TechCrunch
Mailbox Adds Cloud Search For Gmail And Opens Links In Chrome
The Dropbox-owned Mailbox has just added a couple of nice features including the ability to search all of your Gmail messages in the cloud and locally on your device. Previously, you could only dig through messages that had already been downloaded, which was one of the big flaws that stopped me from continuing to use the app.
Searching is quick and happens in two stages. Type your query and you’ll get an instant list of local results. Mailbox polls Gmail in the background and begins filling out results from the server as soon as it has them in a list. At some points in my testing, I did get a gray overlay that said ‘no results’ while it was still searching the cloud. I’d love to see this better indicate that you might have results, they’re just on their way — especially when you have a poor network connection. Most of the searches were quick enough to fill out the list fairly swiftly.
In addition to the new cloud search option, you can now also attach signatures to individual emails based on the address that you’re using to send them. So if you’re replying to an email from your work address, they’ll see the signature you use for work, not the pocket robot joke you use on your personal account.
In what is a growing trend with apps on Apple’s iOS platform, the new Mailbox also allows you to toggle an option to open links inside Chrome, Google’s alternative browser. Google’s apps have, of course, been making a habit of this. That includes Gmail, which now makes it possible to open links in Chrome and almost all attachments in their corresponding Google apps like Drive.
Mailbox, in what is an unsurprising but nice little synergistic move, continues to give away 1GB of free space on Dropbox when you link your account up to Mailbox. Mailbox recently added Dropbox integration for attachments and this is a great way to drive people to the settings menu to toggle that option on.
Mailbox continues to iterate on its initial promise, especially in terms of thinking outside of the device itself and into the cloud. Which is, pretty much, the exact reason why you’d be excited about being acquired by a company like Dropbox.
Singaporean Accelerator JFDI.Asia's Latest Intake Brings Together Entrepreneurs From 9 Countries
Singapore-based accelerator Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI.Asia) has announced the 10 startup teams in its latest class. Modeled after TechStars, JFDI.Asia looks for founding teams who are ready to take their startups from concept to early-stage investment in 100 days.
JFDI.Asia is the first Southeast Asia member of the Global Accelerator Network, which was founded by TechStars’ co-founders to create a standardized model for mentorship-based seed-stage accelerators. The 10 teams in its new cohort, who will start working with JFDI.Asia today, were chosen from 321 applicants. The program is open to applicants from around the world and the 30 founders in the current cohort represent Vietnam, the U.S., France, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Canada and the Philippines in addition to Singapore. Teams that complete the program will present to over 100 early-stage investors at JFDI.Asia’s next Demo Day.
JFDI.Asia was founded in 2010 by Hugh Mason and Wong Meng Weng and focuses on tech businesses targeted toward markets in Asia. The program provides each of its startup teams with $11,700 in cash, as well as mentoring, technical infrastructure and working space, in exchange for a minority equity stake.
The latest batch includes:
enMarkit is a social commerce-based payment and marketing startup that enables individuals and businesses to sell products and services across different online and mobile platforms
Healint is a behavior analytics platform that helps patients and their families make healthcare decisions.
Lifebox JSC‘s iOS and Android mobile app allows colleagues to collaborate on field reports in real-time instead of emailing files back and forth.
MOLOME uses photo-sharing to help increase user engagement for brands.
Skimbl is a feedback system for multi-venue food and hospitality businesses.
Qwikwire’s payment service is targeted toward e-commerce companies that want to break into emerging markets
TapTalents makes tools that enable enterprises to develop data analytics-driven mobile business apps for field-based knowledge workers.
Vault Dragon bills itself as the “Dropbox for your physical stuff” and offers secure, on-demand storage that can be managed through Web and mobile apps.
Visual-Marks is visual storytelling platform that provides an immersive writing, styling and reading experience.
ZhenXin creates healthcare products, including medication reminders and pharmacy validation services, that bridge the gap between pharmaceutical companies and patients in emerging markets.
Three Becomes The Fourth Carrier To Throw Its Hat Into The LTE Ring, Will Offer Price-Busting 4G On 3G Tariffs Starting In December
On the heels of Vodafone and O2 this evening turning on their LTE networks to compete against EE in 4G services in the UK, Three has confirmed its roadmap and pricing for 4G services. The UK’s fourth-largest carrier, owned by Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa, will start offering LTE beginning December 2013, starting first in London, Birmingham and Manchester; then going to 50 cities in 2014; and finally extending to 98 percent of the population by the end of 2015.
It may be the last of the bigger carriers to lay on LTE, but Three is doing it with a bang: to lure more people to its network, which today has 7.4 million active users. Three will be offering services at the same rates as it currently sells 3G — effectively a sizeable discount on what its competitors are doing.
“Our base point all along has been that LTE/4G is a much more efficient way of transporting data across the network,” corporate affairs director Hugh Davies told TechCrunch. “It allows the networks to carry more data more efficiently, and allows more users to benefit from better capacity. Why would you charge more for that?”
Prices for different phones and different plans differ but as a point of comparison, iPhone 5 plans at Three start at £31 per month and include unlimited mobile internet, with a £29 upfront cost. At EE, iPhone 5 plans start at £46 per month, with a £9.99 upfront cost and a 10GB data cap (EE has less expensive monthly tariffs but they have much higher upfront costs and even lower data caps). SIM-only plans for those who bring their own phones to Three’s network are typically also priced lower.
Three says that it will roll out the 4G capability as an over-the-air update. Its flavor of LTE will work on the 800MHz band, capacity it picked up in a round of spectrum auctions in March of this year for £225 million, a part of a bigger auction of 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum that raised £2.3 billion. While Three owns its spectrum, it has a 50-50 infrastructure sharing agreement with EE.
By switching LTE on automatically for Three customers who already have 4G-capable devices, Three estimates that it will hit the ground with 1.5 million 4G users from the very start (it already sells a number of 4G-capable phones from Apple, Samsung, BlackBerry and Nokia; two pictured here to the right).
Compare that 1.5 million to EE, which launched its network in October last year, in July reported around 700,000 users, and projects that it will hit 1 million by the end of this year. Still, Three’s smaller overall customer base is the biggest focus for the company: it needs to drive up that 7.5 million subscriber figure to get better economies of scale on its network.
Ironically, it’s the last of the bigger UK mobile carriers to move into LTE, but Three was the first to offer 3G when networks went through their last major upgrade.
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