TechCrunch
Google Launches Web Designer, A Visual Tool For Building Interactive HTML5 Sites And Ads
Google today announced the launch of Web Designer, a new tool for building interactive HTML5 sites and ads. The company first hinted at this launch in June, but had been quiet about it ever since. Web Designer, which Google calls a “professional-quality design tool,” is now officially in public beta and available for download for Mac and Windows.
As Google notes in today’s announcement, Web Designer was developed to allow advertisers to easily create HTML5 ads for mobile and desktop. Until recently, Google argues, advertisers “didn’t have the tools they needed to easily develop content fit for today’s cross-screen experiences” and Web Designer aims to be the tool to create these experiences.
While this ad pedigree shines through across Web Designer (the default layouts are for DoubleClick rich media ads and AdMob mobile ads, for example), there is nothing in the tool that would prevent you from building interactive single-page sites and animations for other purposes as well. Some of the features, however, are currently only available for ads, though Google says it plans to expand these tools for other purposes in the future.
At its core, Web Designer is a visual tool, but you can also delve right into the JavaScript and CSS to fine-tune different aspect of your site. Indeed, Web Designer allows you to manipulate all of your code directly in a built-in editor and lets you quickly preview your creations in every browser you have installed on your machine.
The tools comes with all the usual visual design tools you’re probably familiar with from similar tools. Some of the more interesting tools Google has developed for Web Designer include a pen tool for free drawing, as well as a timeline for managing your animations. Web Designer also features the ability to create 3D content using the power of CSS3, as well as a set of pre-built components for galleries, maps and embedded YouTube videos.
For animations, one of the core features of the application, Web Developers features a Quick mode for building animations scene by scene and an advanced mode that gives designers more control over each of the elements on the page.
Google's BufferBox Expands Its Shipping Kiosk Service For Parcel Pickups To San Francisco
Last year, Google acquired Waterloo-based startup BufferBox, which provides shipping locker service to make it easy to get things delivered reliably even when you’re not sure where you’ll be when they’re arriving. The startup built its service on the idea that people never want to see another missed delivery door tag ever again, and began rolling out availability in Toronto, a big consumer market near its HQ last year.
BufferBox is now venturing further afield (as teased earlier this year), with a program expansion in San Francisco that takes its kiosk service closer to Google’s home territory. The BufferBox model allows local businesses to essentially become a substitute post office, receiving packages on behalf of BufferBox users during business hours when they’re guaranteed to have someone on staff to accept delivery. Members then get an email notification as soon as the package as delivered so they know when to go to the local business and grab it.
In SF, BufferBox locations include Dogpatch Cafe, Coffee Bar, Noe Hill Market, 7-Eleven, Mission: Comics and Art and more. The service is also tied to Google’s recent Shopping Express service expansion, which allows people in the SF area to get their packages on the same day they place their order.
This marks the first sign of new market expansion since the acquisition of BufferBox last year, which cost the search giant a reported $17 million. At the time, Google said its motivation in acquiring the startup was to help “remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money.” Paired with its same-day service, the BufferBox experience definitely contributes to that ultimate goal, by making shopping online as easy as popping down to the coffee shop on the corner on your way home from work.
Google’s BufferBox business competes in many ways with Amazon’s Locker pick-up service, but the Google version now going live in SF tweaks the model by having humans handle package acceptance, and it has the added benefit of driving foot traffic to local stores. Google is taking its time with the rollout, however, which usually means there’s a lot to work out with the economics of the model before scaling it to any kind of wide coverage. BufferBox says to expect more integration, and more geographic expansion in the future, however.
Android Ecosystem Finally Putting A Dent In The iPad's Universe, Says ABI Research
Apple is expected to refresh its iPad line-up next month, likely adding a Retina display to the iPad mini, and perhaps pushing the iPhone 5s’ Touch ID fingerprint sensor-fuelled home button into a new flagship iPad. But even as Cupertino upgrades the iPad’s capabilities, its dominance in the tablet category is coming to an end — as the sheer size of the Android ecosystem inexorably dents the iPad’s universe.
