TechCrunch
Locca Wants To Stop You Losing Stuff - Or Your Kids - With Its SIM-Packing GPS Trackers
You wait ages for a lost item tracker hardware startup, and then loads and loads pile in at once. There’s been a spate of such startups cropping up on crowdfunding sites in recent times — notably Tile, which raised $2.6 million via Selfstarter back in July, although it won’t be shipping product until next year. Others hoping to attack the space with similar Bluetooth-powered tags include the likes of Button TrackR, Lapa and Protag (with its next gen Elite offering), to name just a few. And now Locca, which has just kicked off a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo for a pair of item trackers, the Locca Phone and Locca Mini (pictured above left), that incorporate a range of tracking techs to offer longer distance real-time item tracking.
The latest low powered flavour of Bluetooth, colloquially known as Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE, is undoubtedly encouraging more startups to try their hand at item tracking. But Bluetooth has it’s drawbacks for an item-tracking use-case — notably it has a pretty limited range, of around 30 meters.
Tile is hoping to get around that by leveraging a community of uses to create a distributed network effect, so that the proximity of your lost Tile to another passing Tile user can be used to cast its item-finding net wider. But that’s only really going to happen if its product takes off in a big way. In the mean time, all these Bluetooth trackers can only really offer a limited use-case scenario of finding stuff you’ve lost in your own house, say, or sounding an alarm when you stray a few meters away from your bag.
That’s why Locca reckons there’s room for another player in this space — one which can track items over much greater distances. Unlike its Bluetooth tag touting rivals, it’s sticking a SIM card inside its trackers so it can draw on a range of location pin-pointing technologies, including GPS, to boost tracking range and enable live tracking of lost items even across international borders (its service will initially covering the U.S., Canada and Europe, expanding to more countries in 2014).
“Locca locators have integrated five of the best locating technologies: AGPS, GSM cell-triangulation, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth low-energy and FSK. Therefore the positioning is very accurate and fast, and tracking is possible worldwide, e.g. your lost luggage with a Locca is in Madrid, and you can see where it is from London,” the startup tells TechCrunch.
Items are viewed on a corresponding Locca app that displays the real-time position of tracked items on a map, and offers additional functionality such as setting up different zones where you might want the system to behaviour differently towards tracked items.
However there’s a cost to Locca’s more comprehensive coverage: Locca plans to charge buyers a monthly service fee for the data they’re using. Both Locca’s forthcoming devices — the smaller, lower cost Locca Mini and the full-fat Locca Phone (which can also be used to make and receive calls) — come with a built in SIM. The monthly cost of keeping each tracker active is €9,90 ($13,50) per month for the Locca Mini; and €14,90 ($20,30) per month for Locca Phone.
Battery life is another cost of this type of tracking option. Locca says it’s developed its own energy-saving algorithms to help improve this but while the larger and more expensive Locca Phone will have a guaranteed ‘more than one month’ longevity, the smaller Locca Mini looks to require a lot more juicing. Locca says the Mini’s battery is good for “7 days active time”, perhaps longer depending on your usage.
“Depending on which technology is used the battery lifetime is shorter or longer. E.g. a Locca is fixed on your dog. At home the device is connected to FSK, when the dog enters the garden GSM is turned on and when the dog runs away you could even switch on in addition the APGS to see the exact position,” it says.
An item tracker with a flat battery is no longer an item tracker — which does give the Bluetooth tracker startups an edge in some respects: for instance, Tile boasts a year-long battery life. In fact Tile owners will never have to charge the device — instead, they get an email reminder towards the end of the battery’s life to send Tile back and purchase a replacement (costing $25). That yearly fee for Tile is still cheaper than a year of Locca’s service (albeit, you can start and stop the Locca service whenever you like within the app, with no contracts required).
There are other GPS trackers on the market, but Locca claims its Mini device is “the smallest with so many locating systems”. It’s also relatively lightweight (23g) — affixing it to your dog’s collar is one use-case they envisage. Other use-cases could include fixing it to car keys, putting it in your handbag or tagging your bike.
