TechCrunch
Heap Raises $2M For Their “Capture Everything” Analytics Tool
Heap, a company looking to battle the likes of Google and KissMetrics in the analytics space, has raised a seed round of $2M from some of the bigger names in the Valley.
As I’ve written before, Heap’s approach to analytics is somewhat backwards from what many web developers might be used to. Rather than having to be told what data to capture, Heap just captures every action a user does on your site. Every click, every page view, every interaction that their Javascript snippet can capture (though they avoid capturing things that would be directly detrimental to a user’s privacy — they don’t record what a user types into a form, for example, just that they typed something.)
The idea there is that if you need to analyze how well something on your site is working, you don’t have to add any new code or set up a test and wait a few days for the data to come in — you already have that data. Want to check if your users are incorrectly clicking an image expecting it to take them somewhere? Just open up Heap and check the historical data for mouse clicks on that image.
Still not getting it? Here’s their demo video:
Capturing everything means capturing a ton of data — especially on bigger, more complex sites with larger user bases — and that much data means scaling challenges. In a chat with Heap founder Matin Movassate, he suggested that scaling and hiring engineers to help them scale are two of the biggest reasons they’re raising a round in the first place.
I did a deeper look at Heap here. Since that post, they’ve introduced a new facet to their offerings: native iOS support. In addition to being able to capture every click and scroll on the web, it can now also capture every tap and swipe users make in a Heap-enabled iOS app.
The investors in this round are: Y-Combinator (Heap is part of the Winter 2013 class), SV Angel, Redpoint, Sam Altman, Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Harj Taggar, Ram Shriram, Pejman Nozad, Joshua Reeves, Salesforce, William Morris Endeavor, Netprice, and RTA Capital. It’s a pretty interesting mix of mammoth groups (SV Angel, Salesforce) and individuals, and a mix of investors known mostly for their investments (like Pejman Nozad) and those known for their own startups (like Alexis Ohanian with reddit, and Sam Altman with Loopt). Heap seems to have their bases pretty well covered here.
Gumroad Expands Its Tools For Selling Digital Content With New Pre-Order Feature
Gumroad, a startup aiming to make it as easy as possible for creative artists to sell digital goods, is announcing a new feature to address a big source of income — pre-orders.
With the new feature, founder and CEO Sahil Lavingia says that instead of uploading a file, creators just enter a release date. Fans can use their credit cards to purchase the product, then when the date comes, all those pre-order cards are charged, the content is delivered to the customers, and the listing is turned into a regular Gumroad product listing. Creators can send messages to people who placed orders before the release date, just as they can afterwards, Lavingia added.
Ryan Delk, who leads the company’s growth and business development, said customers including Eminem and Bon Jovi have already used the service to take pre-orders. However, there were no features built specifically to address this use case.
“No matter what industry you are in, pre-orders are a huge piece of the launch strategy,” Delk told me via email. “For some releases, we have seen pre-orders make up 30% — 40% of the total sales. We really wanted to deliver an amazing experience for our sellers by offering pre-orders, and a seamless (and automatic) way for them to convert pre-order products into regular products on release day.”
The first artist to use the pre-order feature is Keith Urban, who is using Gumroad to sell a number of different “bundles” before the release of his new album Fuse on Sept. 10. Those pre-orders are exclusive to Gumroad for now, Delk said.
Other features added this year include additional analytics for authors and publishers and support for streaming video.
Microsoft Fires Back After Box Steps On Its Turf, Boosts SkyDrive Pro Storage To 25 GB
This is the real storage wars. Today Microsoft announced that it has increased the storage capacity of its SkyDrive Pro cloud document storage and syncing service to 25 gigabytes, from the formerly proffered 7 gigabytes. Non-Pro SkyDrive users are stuck with the 7 gigabyte tally for now.
SkyDrive Pro is part of the Office 365 suite of cloud productivity tools that Microsoft sells to business and universities.
