TechCrunch
Hipmunk Adds Last-Minute Hotel Deals With Its New ‘Tonight Only' Feature
Travelers who are looking to book a hotel at the last-minute should be able to find better deals on travel site Hipmunk starting today, thanks to the launch of a new feature called Tonight Only.
The feature will include hotels deals that offer rooms with as much as a 60 percent discount on standard rates. Those deals can be viewed as part of Hipmunk’s general hotel search results (where you should also see slightly-less-last-minute discounts for hotels that are available up to 72 hours in advance), or in the separate Tonight Only section.
Co-founder and CEO Adam Goldstein said the company started to notice that people searching for hotels on Hipmunk fell into two distinct groups — those who booked in advance and those who were looking for last-minute accommodations. The second group is sizable (it accounts for more than 50 percent of searches on Hipmunk’s mobile apps), but the company hadn’t built any features to make their specific experience easier until now.
The idea of last-minute hotel deals isn’t new (indeed, it’s the main focus of startup HotelTonight), but Goldstein said Hipmunk’s approach is different from most deal providers because it aggregates deals from a variety of sources, giving users a broader selection to choose from.
“It’s basically a business model distinction,” he said. “With a big travel company, what makes their business tick is, they are the merchant who is going to process your credit card, who is going to collect your commission. We are a meta-search site and not ourselves a seller of travel.”
In other words, Hipmunk is more than happy to find deals from a number of sites and then pass you on to those sites when you’re ready to make a purchase (though earlier this year it did add direct hotel booking from the Hipmunk site on certain listings).
Goldstein also said that Hipmunk offers a better experience for choosing from these deals because of of the broader hotel search features that it has already developed. For example, a business traveler could see how close each of the possible hotels is to their scheduled meetings. Or a leisure traveler could look at Hipmunk’s neighborhood heat maps to see which hotels are in the most desirable neighborhoods.
The launch reflects Hipmunk’s broader focus this year, which Goldstein said is to improve hotel search: “We want to be the best travel site that we can be, and the best travel app that we can be — not just for hotels but also flights and other aspects of travel as well. But as a small startup, for this year the most important project for us is hotels.” He added that from a business perspective, hotel bookings are much more lucrative than flights.
However, as his statement above suggests, Hipmunk certainly isn’t abandoning the flight search that it was initially known for. In fact, it’s also launching a new Fare Alerts feature today, where users can get alerts (either via email or push notification) about new airfares on itineraries that they want to monitor.
Netflix Makes Recommendations More Personalized By Adding Individual User Profiles
Just a few weeks after sharing my Netflix account with the girlfriend, things started to get weird.
Random movies began to appear in my personalized recommendations. Documentaries about exceptional people overtook the carefully curated selection of dark crime dramas and indie comedies that dominated Netflix’s suggestions for what to watch next.
That would have been ok, but then the children’s programming began to creep in. I was told that if I liked Spongebob Squarepants, there was a high probability that I would also like Dora the Explorer. But I didn’t like Spongebob Squarepants — hadn’t watched it in years, and then only grudgingly because I had two younger sisters.
Then the Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn movies began to appear. It was almost like I hadn’t seen a movie made in the previous 50 years. That was soon followed by the Masterpiece Theater PBS classics with Colin Firth acting even more stuffy and British than usual in Victorian costume dramas.
And that’s when I decided enough was enough, and I changed my password.
A New, Truly Personalized Experience
Today, it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s because Netflix is rolling out its long-anticipated user profiles, allowing multiple members of a household to create personalized accounts and get personalized recommendations based on their own individual viewing habits, rather than the habits of an entire household.
When a new user signs up, he will be prompted to create user profiles for everyone in the household, and they will be asked to create a taste profile based on genres that they prefer. Subscribers can create up to five user profiles per account, providing some much-needed flexibility for households where tastes vary widely.
When opening the app on any of a number of supported platforms, Netflix subscribers will be prompted to choose his profile from a selection of options. And once that’s done, the app will suggest programming based on what he’s watched before or what his favorite shows or movies are.
According to Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt, the new profiles will be created as blank slates, wiping out previous data-driven recommendations until it learns what a user likes. For those who have been Netflix subscribers for a while, that might seem like a lot of valuable data to just throw out. But Hunt says that Netflix recommendations are heavily weighted toward recent activity anyway — so it won’t take long before suggestions once again become relevant.
User profiles will begin to roll out to users beginning today, and will become gradually available to existing users over the next couple of weeks. At first, users will only be able to create new profiles on the Netflix website or on the PlayStation 3. But profiles will be accessible across a wide range of devices, including the website, PS3, Xbox 360, iPad, iPhone, AppleTV, as well as most newer smart TVs. More devices will be added over time, making profiles eventually ubiquitous.
