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Monday, December 16, 2013
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Notice: You must submit your basically untested app now or your holidays will surely be ruined. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on all those downloads that your app probably isn’t ready for anyway. Your call. Merry Christmas.


Okay, Apple doesn’t actually issue such an alert, but they might as well.


The App Store is about to shutdown for holiday break this Saturday. And so I felt it was a good time to reflect on where we are with regard to the marketplace heading into 2014. The answer, as best I can tell from talking with innumerable developers over the past year, is still very good — but it’s not exactly great. And it should be great.


More specifically, the state of testing and releasing an app has gone from more-or-less untenable to the nightmare we all knew it would become. The time is now: Apple needs to come up with a real solution to allow developers to distribute and test their apps before they launch on the App Store.


These launches have never been more critical. And they’ve never been such a crapshoot. Apple needs to address this and fix the current solutions that just aren’t working.


Currently, if you wish to test your app before launch, you have two solutions: TestFlight or HockeyApp. TestFlight has long been the favored approach, leading up to their sale a year and a half ago to Burstly. HockeyApp has come on strong as of late, likely due to TestFlight’s large number of bugs alongside recent iOS updates.


(Note that I’m not mentioning Apple’s own 100 test device allotment for regular iOS developers because such a number for any sort of actual testing is absurdly low. And worse, those 100 devices are set in stone for a year — even if you delete them from your account.)


TestFlight and HockeyApp are far from ideal from the perspective of both the developer and the end user. The process to install and use both services is at best arduous and at worst, sheer insanity (how many times can your provisioning file just. not. install?).


And let’s be clear: both are hacks. Both require a user to install a provisioning profile on a device which Apple undoubtedly would prefer everyone not do, but turns the other way. These installations, which require a full security bypass, are the antithesis of what Apple preaches with the App Store. And yet, they’ve been the go-to way to handle third-party remote app installs.


Well, almost.


This past year, I’ve noticed a distinct rise in the use of Apple’s own enterprise distribution system to push pre-release apps to testers. This method has existed for a while, but few have dared use it (without explicit permission) in the past. Now it seems that almost everyone is using it. And for good reason: it’s so much better for the remote installation of non-App Store apps.


Send a link to the file, one click install, done. No provisioning file. No mess.


This, of course, isn’t what Apple intended this system for. Such easy installs were meant for companies using private, internal apps. Apple charges $299 a year for this privilege. But Apple also can’t be completely clueless. I’ve heard from a number of developers that Apple is well aware of some developers doing this — they do screen each company that applies for an enterprise license — and chooses to turn the other way (except when they’re forced to take action).


Why? Again, because there simply is no better way. With TestFlight fleeting and HockeyApp still just a hack that can work only when situations are perfectly ideal, there is nowhere else to turn.


So here’s what I propose — it’s a solution that undoubtedly is not unique, but I feel like it is the right time: a Beta App Store.


Throughout its history, Apple has seemed to be a company adverse to the notion of “beta” products. But the more recent launches of Siri, iWork, and of course, Maps, suggest that they may be coming around. Now it’s time to go a step further: to offer a full marketplace (still somewhat curated — more below) devoted to not-quite-ready-for-primetime applications.


With a Beta App Store, Apple could provide developers a way to test apps with certain users — or even certain demographics, or regions. Developers do this now simply by releasing their apps — fully live — only in the stores of selected smaller regions (Canada and Australia being popular choices since both are English-speaking). This is more or less a “soft launch” but it’s also very much a launch. Again, the app is live. Anyone connected to the correct App Store could download it.


With an official Beta App Store, a developer could potentially set more granular parameters. Demographics. More specific regions. Unique device restrictions. You could imagine a way to make certain downloads invite-only while others are opened up much more broadly.


How could Apple do this? Fairly easily, it seems.


They would create a new Beta App Store app that is separate from the real App Store. This app would not be installed by default on devices, but would instead be a separate download (just like many of the current Apple-built apps). And, of course, it would feature a bunch of big, wordy opt-in dialogues.


