Crazy For Tech - Gadgets,Cell Phones,Cameras » video

The 16-Year-Old Startup CEO And The Hong Kong Billionaire [TCTV]

Administrator — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:13:55 +0000

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2012/02/03/the-16-year-old-startup-ceo-and-the-hong-kong-billionaire-tctv/ We covered the launch of Summly an application that summarises text last year , but I recently caught up with Nick D’Aloisio, the16 year year-old programmer who came up with the application for a video interview.

Here is the original:
The 16-Year-Old Startup CEO And The Hong Kong Billionaire [TCTV]

Keen On… Sonic.net: Why Fiber Is The Future Of Wired Connectivity

bestcbstore — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:37:15 +0000

It’s always nice to see a small, plucky start-up take on the big guys and not only survive but also prosper. My excellent Santa Rosa based ISP Sonic.net is doing just that – laying its own fiber-to-the-premises network in Sebastopol for only $70 a month and signing up 30% of the local market. While the numbers are still small (the fiber network still only reaches 700 Sebastopol homes), the Sonic.net story is encouraging because it shows that innovation is still possible in the ISP space, a market that has been dramatically “consolidated” since 1995, shrinking from thousands of thousands of local providers in the nineties to just a handful of national carriers today. So it was a real thrill to have Sonic.net co-founder and CEO come down to our San Francisco studio from his Santa Rosa office to talk about his amazing little company. Sonic.net, Jasper told me, having grown 50% in the last year, is back in “start-up mode” and it’s long term plan is to bring fiber to the district. Fiber, Jasper believes, is the future of home connectivity, especially given the merging of television and the Internet, and our insatiable appetite for video. Yes, yes, Dane. That’s all very well – but when am I going to get fiber-to-my-kitchen-table in Santa Rosa?

See the original post:
Keen On… Sonic.net: Why Fiber Is The Future Of Wired Connectivity

Visualizing Facebook’s Media Storage: How Big Is 100 Petabytes?

Administrator — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:02:31 +0000

Just a little tidbit from everyone’s favorite reading material this week, the Facebook IPO filing : the company noted that it now stores over 100 petabytes of media (photos and videos) uploaded by its 845 million users. In case “100 petabytes” didn’t blow you over, the filing further explains that’s equal to “100 quadrillion bytes.” OK, now you’re just showing off, Facebook. The number was thrown out there in the section where Facebook details its data management and personalization technologies. It’s the technical part of the S-1 which focused on the company’s in-house technology like Haystack , which allows Facebook to efficiently serve and store data, Apache Hive , a data warehouse infrastructure built on top of Hadoop, and HipHop , a tool that transforms PHP source code into highly optimized C++ code. But 100 petabytes is such a larger number, that’s it’s hard to really wrap your mind around it. However, with a little brainstorming, and the clever infographic created by TechCrunch’s Bryce Durbin , we came up with a way to visualize the size of Facebook’s media store. Using common 320 GB hard drives stacked on top of each other, Facebook’s collection of users’ photos and videos would taller than the world’s largest buildings, many times over. Mind, blown.

Read more from the original source:
Visualizing Facebook’s Media Storage: How Big Is 100 Petabytes?

Swarming Robots Will Fly Menacingly Towards Your Loved Ones In Perfect Formation

A D M I N — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:16:47 +0000

This video is making the nerd rounds today and it’s pretty amazing. It shows a set of quadrocopters first righting themselves after a catastrophic failure and returning to a certain point (the scientists throw the little guys into the air and they turn over and fly back to their hands light frightened starlings) and then we see how these monsters can fly in formation around obstacles and through windows. Built by the GRASP Lab at U Penn , these wee robots keep getting cooler and smaller . These are part of the Scalable sWarms of Autonomous Robots and Mobile Sensors (SWARM) project that sounds like something Shredder used to find the Ninja Turtles in their watery redoubt. The future: full of scary robots.