Better Recommendations = More Viewing
For Netflix, the new user profiles are a way to provide better recommendations and to get people watching even more video on its service. Approximately three-quarters of all viewing happens as a result of recommendations on the Netflix home page today, but as there are an increasing number of multi-user households, the effectiveness of those recommendations has gone down.
That’s especially true in households with kids, where a huge amount of the content suggested ends up being cartoons or animated features. Because when the children go to bed, parents are left with recommendations that are unlikely to fit their mood.
“An important component of our service is that we can put something compelling in front of users and capture their interest in just a few seconds,” Hunt told me. Implementing profiles should make Netflix more effective at that.
While subscribers will be prompted to pick a profile at launch to start, Hunt says the company could link individual user profiles to certain devices over time, especially as it becomes smarter about recognizing personal devices. So for instance, a subscriber might not have to pick his user profile on more personal devices — like a phone or tablet — while smart TVs or other living room devices will likely always prompt subscribers to pick the appropriate profile. Even so, that type of feature could be a long way off, according to Hunt.
For now, though, Netflix is focused on getting the experience right before it starts tweaking things too much. For those who have seen their recommendations hijacked by other viewers in their household, that’s good news indeed.
Apple Reportedly Ramping Up For New iPad Mini With Retina Display Later This Year
Apple is indeed gearing up to put a Retina display in next version of the iPad mini, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The new version of Apple’s smaller, 7.9-inch tablet will have a high-resolution screen provided by Samsung’s display supply wing, as well as LG and Sharp. Originally, per the report, Apple wanted to skip Samsung for this round but wanted to ensure it could meet buyer demand.
The news that Apple is preparing to enter mass production on a Retina iPad mini starting in the fourth quarter of this year comes just as rumors circulated yesterday that Apple would likely skip putting a high-res display in the next version, and instead boost the processor that powers the device, which was based on hints in code found in the iOS 7 beta.
9to5Mac first reported the non-Retina A6-powered iPad mini, but did explicitly state that this doesn’t mean Apple is preparing to ship one. Apple routinely tests a variety of devices in its labs and brings only a select few to market, so it’s possible that a non-Retina version was in the works alongside a Retina variety. Apple must pay attention to the market, and the Nexus 7′s ultra high-resolution display (as well as other upcoming devices like the rumored Kindle Fire HD refresh) could in theory have prompted the company to choose one over the other.
The WSJ qualifies its report by saying that Apple often tests different designs too, and makes no claims that the Retina iPad will definitely make it to market. The timing and nature of the report seems like a controlled leak, however; Apple watchers and pundits were quick to criticize the possibility that Apple wouldn’t introduce a Retina display in a second-generation iPad mini. A sudden leak sprouting saying it will is the perfect way to assuage those fears while capitalizing on the spotlight focused by the earlier leak to build more product hype.
Apple wants to wean itself away from a supply dependency on Samsung, the WSJ reiterates, since the two are now primary competitors on the smartphone front and still embroiled in numbers court battles over intellectual property. But Samsung is a key supplier for many important components, not the least of which is displays, so it isn’t surprising to see them named as a source for a Retina iPad mini screen. The WSJ also says we could see multiple different colors for the new mini’s back cover, just like with the color iPod touch.
If Apple is ramping up for Q4 production of this device, we could see it arrive around the same time as last year’s first model, so around November this year. A Retina iPad mini before Christmas would definitely result in big benefits for Apple’s holiday quarter sales, so the timing fits.
Tidemark Raises $13 Million For Cloud-Based Analytics Platform With An Infographic Twist
Tidemark has raised $13 million for its cloud-based analytics platform. Tenaya Capital led the round with participation from existing investors Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Redpoint Ventures. This latest round brings the total amount raised to more than $48 million.
The technology is built on an in-memory platform that pulls structured and unstructured data into an elastic multi-tenant environment. That data is then shaped into apps that are used for risk-analysis, strategic, financial, operational planning and forecasting as well as profitability modeling. Essentially, Tidemark layers its analytics technology on top of a company’s financial management system, data from external sources such as Twitter and Facebook and other relevant information.
The company positions itself as a modern analytics provider that can do more with a customer’s data than competing legacy providers. The difference is the speed at which it generates the apps and the analytics.
This modern approach is embodied in Storylines, a SaaS offering launched earlier this year that uses the infographic style as a dashboard-style service for customers.
The service uses real-time analytics with the infographic style to tell a story with ongoing financial projections.