But rather than allow anyone to submit apps to this new trial store, Apple should take a page from their OS X playbook. Starting with Mountain Lion, Apple began giving users the option to download an app from anywhere over the web or just the official Mac App Store. But there was also a third option: to allow downloads outside of the Mac App Store from “trusted” developers.


A Beta App Store for iOS should work similarly. A user would opt-in to it (preferably via the download of the new Beta App Store app and with all the subsequent pop-ups) but a developer would also only be approved to push apps to the Beta App Store if they were approved in the same way that Apple currently certifies approved Mac app developers. In other words, a white list of app developers.


This way, Apple could ensure that those pushing apps to this new Beta App Store aren’t trying to do so for malicious purposes. You could imagine a one-time review process for this Beta App Store — or a way to show that you’re already a developer in good standing. And, of course, a one-strike-and-you’re-out policy.


What I’m proposing is a far less restrictive App Store where trusted developers are just that, trusted. They can upload builds at will and Apple would be okay with that knowing they aren’t trying to harm users. At the same time, users are opting-in to testing these apps which still may be buggy, but again, aren’t going to be harmful. It’s a more formalized, safe, and secure system than everyone is currently using. Win-win.


So why not do this? It’s obvious, right? I imagine Apple is afraid that such a system would add both a layer of confusion and complexitity to the current App Store system. But again, I don’t think so given what I see developers already doing. What’s better: letting trusted developers push beta apps to willing testers through a lightly regulated store you can track, or letting them push beta apps to anyone via ad-hoc links?


It’s time for this, Apple. The App Store has flourished thanks to a robust ecosystem that has allowed many companies, developers, and users to thrive. But no system is so perfect that it doesn’t warrant changes and evolution over time. Now is that time.


[image: DeviantArt/TheArcSage]







9:54 PM

Notice: You must submit your basically untested app now or your holidays will surely be ruined. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on all those d...

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Building an online marketplace for local services is a tricky proposition, especially at scale. It takes time to recruit a stable of service providers, to offer deep coverage within local markets and maintain the quality of service (and the trust of customers) as the marketplace expands into new cities. For local service providers, though, moving online can be a boon for business, reducing costs and providing access to a new pool of customers.


While products and businesses are increasingly moving online, Mike Weishuhn and Andrew Geant founded Wyzant in 2005 to bring an online marketplace to a market where service providers still live mostly offline: Tutors. Today, following in the same mold as names like Uber, Etsy and Angie’s List, Wyzant is building a national company that functions as a hyper-local marketplace, offering students an easy way to find and connect with tutors in a range of subjects.


Starting with college campuses in and around Washington D.C. and advertising its new tutoring service with fliers and via craigslist, Wyzant began building a stable of local tutors and customers, slowly expanding into new markets. Today, Wyzant has quietly become one of the largest online tutoring platforms in the U.S., serving 500,000 tutors and over one million students. The founders have bootstrapped the business to more than $100 million in gross sales to date, with a 120 percent annual growth rate since launch.


After resisting outside investment for nearly eight years in favor of staying lean, the Wyzant founders are looking to expand their tutoring business into new markets and beef up their team. To do that, Wyzant is taking on its first capital — a $21.5 million Series A round from Accel Partners. As a result, Accel partners Ryan Sweeney and John Locke will be joining the startup’s board of directors.


While it’s somewhat unusual to see an initial round of funding like this come from one backer, it’s a somewhat familiar market for Accel, which has also backed online marketplaces like Etsy and 99 Designs. It also marks the second significant investment in online education the firm has made this year, following the $103 million round it co-led with Spectrum Equity in video-based education platform, Lynda.com.


Wyzant and Lynda.com have similar stories in many respects, both bootstrapped online businesses that, over years, managed to organically turn simple business models into millions in revenue. Lynda.com, for example, went 17 years without taking on outside capital, building a huge stable of quality instructional content and leveraging a simple subscription model to not only turn a profit but hit $100 million in annual revenue in 2012, before taking money from Accel.


Wyzant, on the other hand, has managed to survive in an increasingly crowded market by making it easy for students in any state to connect with a quality, local tutor. Rather than focusing on the SATs, or a particular subject, Wyzant has taken a broad approach, like Etsy or Amazon, offering tutoring in over 240 subjects that range from K-12 to college, test prep to arithmetic.