Analyst ABI Research has flagged up what it describes as a “shift in leadership” in the tablet space, with Apple’s iPad family passing the baton to Android in three areas. Firstly in shipments: ABI notes that Android-powered tablets surpassed iOS-based slates during Q2 for the first time. Secondly, it says tablet-related hardware revenues in Android and iOS reached parity at the mid-point of the year; and third it notes that the average selling price (ASP) of the iPad is “rapidly approaching the market average”.
Apple reported its first yearly decline in iPad sales in its Q3 results, back in July, with 14.6 million iPads sold in the quarter (vs 17 million in the year ago quarter). Apple of course competes with multiple Android OEMs — which in the tablet space includes Amazon, with its Kindle Fire range; Samsung with its Galaxy Note line up; and Google’s own-brand Nexus slates. So it’s fair to say that Android-powered tablets passing iPad shipments at some point was all but inevitable, with multiple companies attacking the iPad maker.
Amazon and Google especially have used price as the differentiator to move more tablet-shaped boxes by undercutting the iPad’s premium pricing. That it’s taken the Android ecosystem more than three years to be shipping more slates than Apple is a measure of how relatively poor Android tablets have been vs the iPad experience (it’s no coincidence that Google felt it needed to get involved directly with the tablet space with its own-branded Nexus slate to help bring up standards and push down prices).
Overall, ABI says tablet shipments grew more than a fifth (23%) year-over-year in Q2, while the market declined 17% sequentially.
On the revenues front, overall, ABI estimates that tablet shipments in Q2 generated revenues of $12.7 billion — with the iPad accounting for (only) 50% of worldwide end-user revenues. That’s notable because it’s the first time Apple’s slate has not dominated market revenues. Albeit, it still means Apple split the market in the quarter – taking the largest share for itself, while all other branded vendors shared $6.3 billion between themselves.
A shift to smaller slates
A dip in iPad sales and the lower cost iPad mini go some way to explaining reduced revenues for Apple in the tablet space. But with multiple Android OEMs targeting the 7-inch small slate space before Apple did, there was a clear need for Cupertino to introduce a smaller iPad, whatever the costs on the revenue cannibalisation front. (Cannibalising itself is not, in any case, something Apple shies away from.)
ABI’s data reinforces the importance of the small slate category, noting that circa 7-inch tablets finally became the category majority in Q2. Apple’s own small slate also dominated overall iPad shipments — and accounted for nearly half of iPad revenues. “The 7.9-inch iPad mini represented about 60% of total iPad shipments and 49% of iPad-related device revenues in the quarter,” notes ABI senior practice director Jeff Orr in a statement.
The iPad mini, which launched just under a year ago and costs $329 vs $499 for the Retina iPad (or $399 for the iPad 2), is the main cause of a 17% drop in the ASP of the iPad over the past year. “The iPad drop is primarily attributed to the introduction and volume shift to the smaller iPad mini,” ABI notes.
Yet, while the ASP of the iPad has been falling — as buyers shift their cash to Apple’s smaller, lower cost slate — the ASP of the rest of tablet market has increased 17% over the same period. ABI attributes that to competition heating up and iPad rivals being able to match and even best the capabilities of Apple’s hardware. “Twelve months is a long time for the peak lifecycle of a contemporary tablet. To remain a leader, Apple must continue to innovate and address real-world market needs,” adds Orr.
Microsoft Details SkyDrive's Smart Files Feature, Prepares To Roll Out Bing-Powered OCR Search
One of the more interesting but relatively unknown features of Windows 8.1 is its deep integration with SkyDrive and Microsoft’s smart files system for keeping your online and offline storage in sync without having to download all of your files onto every machine. Today, the company is providing an update on what it has learned from the first batch of Windows 8.1 preview users and how it will implement it in the Windows 8.1 RTM that’s launching in just a few weeks.
