CrunchGear |  |
- Video: Japanese Robot Talks Like A Human
- Visually Launches To Automate The Making Of Infographics
- Evernote Takes $50 million To Become The Anti-Zynga
- Video: Meet Mex-One, Mexico’s First Humanoid Robot
- Sony Plans To Make Batteries For Electric Vehicles
- 34% Of iPhone Owners Think Their Phone Is 4G
- The iHit iPhone Case Ineffectively Hides Your Stash
- Microsoft’s Android Plan: Evil Genius Or Just Evil?
- Google Voice Adds Spam Filter, Identifies “Problem” Callers
- Hitler Also Hates Our Redesign
- Sobees Debuts A More Social, Browser-Based Version Of News Aggregator NewsMix
- Unfriendly: Google Blocking Ex-Employee’s “Social Circles” Book (Oh Yeah, He Now Works At Facebook)
- Badgeville Raises $12 Million, Celebrates With An Infographic
- T-Mobile Amps Their “4G” Network To 42Mbps in 56 New Regions, Still Has No 42Mbps-Compatible Phones
- Foursquare’s New Deal Partnerships Are No Big Deal
- Photonics Breakthrough Is Less Disruptive To Light Than Empty Space
- GOTO Metrics Raises $3 Million, Relaunches As Zettaset, To Help Companies Manage Big Data
- “Your Logo Looks Like Tetris!” No, Our Logo IS Tetris
- Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation
- Play For iPhone Coming Tomorrow, AOL Pitches Me Over Instagram
- Quick Hands-On With AT&T’s 4G TouchPad
- Ruby Creator “Matz” Matsumoto Joins Heroku As Chief Architect
- Zaarly Launches On Android
- Nintendo Video Hits The 3DS Tomorrow (In Japan Only, Alas)
- Digg Raises An Inside Venture Round
| Video: Japanese Robot Talks Like A Human Posted: 13 Jul 2011 05:03 AM PDT We’re one step closer to the Robocalypse: a research team at Japan’s Kagawa University has developed a robot that’s able to “speak” like a human being. While talking robots are not new by any means, this model isn’t using software but a set of mechanical, human-like vocal organs, for example artificial vocal chords or a tongue and lips that are made of silicone. The key element to make the robot speak like a human is an air compressor: the robot uses a set of pressure and control valves, eight resonance motors, and a resonance tube (the throat) to convert airflow into sounds. Those sounds are then recorded via a mic, collected and passed on to be processed by a computer to make them as human-like as possible.
Here’s a short video of the robot in action:  Here’s a longer one: Via Japan Trends and Akihabara News        
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| Visually Launches To Automate The Making Of Infographics Posted: 13 Jul 2011 04:55 AM PDT The whiz kids behind Mint’s infographics, Stewart Langille and Lee Sherman are today launching the first startup that solely focuses on mass producing infographics, Visually. Users who visit Visually this morning can see over 2000 infographics uploaded by designers like Jess3 and Dave McCandless as well as upload their own in a myriad of topics ranging from Science to Sports to the Economy. In its first launch iteration, Visually has partnered up with The Atlantic, GOOD Magazine CNNMoney.com, Ebay, The National Geographic and others to provide infographics content in exchange for sharing links — On Visually each participating publication gets to upload its own graphics, which are embedded and shared using an code generated by Visually. Visually plans on monetizing eventually by letting publications subscribe to its offerings via a monthly fee. “Everyone needs to create a graph or a chart or something, and the software that’s currently out there is more focused on business intelligence” Langille says. “There is a definite need to create simple visualizations for people. Within three clicks you can create visualizations for the sites.” Langille hopes with Visually to create a community of designers a la Dribbble or Forrst, but also hopes to rope in infographic producers that are concerned with issues like exposure and monetization. If and when the basic infographics part of the site includes advertising he wants to incorporate artist friendly business practices like revenue sharing. In addition to letting people upload and download infographics today, Visually has created a Twitterize Yourself widget that allows Twitter users to compare themselves against celebrities like Lady Gaga and Michael Arrington and create an infographic out of the experience. While there isn’t much practical benefit from this, it is pretty delightful. This automated process is a harbinger of Visually product developments to come, as eventually Langile is about to introduce an interface where customers will be to be able to enter in data and have the visuals come out, with the choices of various artist’s styles baked in to the service. The duo have almost 500K in seed funding to make this dream come true. Langille tells me, “It’s already the largest collection of infographics on the web.” Nice. 