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The key to its service, Wyzant co-founder and CEO Andrew Geant says, is to offer enough tutors and enough subjects to enable the platform to connect students to the “right” tutor. The best way to build trust and loyalty in tutoring, when there are now so many services parents and students can choose from, both online and off, is to keep quality high and facilitate better matches than the tutoring school down the street.


Like Yelp, customers can search Wyzant for tutors in their local area, filtering results by price, rating and distance. Search results include a picture and profile of each tutor, including a brief resume-like description of their backgrounds and areas of focus. Profiles, again much like Yelp, also include star-based ratings and student feedback, making it easy for students to get a quick feel of what their peers are saying and their strengths and weaknesses.


Today, Geant says, Wyzant has accumulated over 850,000 tutor ratings and reviews, which albeit small compared to Yelp’s bullpen of reviews and ratings, makes it one of the frontrunners in the tutoring industry where transparency is concerned. In most cases, students get connected with tutors based on recommendations from (family) friends, guidance counselors and schools, but Wyzant’s system gives parents and students choice in the matter, and the ability to take more ownership of the process, rather than leave it up to chance.


On the flip side, Wyzant offers a way for tutors to tap into a new pool of customers, while moving their small tutoring service online and bringing in more dollars. Like many other marketplaces, Wyzant generates revenue by taking a piece of each transaction, with the percentage it takes based on a sliding scale, depending how often the tutor uses Wyzant. In addition, by offering profiles, payment processing and some basic CRM tools, the company wants to be an easy way for tutors to run their businesses, market themselves and manage usually tedious operational pains, like scheduling and collecting payments.


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With its new $21.5 million, however, Wyzant is looking to beef up the services it offers to tutors, and is currently in the process of testing digital tools that will allow tutors to interact with their students online, like via video chat, for example. From the beginning, the company has been focused on live, one-on-one and in-person tutoring, but even as its hyper-local coverage expands, not every rural outpost in the U.S. has a quality tutor in the subject they’re looking for right around the block.


As a result, Wyzant wants to increase its support for those without tutors in their immediate hoods, while making it easier for students and teachers to chat, message each other, share course materials and content and so on. As of now, Wyzant doesn’t offer video support, but the founders say that it’s in the works. Similarly, while the platform is available via the mobile web, the company has yet to offer native mobile apps.


With its new funding in tow, Wyzant plans to launch its first native mobile apps during the first half of 2014 and, as it ramps up its marketing, business development and engineering staff, is beginning to plot its expansion into international markets. In this way, it’s on a similar course to that of Lynda.com, which is also beginning to increase its global footprint, also guided in part by support and capital from Accel.


Over the coming year, Wyzant plans to hire 50 new employees, particularly in Chicago (where the company is headquartered), and will continue to build out its “Resources” section, which offers students a range of supplementary educational content, like Q&A forums, lesson plans, videos and blog posts.


Tutoring is a crowded market and, as Wyzant expands its platform, it will find itself in competition not only with the bevy of tutoring services out there, but other online education providers. Some of these can be prospective partners, but many won’t.


In the end, marketplaces of all varieties are subject to network effects, so, as the demand for online tutoring resources increases and competition from vertical services like TakeLessons, Wyzant finds itself in an arms race and land grab — one that has claimed more than a few startups (like Tutorspree, for one). But with $21.5 million, the runway gets a lot longer.







9:54 PM

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The news industry exploded today with headlines trumpeting a federal judge’s declaration that the National Security Agency’s phone data collection program was “unconstitutional”. The strongly worded anti-NSA opinion was quotation gold, but it won’t have much real-world impact for now. “It’s one judge’s view, and it will certainly be appealed,” writes former NSA general counsel, Stewart Baker, to me in an email.


Judge Richard Leon issued a tentative injunction against the NSA bulk collection of phone call records (“meta-data”), but it was stayed pending the decision of higher courts. Leon predicts it will take “at least six months” for the appeals court to evaluate his decision.


Every civil liberty organization and their pet hamster has a case pending to end the NSA mass spying programs. Kirk Opsahl, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells me that any meaningful change at the NSA will likely wait for the Supreme Court, which could decide to bundle all of the pending suits into a single case.