The larger Locca Phone tracker, which can also make and take calls thanks to a built in microphone and speaker, is being marketed as something to give to an elderly relative or your kids. (Locca co-founder, Albert Fellner, is also founder and owner of Austrian mobile maker Emporia, which makes mobile phones for older people — likely explaining this portion of Locca’s focus.)
Calls can be put through to the Locca Phone via Locca’s app, giving parents an alternative channel to speak to their kids or check in on elderly relatives. Another use-case for the Locca Phone is as an in-car safety device, as it will incorporate crash sensors and can be set to automatically make a phone call in the event of an accident.
Locca is offering Indiegogo backers a variety of options to bag its hardware. The Locca Mini can be picked up from €99, with six months of service included in that price. And the Locca Phone from €149, also with six months of service. It’s also offering a range of accessories such as cases to fix the trackers to your pet’s collar or a bike kit to mount it on your bike.
The startup is focusing on getting the Mini delivered first, with an estimated ship date of December, while the Locca Phone is slated for February next year. Locca said it has been bootstrapping the project up to now — and is hoping to raise €75,000 via Indiegogo – although it has also previously taken in an angel investment of €150,000.
Video Automation Startup IRIS.TV Launches With $1.7M In Funding To Keep You Tuned In Longer
A new startup in Los Angeles called IRIS.TV wants to give video publishers the tools to make streaming video more personalized and keep viewers hooked for longer. The company is coming to market with $1.7 million in seed funding from angels in the media and finance worlds.
IRIS.TV was founded by the folks behind Jukebox TV, which sought to provide a continuous stream of interesting videos to consumers. After a few years working on a consumer-facing product, the team decided to take all their learnings and technology and apply it to the B2B market instead.
The pitch to video providers is that IRIS.TV can build that same type of continuous experience, but do so in a way that keeps users tuned in to their video properties. The technology is mostly designed to string together short-form videos that create more of a lean-back experience for casual viewers. Rather than having to search for the next video to watch once the current one is over, consumers are offered something they will (hopefully) find relevant and enjoyable.
Of course, the idea of offering up that kind of continuous streaming isn’t new, and most video publishers these days have already implemented some sort of auto-play feature into their video players. For IRIS.TV, the difference comes in making that stream more personalized.
While most auto-play experiences now just offer up the next video in a queue or playlist, IRIS.TV seeks to offer up videos that will be relevant on a user level. To do so, IRIS.TV uses a proprietary algorithm to extract and process video metadata, which allows it to apply complex business rules. It then has an adaptive stream management system that inserts a series of videos into a player and updates that playlist based on user interactions.
It wraps that all up by providing detailed analytics of video performance, including locality and demographics data of the viewers who tuned in.
Since being founded officially in February, IRIS.TV has been busy building relationships with major media companies and their technology partners to make its technology work with their video players. The company has therefore partnered with online video platform providers like Brightcove, Kaltura, Unicorn Media, and Viddler.
It’s already gaining interest from some large major media corporations who are interested in deploying the technology on their web and mobile properties. While the company can’t name any of those customers yet, IRIS.TV co-founder and CEO Field Garthwaite says it will be integrated in a TV app and a mobile app soon. But it expects to be more broadly used in the field in Q1 or Q2 of next year.
IRIS.TV is based in L.A., because that’s where all the media companies are, and its founding team has experience at places like ABC, Deluxe, Yahoo, Hulu, Disney, Universal, Rubicon Project, and Rand Corp. That includes Garthwaite, CRO Robert Bardunias, COO Richie Hyden, and CTO Sunil Ingle.
The team has raised a total of $1.7 million from angels in the media and finance worlds. That includes folks like Bob Jacobs, who was Bill Cosby’s long-time agent and is considered the “godfather of television syndication”; Nick Rau, co-founder of Vizu (which recently sold to Nielsen); former Viacom exec Jimmy Barge; and entertainment attorney Jor Law.
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