       
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| Evernote Takes $50 million To Become The Anti-Zynga Posted: 13 Jul 2011 04:55 AM PDT A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Evernote’s new rumored venture round. It was a big one, said one source, putting them in the billion dollar valuation club. Today they’ll officially announce that deal – $50 million in new funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Morgenthaler Ventures. And while they didn’t quite get that billion dollar valuation people were whispering about, the company is still doing quite nicely, thank you. As part of the round, Roelof Boetha at Sequoia will join the board of directors. He was previously a board observer. The new round is partially secondary, meaning founders will be taking some money off the table. The majority of the round, though, is a primary venture raise. They’ll use it to fuel growth, including upcoming acquisitions. Since the company is already quite profitable (they haven’t spent any of their previous $20 million round), they now have quite a warchest. The company continues to grow like a well loved weed. In June they had 10 million users. Now it’s 11 million. 75% of users access the service using more than one platform – a desktop and a mobile phone, for example. 50% use more than two. And new, fun, applications like Peek continue to drive new user awareness of all that Evernote has to offer. Which is a lot. Snip a picture, save a web page, type a text note. Heavy users come and organize that content later, adding tags and other metadata to keep things tended properly. And that’s exactly what the company wants to see. Zynga is a place that encourages people to spend a 5 minute break playing one of their fun new games. Evernote says a lot of people want to spend that 5 mins doing something productive, like tending to your growing Evernote personal library. “You can really feel like you’ve accomplished something,” says CEO Phil Libin. Interesting sidenote, Morgenthaler loves Evernote so much that they not only invested in the company again, but they also sent over partner Ken Gullicksen to head Evernote’s corporate development efforts. Most venture funds get a little snippy when a company poaches a partner. But Morgenthaler just doubled down on their investment instead. Nice Sarah Lacy sat down with Libin yesterday to talk about the round, and how Evernote’s doing in general. That fascinating conversation is below. And the meaning of that thing he’s holding in his hand in the picture above becomes clear. I love that his goal is to create “a 100 year company.”        
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| Video: Meet Mex-One, Mexico’s First Humanoid Robot Posted: 13 Jul 2011 04:26 AM PDT Professor Eduardo Bayro-Corrochano from the Research and Advanced Studies Center of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico has achieved what no one before him achieved: he created Mexico’s first humanoid robot. Aptly named Mex-One, the little guy stands 105cm tall and weighs 15kg. As you can see in the video embedded below, Mex-One doesn’t seem to be as advanced as the humanoids we’ve seen coming from Japan and other robot nations in the past, but a first step has been made. And compared to other humanoids, Mex-One is inexpensive: $100,000 is almost nothing for such a robot, and Professor Bayro-Corrochano says Mex-One could now even be made for $50,000. Mex-One is being marketed as a “social robot” that can be programmed to one day perform tasks such as climbing up stairs, conversing with people, or guiding visitors in museums (it has an “open architecture”). Here’s a video: Via Plastic Pals        
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| Sony Plans To Make Batteries For Electric Vehicles Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:40 AM PDT There is probably no one left doubting that electric vehicles will be a huge market in the future, and now it seems that Sony is agreeing, too. The company yesterday announced it will start making lithium-ion batteries specifically for electric cars and hybrids “from the middle of this decade”. A Sony VP said his company expects demand for such batteries to grow drastically in the years to come, adding big S is ready to build dedicated plants in Japan and elsewhere if necessary. Details are scarce at this point, but a first battery prototype for electric vehicles that was shown to the press yesterday measures 257 x 182mm and apparently boasts a long life. According to reports in various Japanese newspapers from today, Sony has already started offering its batteries to major electric car makers in Japan and elsewhere. The picture above shows the Tesla, which is using Panasonic batteries (Panasonic is also an investor). Via Mainichi Shimbun [JP]        
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| 34% Of iPhone Owners Think Their Phone Is 4G Posted: 13 Jul 2011 02:01 AM PDT A Retrevo survey found that 34% of iPhone owners think the “4″ in iPhone 4 stands for 4G. Admittedly, they could have been fooled by the previous 3G moniker, but still… Twenty-four percent of Blackberry owners think their phone is 4G (which is also impossible). 61% of iPhone owners don’t actually care about 4G and will buy a next-gen iPhone with or without the service. Blackberry and Android users are also interested in the new iPhone, regardless of 4G speeds. Retrevo’s ultimate conclusion? That 4G is confusing and not many consumers quite understand it, want it, or believe they can afford it. Sadly, given the prevalence of marketing around the 4G concept I wonder if it isn’t too soon to be flogging this technology to a world that has just gotten comfortable with Wi-Fi.        