Civil liberty groups may get an early present if an appeals court upholds today’s declaration of unconstitutionality, and the Supreme Court decides not to stay an injunction while it figures out its own decision. But, don’t bet your bitcoin stock on that one. “In the worst case, yes, it would require that the program be revamped or scrapped, but only if it stands up on appeal,” concludes Baker.


For those angling for a bit of optimism, Opsahl says that the significance of today’s decision is that “it shows what the difference is between a one-sided secret court that only hears the government’s argument and an open court that hears arguments from both sides”.


Previously, most cases about the legality of the NSA were decided in secret courts with the deck stacked in favor of government lawyers.


Now, given the increasing public scrutiny, it’s equally as likely that President Obama himself, or Congress, could enact their own reforms before the Supreme Court even hears the case. Obama’s task force on NSA reform will hopefully be made public early next year, right around the time that Congress considers one of several reform bills.


Until then, put away the James Clapper Piñatas and statue of liberty costumes, there’s a long road to go. For more info, see our own Alex Wilhelm’s analysis of Today’s case.







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500px-art

Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, 500px‘s new offices are expansive, impressive and just as laden with exposed brick and beams as anything you’ll see south of Market in San Francisco. When we visited last week, they’d only been there a few days, and only about a quarter of the space was set up, but even so it was impressive, and fitting for a startup that’s been on a tear since its seed funding round in 2011.


We talked to 500px CEO Oleg Gutsol in his new digs, about the just-launched 500pxArt.com, where users can buy customized prints of works licensed by photographers on the site (at a commission rate that’s well above the industry average). We also discussed how the site plans to use 2014 as a growth year by iterating product geared towards the average consumer, rather than the professional photog.


500px has raised a total of just under $10 million to date via its Seed round and Series A, which included Andreessen Horowitz and Harrison Metal, and it’s been putting that funding to good use, with two acquisitions in 2012. Now, the plan is to reach out beyond its core demographic of photo pros and advanced enthusiasts, in order to help make sure it doesn’t hit a growth plateau. Gutsol says he believes there’s a big opportunity there, in making everyday pictures feel bigger-than-life with a truly remarkable online portfolio tool. Google is trying to accomplish the same thing with Google+ photos, and Flickr also does it to some extent, but Gutsol still doesn’t believe the need is being served well by any existing solution.


There’s also going to be a push into providing paid creative for companies to use in media and advertising. Gutsol says that this too is an areas where existing solutions fall flat, providing either stock photos that are not original or interesting, or custom shoots that are overly expensive for most businesses to even consider using.


To fill up its spacious new offices, 500px is looking to bring on new talent across all areas. This is definitely one of the hottest Canadian tech companies currently operating, and now it’s got a proper space to reflect its ambitious goals.







3:24 PM

Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, 500px ‘s new offices are expansive, impressive and just as laden with exposed brick and beams as ...

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frankly

Spurred on by the intense popularity of Snapchat, it seems like everyone’s making an app with self-destructing messages these days. Or if you’re not making a standalone messaging app, you’re adding messaging as part of your existing service. With $6 million in backing by South Korea’s SK Planet, Frankly is another recent entrant into the space.


And how is Frankly trying to be different? Well, with its latest update, the app allows users to have more control over how their text appears, including the size and background color.


Frankly, in case you didn’t know, is an ephemeral messaging app that allows users to send text messages to one another that disappear after 10 seconds. While apps like Snapchat allow photos or videos to be shared, Frankly is mostly about the kind of short messages you used to send via SMS — that is, before exploding messages were a thing.


But even if you add the ephemeral element, text messaging hasn’t changed much over the years, and users don’t have a lot of ways to get their feelings across. For the most part, the alphabet and font that they use hasn’t changed very much over the years. And while emoticons, Emoji, and even stickers have been used in varying degrees to better communicate emotions with one another, they’re often insufficient.


That’s the main impetus behind the latest update to Frankly. According to Frankly CEO Steve Chung, the team wanted to provide a “full set of tools to communicate with your emotions via text.”