The rest is here:
Swarming Robots Will Fly Menacingly Towards Your Loved Ones In Perfect Formation

Microsoft Updates Kinect Hardware For Official Windows Release

blogger — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:10:12 +0000

We’ve known for some time that Microsoft would be bringing official Kinect support to Windows this week, but one thing they kept quiet was the fact that they’d be debuting a new version of the hardware as well. It’s not tiny, as some hoped, or built into the bezel of a laptop, as we know it will be eventually , but it does improve on the original in a few ways. The most visible improvement for most people will be a slight improvement of the minimum distance required for the device to operate. The Xbox 360 Kinect required you to be around 50cm away at least, and the Kinect for Windows will go down to 40cm — about 16 inches. That means it can sit on a monitor on a user’s desk and capture movements without the user having to scoot back at all. Other improvements are of the softer variety. Microsoft has improved the tracking software, providing an improved raw sensor stream, better color/depth synchronization, and more accurate skeletal tracking. On the downside, the new version costs quite a bit more: the new Kinect for Windows is going for $250 , while the 360 version is selling for just $100 at the Microsoft Store right now. The justification for the price seems to be that the new version has been updated to support multiple systems and situations, rather than the standard 360 hardware it’s been running on for the last year. And I’m guessing they’re not subsidizing this price quite as heavily. The official SDK won’t work with the 360 version, it seems, though you can still download the beta SDK, which works fine but officially can’t be used for commercial applications. Microsoft says they’ve been working with hundreds of companies and seeing lots of unique applications and ideas, so hopefully we’ll see some of those hit soon. In the mean time our Kinect tag has lots of projects that demonstrate the versatility of the device.

See the original post here:
Microsoft Updates Kinect Hardware For Official Windows Release

Stealth Startup Numecent Raises $2 Million Series A For “Cloudpaging” Technology

blogger — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:06:23 +0000

Numecent , a stealth startup building a patented “cloudpaging” technology, just raised $2 million in Series A funding from undisclosed corporate investors. The $2 million tranche is a part of a larger $10 million funding round, and is in addition to the $7.5 million in seed funding the company has already raised from private investors. Exact details as to what Numecent is developing are not known, beyond a general description of what “cloudpaging” means, as provided by the company. The term “cloudpaging,” says Numecent, refers to a specific (and patented) “push-pull” paging technology which allows software instructions and data to be demand-paged from the cloud in real-time. The company claims that cloudpaging will allow any software, app or game to pull this data on-demand to any connected device in a secure, metered and virtualized fashion. The company is even positioning cloudpaging as the successor to streaming, and holds 10 patents for application streaming and virtualization through its subsidiary, Endeavours Technologies. It’s also worth mentioning that Endeavors Technologies was spun out of a think tank for a DARPA project. Numecent is also now claiming to have high-profile testers who have begun to deploy its hybrid-cloud solution in mission-critical environments. The company plans to exit stealth in March, at which time the company will reveal more details about the cloudpaging technology itself and how it’s being used. Alongside the funding news, Numecent also announced that Osman Kent , previously the co-founder of 3Dlabs, has joined the company as the new CEO. Earlier this month, Numecent launched an “application jukebox” for Red Hat, which allows traditional Windows applications to be delivered to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization-hosted desktops.

More here:
Stealth Startup Numecent Raises $2 Million Series A For “Cloudpaging” Technology

Wahooly Launches Its Crowdfunding Experiment With First 3 Startups Ready For “Social Capital”

user — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:00:06 +0000

There’s an interesting experiment afoot in the startup community, which poses the following questions to entrepreneurs: Would you be willing to trade equity in your startup in return for social media buzz, and customer feedback? How much, if any, would you fork over? Minneapolis-based startup called Wahooly is both asking those questions — and proffering a few answers. Soft-launching in late September, Wahooly set out to create a platform on which socially-connected and early adopter-types, who are not accredited investors, can grab a small stake in up-and-coming startups by sharing their influence in exchange for a piece of the action. The goal: To help address one of the biggest obstacles encountered by early-stage companies — traction. Partnering with Klout and Cmp.ly, Wahooly has ammassed over 28,000 users, which Founder Dana Severson (a former business writer/blogger) says are all online infleuncers within the 90th percentile, according to Klout. Wahooly provides startups that need social media boosts and helping feedback with access to these “influencers,” allowing them to create testing groups of 5,000 to 8,000 people. Once formed, these groups take a share of between 4 to 6 percent in the startup. As to how it works, at a more granular level: Severson says that once users (a collection of bloggers, developers, and “web-lebrities”) join a startup, their share of the equity pool fluctuates based on a number of criteria, including feedback, which is tracked/rewarded in a point system. Users gain points based on three variables: The value of feedback (voted by the community), user activity (how often and to what extent they are using the service), and by influence (how many conversions their activity creates). Obviously, it’s in the interest of the user to focus on increasing the value of their startups, and the campaign continues until Wahooly exits, at which point users are paid based on their point total. In terms of what Wahooly provides to its startups, the founder says that the platform’s value proposition lies in delivering acceleration via advocates. “It’s a quality not quantity equation,” Severson says, “We’ve built our system to get what start-ups need most out of influencers, which is what most companies struggle with. We’re really focused on the power of combined influence, which is how trends begin.” While many startups are able to attract a decent amount of tweets, posts, mentions, and so on, the tipping point truly comes when this activity occurs concurrently and repetitively. But finding sustainability in brand advocacy is a difficult challenge, as user attention is fleeting, and most are wary of phoniness when it comes to repeat advocacy. That’s why Severson, who has also spent tim in advertising, wants to deliver a level of activity that will consist of 1,000 mentions over a single day — rather than over the course of a year — and then repeating that. A tricky feat, no doubt. Due to its unusual business model, Wahooly has been met with skepticism from some media, as the company plans to have quity stakeholders who take no action have their stake diluted (like a stock splitting), could potentially run afoul of the FTC and other regulators. Severson explains that part of the reason for this skepticism was due to the fact that the team hasn’t been willing to discuss how Wahooly is structured, holding off for competitive reasons. At this point, however, the founder is willing to share a bit more. Wahooly will always be the single shareholder in its startups, paying users based on its point system, with points being calculated against the net result of Wahooly’s success with its investments. It’s the same result for everyone, he says, while staying within the guidelines and allowing for the structure to be applied to international markets. In terms of the FTC’s potential interest, Wahooly’s users will be required to provide full disclosure. In other words, the affiliation/disclosure will appear on pages in which Wahooly users share. Because its users are influencers, the founder explains, they want to maintain their credibility and online reputations, and thus Wahooly wants to make it simple for the proper disclosures to be made. As to Wahooly’s progress: The company plans to introduce 200 startups to its users this year, and they’ve received over 300 applications thus far, and will be continuing to accept applicants going forward. Right now, Severson says, the focus is on consumer-based web applications. Today, Wahooly is officially introducing its first three companies: TweetTV.com, Cull.TV and ValuValu.com. The first, tweetTV is an Austin-based startup, building a web-based social TV Guide and Twitter-powered social TV platform that helps its users discover what to watch on TV and facilitates real tweet-based conversations around TV programs as they air. The second, Cull TV is attempting to reboot music television by leveraging leading recommendation and web data mining technology to helps anyone discover relevant, emerging talent through music videos. Currently experiencing a renaissance, music videos are the most popular way to distribute and consume music online, so Cull TV wants to give users a new and better way to discover artists. The third is Seattle-based startup Valu Valu , which calls itself “the hedge fund for everybody,” and aims to beat the stock market by combining momentum strategies with social sentiment analysis, sending “precise and easy trading instructions to its subscribers.” I’ve also just learned that a fourth startup, RAVN, which we wrote about in October, will be launching on Wahooly later this week. Check out the post for more here . Wahooly, which is walking the line between an accelerator and a crowdfunding platform, is definitely offering an unusual model, and could very well be a successful tool for startups looking to push past the early-adopter phase. But it could also be another sign that we’re on the doorstep/in the midst of another bubble. Whether or not Wahooly is successful depends on how influential its community truly is and whether they can really help startups get off the ground. Startups have to attract enough users or they will be overlooked, another challenge. It’s still early in the process to waylay judgement, but, as it scales, we’ll be able to get a better sense of how much real value Wahooly is adding to the ecosystem. It’s very likely that Wahooly will get early adopters feeling very tingly, but will the value be there? If it can deliver real acceleration in the market, Wahooly will no doubt race past the tipping point. The company is currently in the midst of raising its series A. For more on the model, check out Wahooly at home here .

