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Wednesday, December 11, 2013
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Google has brought its Chrome Apps to the Mac, letting users install apps to their desktop for use just like native software. There’s a Chrome App Launcher for Mac, too, which resides in your dock and provides centralized access to all those Chrome apps in the same place.


The apps available work offline, and can sync their state across computers where a Chrome user is logged in with their Google account. They update automatically when a new version comes out, and “behave and feel just like native software,” according to Google. To find Chrome apps that work with the Mac Desktop, you can visit the “For Your Desktop” section of the Chrome Web Store, which essentially collects any Chrome software that functions offline, and includes things like 500px, Any.Do, Autodesk Pixlr Touch Up and more.


Google bringing Chrome apps to the Mac desktop isn’t strictly new: The search giant revealed its plans to do this back in May when it launched Chrome Apps in beta, but now it’s taking the beta label off and making this available to all. If you’ve every used a site-specific browser like Fluid to turn web pages into desktop apps on your own, you’ll know the value of having this stuff live outside of Chrome itself.


That said, don’t expect apps from the Chrome web store to replace Photoshop or anything like that just yet. Still, it’s a good way for Google to get people using their software on their current platforms, so that they can get an advance look at how Chrome OS works, essentially. The fact that these sync settings with Google accounts also means that users who embrace them on Mac will be primed to start right where they left off should they ever pick up a Chromebook, which helps with Google’s long-term strategy for its browser-based desktop OS.







11:25 AM

Google has brought its Chrome Apps to the Mac , letting users install apps to their desktop for use just like native software. There’s a Chr...

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Google launched Android Device Manager back in August, but it curiously made the tool web-only, eschewing a native Android app and causing a lot of confusion in doing so. The Android Device Manager is now in the Play Store, and does most of the things that Apple’s Find My iPhone service does, but for Android gadgets instead of iOS-powered devices.


The new app, like the web interface, lets you locate your Android device on a map, see when it was last located and when it was last used, as well as ring, lock and wipe the device. Plenty of people I spoke to about the service early on were excited it was finally bringing some device security features to Google’s mobile OS, but also confused when they searched the Play Store only to find that no actual app for the service existed.


Of course, in theory having it operate on the web makes more sense: if you’ve lost your phone, an Android app running on it won’t do much good in terms of helping you track it down. It makes more sense to have an Android Device Manager on the web, where it was born, but people were bound to look for it on the Android mobile app store, especially given the example provided by Apple’s competing service. Having an app also means that people who have multiple Android devices, including tablets, will have faster access to the security features contained therein.







10:53 AM

Google launched Android Device Manager back in August , but it curiously made the tool web-only, eschewing a native Android app and causing ...

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What do you do when your school can’t afford a 3D printer? If you’re Shai Schechter and Andrey Kovalev you build one yourself. Their printer, called Deltaprintr, has just launched on Kickstarter and the pair has already hit $102,000 out of a $195,000 goal. Their goal is to create an inexpensive, extremely usable printer for students and those on a budget. I think they’ve succeeded.



Shai goes to SUNY Purchase and Andrey goes to Cooper Union School of Engineering. Andrey was working on his sculpture homework and realized he could really use a 3D printer. With a $1,000 grant from the school, his small team built a very basic delta-style printer which uses three tall tracks as opposed to a MakerBot-style Cartesian printer. Their first model was hand-made but now they are working hard to make a commercial product, pricing kits as low as $475. In fact, it looks like they’re already oversold for the Kickstarter version of the machine and are scrambling to figure out how to sell more.


The printer automatically calibrates itself – a godsend if you’ve ever used non-self-leveling devices – and it can print PLA at 100 micron resolution. It doesn’t yet print ABS plastic because the bed is not heated.


I sat down with Shai and Andrey and watched their printer in action. It’s an impressive piece of kit, especially when you consider it was built by a team of students. Their intensity and drive is impressive and I’m really excited to see where these guys take their product.








10:09 AM

What do you do when your school can’t afford a 3D printer? If you’re Shai Schechter and Andrey Kovalev you build one yourself. Their printer...

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Square has just announced that it has acquired Evenly, a company that was built to make it easy for friends to send and receive payments for splitting bills and other expenses. The company was founded in 2012, and was similar in concept to Venmo, an NYC-based startup that was acquired by Braintree last year.


Evenly offered a mobile app that let people send and receive requests for funds from their contacts list, organized around events and experiences. For each participant in a pool, it would list what a user owed and what they’d already paid, if any, and you could see progress towards the total cost of an event displayed visually, as well as send reminders to all parties involved that they have to pay up. There’s also an activity feed that tracks progress and adds a social element to the bill sharing.


Evenly will remain open and active until January 15, 2014 for existing users, and the team says on its own blog that it will give existing users “plenty of time” to get money out of the app and finish collections. Users can find out more here at an FAQ designed to guide those who will be transitioning off of the service. The app has been removed from the App Store, however, and new user registrations are turned off completely.


Developing…







9:39 AM

Square has just announced that it has acquired Evenly , a company that was built to make it easy for friends to send and receive payments fo...

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Microsoft on Tuesday previewed the third generation of its Photosynth technology, touting it as a dramatic step forward in smoothness and simplicity. Four effects are now available in Photosynth. Spin lets you rotate an object in the photo around itself. Panorama lets you "stand" at the center of a photo and rotate 360 degrees around yourself. Walk allows you to follow a path in the photo -- stroll through a city's streets, for instance. Wall lets you slide across a panorama, as well as zoom in and out on objects in the photo.


