which easily beats that number each quarter, but relative to other Android tablets the Nexus line, and the small one in particular, is a growing success, above and beyond its value as an aspirational reference design for Google to demonstrate Android’s tablet potential. It’s designed to address the “explosion in tablets,” according to Pichai on stage, which now sees almost one in two tablets powered by Android.
eBay Is Testing A New Local Service Provider Marketplace In The UK
eBay is testing a new local service provider marketplace in the U.K. called eBayHire. It appears that the test is first rolling out in the U.K., and there isn’t a U.S.-based site (yet).
According to the site, eBayHire is similar to Angie’s List in that the site will get you in touch with service providers. You can find traditional service providers like plumbers, movers, contractors, drivers and more; but you can also access more specialized providers like photographers, those who specialize in antique valuations, upholstery cleaners and more.
How does it work? You pick a provider you want to hire and submit a form via the site of what type of service you need. The provider then sends you a quote or calls you, and if you proceed with the service, you book and pay directly with the professional.
While some details are still unclear, this seems more like Angie’s List or Home Depot’s Red Beacon than TaskRabbit or Exec. On the eBayHire site, the company states that “eBay Hire is a pilot being run by a few folks at eBay in the UK. It is a separate business to eBay, but is part of the eBay, Inc. family.”
Local service providers would be a deviation from the marketplace, delivery and payments focused products that eBay has prided itself on over the past few years. But extending the eBay marketplace technology to other economies could be interesting and profitable, and CEO John Donahoe has a great advisor in Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky.
A spokesperson for eBay issues this statement: “eBay Hire is a pilot program in beta currently only available in the United Kingdom that connects consumers with local services.”
UpCounsel Is A Marketplace To Connect Small Businesses With Affordable Legal Help
At one point or another, pretty much every small business needs legal help. But hiring the right law firm isn’t easy, and it can be expensive. But what if there were a platform enabling small businesses to find affordable, independent legal counsel? That’s what UpCounsel seeks to provide.
UpCounsel provides a marketplace of attorneys to help small businesses and startups find cost-effective legal help without hiring a full-service law firm. It works by matching customers with attorneys based on the type of legal help needed, as well as the specialties of the lawyers available.
For attorneys, the UpCounsel platform provides a new way for them to find clients, which can be a challenge for those with their own independent practices. Essentially, it enables independents to create their own virtual law firm in about five minutes, allowing them to offer different packaged deals and fixed-fee services and providing a client-management tool for scheduling meetings and projects. UpCounsel also processes all payments for services provided through the platform, so there’s no haggling over invoices or waiting for clients to pay their bills.
For clients, the platform provides a number of independent, solo, and part-time attorneys who charge much less than the typical full-service firm. According to co-founder and CEO Matt Faustman, the platform cuts down on a lot of overhead associated with typical law firms, which means the average hourly rate on UpCounsel is about half what most firms charge.
When a client posts a job on the platform, it seeks to match them with the best attorneys available based on the type of work, industry, and location. So far, UpCounsel has been used a lot by clients in the tech and real estate industries, and even among the legal community to help firms find part-time attorneys for big projects. It’s even seeing attorneys use the platform to team up and create their own ad hoc law firms for certain clients.
UpCounsel screens all attorneys that have signed up for proper certifications, malpractice insurance, and a minimum of two years experience. To date, they have about 150 California lawyers signed up for the platform since it launched in beta last September, but according to Faustman it plans to expand that to more than 1,000 attorneys over the next 12 months.
Faustman was a former startup lawyer himself, at Latham & Watkins in Silicon Valley and Boston. To build UpCounsel he teamed up with co-founder and CTO Mason Blake, who was the former lead engineer at JamBase, and COO Touraj Parang, who founded Jaxter and was former head of strategy at Webs.com before it sold to Vistaprint.
Runtastic Gets Updated For Android 4.3, Brings Holo Visual Redesign And Bluetooth Smart Support
Fitness app and hardware accessory maker Runtastic launched version 4.0 of its product today in conjunction with Google’s special Android and Chrome event. This update offers new features tailored specifically to the Android 4.3 improvements Google has made, with a particular focus on Bluetooth Smart capabilities that work with its line of fitness hardware, which includes a heart rate monitor.