Microsoft also today announced that the new optical character recognition (OCR) feature for searching through SkyDrive files that it announced a few weeks ago will be rolling out over the coming weeks. The OCR feature, which makes images on SkyDrive searchable, is powered by Bing, which recently introduced this capability as a part of its new focus on developer tools.
The smart files feature creates placeholder files that replicate your SkyDrive file structure on all of your machines. It won’t download all of them to every device you sync with by default, however. Instead, it will just download them when needed. This way, the company argued earlier this year, a 5.6GB folder full of images just takes up 185MB for the basic low-res thumbnails of these images. The overall design goal of smart files is to ensure that SkyDrive files take up less than 5 percent of the local disk space they would have taken without this feature.
Even though these files are stored online, though, the new Windows 8.1 search tools will still be able to search and discover all of your files, no matter whether they are stored online or locally.
In a world where users are constantly switching between desktops, laptops, phones and tablets with different amounts of internal storage, the company believes, this system will allow users to still be able to access all of their data without a hassle. If you regularly need offline access to a file or folder, you can also ask Windows 8.1 to download all of the content to your tablet, too.
As Microsoft announced today, it found that its users are using SkyDrive in two very different ways. One group keeps most of its files on SkyDrive while the other group keeps all of its files available for offline access and has all of its files stored locally. Those users who keep their files on SkyDrive and use smart files, the company announced today, use about 80 percent less disk space than those who don’t. These usage patterns, Microsoft argues, shows “that users understand smart files and are tailoring the feature to their needs” (though it’s worth noting that those users who installed the Windows 8.1 Preview are likely more tech savvy than the average Windows user).
Lineal Timeline Lets You Visualize History (Or The Future) On Your iPad
A new app for iPad called Lineal Timeline launched recently, offering a way to scroll back through historical events from centuries prior, as well as create your own personal timelines using notes and photos from your device’s library. Though appearing deceptively simple, the app’s goal is fairly ambitious: it wants to be able to present all of history in minute-by-minute detail in the iPad’s interface, without overwhelming the user with information.
The answer comes in the form of an iOS 7-only iPad application from a company called Apposite, founded in 2011 by husband and wife team Greg Wieber and Colleen Clery. Greg had previously launched music app Polychord in the iTunes App Store, before the two teamed up on Apposite. The company’s first creation was Microcosm – an experimental sound toy that grabbed a headline on Gizmodo in early 2012.
Lineal Timeline, however, has been on Colleen’s mind for years. She began working on designs for the app back in 2010, after being inspired by the iPad’s capability to organize research and thoughts. Explains Greg, Colleen is dyslexic and has been frustrated by how information is often presented in isolation. “For her, understanding comes through placing things in context – by contrasting fields of study, building connections between them, and discovering common themes,” he says.
Meanwhile, Greg, a former EA interaction designer, says he was intrigued by the user interface challenge of building something like Lineal Timeline.
Even if you don’t have a need for organizing your own personal research into some sort of historical context, Lineal Timeline is still an enjoyable way to organize any series of events throughout history that you want to better understand and view more visually. For example, a student struggling to understand how the events of a World War unfolded could plug them into the app and then use it as a reference tool. You could also visualize the important moments throughout a company’s history, or that of an industry. Parents could use Lineal Timeline as a modern-day baby book, tracking the chronology of their child’s first steps and other milestones.
The app also supports “future” timelines, which opens it up to other use cases led by project managers or event planners, too.
Today, Greg says he’s been using Lineal while reading about Einstein — plotting his major life events and discoveries, including those of his contemporaries and predecessors all the way back to Newton.
As you create your own timelines in Lineal, you’ll be able to scroll through the moments you add in a variety of ways. If you were to build a timeline for a series of events throughout a decade, for example, when you zoom out, all the events from that decade form a stack which can be scrolled up and down for easy access. Zoom in again, and the events again spread out to their respective years. You can also color tag events to build sub-timelines around themes, and a forthcoming update will make building timelines easier through the addition of import and export tools. That will go a long way to encourage adoption, as today making timelines takes, well, some time.