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| The iHit iPhone Case Ineffectively Hides Your Stash Posted: 13 Jul 2011 01:28 AM PDT This Kickstarter project, while noble, seems to be slightly misguided. The case, designed for the iPhone 4, has a small side compartment for taking “various small goodies with you, such as vitamins and mints” or, barring those sundries, a loosie cig or (and this is only conjecture) a “joint” of “marijuana.” I can only imagine the reaction of the “fuzz” to such an obvious attempt to disguise the consumption of the “devil weed” in what appears to be a very lopsided phone case. For $20 you get a case and for $25 you get the case and something called a “one-hitter” that allows the owner to smoke a small amount of tobacco discretely using a small metallic pipe shaped like cigarette. It is my understanding that these “one-hitters” are popular with heavy metal listeners, skaters, and “heshers” for their convenience and fashionable styling. No other use is implied or warranted.
This contrivance was invented by Mssrs. Joshua and Edward, late of Miami, Florida, two gentlemen who I’m sure will go far in the industry of thinking-up wacky cases while consuming illicit substances. In related news, the new Sublime With Rome album has just been released.         
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| Microsoft’s Android Plan: Evil Genius Or Just Evil? Posted: 13 Jul 2011 01:07 AM PDT Buried in all the intrigue surrounding the Nortel patent auction was an interesting tidbit: Microsoft did not have to bid on the patents, but they did anyway. Why? As far as I can tell, it’s one of two reasons. One is evil. The other is evil genius. Either Microsoft really wants to kill Android. Or, if Android continues to thrive, Microsoft wants to be the ones that make billions of dollars off of its success. Back in June, we noted that it seemed unlikely that Microsoft would enter this high-stakes patent bidding process for the simple reason that they already had patent licensing agreements with Nortel. We were told these agreements would transfer over when the patents changed hands. But several days later, Microsoft began complaining that the eventual winner may be able to void their licensing agreements. Still, we were told this would not be the case. But surely Microsoft had to know that as well. So why were they complaining? They were playing mind games, attempting to mess with Google, says one source. But then something funny happened. Microsoft did end up bidding on the patents. As a part of Rockstar Bidco (the group that eventually won the auction), Microsoft joined up with several other tech giants (and rivals) to put together billions of dollars to bid with. Of course, Rockstar Bidco bowed out of the auction when things started heating up. But then Apple stepped in with an offer to stake them. Together, they rode the hot hand to victory. The victory likely has major ramifications in the mobile space, so you’d think several other players would complain and try to get the courts to void or alter the deal. And the truth is that some did complain. Namely, Verizon and HP objected to the deal alongside Google, reports Reuters. But the deal sailed through the courts in both the U.S. and Canada in just 10 days. Why? Because once the judge reiterated that the sale would not negate existing licensing agreements, Verizon and HP dropped their objections. Microsoft, which again, also had Nortel patent licensing agreements, would have also fallen into this category. Again, they did not need to bid. So why did they? Because if Google had won the patents, while Microsoft still would have had the right to use the patents, they would have lost a significant part of their leverage over Google. Prior to the Nortel deal, Microsoft had something like 17,000 patents, while Google had something like 700. Had Google won the 6,000+ Nortel patents, they would have effectively gained some deterrence from many of the lawsuits being hurled their way. And because the majority of the Nortel patents are in the mobile space, this may have meant an end to Microsoft’s pressuring of Google’s Android partners to sign licensing agreements with them. And that’s a problem for Microsoft because as we’re now seeing, this is potentially a massive business opportunity for them. Sure, they’d prefer that Android (which killed Windows Mobile) would die and Windows Phone would take it’s place. But the next best option is to catch a free ride on the Android train. Patent licensing deals already in place with HTC, General Dynamics, and others could mean revenues of over $1 billion by next year, as Forbes reports. And if they’re able to convince Samsung to sign one as well (which could effectively force every Android partner to sign one), we could be talking multiple billions of dollars of revenue each year. Had Google won the Nortel auction, all of that would have gone up in smoke. Yes, this strategy is extremely lame on Microsoft’s part. Instead of focusing on winning by out-innovating Google in the mobile space, they’re focusing on milking revenues off of a freely distributed operating system that they don’t actually make. When Apple takes these agressive approaches on patents, it’s no more right, but at least they can argue that they have a winning product (the iPhone) that they’re trying to protect. Their goal isn’t to get other companies licensing their patents, it’s to run those guys out of the market (which doesn’t always work). Microsoft’s intent here is pure evil genius. “It’s not like Android’s free. Android has a patent fee. You do have to license patents,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said last year. What he didn’t explicitly say is that you’d have to pay Microsoft and not Google for those patents. Think about this for a second: it’s entirely possible that Microsoft is going to end up making more money — perhaps significantly more — from Android than Google will. A year ago, such a statement would have seemed like a joke. But now it’s becoming reality. And it must be the ultimate nightmare for Google. By being a part of the winning team, and not allowing Google to get Nortel’s patents, Microsoft put themselves in a win-win situation. If their continued threats to Google’s Android partners force those partners to reconsider their Android commitments, well there’s Windows Phone waiting with opened arms. If the threats lead to licensing agreements and the continued rise of Android, well there’s a huge pile of money from each participating OEM. So no, Microsoft did not have to bid on the Nortel patents. But doing so may prove to be one of the best moves Microsoft has never made. And strangely enough, they have Apple to thank. Of course, they’re likely playing their own little game in this situation. Keep your enemies closer. Or keep them fighting.        