The news comes directly on the heels of Box’s doubling of its free storage option – to 10 gigabytes – and its creation of a new paid plan for its service that offers 100 gigabytes of storage per user for $5 per seat per month. Microsoft, Box, Dropbox, and Google are each striving to offer the most, at the lowest price.
Consumers and businesses are reaping the rewards of that competition. Storage costs are decreasing, allowing for increased scrapping amongst the contenders.
Microsoft also today increased the file upload limit to 2 gigabytes per file, enabled versioning to automatically save the last 10 versions of documents stored in SkyDrive Pro libraries, and increased “default recycle bin retention” to a full 90 days. So, more storage, and a better user experience is Microsoft’s response to Box’s encroachment on its enterprise turf.
Box is not a company that just wants to store your digital bulk in the cloud. It has larger goals than that, I think. Once it stores all your files, why not help you edit them, right in the browser? Right. And that dings Office revenue, an essential profit cannon for Microsoft.
So, who controls the data in a way controls its editing, and that revenue stream. Microsoft would like to do both, thank you. Box does one now and will do the other later. War, gents and ladies.
Top Image Credit: Karin Dalziel
Cory Booker Opens Stop-And-Frisk Data To The Public. Here's Why It Might Help.
Newark Mayor and Senate candidate Cory Booker has just begun testing an innovative solution to the racial problems plaguing law enforcement’s use of stop-and-frisk: hold officers accountable by making details of every stop accessible to the public. The controversial practice of “stop-and-frisk” allows police officers to pat down any citizens for looking mildly suspicious; law enforcement claims it’s a vital tool against crime in overcrowded cities, while civil liberties groups claim that it unfairly targets minorities (In New York, minorities make up 90 percent of all stop-and-frisk incidents).
But while NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is fighting civil-liberties groups to keep the practice, Booker worked with his local American Civil Liberties Union to find a solution in radical transparency. Every month, Newark will release stop-and-frisk incident reports, detailing the race, gender, age, forced used, and arrests made. “It’s a win for police officers, because they’re able to gain the trust of community members,” says Udi Ofer, head of Newark’s American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s a win for the public, because the public is then able to decipher whether there is any abuses taking place.”
For those unaware, stop and frisk, by any measure, is a pretty broad tactic. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, only 1 in 143 NYPD stops of African Americans result in a seizure of guns, drugs or other weapons.
And with decreased oversight, opportunity for police aggression is ripe. For an undercover look, see @3:05 in the YouTube video below of an actual stop and frisk.
Data, Unintentional Racism, And Safety
Even though most people wouldn’t consider themselves racist, many of us may harbor latent biases. For police, seeing the same minority violence on a daily basis may exacerbate the prejudices we all hold.
“What the public sees as “racially charged” is often driven not only by implicit biases, but by poor communication and a history of mistrust between some communities and the police who are sworn to protect them,” explains University of California, Los Angeles Professor Philip Goff, to me in an email. “In other words, it is not possible to understand bias in policing without understanding human nature, and our tendency to misinterpret others we fear might be dangerous”
Releasing data on stop-and-frisks is a friendly way for police to admitt unintentional potential racial bias. With nothing to hide, authorities can admit wrongdoing without losing face, working cooperatively with community members to investigate the truth. For instance, it’s possible that officers are not racially biased, but geographically biased, unintentionally concentrating resources in particular communities.
“Being more transparent in their practices will lead to better relations with the community, which will which then lead to a safer city,” says Ofer.
Transparency isn’t just about protecting civil liberties; it’s also about communities helping to make their neighborhoods safer. Digging into the data could yield valuable insights that law enforcement analysts don’t have time to think about with their limited staff.
For instance, perhaps officers are finding too few white females with drugs, while stopping too many middle-aged African-Americans for suspected gun possession. After comparing stop-and-frisk success rates to the demographics of those actually found guilty, researchers will help police find unusual sources of crime. So, in the course of looking out for African-American civil rights, independent statisticians may tip off authorities to an unknown pipeline for drug distribution and help officers better identify who in the neighborhoods are actually carrying weapons.
