TechCrunch
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Steam News Breaks While We Record, Surface Sequels And Adobe Gets Mighty
A rare treat this week as you can hear the TechCrunch team react to breaking gadget news (the Steam Controller, to be specific) live as our happens. It’s like being inside our brains without the echoes and cobwebs. We also cover the big Surface 2 reveal, Steam OS, the Steam Box announcements, Adobe’s Mighty hardware and BlackBerry’s very bad quarter.
This week, we have a very special episode of the Gadgets Podcast with a ragtag team of lovable characters, including myself, Darrell Etherington, Chris Velazco and special guests Frederic Lardinois and TCTV Producer Steve Long, so you just know it’s going to be the heartwarming comeback story of a lifetime.
We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here, as well as the TechCrunch Droidcast.
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Intro Music by Rick Barr.
Evernote Updates Its Business Product With Social Features And Salesforce.com Integration
Evernote today announced version 2.0 of its business product, appropriately called Evernote Business 2.0.
CEO Phil Libin introduced the product on-stage at Evernote’s EC3 conference and said it will be released next week. In its first nine months, 7,900 companies have signed up for Evernote Business (which was announced at last year’s conference).
Libin emphasized that at its core, Evernote Business is just the consumer Evernote app, but with additional features like shared notebooks that allows teams to work together. That’s still true in version 2.0, but the company has added some additional features on top of the app, many of them social.
For example, he said that Evernote can now suggest other users in the company who may have the expertise to help answer specific questions. Those recommendations are based on the information in users’ Evernote notebooks — not their private notebooks, but the ones that they’ve chosen to share. Libin added that his team made a point of only recommending five people per topic: “Regardless of the size of the company, most likely that’s all you need. If the top five people can’t help you, showing you 20 isn’t going to make the situation any better.”
Evernote Business users can also upload profile pictures now. If they haven’t uploaded a photo, they’ll be represented by an image of a single letter (it looks like it’s the first letter in their name). Libin sounded particularly proud of those letters, saying the company spent months working on them with multiple designers, resulting in what he described in “the world’s most beautiful” alphabet.
“This is the kind of thing you would expect from a great consumer product,” Libin said. (People’s desire to get the same great experience they’ve had on the consumer side in their work as well was a recurring theme in Libin’s presentation.)
The new features also include things that IT people have been asking for, such as directory management and LDAP, Libin added. And, as hinted at by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff’s presence at the conference, Evernote Business will integrate with Salesforce, so users can see relevant Evernote data when they’re in using Salesforce’s sales software, and relevant Salesforce data when they’re in Evernote.
Libin actually addressed these announcements when I spoke to him at the conference yesterday (after Evernote unveiled the Evernote Market for physical products and partnerships). He said that even though Evernote is adding more social features, it remains a fundamentally “introspective” product, and that these features are designed to “make your interactions as efficient as possible so that you can just get on with being productive.”
A New Batch Of Socially Conscious E-Commerce Startups To Put On Your Radar
Is #FeelGoodFriday a thing? With the launch of e-commerce site Zady last month, we’ve been keeping our eye on other conscious consumerism startups in the pipeline. Here for your consideration, three newcomers to the transparency scene and one new program from the three-year-old Everlane.
Such startups don’t come without skeptics. It’s hard to shake the feeling that socially conscious ecommerce sites are just paying lip service to ethical production. Videos can be fudged, factory workers asked to smile, manufacturing cycle infographics simplified and rendered in cheery colors. Without actually visiting a production site in person, who’s to say we’re not all being played? It’s hard to know for sure.
But as Nielsen pointed out, consumers are increasingly willing to spend more on goods from socially conscious companies. Savvy entrepreneurs should be looking to capitalize on this. And they are.
Given Goods
Newly launched e-commerce site Given Goods is an impact-driven decor, kitchen, and accessories site. Rather than revealing the production process, Given Goods’ product descriptions speak to who benefits from each purchase. It may be the makers themselves — as with a glassware company that gives jobs to unemployed individuals in Idaho — or the brand may donate a percentage of each purchase to a particular organization or charity. The site includes the all-but-obligatory impact map to help consumers visualize where their goods are coming from.
RVNA
A startup called Runa (stylized RVNA) is opening an Indiegogo campaign in October to raise around $20,000 to get its Colombia-sourced fair trade clothing line off the ground. They are promising three things on the transparency and impact front: showing customers exactly how much the main worker in the production process was paid, a video profile of said worker upon purchase, and follow-up videos to track that worker’s progress. The micro-collection they’re showing now has a clean, simple aesthetic, and with it Runa is hoping to shake the somewhat frumpy image of fair trade clothing. The startup’s target audience is young professionals in their 20s and 30s — a cohort that can and will pay for ethically produced goods. If they meet most of their crowdfunding goal, the plan is to have the e-commerce site up and running by March 2014.
Everlane
Everlane has built its brand on a clean, classic aesthetic and on transparency in the manufacturing process of its goods. Through their Everlane Explores videos, they’ve been working to give customers a behind-the-scenes (albeit edited) look at the factories they work with. According to founder and CEO Michael Preysman, the e-tailer is beginning to administer quality of life surveys and happiness among workers at those factories, with the goal of using those findings to improve working conditions. The first set of results is due back in a month, Preysman said, and Everlane will then be rolling out more surveys over the next six months.
WE’VE
WE’VE, a new ecommerce site for home decor and accessories, launched last week with a focus on showing consumers the manufacturing process behind the products on the site. (The site is open to the public now, although you have to request an invite code.) The site draws its product from artisan makers, and in order to ensure demand and fair pricing, a pre-order minimum has to be filled before entering production. Once it does, WE’VE sends out videos to buyers walking them through the production process step by step.
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