New Technology News

Monday, December 2, 2013

App discovery startup AppHero has been acquired by fellow Toronto-based company Fuse Powered, the company announced today, in a deal that will see the entire AppHero team including 19-year old founder Jordan Satok join Fuse Powered and develop its products for app publishing, marketing and distribution. AppHero, founded in 2011, was a pure play discovery network that developed sophisticated algorithms for suggesting mobile software to users, but now it's crossing the line into territory it stayed specifically out of when it was operating under that guise: paid placement.

The recommendation platform built by Satok and AppHero was designed to survey what kinds of apps a user already has and then make intelligent predictions about what else they might be inclined to download – taking into account that if you already have an excellent grocery list app, for instance, you're not likely to want to get another one. But Satok says that some months ago they started to realize that more and more users are downloading new apps based on what they find through advertisements, rather than through suggestion networks like the one he and his team had built.

“[Fuse Powered] has a monetization product that they offer to their monetization partners, so what we're looking at doing, and this is something we've been working on the last few months, is we recognized that people are discovering a lot of apps via ads,” Satok explained in an interview. “So Facebook ads, etc. The difficulty is that most mobile app ads today are really impersonal and not at all relevant to what people are really interested in. So we started using the same processes we'd developed to find apps that people would really like, and then show them ads for those apps.”

Satok says it's a much more straightforward business model than any they'd created for AppHero, and also really well-aligned with their goals and technological development. He says that they were always worried about doing the same thing in AppHero itself, for fear of compromising the user experience, but notes that now there's nothing stopping them from using that tech in that way, as it'll be clear to any and all that this is an advertising product.

The terms of the deal aren't being disclosed, but AppHero has raised some $1.8 million in funding from OMERS Ventures and others, and Satok says that all investors and stakeholders are more than happy with the deal.

App discovery is a dangerous market to operate in, as Apple has proven time and time again with its ability to shut out companies who do similar things from the App Store entirely. An exit here for AppHero actually manages to help Satok and the company he built mitigate that risk entirely, while giving both them and new parent Fuse Powered a way to quickly chart a relatively uncomplicated path to monetization. I asked Satok, who started AppHero when he was just 17, if he's feeling entrepreneurial again, but he said he sees the this as the chance to build something more long-term with his new partners at Fuse Powered.

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AppHero Acquired By Mobile App Publishing Firm Fuse Powered, Will Turn Its Attention To Ads

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App discovery startup AppHero has been acquired by fellow Toronto-based company Fuse Powered, the company announced today, in a deal that w...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is looking to the skies for his company's latest splashy venture, with a plan to start making deliveries by drones within the next five years. Amazon Prime Air will allow the company to make deliveries via the unmanned devices within a half-hour of ordering in some cases. The drones can carry items weighing up to five pounds, Bezos claimed. Since approximately 86 percent of items in Amazon's inventory fall into that category, the company will be able to deliver many purchases rapidly should the plan take off.

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The Sky Is Falling - No, Wait, It's Just a Package From Amazon

11:57 AM

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is looking to the skies for his company's latest splashy venture, with a plan to start making deliveries by dron...

The Supreme Court has rejected Amazon's calls to consider their case against New York State's sales tax on goods sold outside of its borders. By effectively upholding a New York Court's ruling, the Justices tacitly imply that they are fine paying sales tax on black body robes purchased online and shipped from outside the DC area.

Ever since the 1992 Supreme Court case, Quill v. North Dakota, savvy Internet retailers could avoid sales tax if they didn't have a “substantial nexus” in the state where a customer lived. States lose an estimated $23 billion from online sales, according to the National Conference of State Legislators (hardly an unbiased group).

New York State gets around that law by taxing an online company if they leverage local businesses, such as Amazon's affiliate program, to sell goods.

The federal government isn't sitting out this game, either. Dueling bills in Congress seek to both ban and enact a federal sales tax. But, considering we have the most unproductive congress in history, Amazon may not have to worry about that law any time soon.

Amazon officially supports a federal sales tax law if it creates a standardized set of rules across the entire country.