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| Google Voice Adds Spam Filter, Identifies “Problem” Callers Posted: 13 Jul 2011 12:48 AM PDT As someone who hates phone calls in the first place, Google Voice has been a boon to my workflow. Calls go in and I rarely, if ever, check them. It’s truly a marvelous invention. However, Google Voice now has global spam filtering that allows you to report spam callers and block them. GV always had a blocking system. However, now the data you add to Google Voice percolates out to other users, thereby saving them from your sad fate. To enable the feature, pop over to the Call tab of GV settings and select the proper checkbox. Spam calls appear in the Spam folder and can be heard or, if you’re in a malicious mood, deleted.        
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| Hitler Also Hates Our Redesign Posted: 13 Jul 2011 12:02 AM PDT  People hate change. People also hate ugly things. It’s up to you to decide what’s been motivating the torrent of redesign hate we’ve received since we decided to change our logo to the Minecraft helicopter or to that Eightbit startup or whatever. I’ve actually been pretty sick for about two days so I really have no idea what’s going on, except for the fact THAT SOME OF OUR HEADLINES ARE ARBITRARILY SHOUTING NOW and I have to deal with some weird thing on the CMS backend called a “Screamer.” At least we’re still on WordPress. But you guys are pissed. You know who else is pissed? Hitler, as you can probably glean from the Downfall meme – inspired video above. My favorite part, "I used to love reading TechCrunch. And now I have to soak my eyes in bleach every time." Close runner up: "Why don't they just redirect to the Aol homepage?" Oh and BTW, you guys can stop tipping us that you hate the redesign, we know. Via: Meemsy        
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| Sobees Debuts A More Social, Browser-Based Version Of News Aggregator NewsMix Posted: 12 Jul 2011 11:58 PM PDT Earlier this year, social media client Sobees launched NewsMix, an iPad app which presents news and content shared by your social circle in a magazine format on the device. It’s similar in functionality to Flipboard, Summify or Pulse. Today the company is launching a browser-based, more social news aggregator. The site, which is designed with HTML5, allows you to create and mix a digital magazine composed of content shared in your Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds (Google The new version of NewsMix not only displays your Twitter updates but it also lets you subscribe to newspapers and blogs and to Twitter users to read their Tweets, Twitter Favorites and personal mix of news. So you can subscribe to the personalized magazines shared by your friends as well as blogs and newspapers. Sobees also offers a bookmarklet that allows you to add content from your browser into NewsMix. Similar to the iPad app, NewsMix features Sobees’ proprietary curation technology, which will will automatically prioritize and curate Twitter and Facebook posts based on your interactions with the app. For now, the web application is free, but sobees plans on implementing a premium version of the web app in the foreseeable future (the iPad app costs $2.99).        
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| Unfriendly: Google Blocking Ex-Employee’s “Social Circles” Book (Oh Yeah, He Now Works At Facebook) Posted: 12 Jul 2011 10:55 PM PDT We’ve written about Paul Adams a few times now. As a refresher, he’s the guy who used to work at Google on user experience and made a popular presentation that suggested how Google could go after Facebook in the social space — namely, friend groups. That, of course, ended up happening with Google+. But before that project was complete, Adams jumped ship to, where else, Facebook. After the recent launch of G+, he stated that seeing it was a bit like “bumping into an ex-girlfriend“. Yes, that guy. Anyway, there’s been a lot of interest recently in Adams given his history and he took some time today to write a blog post to clear some things up. Why he left Google, what he does at Facebook — it’s good stuff. But the real meat is one little nugget of information he drops: Google is blocking him from releasing a book he wrote about his social research called, what else, Social Circles. And Adams is not happy about this at all. Specifically, Adams says he received permission in June 2010 from Google to publish Social Circles. As he notes the content, title, and cover (circles!) all existed before the Emerald Sea project (Google+). But after word of the project started leaking out that summer, Google rescinded their permission and asked Adams to wait to publish until Google+ launched. Adams understood, and was perfectly fine with that. But now that G+ is out there, he says Google is still blocking him from publishing the book, and he doesn’t know why. To make matters worse, Google won’t even respond to his emails on the topic. “The book contains no proprietary information, it is based almost entirely on research from 3rd parties (mostly universities) and any Google research referenced is already in the public domain,” he writes. Then he takes his shot:
Google and Facebook have long been in the midst of a war of words (and data) over open access to information. Now Google is apparently blocking a Facebook employee from publishing a book he wrote. Interesting. But rather than wait for Google’s permission, Adams is hard at work on a new book, called Grouped, which will be out in a few months, he says. As for working at Google and Facebook, Adams uses the post to vent his frustrations with Google’s bureaucracy and politics when he left. He declines to go into more detail, but points to this harsh post also by a former Googler who worked on Emerald Sea. Adams goes on to say:
Ouch. So going to Facebook was the ultimate revenge, right? Well maybe, but Adams actually does not work on the Groups or Friend Lists teams there. He joined as a researcher, but is now a product manager working on Facebook’s advertising products. “ I love my new job, love Facebook, and have absolutely no regrets about moving. It has been the best career decision I've made,” he says.        