Runtastic gadgets, including the heart rate monitor, and in the future the speed/cadence sensor, will now be able to sync directly with Bluetooth 4.0 enabled smartphones running Android 4.3, without the need for an intermediary receiver. Also new in the app is a complete redesign that adheres to Google’s so-called “Holo” design guidelines, which means that interface elements have a lighter touch and the entire interface has been overhauled. There’s a new menu, and maps integration is built-in to the main screen while activities are running for easier access.
Runtastic is one of the earliest and most successful entrants in the fitness monitoring space, and Google will be using the app to show off its new Android 4.3 features today on stage at the event, which is taking place as we speak, so tune in to find out more about the app and how it shows off the changes Google made with Android both under the hood and on the surface in version 4.3.
MoPub's New Dashboard Gives Developers One Place To Track Their Revenue Across Ad Networks
Startup MoPub aims to help mobile publishers and developers manage advertising from multiple ad networks and other sources. Today it’s adding a seemingly obvious-but-important feature — a dashboard where customers can actually see how each source is performing.
Marketing Director Elain Szu said that until now, publishers haven’t really been able to see this data in one place. Instead, they’d have to go to each individual network, and even within MoPub, they had to access their data by pulling offline reports. Bringing all the results together has been a technical challenge, she says, but the real issue is that “nobody has taken the time to think about what insights they are trying to drive.”
“The idea is to give publishers a really clear and comprehensive view of those high-level metrics to their business,” she says. “It’s less about tactically executing their changes.”
As you can see in the screenshot above, the dashboard shows revenue, impressions, pricing, clickthrough rates, and fill rates, all broken down by source. When publishers can see this data in a single dashboard, it’s easier to spot the campaigns and networks that are performing well, to see the ones that are underperforming, and then to adjust the way they allocate ad inventory accordingly.
Szu said the goal is to make the dashboard useful for customers whether they’re a lone developer who’s managing their ad inventory on their own or the chief marketing officer/chief revenue officer of a larger publisher (who might be less involved in making day-to-day changes but is still looking for a broader sense of how their strategy is panning out).
In an email statement, Jon Schlegel, founder and CEO of Optime Software (publisher of games including Hearts Free and Hangman Free) said, “This is exactly what I need to keep tabs on my monetization strategy. It has everything we need from our ad network performance to MoPub Marketplace data in one place, so I can focus on our users and spend less time chasing down data.”
After an invite-only beta test, MoPub is making the dashboard available to all of its users today, Szu said. The company announced in May that it has reached a $100 million revenue run rate.
Bukito, A Portable 3D Printer With A ~$600 Price-Tag, Gets Funded On Kickstarter
3D printers generally have a pretty large footprint, so it was likely only a matter of time before someone decided to work on shrinking one to the point of portability. Just, well, because. Meet Bukito: a “take it everywhere” extruder 3D printer which has already doubled its original Kickstarter funding goal of $54,000 with 10 days still left to run on the campaign.
The printer has a handle up top for carrying it from place to place, and can apparently continue printing even when being held upside down or at an angle, although that’s not entirely advised by its creators. Weight is sub-2kg, with aluminum used for the frame. And just in case you had any doubts about its portability the creators have shot a video showing the printer being hoisted aloft by an octocopter while still printing.
Being small enough to be portable, the printer obviously isn’t going to be spitting out massive objects. Build volume is 125 x 150 x 125mm, with a nozzle size of 0.5mm. The metal extruder design can apparently handle the following materials: PLA, ABS, MABS, Nylon, Laywood (although they say you may need a different platform to handle some, which they will be including with the shipping product). Print resolution is 50 microns on the X/Y axis and 100 microns on the Z.
What’s the point of a portable 3D printer? We’re not entirely sure that’s massive mileage in the concept but of course it does mean you can more easily take the printer round to friends, your work, school and so on. Also there’s the shrunken price factor to consider, which may be what’s most attracting backers here. Creator Deezmaker’s early bird offer of 75 pledges of $549 to bag a Bukito have all gone, but there are still a few pledge options at $599 (or more).
A circa $600 price-tag means the Bukito is a lot cheaper than high end 3D printers like the Makerbot Replicator 2.0, which costs circa $2,199 (but will of course turn out a far superior end product), and a little more expensive than Pirate3D’s Buccaneer ‘affordable’ 3D printer, which has a price-tag of around $350.
As well as its relatively low price, the Bukito’s apparently rugged portability may be attracting interest — since, with 3D printing still a nascent tech, having a carry-handle on top gives the impression that it’s robust enough to handle a bit of user misuse/trial and error too.
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