[Image Credit: Flickr User sⓘndy°]

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Supreme Court Refuses Consideration Of Amazon Sales Tax Case

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The Supreme Court has rejected Amazon's calls to consider their case against New York State's sales tax on goods sold outside of it...

China has launched a rover that is en route to the surface of the moon, marking the first time the Middle Kingdom has embarked on a moon-bound rover mission. The rover, called "Jade Rabbit," is affixed to a rocket that launched at 1:30 a.m. Monday morning local time. If all goes to plan, it is expected to land on the moon in mid-December. China has had two lunar orbit missions, but it has yet to touch down on the surface of the moon. The nation is reportedly planning manned trips to the moon one of these days.

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China Flies Jade Rabbit Rover to the Moon

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China has launched a rover that is en route to the surface of the moon, marking the first time the Middle Kingdom has embarked on a moon-b...

Here's a new tweak to how Facebook users can filter their News Feeds: The company says it's rolling out a button that allows you “unfollow” other users.

To be clear, it sounds like the functionality is pretty much identical to what users could already accomplish by hitting the “Hide All” button. For those of you who haven't tried it, Hide All is a way to remain Facebook friends with someone while hiding their updates from your News Feed - say if they usually post content that you find annoying or boring, but you don't want to offend them by completely severing your Facebook connection.

What is changing is the specific wording. Thanks to services like Twitter and Instagram, users have presumably become more familiar with the concept of unfollowing, and it seems that the language of following and unfollowing is becoming a bigger part of Facebook.

Next to the “Like” button in profiles, Facebook will also show users whether or not they're following someone (this will show up on on individual user profiles and on company Pages). The mechanics of following, which allows you to follower a user's public updates (assuming they've opted in) without becoming their friend, will remain the same, but this may encourage more users to take advantage of this option to influence the kind of updates that show up in their feed.

A Facebook spokesperson said, “The goal of this change is to help people curate their News Feed and see more of the content that they care about.”

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Facebook Is Replacing Its “Hide All” Button With “Unfollow”

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Here's a new tweak to how Facebook users can filter their News Feeds: The company says it's rolling out a button that allows you “un...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos isn't the only one who wants to take to the skies. Most of Hollywood wants drones for making films, police want them to patrol the skies, the national guard needs rescue bots, journalists want cheap aerial footage, farmers would love unmanned crop dusters, and every college stoner glued to their couch would trade a vital organ for the Tacocopter. In short, everybody wants drones! But there are forces at work that could prevent all that sweet, sweet taco-dropping.

Back when Congress used to actually pass laws, they directed the Federal Aviation Administration to figure out how America could safely deal with an estimated 30,000 humming drones by 2020, through the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2012. There's a few technical, social, and straight up bat-sh*t crazy problems stopping the FAA from legalizing commercial drones [PDF].

1. Technical Limitations

As cities become increasingly dense, the probability increases of a delivery drones crashing into another and dropping a birthday bowling ball on the windshield of a commuter. Researchers, including a number of folks at Cornell, are putting their considerable talents into crash-avoidance software (video below). But, we still don't fully understand the mathematical foundations of how groups of flying objects (like birds) avoid an air pile-up of cascading doom.

MIT researchers suspect there's a critical speed limit that all flying objects might need to abide by, no matter how good their senses are. These theoretical limits may seriously narrow the radius at which Krispy Kream could deliver a doughnut that is truly “hot and now”.

2. Privacy Concerns

The ever vigilant privacy hawks (pun intended) at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are concerned that drones could turn America into a surveillance wonderland. Virginia has already proposed a two-year moratorium on drones.

Drones necessarily record their surroundings to navigate jagged city terrain. Even beyond the necessities, the incidental footage they scrape of retail foot traffic and consumer behavior would be advertising gold to a commercial analytics team. Moreover, in the case of something like the Boston bombing, it's easy to see why law enforcement would want to sequester the video footage of every drone in the area.

“Before countless commercial drones begin to fly overhead, we must ground their operation in strong rules to protect privacy and promote transparency," said Senator Edward Markey, in a statement related to his prescient bill on commercial drone privacy.