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| Badgeville Raises $12 Million, Celebrates With An Infographic Posted: 12 Jul 2011 09:31 PM PDT Badgeville founder and CEO Kris Duggan is one of those people that is so ridiculously upbeat and positive all the time that sometimes you just want to strangle him. No one has a right to be that happy. He was smiling and happy when I met him at the Fortune Brainstorm conference a year ago and he showed me Badgeville for the first time. He was happy on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francsico last September while launching his company and taking the audience choice award. And now he’s a whole new level of happy because he just closed a second round of financing – $12 million from Norwest Venture Partners and El Dorado Ventures, with participation from previous investors Trinity Ventures and Webb Investment Network. Tim Chang from Norwest and Tom Peterson from El Dorado joined the company’s board of directors. When Duggan isn’t overdosing on dopamine (or perhaps while he is), he’s growing one heck of a company. Badgeville provides game mechanics to websites, giving incentives to users to interact more with those sites. They have 75 announced paying customers, “seven figure” quarterly revenue and are growing that revenue at 40% quarter over quarter. Customers pay a yearly fee for the service. Customers include Discovery Communications, NBC, Bluefly.com, Interscope Records, Major League Gaming, LiveMocha, The Active Network, and Deloitte Digital. Chang from Norwest is a particularly good fit for the company. He’s invested in both ngmoco and Playdom, and understand game mechanics well. He’s also invested in BranchOut, that startup that you keep seeing in your email inbox as people add you to their network. Here’s that infographic I mentioned in the title.
       
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| T-Mobile Amps Their “4G” Network To 42Mbps in 56 New Regions, Still Has No 42Mbps-Compatible Phones Posted: 12 Jul 2011 09:00 PM PDT Oh man! I just realized: we’ve had this new layout for a whole day now, and we have yet to do one of our kind-of-but-not-really-trademark Good News, Bad News posts. You know what that means? IT’S INAUGURAL GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS TIME. The Good News: T-Mobile is doubling the speeds of their high-speed data network in 56 new regions, bumping things from a theoretical max of 21 Megabits per second to a theoretical max of 42 Megabits per second. You can find a full list of the new, super-speedy regions down below. All in all, this upgrade brings the number of regions running on T-Mobile’s HSPA+42 network up to 152. The Bad News: They, uh, don’t actually have any phones compatible with this new, snappier network yet. While T-Mobile plans to launch a HSPA+42 compatible phone by the end of this year, all of the “4G” phones they’ve sold to date can only run on the 21 megabit pipe. They do have a 42Mbps-friendly USB laptop dongle called the Rocket, but hey — this isn’t TechCrunch.com/LaptopDongles.
The new 42 Mbps Regions:
       
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| Foursquare’s New Deal Partnerships Are No Big Deal Posted: 12 Jul 2011 08:32 PM PDT Foursquare this morning announced distribution partnerships with daily deal providers LivingSocial, Gilt City, zozi, BuyWithMe and AT&T. Missing from the list are Groupon, Yelp and Google Offers. With these deals, Foursquare is attempting to solve two problems: liquidity in deals and its own lack of a revenue model. Foursquare already has a reasonable number of deals on its own. How many, exactly, it refuses to say. But I even found one during a stopover in Ketchikan, Alaska. I couldn’t get a 3G signal, but I could get a Foursquare deal. Foursquare will now distribute the deals to its users on behalf of its partners. At this stage of the mobile deals market, it helps all of the players out there to work together. None of these companies have all of the pieces of the puzzle: Foursquare has distribution, but no local salesforce. LivingSocial and the others have salesforces and some deals but no meaningful mobile distribution. Without cooperation, you run into the Color problem—you check to see what’s there, see nothing, check again, see nothing and then stop checking. A single purpose deals app will get old quickly. Deals need to be shown where people already are for other reasons. Foursquare is one of those outlets. The company won’t disclose how many monthly unique users it has, but I would estimate it at 2-3 million, based on typical Internet decay rates of registered users and its recent milestone of 10 million registered users. However, I see three key challenges with Foursquare deals:
There is also competition between Foursquare and its partners. Tomorrow, LivingSocial is offering $1 lunches at more than 100 places in San Francisco to promote the launch of LivingSocial Instant. I asked LivingSocial if those deals will be available through the Foursquare app. “Tomorrow’s dollar lunch will only be available thru the LivingSocial apps or the LivingSocial website,” replied spokeswoman Maire Griffin. In other words, LivingSocial would like you to install their app.        
