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Tuesday, December 10, 2013
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Potrero 4x3-med



Lit Motors, the electric car startup that launched last year with its first vehicle called the C1, has debuted another sleek looking electricity-fueled vehicle called the Kubo.

The Kubo is a uniquely designed vehicle that brings together the best of both worlds from scooters and cars: It has a small two-wheeled form factor, but a nice amount of storage space. Lit describes it as “combining the beautiful design of Apple and Vespa with the basic utility of a pickup truck.” I’d liken it to a modern two-wheeled version of the El Camino, only much more beautifully designed (and eco-friendly!) Either way, it’s a very nifty piece of work. Once you see it, you wonder why something like it hasn’t been made already.


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Lit Motors is hoping to crowdfund the initial production of the Kubo through a Kickstarter campaign launched last month. So far, the company has a ways to go — a little over $45,000 has been pledged out of the $300,000 goal, so with nine days left in the campaign the clock is certainly ticking. As sleek as the Kubo is, it might have been a bit ambitious to expect dozens of people to each put down $5,000 to reserve a yet-to-be-built scooter from a small startup.


But whatever happens with this particular Kickstarter campaign, Lit’s chief marketing officer Ryan James tells me that the company will figure out a way to get the Kubo into production for all the people who want it. There are lots of people rooting for Lit, and it will be exciting to see how its designs are made into a reality (and eventually come to our roads.)


We swung by Lit Motors HQ to get a first-person look at the Kubo and watch Lit’s CMO Ryan James take it for a spin. Check it out in the video embedded above.







4:41 PM

Lit Motors , the electric car startup that launched last year with its first vehicle called the C1 , has debuted another sleek looking elec...

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american giant extole

“Referral marketing” startup Extole is announcing that it has raised $5 million in new funding.


Founded in 2009, Extole announced the appointment of new CEO Matt Roche back in April. Since then, the company has also brought on Mark Cryster as CTO and Chris Duskin as vice president of marketing — like Roche, they were formerly executives at Offermatica (which was acquired by Adobe).


Roche said that when he joined, Extole offered a broad suite of “advocacy” products, i.e., tools to encourage fans to promote a company or product. Under his lead, however, the company has “doubled down” on a specific part of its business, namely referral marketing, while dropping everything else.


In other words, Roche wants Extole to be the platform that companies use to launch “recommend us to your friend and get a reward!” campaigns on their websites and on mobile. For example, if you go to the website of clothing startup American Giant, Extole is providing the underlying technology for the “refer and get $15 off” offers on the home page and on the listings for individual products. Roche said the campaigns are completely customizable and that Extole also offers analytics so that companies can monitor and optimize them.


Roche plans to make the platform available to everyone early next year, but it started bringing on beta early customers over the summer, and there are now 35 companies using it. In the case of American Giant, Extole says it’s driving 10 percent of the company’s e-commerce transactions.


“This is an actual enterprise channel,” Roche said. “We are no longer in research mode, we are in exploitation mode.”


The new funding comes from Norwest Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Trident Capital. When I asked if Roche had always plan to raise more money at this time, Roche laughed and said, “Sometimes, plans force themselves upon you.”







3:25 PM

“Referral marketing” startup Extole is announcing that it has raised $5 million in new funding. Founded in 2009, Extole announced the appoi...

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lovely-android

Few things in life are more frustrating than trying to find a new place to live (especially if you’re itching to move to the housing market hellholes that are New York City and San Francisco). It’s no wonder then that so many startups — Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, Apartment List, Rental Engine, Zumper, Nestio, the list goes on — are trying to make it all just a little bit easier.


Of these myriad startups, apartment-centric Lovely has been especially busy these past few months: it closed a (sadly undisclosed) Series A and snapped up automated rent payment startup Rentmatic to help prove its worth to property owners too. So what was next on their agenda? Getting a new Android app out the door, which the company finally did earlier today.