The Birth Of An American Giant—Basic Clothing Sold On The Web

Budowniczy425 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:45:49 +0000

Nothing is made in this country anymore. In terms of actual manufacturing, America is increasingly at a disadvantage. The logic of the global economy moves jobs overseas. Get used to it, we are told. Well, Bayard Winthrop thinks the conventional wisdom is wrong. He wants to bring manufacturing back to America, in the apparel industry, no less! His clothing startup, American Giant (gotta love the name), launches today. American Giant is starting small, with a line of basic sweatshirts made in Brisbane, CA. American Giant doesn’t have any stores. It sells its sweatshirts only on the web, and soon will expand to other men’s basics such as T-shirts, polos, and button-downs. While the cost of materials and labor would be cheaper in Asia, a much bigger portion of the cost of a shirt is distribution. By eliminating stores and going direct to consumer, American Giant can cut out a lot of the costs in the apparel industry and pass the savings onto consumers while still making better quality clothing. By controlling manufacturing, Winthrop also expects to be able to reduce his production cycles to 3 months or less instead of the 18 to 24-month cycles typical in the industry. By reducing cycle times, American Giant will be able to experiment more with styles and products and then increase production for the products which generate the most demand. American Giant is a startup with 10 people and less than $5 million in funding, but the little giant is going after the Gap, J.Crew, and Old Navy. There is “no brand affinity” to those stores among men, argues Winthrop. “They don’t have a reason to live.” How does he hope to compete? Simple: with better quality. “I feel like in the apparel sector the whole idea of quality has gone way,” says Winthrop, who has spent the past two decades in the apparel industry, most recently as CEO of Chrome, a chain of urban men’s clothing stores. Winthrop wanted to make an “old-school navy sweatshirt” like the one his father used to wear that lasted 40 years, not the kind you buy at Old Navy. His first line of sweatshirts will be priced at a reasonable $59, but they are made with heavyweight cotton, double- and triple-needle stitching, thick ribbing at the waist, additional panels along the side for a better fit, and other construction details such as metal snaps designed in-house. But can a Web-only clothing brand work? “Consumers are moving more online and spending more money online,” notes Winthrop. “Consumers’ expectations of value and quality are changing. The days of us walking into Macy’s and paying full retail for a shirt are basically going away.” Watch the video above, in which Winthrop shows off his new sweatshirts and talks about his approach to American manufacturing.

Go here to read the rest:
The Birth Of An American Giant—Basic Clothing Sold On The Web

Videoplaza Secures $12 million For Ad Platform Led By Qualcomm, Innovacom

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:30:47 +0000

With the huge rise in the consumption of online video it follows that services to monetize that video are becoming hot properties. To that end, today Videoplaza , a ‘sell side’ ad management platform for video, has secured a Series B round of $12million led by Qualcomm Ventures and Innovacom. The company previously received rounds from VCs Creandum and Northzone, which also participated, which means VideoPlaza has received $18 million to date.

Original post:
Videoplaza Secures $12 million For Ad Platform Led By Qualcomm, Innovacom

And The Crunchie Goes To…Pinterest, Best New Startup Of 2011

Achilles — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:11:41 +0000

Online pinboard Pinterest , the hot new startup that’s growing at a phenomenal rate , won the Crunchie for the Best New Startup of 2011 at this year’s Crunchies. (This, despite the fact that it actually launched in 2010). The reason? Crazy, crazy traffic and growth. In November, the site had reportedly seen a 2,000% increase in pageviews, according to comScore. That wasn’t year-over-year growth, mind you, but the increase Pinterest had seen since June . At 421 million pageviews, the site had already surpassed more established players, like Etsy, for example. But co-founder Ben Silbermann stayed tight-lipped on the hard metrics behind Pinterest. In an interview backstage after the win, he declined to provide the number of users or even the number of pins. (There were “a lot,” he demurred.) However, Silbermann did attribute Pinterest’s success, in part, to its design and ability to connect people with each other. “Pinterest is a visual site, and a lot of people are visual by nature,” he explains. “But at its core, Pinterest is a site that connects people who are passionate about the same things. In the same way that people who use Facebook are excited to connect with people they care about, people on Pinterest are excited to be inspired by people with similar tastes.” (For what it’s worth, I still think Pinterest could have easily won Best Timesink, too, had it made the cut!)

Read the original post:
And The Crunchie Goes To…Pinterest, Best New Startup Of 2011