That starts with enabling users to play with the sizing of the text. To do so, you simply pinch to minimize or maximize the text before you send it. As Chung explains, that lets its users differentiate what’s meant to be a shout from what’s meant to be a whisper.


You can also change the background color of the text, you know to convey anger (red) or sadness (blue) or whatever other emotions you might have as a human. To do so, simply move your finger across the text field and it’ll automatically change.


Anyway, so Frankly has a team of about 20 that is funded thanks to SK Planet, which has put $6 million into the company. Considering the size of the messaging market in general and the opportunity there, it’s a pretty modest bet for the Korean investor.







3:24 PM

Spurred on by the intense popularity of Snapchat, it seems like everyone’s making an app with self-destructing messages these days. Or if yo...

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TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 - Day 2

Ecommerce fraud prevention startup Trustev is on something of a roll. Having recently closed a $3 million seed round from investors including Greycroft Partners, Mangrove Capital Partners, ACT Venture Capital, Telefónica’s Wayra and Enterprise Ireland, it’s now adding to this with a $500,000 investment from enterprise-specialist VCs Notion Capital. The team behind the latter founded MessageLabs, one of the largest ever exits in the European IT security market.


Trustev’s anti-fraud and identity verification technology for e-commerce merchants is clearly sitting in a sweet spot given the billions now being spent online daily. According to research by eMarketer, global e-commerce sales are expected to reach nearly $1.3 trillion in 2013. The startup will now open an office in New York City in the first quarter of 2014.


Pat Phelan, Trustev’s co-founder and CEO says the company has just over 60 customers, including some big global carriers. However, most are reticent to be named publicly about the fact they are battling fraud, perhaps understandably. Telefonica, for instance, is known to be an investor but may or may not be a customer.


Trustev processed some 2 million customer transactions last week says Phelan, and that’s “an average”. They cover some 100 data points and the aim is to get that up to 10 million transactions by February.


Part of the funding will be to take Trustev to the next step of their business, beyond alerting around fraud and identity verification towards payment guarantee. “We will move into payment guarantee in QTR 2 where we take all the risk and allow merchants to trade globally without the fear of fraud,” says Phelan.


We wrote a fairly detailed description of the company and how it works when they were in the Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt New York.


After launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York last May, Trustev was named 2013’s top technology startup in Europe in a startup competition backed by the European Commission.







3:23 PM

Ecommerce fraud prevention startup Trustev is on something of a roll. Having recently closed a $3 million seed round from investors includi...

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pebble-education

Pebble today revealed a new project aimed at education in which it will donate over 4,000 smartwatches to higher ed schools including Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, Virginia Tech and many more. The donation is worth over $600,000, according to Pebble’s own estimates, but it’s clearly designed to make sure Pebble and the Pebble SDK are in the hands of the next generation of top-tier developers before they ever even hit the job market.


Now that Pebble has released its official app creation SDK, and unlocked many of the dormant features of the platform, it needs developers to get on board and start pumping out creations that really show off the potential of wrist-worn computing to push the Pebble’s appeal beyond the early adopter and gadget loving crowd who’ve already purchased one, and into the mainstream. Software sells hardware, and developers build software. In school, they’re often more willing and able to experiment with platforms that don’t necessarily have a proven ability to pay the bills, hence why it’s a good idea to give these things away to engineering students as development hardware.


Pebble only recently hit the tipping point in terms of having stock on hand in stores and online, but current inventory levels seems strong, and there’s also a sale on right now offering a $10 discount on new units. As 9to5Mac’s Seth Weintraub noted on Twitter, this sale and education donation could be taken as evidence that the company is looking to offload stock ahead of some kind of refresh.



Pebble is also offering a special discount through its institutional partners to anyone who wants to order a personal device through them, it notes in its announcement today, which could also be taken as an indication that it’s offloading on-hand stock. This is a key time to watch the wearable computing manufacturer, since at the very least it’s clear it’s through the frenzy and supply catch-up process that it faced while Kickstarting the project and quenching initial demand.







2:40 PM

Pebble today revealed a new project aimed at education in which it will donate over 4,000 smartwatches to higher ed schools including Carne...

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