3. People Are Cray-Cray

Watch this video of a camera man ruining a precious moment between a wife and her groom and you'll understand why humans could be the biggest barrier to a functional drone system.

Because people are crazy, spiteful, and clumsy, the FAA plans some type of pilot certification of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which could become the driver's license of the 21st century.

In addition to bad piloting, the FAA is worried about both violence to and from drones. Drones have already been perfected for war, so Mexican drug lords are probably already dreaming about little domestic assassinators that can cross the border. On the nuttier side of things, Stephen Colbert profiled a liberty-loving patriot who hunts down law enforcement drones (and tried to pass local legislation to legalize it).

So, as you can see, the ban on drones isn't a clear-cut case of government stonewalling. We don't really know how to handle tens of thousands of potentially lethal experimental robotic pilots buzzing around dense cities. Before consumers can get an order of Xanax from an Amazon delivery drone, we might want to make sure it gets to the destination without harming anyone in the process.

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Three Problems Stopping Bezos' Army Of Amazon Delivery Drones

10:08 AM

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos isn't the only one who wants to take to the skies. Most of Hollywood wants drones for making films, police want t...

Jeff Bezos shocked Middle America during a CBS “60 Minutes” segment with Charlie Rose: 30-minute Amazon deliveries by drones. Whether it's a real product or genius PR stunt on the eve of the biggest online shopping day of the year, it doesn't matter. The idea of a sky full of drones just hit the mainstream.

Amazon isn't the first company to experiment delivery by drones. In fact, over the last year, several companies beat Amazon to the punch with very similar services testing carrying tacos, pizzas and packages by multi-rotor crafts.

Skycatch demonstrated its aptly-named Tacocopter at Disrupt SF 2013. It flew past attendees, delivering a warm taco feet from the panel of robotics experts.

But what about a pizza? A UK franchise of the U.S.-based Domino's demonstrated over the summer a drone carrying two pizzas, forcing career pizza delivery men and women to question the longevity of their profession.

China-based SF Express started limited live trials of package deliveries earlier this year. And SF Express' reveal wasn't helped along with a prominent news agency like in Amazon's case. Drones carrying packages were simply spotted in Dongguang, in southern China.

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As reported by Quartz at the time, local companies are not bound by rigid government regulations and restrictions in China. Forget the black hole that is the FCC, apparently Chinese businesses that want to use drones must be granted approval from the local civil aviation authorities first. There's a certain appeal to delivery drones in China. Heavily populated areas are fighting a losing battle against smog and traffic congestion. Drones could be part of the answer.

Amazon's program would offer 30 minute deliveries of small items - that would cover 86% of Amazon's orders, Bezos indicated during the 60 Minutes interview. In theory, this would completely eliminate the lack of instant gratification currently lacking from shopping online. In its place would be the fact that your order would be delivered by a drone. A drone! I would order a pack of pencils just to have them dropped on my front door by a robot. But this revolution will not happen anytime soon. At least not in the States.

Bezos is a marketing genius. Amazon Prime Air is unquestionably more marketing gimmick than service in the pipeline. Even Bezos cautioned on 60 Minutes that drone deliveries are still years out. The air regulations are not in place, and the drone technology still needs to mature.

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Amazon is currently under fire for working and hiring practices. They are fighting a losing battle against making customers pay taxes in certain states. The Guardian discovered the retail behemoth skirted paying the UK's corporation tax despite £7 billion in local sales. And there's always talk about Amazon's lack of substantial revenues. But now the company has drones!

If any company in the U.S. could pull this off, it would be Amazon. The retailer has demonstrated its knack for modernization time and time again. Of course there is a list of potential issues including regulations, scaling, and people with Airsoft guns. Innovation will overcome obstacles. However, the slope here is rather slippery. If Amazon can do this, why can't Walmart? Will this solution to decongest roads simply result in congestion 30 meters above the ground?

Library books on demand. Inter-industrial complex deliveries. Even the delivery of a drone by a drone. The sky is the limit (sorry) for drone deliveries.