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| Photonics Breakthrough Is Less Disruptive To Light Than Empty Space Posted: 12 Jul 2011 06:12 PM PDT Research at Columbia Engineering School has yielded a material that is literally unlike any other known. Everything in the universe (that we can see) affects light one way or another. Slows it down, speeds it up, spreads it out, diffuses it in a certain way, whatever. Even man-made materials with “negative refractive indexes,” themselves unlike anything else in the universe, do something to the light. Not this stuff. By combining two materials, one with a positive refractive index, and one with a negative, they’ve produced something with an interesting effect: light passes through it as if that material wasn’t even there. It has as zero refractive index. The photons come out the other end of the “nanofabricated superlattice” in the exact phase, angle, etc as they went in. Sounds kind of cool, you say, but why should you care? Well, being able to control the phase of light in this way means that it can be used in completely new ways of using and propagating photons. Fiber optic communications may be revolutionized, and if the phase control could be expanded to spectra other than visible light, wireless communications could be as well. As always, expect a good five or ten year delay before you hear about real-world applications. The paper by Chee Wei Wong and Serdar Kocaman appears in Nature Photonics, and Columbia summarizes the findings here. [via Extremetech]        
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| GOTO Metrics Raises $3 Million, Relaunches As Zettaset, To Help Companies Manage Big Data Posted: 12 Jul 2011 05:59 PM PDT Mountain View-based GOTO Metrics announced today that it has closed a $3 million series A funding round. The round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and EPIC Ventures. DFJ Managing Director Andreas Stavropoulos and Nick Efstratis, managing director of EPIC Ventures, will both be joining Zettaset’s board of directors as part of the new round. The infusion of capital will be used to grow the team and expand the startup’s existing feature set. The company is also announcing today a rebranding and name-change, in which the company will now be known as “Zettaset”. The name change was made, according to the team, to better reflect the company’s modus operandi, as Zettaset provides data analytics tools for enterprises and those looking to better understand those huge swaths of data. A “zettabyte”, for those unfamiliar, consists of more than a million petabytes — in other words, a whole lot of data. Zettaset’s database management solution is essentially a mine-able enterprise-level software platform, which aims to give small and medium-sized businesses the reins to control (and analyze) the massive amounts of data that are becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s wide, webby world. The patent-pending technology behind Zettaset’s solution is built on opensource technology that operates via Hadoopm, Hive, Pig, and Zookeeper. And, what’s more, it’s fully-automated, so users don’t have to spend time worrying over nuts and bolts. Said another way, this means that users can aggregate, organize, and analyze those huge sets of data collected in a business’ day-to-day activity, including petabyte-level analysis. Zettaset also offers its users a simple licensing model that facilitates scaling and provision, without having to build and maintain the type of on-site infrastructure that would allow big-data analysis. Zettaset’s strong point is its affordability (pricing depends on the size of the business) and the fact that it doesn’t put a limitation on the number of users that have access to the solution, enabling businesses to focus on how to utilize the data and analytics, rather than how to manage it. The solution has also been tailored to provide a level of redundancy that allows its systems to continue working in the event of hardware or software kerfuffles. Businesses can also add a number of servers to increase storage without hampering daily operation and supports a number of programming languages, from C++, Jave, and Python to Smalltalk and OCaml, all available through Zettaset’s API. For more on the data management solution, check out its website here and to sign up for a demo, click right. Here.        
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| “Your Logo Looks Like Tetris!” No, Our Logo IS Tetris Posted: 12 Jul 2011 04:56 PM PDT So, what do you think of our redesign so far? Wait, don’t answer that. You already have — thousands of times. The most common refrain seems to be, “love the new site, hate the logo”. But my favorite offshoot of that is the notion that our new logo looks like Tetris. I assume this is meant to be an insult, but I mean, who doesn’t love Tetris? Anyway, one driven reader decided to take things to the next logical conclusion: he created a version of Tetris using the TechCrunch “T” and the TechCrunch “C”. TCTetris. It’s pure gold. Great work Amos Haviv (and Dalton Ridenhour), you’ve all but ensured that we’ll get no more posts out today as we attempt to make the T fit into the C over and over again. TCTetris is hard.        