9:39 AM

Microsoft on Tuesday previewed the third generation of its Photosynth technology, touting it as a dramatic step forward in smoothness and ...

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For almost a decade and a half, mobile customers – and Americans in particular – have enjoyed a certain economic perk: phone subsidies from the major carriers. This meant you could, on sign-up, get a very expensive phone for at most a few hundred dollars and, as an incentive to hang around, upgrade that phone every few years. These subsidies seemed as God-given as freedom of speech and apple pie, but they may be on their way out.


I don’t want to stir up fake outrage at this move (and it’s not even a move, just an comment by the AT&T CEO at some conference but in the Kremlinology of online babbling that’s as good as a contract) but it smacks of perfidy. Said Randall Stephenson:


[blockquote]“When you’re growing the business initially, you have to do aggressive device subsidies to get people on the network. But as you approach 90 percent penetration, you move into maintenance mode. That means more device upgrades. And the model has to change. You can’t afford to subsidize devices like that.”[/blockquote]


Instead of allowing you to upgrade your $500 phone for $200, AT&T is already offering cheaper plans to users who don’t upgrade, thereby lengthening the upgrade cycle of phones from the traditional 18 to 24 months. This means you will miss two iPhone versions before AT&T even considers giving you a discount, if that happens at all and it means more BYO handsets.


To be clear, we need to remember that phone subsidies are actually imaginary. Europe’s refusal to subsidize phones has led to a number of service improvements including pre-paid SIM cards, cheaper, simpler handsets, and a number of roaming benefits. There’s no reason to lock a phone to a carrier if that phone is crossing borders every few days. However, the U.S. market is monolithic. We rarely roam and we rarely look for pre-paid deals.


If there are two things I agree with here it’s that we upgrade our phones far too often and that hardware manufacturers think we are stupid. I think, then, Stephenson isn’t directly addressing us, the consumer, but the handset manufacturers. They depend on regular updates to keep making money. Samsung and Apple have to release new phones for a number of reasons, primarily to maintain the perception of forward momentum and to please shareholders. Look at this panoply of Galaxy phones, for example, each destined to be AT&T’s next “free” phone. Just as a shark dies if it stops swimming, phone manufacturers die if they stop selling phones. Therefore phone subsidies are great for manufacturers and, if you think about the incremental differences between iPhone versions, not so great for us. There is plenty of supply and, thanks to subsidies, artificial demand.


This move by AT&T stops that endless circle. But it isn’t fair. Why should the consumer suffer with a bum phone for three years or pay hundreds of dollars on top of an already expensive rate plan? Carriers pay lip service to low prices but if you want their “best” plan you’d best be ready to pay. To add BYO handsets and slow upgrade cycles to this is insult to injury. Essentially Stephenson is saying that back when AT&T was still trying to get customers, subsidies worked. Now that it has all the customers it could want, subsidies are unfair. What’s really happening? Carriers got into bed with the manufacturers and now they want out. We pay the price.







9:10 AM

For almost a decade and a half, mobile customers – and Americans in particular – have enjoyed a certain economic perk: phone subsidies from ...

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No, this might not be the sexy new disappearing messages app. However, it’s a startup that takes software and applies it to an unsexy but potentially lucrative market.


KeepTruckin is an eight-person San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to make it easier for trucking companies to manage their fleets and have their drivers legally log their hours.


Long-haul trucking is a half-trillion dollar business in the U.S. employing 3 million drivers nationwide. Currently, drivers record their hours in paper books that they have to have them at all times for potential inspections. Not only that, dispatchers who organize trucking fleets still use whiteboards and spreadsheets to manage their drivers. Then brokers have to make phone calls to look for truckers to move their loads.


It’s cumbersome and clearly in need of an overhaul, argues Shoaib Makani, who started the company after leaving Khosla Ventures.


Now that smartphone penetration is high enough in the U.S., Makani believes its time for an easier solution.


So he teamed up with Ryan Johns, who was previously a vice president of technology at TapJoy, to start KeepTruckin. It’s a combination web- and mobile-service that helps drivers keep track of their hours on their phones. While developing the product, they interviewed hundreds of truckers, brokers, shippers and carriers while hanging out at truck stops in California.


“It’s market area that has been really underserved,” he said.


They created a skeuomorphic user interface on their mobile app that almost looks like the paper logbooks so that truckers would feel comfortable using an app that felt familiar. It works with the current legal regulations and recognizes if a trucker might be running into a violation like driving for longer than eight hours. This is key because errors can cost drivers thousands of dollars in fines.


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“The trucker wants to be in control,” Makani said, explaining why the app doesn’t auto-populate or passively detect when the driver is on the road or not. They’ve deployed the app to about 200 drivers so far in the field.


On the dispatcher side, trucking companies can direct message their drivers, audit their log books and track their location if the driver consents to it.


The plan is to let the app grow organically as truckers pick it up. Because all fleets are registered in a public database, KeepTruckin can use that to reach out to the employers of their users and market the fleet management software. The software is free for now, although they will charge a nominal amount per month per driver later on.


KeepTruckin has raised $2.3 million from investors including Google Ventures and angels like Karma and Tapjoy co-founders Lee Linden and Ben Lewis, Playhaven COO Charles Yim, Greenoaks Capital and Zubair Jandali, who heads Google’s mobile app developer ad sales.







9:10 AM

No, this might not be the sexy new disappearing messages app. However, it’s a startup that takes software and applies it to an unsexy but po...

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