A bit further down the line, the plan is to also add in collaboration and sharing features. And longer-term, Greg says the company’s overall vision for this and other projects it’s considering, including some smaller apps that emerged while making Lineal, is to bring data visualization tools to ordinary people.
He declined to discuss the business model in-depth (beyond the fact that Lineal is a paid application), saying only that there are “a lot of interesting opportunities once we reach a certain scale.” Well, aren’t there always? However, he did promise Lineal would never introduce things like banner advertising in order to generate additional revenue.
The Lineal Timeline app is $4.99 here in iTunes. (Note that it requires iOS 7 and up to run.)
Foursquare, Twilio, Automattic Among Latest To Join Demand For More Disclosure On US Data Requests
Today or tomorrow, the U.S. Justice Department is expected to file a brief with the FISA Court opposing motions from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and LinkedIn requesting the right to publish more information about data requests made by the government. To pre-empt that, the Center for Democracy and Technology has sent a letter to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, requesting them to step up the pace on their own work to create more transparency.
The letter also marks an expansion of the number of companies that are supporting its position to include 10 more tech startups — Foursquare, Twilio and Automattic, owner of the WordPress blogging platform (which is used by TechCrunch among many others) among them — and some 24 other non-profits and trade associations. That’s on top of the tech companies, nonprofits and investors that joined the CDT effort in July of this year. The original signatories inlcuded AOL, Apple, CloudFlare, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo and many others.
The moves are a sign of how, while some believe that much of Silicon Valley has been slow to respond in the aftermath of the revelations around the role of the NSA and how its activities have impacted ordinary people in their digital activities, more are trying to mobilize now.
The crux of today’s letter is that it is in support of ongoing legislation going through Congress at the same time that others in government are working on ways to curtail how effective it might end up being.
The two pieces of legislation in question are S. 1452, the Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013′ and H.R. 3035, the Surveillance Order Reporting Act of 2013, “each of which would clarify that companies have the right to publish basic statistics about the government demands for user data that they receive.”
This would pertain to records from Internet, telephone, and web-based service providers for information about their users and subscribers. In the past, officials have said the issue of spying in this way pertained only to non-U.S. nationals who were deemed security risks; more recently, however, there has been information coming to light that appears to indicate that ordinary people are very easily part of that net, too.
“Such transparency is important not only for the American people, who are entitled to have an informed public debate about the appropriateness of that surveillance, but also for international users of U.S.-based service providers who are concerned about privacy and security,” the letter notes. Interestingly, the call to action also includes a note to “urge the Committees to hold hearings on the issue of surveillance transparency as a prelude to the markup of these bills,” which could end up providing further revelations on how these practices work. The ramifications, of course, could end up being wider-ranging as a precedent for how data gets handled in other countries as well.
The letter, addressed to Senators Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley in the Senate; and Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers in the House of Representatives (Chairman and ranking member, respectively), is embedded below.
This Is A $200K Jet Pack That You Can Buy In Two Years
A few things come to mind at the mention of a jet pack.
The Jetsons come first, and then this hilarious video, in which Fox 5 News embarrasses itself with a water-propelled jet pack. But what if I told you that we’re about a year away from the first legitimately available jet pack for sale?
It’s true. Martin Jetpack, a New Zealand-based company, has just revealed the latest prototype of its jet pack, which is promised to be available in mid-2014. Though the name suggests otherwise, the P12 Jetpack is actually propelled by ducted fans, powered by premium gas.
Founder Glenn Martin has been working on building a jet pack for the last 30 years, starting in his parents garage. The P12 marks the 12th iteration of his dream, and the closest version yet to commercial availability.
Unfortunately for the (incredibly wealthy) average Joe, Martin will be releasing the Jetpack to first responders like policemen and firemen before bankers, NBA players, oil tycoons, etc. will have their chance at a purchase. However, Martin says the jet pack should be commercially available to anyone (who can afford it) by 2015.
As for pricing, it’s predictably high. The Martin Jetpack will cost anywhere between $150,000 and $250,000, excluding the cost of premium gas as well as any costs associated with getting a sports license in the U.S., and purchasing the necessary flying equipment. But hey, what’s $300k compared to feeling like you live in the future?