Forgive my math-nerdy excitement here, but there are all sorts of fun statistical patterns we can find in the data, which puts everyone on the same side of finding out the truth and saving lives.
Need For More Info
Of course, all of these wonderful benefits are theoretical. For now, the police dump the monthly data sets in clunky PDF files, which are a real pain in the neck to convert into spreadsheets for statistical analysis. Newark Police need a few developer friends who can put their data up on stat-friendly websites.
Even more problematic, the data input is done entirely by police. That’s like asking a student to grade his own homework. Even with the best of intentions, all the reporting is still held hostage to psychological biases.
This problem is why Ofer, for the first time to TechCrunch, publicly endorsed the use of police lapel video cameras, similar to the dashboard cameras currently on police cruisers. Only when the public is able to review the stops as their happen from the officer’s perspective, can we truly know all the data, and the intentions behind the stops.
Booker Impresses Again
We’re always thrilled when public officials offer innovative solutions. When we named Cory Booker one of the Most Innovative People In Democracy, we had hoped he would continue to impress us.
As a Senate candidate, Booker’s star power and general popularity are paying off. According to a new CrunchGov poll we conducted with Google Surveys, Booker leads his Republican opponent, Steve Lonegan, by 25 points among self-reported registered voters in Newark (60.9% vs. 34.5%). For more details about the poll, click here.
Mayor Cory Booker will likely become Senator Cory Booker next Winter. Should that happen, we hope he continues to break new ground.
[Image Credit: Flickr User Connor Tarter]
Windows 8.1 Is Ready, But You Can't Have It Until October
It’s ready, kids. Today Microsoft announced that Windows 8.1 has been completed, and seeded to manufacturers. But regular folks like us won’t get our hands on the code until October 18. Interestingly, MSDN and TechNet subscribers won’t get an early peek. Patience is the name of the Windows 8.1 flutter for now.
Windows 8.1 matters because it is an essential second attempt for Microsoft to dig in to the tablet market, and perhaps stimulate the flagging personal computer industry. If Windows 8.1 is a sufficiently large upgrade to Windows 8, and is paired with a strong crop of new hardware from admittedly beleaguered OEMs, Microsoft might slow the decline of the PC market. If not, declines will not staunch, and the Windows division will continue to cede leadership inside of Microsoft.
While Windows 8.1 cannot end the decline the of the PC, it could bring Microsoft growing market share in the tablet market, which it desperately needs. In this way, Windows is slightly unmoored from the PC market’s decline – if Windows 8.1 can move on tablets, Microsoft can sell more copies of Windows, even as laptop and desktop sales fall.
Keep that in mind.
Microsoft calls Windows 8.1 a “significant update.” That’s true. The company is also quite proud of the speed with which it built the new operating system version. Ask yourself if it had a choice. If Microsoft went through another holiday season with Windows 8, how would sales have fared? Precisely.
Therefore the speed of the update only matters in that it demonstrates that Microsoft understands its market position – in some capacity – and can kick out a new build of an OS in a year. The contents matter much more, of course.
Windows 8.1, as I wrote a few months back, is a “slurry of feature upgrades, user interface changes, and completely new capabilities” that represent an important correction to Windows 8′s endless quirks. It is a material improvement to Windows 8. However, until we see consumer reaction, we cannot truly measure if it is “enough.” New applications, improved navigation and user interface design, and more are included in the 8.1 update. But are they enough?
I’d wager that Windows 8.1 is not enough by itself and cannot be. Without improved hardware options, consumers will remain cool to the code. However, Windows 8.1 on a decent touchscreen could be a compelling experience. If you found Windows 8 tolerable, and most did — I think — Windows 8.1 will be welcome. However, the laptop market is lagging in the touch department, which will harm Windows 8.1′s roll out, as it is a dish best served hands-on.
Two months to go. Hold fast, 8.1 is coming.
Top Image Credit: Dell Inc.
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