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| Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation Posted: 12 Jul 2011 04:46 PM PDT We’ve heard from multiple sources that Dropbox is finally moving on raising its next venture round and it’s a whopper. They’ve had preliminary conversations with several investors, several solid offers they’ve passed on earlier this year and are meeting with investment banks to handle the offering now. Allen & Co. is said to be in the mix, but we’ve also heard nothing has been finalized. The real news are the numbers we’re hearing from multiple sources close to the company. Dropbox is looking to raise between $200 million and $300 million according to these sources. In terms of valuation, the company has already had multiple offers at a valuation north of $2 billion range, and recently more informal discussions in the $8 billion-valuation range. Our sources expect the valuation to end up in the $5 billion to $10 billion range. That’s quite a step up from its previous funding rounds which have totalled a tiny $7.2 million. There will no doubt be a secondary component to the round, but our sources say it’ll be less than 50% of the total amount raised. We’ll update as soon as we know more.        
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| Play For iPhone Coming Tomorrow, AOL Pitches Me Over Instagram Posted: 12 Jul 2011 04:15 PM PDT Back in March, we noted that the mobile-first group inside of AOL was pushing forward with a pretty nice new music app called “Play”. The timing was good, they released it just as SXSW was kicking off. Unfortunately, it was Android-only — meaning myself and millions of others were unlikely to use it and instead would favor something like rival Soundtracking. Well, tomorrow Play is finally coming for iPhone. As far as I can tell, Play for iPhone looks great. But “looks“ is the keyword. I haven’t actually used the app myself. Instead, I’ve only seen it because AOL decided to pitch it to me over Instagram. Yes, knowing my no-email stance, AOL smartly found me on another network I’m always on and highly engaged with. Well played — and smart. AOL has been pitching their app as a sort of “Instagram for music”. And that seems to be working for them so far. AOL’s senior director of mobile projects, Sol Lipman, prepared and sent me (publicly, of course) the following set of Instagram images to show off and explain the new app. Again, the app looks great. Can’t wait to try it out. Update: And behold, Play for iPhone is live now! thesolster: So @parislemon we’re launching PLAY for iPhone tomorrow – this is the music tab.
thesolster: And this @parislemon is the PLAY tab – it is rad.
thesolster: the feed @parislemon, rules
thesolster: hey @parislemon look at this awesomeness here
thesolster: We have a full-on local music player @parislemon
thesolster: Hope you enjoyed it @parislemon – for everyone else sorry to clutter your stream, just trying to take care of business
       
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| Quick Hands-On With AT&T’s 4G TouchPad Posted: 12 Jul 2011 03:15 PM PDT We may have already reviewed the TouchPad’s most elementary form, but last week we saw a leaked roadmap that has the 4G version coming out in August. AT&T had an event today where we got a quick hands-on, but other than a speed test and a little extra info, there’s not much to say. Obviously an inside event (though relatively high up), packed with spectrum-hogging bloggers, isn’t the best place to test this sort of thing out, but it’s not like AT&T was going to let us go for a walk with their precious. We saw speeds of just 3 Mb/s down and 0.84 Mb/s up. I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt, and of course they’ll be different where you are (if 4G is even offered).
Let’s say you do have a sweet 30-meg connection, though. You’re going to burn through your data allowance pretty quickly. So the 4G TouchPad will come with an app to help monitor your data consumption and control wireless connectivity. Thoughtful! I would have guessed they’d let people go over by a few thousand dollars’ worth and then give out the app.        
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| Ruby Creator “Matz” Matsumoto Joins Heroku As Chief Architect Posted: 12 Jul 2011 03:03 PM PDT In what must be an amazing day for the Heroku founders, the creator of Ruby, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto has announced that he will be joining the former Y Combinator startup as Chief Architect of Ruby. “As a member of our platform development team, Matsumoto-san will continue his work on the Ruby language in close collaboration with the Ruby community, keeping the language open and advancing the technology in exciting new ways,” Heroku General Manager Byron Sebastian said in a release. Matsumo created Ruby in 1993, hoping to build a programming language that increased “developer experience, happiness, and productivity.” Heroku, founded in 2007, originally focused solely for Ruby development but added other languages over time. Early this January, the startup was bought for $200 million in cash by Salesforce. As Heroku Chief Architect, Matsumo will be keeping his other positions as a fellow at Rakuten Institute of Technology and researcher at the Network Applied Communications Laboratory. He says he joined the startup because of its commitment to the Ruby language. Is Heroku becoming for Ruby what Engine Yard is for Rails (by soaking up some of the core team)? In any case, it must be pretty humbling to build a PaaS for a language and then have the guy who created that language join your company.        