Lovely is hardly new to the mobile realm — it launched an iOS version of the app a little over a year ago, and anyone who’s mucked around with that should feel comfortable taking the Android version for a spin. That’s far from a bad thing when more than a few competing mobile real estate apps are happy to throw everything plus the kitchen sink into the mix. It’s not hard to see why: as stated, finding an apartment is hard and bombarding a user with fiddly options and controls makes them feel like they’re actually getting something done. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but the illusion of control persists.


The Lovely approach is to strip out the cruft. When you fire up the app for the first time, color-coded listings appear in location-based groups that expand when tapped. From there it takes a but a few taps to directly contact the property owner, share the listing, or report obvious frauds. If you go on to create an account, even more doors open (I slay me) so you can set alerts when properties free up within specific areas and preload some personal and financial information to put potential renters at ease.


There’s little here that differentiates the Android app from its iOS cousin, but that’s hardly an issue — CEO Blake Pierson said he considers Lovely a mobile-first company that uses what it’s learned from fast iteration on the web to inform the mobile experience. All things considered, this new Android version of the app is a handsome one and I actually found a few interesting leads while I was writing this story (what can I say, I’ve grown a little weary of southern New Jersey).


“Some think of us as purely a search tool,” Pierson noted on the phone. “But our long term vision is to be the platform and THE marketplace for rentals.” What he means is that the Lovely vision ultimately encompasses the renting process from both ends: tools for renters and apartment hunters alike. The team has already starting moving down that path with its Rentmatic acquisition, but we’ll see if they can really balance both sides of that equation.







3:09 PM

Few things in life are more frustrating than trying to find a new place to live (especially if you’re itching to move to the housing market ...

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The Linux Foundation on Tuesday announced the formation of the AllSeen Alliance, a cross-industry consortium working on a standard of interoperability among devices connected to the Internet of Things. LG will incorporate the Alliance's technology into the smart TVs it offers next year. The alliance's technology framework is based on Qualcomm's AllJoyn open source project. It runs on regular and embedded versions of Linux, Android, iOS and Microsoft Windows.


2:54 PM

The Linux Foundation on Tuesday announced the formation of the AllSeen Alliance, a cross-industry consortium working on a standard of inte...

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After closing its Series A in early November, gifting startup Loop Commerce has added an investment from PayPal to the round. While Loop Commerce co-founder and CEO Roy Erez would not disclose the exact amount of PayPal’s investment, the Series A was previously $7 million and now stands a little north of $12 million. So you do the math.


Loop Commerce’s list of investors already includes eBay CTO Mark Carges, Don Katz of Audible and Amazon, Magento CEO Roy Rubin, former Toys “R” Us SVP Michael Scharff, Oren Zeev, Chegg CTO Chuck Geiger, and Novel TMT. With this latest investment, PayPal VP of Global Strategic Development Don Kingsborough will join Loop Commerce’s board.


As a B2B2C service, Loop Commerce’s aim is to find a place in the broader ecommerce landscape by integrating with retailers as an alternate checkout flow. When a shopper wants to gift an item to a friend, they go through Loop’s checkout process, sending a notification to the recipient asking for shipping, sizing, and color preferences.


For consumers, it means giving and receiving gifts, especially clothing, that will actually see some use. For retailers, it could cut down on the cost associated with returns while delivering extra user behavior data.


Loop Commerce has been in private beta since its launch in November, and it’s taking its time getting to market. Erez said the team hasn’t set a date to open up the service to retailers, although they have added merchants to their test roster over the last month (they’re not disclosing those names, either).


“It’s not a consumer app where you get some feedback and make it happen. We built it from the ground up to go to the largest retailers out there,” Erez said.


While Erez said it is too soon to comment on the nature of the startup’s relationship with PayPal, we’ll be watching to see how that informs Loop’s product.


In the past, PayPal has invested in the Japanese personal finance app Moneytree; restaurant ordering platform OLO; BillFloat, the service bill payment startup that was incubated by PayPal and Venrock; and mFoundry, which sold to FIS early this year for $120 million.