Tidemark is helping companies operate according to a data-driven approach that I am seeing more companies embrace as analytics become more accessible and older systems from legacy providers increasingly don’t do the job. That’s a shift that will be ongoing for many years to come, It will benefit Tidemark but analytics capabilities will be far and wide. The challenge will be in continually differentiating in a crowded market against companies with very deep pockets.
Synack Nabs $1.5M From Greylock, Kleiner Perkins To Crowdsource Vulnerability And Security Testing
Synack, a startup that is attempting to safely crowdsource vulnerability testing for companies, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Greylock Partners, Wing Venture Partners, Allegis Capital, and Derek Smith, CEO of Shape Security.
In the current cybersecurity environment, every large corporation is now required to enlist cyber-offense skills helps to find and fix security issues before hackers exploit them. The challenge is finding the vulnerabilities that could be hackable. Synack is betting that crowdsourced programs are more effective in doing this than the typical process of hiring full-time security white-hat researchers. In fact, the startup’s community of researchers have identified vulnerabilities at technology giants like Google, Facebook, and PayPal.
Synack’s founders, who hail from the National Security Agency, are offering a controlled testing marketplace that finds (and vets) the best security researchers to apply their skills to this testing. As the startup explains, this provides the first end-to-end testing environment with massive scalability.
“Synack is developing stealth technologies that will form a new standard for vulnerability discovery. Companies like Google and Facebook have demonstrated that using global white hat researchers is an outstanding way to identify security problems and Synack can deliver this capability to any commercial company without compromising security, privacy, and confidentiality,” said Kleiner partner Ted Schlein.
Here’s how it works. Synack works closely with organizations to create a listing that best fits their budgetary constraints and technical requirements for finding vulnerabilities. Synack will perform an initial assessment of the organization’s security, and then help the company figure out the right vulnerability testing and talent to work on the testing.
On the researcher side, Synack’s community of researchers sign-up for individual listings based on their skillset (and agree to non-disclosure agreements). Synack says that researches test for vulnerabilities in highly efficient virtual private testing environments.
Upon locating a vulnerability, researchers submit a detailed report describing their findings, steps to reproduce, and recommendations for mitigation. In terms of payment, the company says it uses a specific methodology to establish the market value associated with a vulnerability submission and handles payments to researchers. Companies only pay if the vulnerability is found.
The company says that cybercrime may reach $100 billion per year, so clearly this is a lucrative opportunity to reduce costs by large-scale organizations in finding vulnerabilities while still promising high level talent working on the possible issues.
CityMaps Launches Official iOS App That Aims To Make Mapping Social
CityMaps, a mapping startup that picked up $2.5 million last year to offer “social mapping,” has been down a long and winding road. Founded in 2012 by an urban panner and a former financial product manager, the company began by mapping New York and adding SoLoMo tags to various locations based on popularity and friend recommendations.
“Our old map was quickly named the official map of New York City by its department of tourism, selected to power 35,000 TaxiTVs worldwide, and named a ‘breakout company’ by Goldman Sachs,” said Lindsay Kaplan, the company’s marketing manager. They didn’t stop there.
From these auspicious beginnings the team, led by Elliot Cohen and Aaron Rudenstine, began working on a global version of the app for iOS. They released it last week. It is free on the App Store.
The new version allows you to create your own maps anywhere in the world – think of them like locative playlists – and then share those with friends. For example, the @citymaps account on the app has lists for the best jeans in Nashville (Osh Kosh B’gosh, duh!), best celebrity-owned restaurants, and a list of the best food carts in Portland (abridged). The app is also populated with maps by companies like Barnes & Noble and Equinox fitness, in case you want some marketing with your recommendations.
Luckily the maps are actually quite beautiful. Rendered in a delicate blue and tan color scheme and nicely parallaxed, they are reminiscent of a better Google Maps.
“Citymaps is a new global map platform built with mapmaking at its core,” said Kaplan. “Our mapping technology is on par with Google Maps and Apple Maps. We’ve built a proprietary, global vector map from scratch, featuring 15 million business locations that stream into the map with logos.”
“Citymaps features the standard navigational utilities found in Google maps, but our focus is on personalization, discovery, and mapmaking.”
The real value comes in being able to create maps for your friends from out-of-town. You can also use the system to plan your own trips to foreign climes. The maps are instantly shareable and you can plot routes for yourself or others. I could definitely see this as being useful for, say, tour guides or fashionistas who can share their favorite spots for bargain dresses and infinitesimally small meals.
“We believe no two people should see the same map,” Kaplan said.
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