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| Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:44 PM PDT Android users, say hello to Zaarly. For those not yet familiar with the peer-to-peer mobile startup, they’ve had a whirlwind year thus far. Built at hackathons and startup weekends over the first few months of this year, Zaarly took first prize at LA Startup Weekend in March, and soon thereafter raised a $1 million seed round from an impressive list of investors — Ashton Kutcher, Paul Buchheit, Lightbank, and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington (see below), among them. In May, Zaarly launched nationwide and, in less than a month, crossed $1 million in posted transactions. Occupying a similar space as TaskRabbit and Gigwalk, the web and mobile service seeks to connect buyers and sellers in a localized market place, reverse Craigslist-style, by allowing users to post what they're looking for (beer, a massage, or an iPad), how much they're willing to pay for said good or service, and how soon they need it. The startup then posts the request in the local community forum and allows users to share the request via Twitter and Facebook. Sellers can then bid for the tasks users post, and buyers can then choose their preferred merchant or seller, with Zaarly facilitating the connection by way of an anonymous Twilio phone number. The service offers an integrated credit card payment system, which users can take advantage of — or pay cash. The biggest selling point for Zaarly as a service has been the fact that it’s mobile-centric, offering a terrific mobile experience through free iOS and Facebook apps. A few weeks ago, in fact, Zaarly rolled out a few new features and was featured by Apple on iTunes. For the last few months, the startup has been developing an Android app to further expand its mobile experience, and, today, the app has gone live in the Android Marketplace. Check it out. Zaarly for Android offers a similar experience to that which its iOS users will be familiar with: Wedding singers will build custom tree houses, houses cleaned, websites designed, and the opportunities to ride in beautiful sports cars will present themselves. The new, free Zaarly Android app will include signup from inside the app, an “Activity Tab” that tracks past, pending, and completed offers, and all Web and Android activity is synced so that users can switch between the web app and the Android app without losing any content or info. The new app also allows users to message each other anonymously within the app, or via SMS if the app happens to be closed — and it archives all your conversations, too, which is a nice bonus. Users can browse local listings with a “Compass button”, and just as Zaarly users can do on the web app, listings can be posted for up to a week. (And a note for Android users, Zaarly’s app incorporates standard Android buttons, for example, the “back arrow button” can help users quit or go back and the “options button” allows users to view their activity, post a Zaarly, etc.)
Currently, over $1.6 million in dolla dolla billz has been posted on Zaarly, and one of the reasons that app has been able to attract so much activity so early on in the game, Fishback says, is that the service has resisted just becoming something where “people run errands for you”. The CEO says that the team has been seeing all kinds of surprising posts, although, perhaps unsurprisingly, he surmised that about 7 percent of Zaarlies involve an apple product of some kind. But, that being said, couches, bikes, and cars have all been put up for grabs as well, so the product offerings remains diverse. And sometimes weird. Check out Zaarly on Android here. Note: As noted above, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has invested in Zaarly. You can read more about his investment policy here.        
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| Nintendo Video Hits The 3DS Tomorrow (In Japan Only, Alas) Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:26 PM PDT Nintendo is working hard at making its 3DS less of a “put in a cartridge, play a game” console, and more of an all-purpose gaming/media/social gadget. They’re awful slow at it, though, since their entire system from the eighties on has been the cartridge thing, more or less. Perhaps they looked at Apple and said not “oh no, they’re going to get us” but “man, how come we haven’t tried alternative methods of capitalizing on this huge, loyal user base?” This was years ago, mind you, and they still haven’t really branched out (Wii Speak?), but we’re beginning to see the new, rich experience roll out, however slowly. Their curated video channel of 3D content is just about to go live on Japanese 3DSes, for instance. Finally! The service offers selected videos — a fashion show, a 3D tour of Kyoto — but no access to popular web video services. It’ll be coming to the US later this summer, presumably with content a little more relevant than the latest trends hitting the teen streets of Shinjuku. Netflix will be joining it, and you’ll be able to download an app to watch any streaming content you have access to on your 3DS. Hey, that could be pretty handy. [via Joystiq]        
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| Digg Raises An Inside Venture Round Posted: 12 Jul 2011 02:20 PM PDT Digg has raised a new round of financing, we’ve confirmed. It’s an inside round, meaning one or more existing investors put in the money. We’ve heard the amount raised was single digit millions, probably around $5 million. CEO Matt Williams has confirmed the financing to us, but won’t give an exact number on the amount raised. The real question is around the terms of the deal. Digg’s last round in 2008 valued the company at $150 million post money. But that was a long time ago, and Digg’s influence has waned. One source says the valuation is probably around $35 million. But Williams told me “this was not a down round.” There are ways to structure a deal to give a better real valuation to investors while keeping the official valuation high. By increasing the liquidity preference, or using debt, or warrants. Williams wouldn’t comment further, though, on the round. The company has $1.5 million outstanding debt with Silicon Valley Bank, and one source says they were pressuring the company to raise new money to improve the balance sheet. Without this round Digg had about 6 months of runway left before they ran out of cash, says one source. Now, they have more time.        
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