The P12 is said to reach a maximum of 46 mph, with a max flight time of around 30 minutes. In that time, at a normal speed of around 35 mph, the Martin Jetpack can transport an individual about 20 miles. The highest that this personal flight vehicle can go is 3,000 feet, but it’s recommended that the pilot remain around 500 feet.
Why? Well, flying at a lower altitude won’t give enough time for the safety systems to work. This includes a rocket-deployed ballistic parachute.
That said, acrophobics need not apply.
According to GizMag, the pilot will also need hearing protection, helmet, neck restraint, boots, and a fireproof suit.
So who’s ready to fly?
[via Gizmodo]
HireArt, A Job Applicant Screening Service Used By Airbnb, Cisco, eBay & Others, Launches A Lower-Priced Option
Y Combinator-backed HireArt, a job applicant screening service which today touts business customers including Airbnb, Cisco, eBay, Gap, Facebook, General Assembly and others, is today launching a second, less expensive pricing tier designed for those who don’t need a full-service recruiter, but rather a curated feed of potential job candidates they can review themselves.
Launched last year by three college friends from Yale, Elli Sharef, Dain Lewis and Nicholas Sedlet, HireArt has until today been focused on offering employers a contingency service, where it took a success fee of 10 percent of the first year salary from those job applicants it helped to place.
At its core is this idea that reviewing candidates through a resume process is broken. Applicants like to exaggerate their experiences, and sometimes even outright lie about their abilities. Other times, great candidates are missed because their backgrounds don’t seem to match up with what the employer has in mind in terms of experience, leading them to slip through the cracks.
HireArt’s solution, instead, is to have job candidates actually do the work first. The applicants complete a series of tasks that demonstrate they have the skills needed for the job at hand. For example, they might write out some code for a developer job, or if they’re claiming to be an Excel expert, they might have to create an Excel model using a provided dataset. Meanwhile, creatives might have to come up with a product pitch.
Candidates applying to positions on HireArt can upload files, write out responses, or even upload videos, depending on the task. Employers can either review the applications on their own, or outsource that work to HireArt if they choose.
To date, 70,000 candidates have applied for positions advertised on HireArt from nearly 300 employers. Many of these companies are in the startup space, but some are bigger name brands, like Gap, Safeway, and Cisco. Facebook is a newer addition, having recently posted its third or fourth job.
According to Sedlet, HireArt’s business has been growing at around 20 percent month-over-month, but it’s so far been a “high-touch” recruiting service that uses software to try to bring the headhunting process online. Today’s launch of a more affordable plan is a move to bring HireArt’s services to an expanded customer base. The new plan is $595 per month, allowing employers to get a feed of applicants that are first curated by HireArt, and access to an optional account manager, if they need someone to speak to.
“The new product is aimed at companies who don’t necessarily want a headhunter because they’re expensive or they’re not quite right for certain jobs, but they still don’t have time to wade through tons of resumes,” says Sedlet. He adds that it’s still about simplifying the hiring process for these business customers, while also allowing them to retain more control.
The company uses a small team of “graders” to review the applications from candidates, using a rubric developed internally, so even the new pricing tier involves some human involvement during the “curation” process. But with the lower-priced tier, HireArt doesn’t provide its additional recruiting services, including scheduling interviews, negotiating salaries, or selling candidates on the job itself. Employers simply receive the applicant feed with work samples and video interviews, which they can also now share internally among colleagues at the company to get further input.
HireArt also confirmed that it raised $1.4 million seed financing in the form of a convertible note from Learn Capital, Felicis Ventures, InterWest Capital, TripleWest Capital, 500 Startups, Gus Fuldner and other angels. The company competes with others combining video interviews with recruiting services, including HireVue, VidCruiter, Interview Rocket, Take the Interview and many more.
Employers interested in trying the new service can use the discount code “TechCrunch” for 25 percent off. (Valid for a month from today’s date).
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