[Image: Flickr / Hades2k]







2:53 PM

After closing its Series A in early November, gifting startup Loop Commerce has added an investment from PayPal to the round. While Loop C...

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SugarSync, a gladiator in the long, hard battle that is hosted cloud storage, has decided to go mercenary. The company announced today that they will offer a “paid-only” service model, doing away with their free storage tiers. Current customers can still access their files and will be offered considerable discounts on the service – up to 75% in some cases.


“We have decided to no longer offer free storage forever,” said CEO Mike Grossman. “SugarSync is unlike other companies in the space because we do a lot more than just offer basic file storage. Instead, we offer a premium service that provides prosumers and small businesses with unprecedented control and flexibility over their data through our unique multisync capabilities.”


That basically means they want more business clients. Competitors like Box and Dropbox – not to mention Google Drive – are clearly taking the oxygen out of the casual cloud market, which is why SugarSync is, in a way, pivoting.


Free accounts will close on February 8, 2014 while users can still sign up for a 90-day 5GB trial or a 30-day trial with up to 60GB of storage. However, instead of letting you keep your free storage, SugarSync will attempt to monetize customers as soon as possible.


“There are many companies in this space that are giving away free storage, however, most of these companies will not be viable. We are already in a solid financial position and this shift will further strengthen our business,” said Grossman. In a world where dozens of gigabytes for free is now the norm, this is definitely an interesting maneuver by a major player.







2:39 PM

SugarSync , a gladiator in the long, hard battle that is hosted cloud storage, has decided to go mercenary. The company announced today that...

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outdoor-gift-guide

Technology and nature seem in constant conflict, but they can be better together. And being a tech enthusiast isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive with loving the outdoors, which is why we’ve put together a whole gift guide featuring stuff that scratches that techie itch but also should help you conquer (or live in peaceful harmony with, if that’s what you’re into) nature.


AR Drone 2.0 ($299)


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Soon, drones will be everywhere, and we’ll need to retreat to the forests just to escape their interminable whirring. But until then, nature is the perfect harbor for them. The AR Drone 2.0 by Parrot is a smartphone-controlled quadcopter that you’ve probably seen on TV, the web or at a trade show, and it’s a great device for winging around the forest for some easy outdoor aerial photography. Bonus points if you can buzz a deer.


Nike+ Fuelband SE ($149.95)


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The woods doesn’t count if you can’t quantify what you did there, and that’s where Nike’s new Fuelband device comes into play. Upgrading with much-improved activity tracking that can distinguish between biking, running, and even tennis and more. The Fuelband SE can also track sleep for you while you’re toughing it out on the cold, hard ground, but it’s only an on/off state, so if you’re more concerned about that, look to something like the Jawbone UP24.


Oru Kayak ($1,095)


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An entire kayak that folds up into a convenient suitcase sized carrying package. That’s the only pitch you should need to hear with the Oru Kayak. Made of durable corrugated plastic, it comes with a number of options, including a two-pack for the outdoor-loving couple. It’s well-reviewed by many kayakers, packs up smaller and is in many ways easier to assemble than most other so-called folding kayaks. Plus, as far as kayaks go, it’s not even actually all that expensive.


Olympus TG-2 iHS ($379.99)


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If you want a camera ready for the wilderness, the Olympus TG-2 iHS is the best one that will still fit in your pocket. Dust, shock, water and freeze proof, it also offers a very wide maximum aperture and good image quality all around. This is the prevailing leader when it comes to the pocket toughcam market, and you can usually pick it up at a discounted price if you look around a little.


Boombot Rex ($119.99)


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You go to nature to enjoy the silence, not rock out to sick beats, but sometimes it’s okay to combine those two. And the Boombot Rex can hold up to adverse weather conditions, including mud and dust, and it doubles as a very capable Bluetooth speakerphone with a long-lasting battery.







2:39 PM

Technology and nature seem in constant conflict, but they can be better together. And being a tech enthusiast isn’t necessarily mutually exc...

Read more »
 
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