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Tuesday, December 17, 2013
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replayStupeflix, a startup that offers video tools to app developers, has launched a mobile app of its own called Replay.


In many cases, when a developer-focused company launches an app, it’s done as a proof-of-concept: “Hey, look what you could do with our technology!” In this case, however, co-founder Jeff Boudier said this was built to address an honest-to-goodness consumer need, using a lot of the video technology that Stupeflix had already built.


“Even the biggest oversharers will only share 10 percent of their photos,” he said. “The rest will die in the camera roll. We want to fix that.”


So with Replay, you can bring your photos and videos together in a single video. If you do it right, it’s like a slideshow, but flashier and more fun. The concept is similar to the Animoto mobile app, which has the company says been downloaded more than 1 million times, and which it’s still working to simplify.


I haven’t tried Animoto on my iPhone, but Replay is certainly easy-to-use — you just choose the items you want to include, and the app opens a single menu where you can choose a filter, choose music, and rearrange the order of the photos and videos. When I tried Replay, I only had five photos on my camera roll (and two of them were of receipts), so the resulting video wasn’t worth sharing (trust me), but the results in the “featured” section of the app are pretty impressive.


“Our vision has always been to make it easy and quick for them to express themselves through video,” Boudier added. “This is really the accomplishment of our vision.”


Replay is currently available for iOS. Boudier said he’s planning to release an Android version in the second or third quarter of next year — for now, he said he’s focused “on exploiting 100 percent of the capacity of the iPhone.”







3:54 PM

Stupeflix , a startup that offers video tools to app developers, has launched a mobile app of its own called Replay . In many cases, when a ...

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Earlier today ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley published another installment in what appears to be an orgy of access, this time with outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Regarding its executive changes, Microsoft today reported that it will not announce its new leader until 2014, cooling speculation that the new CEO would land before the end of this year.


Ballmer’s remarks are worth reading, of course, but two segments stand out.


For one, his framing of Microsoft’s soul after its shift towards devices and services instead of software proper is interesting, given that if the board agrees, his views could be similar to the strategic rubric the company is looking for in their next chief:



Are we a productivity company or are we a software company? Well, what we are is a company that knows how to create great software for productivity and serious fun, but the expression will be through services, and through devices increasingly. And maybe it always has been. Nobody ever buys Windows. They buy Windows PCs.



That’s mostly true, even though enthusiasts do, in fact, buy Windows as a stand-alone product. But Ballmer is correct in saying people buy Windows PCs more than they buy the operating system itself. Even more, they buy ‘computers’ more than they buy Windows PCs, but that is a quibble.


Secondly, Ballmer reflected on Surface as an internal project, in relation to its Xbox efforts. Xbox, of course, was a key moment in Microsoft’s becoming a hardware-capable company. In Ballmer’s view, Surface was “in a way… a tougher bet” than Xbox.


Microsoft’s Windows platform needs OEM partners to make tens of millions of PCs each month. Its decision to hem in on their space was heavily frictional. When the Nokia purchase closes, however, Microsoft will manufacture hardware across every major Windows form factor: Tablets and PCs through Surface, smartphones via Lumia, and televisions through Xbox. It can now create hardware consumer experiences for every screen Windows wants to land on. That gives the company increased flexibility to reach consumers, and set the discussion.


The new Microsoft’s strategy is well on its way to execution. The question now becomes who will see it through.







2:54 PM

Earlier today ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley published another installment in what appears to be an orgy of access, this time with outgoing Microsof...

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A federal judge has ruled that the NSA's collection of telephone metadata is likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adding another point of debate to this volatile issue. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon's ruling has extra impact because he is a conservative appointed by George W. Bush. "When a Bush appointee to the federal courts issues a preliminary injunction that indicts the Obama administration for unconstitutional spying on Americans, that sets a serious precedent," said CREDO Mobile's Becky Bond.


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A federal judge has ruled that the NSA's collection of telephone metadata is likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Co...

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yourmechanic

TechCrunch Disrupt winner YourMechanic just got a lot more mobile with an iPhone app that will help users to better diagnose repairs that are needed. The app will also send notifications to users as their car is being serviced and could even allow them to see pictures of jobs being done.


YourMechanic launched last year to provide an easy way for car owners to book appointments with mechanics that come to them. The idea was to create a marketplace of mechanics that would come to users and service their cars


But there was one problem: Most people recognized that their car had problems when they were in it. Then they had to go to a computer and relay the issue online and try to diagnose it from inside their home or office.


The new mobile app solves that problem, by giving users a way to report issues when they find out about them, and to find mechanics nearby. That’s especially helpful for diagnosing non-specific issues, like fluid leakage or strange noises emanating from the car that the user can better report on from a mobile phone than from a computer.


Even for those who are looking just to get routine maintenance done, the app simplifies things a bit. Users can get a list of available mechanics, including profiles and ratings, and schedule times directly from the app. They’ll also get push notifications letting them know when a certain job is done or get updates along the way.


Push notifications are also helpful for reminding users when it’s time to get scheduled maintenance done, since it knows when a mechanic last looked at an automobile.


For now, the YourMechanic app is only available on iPhone, though co-founder Abhas Art Agrawal says the company is working on an Android version. YourMechanic has raised $1.8 million from investors that include Y Combinator, SV Angel, Yuri Milner, Andreessen Horowitz, Lerer Ventures, Launch Capital, Jeff Clavier, CrunchFund (which is owned by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington), Paige Craig, A-Grade Investments, Jawed Karim, Justin Waldron, Joshua Schachter, and Kevin Freedman.







1:39 PM

TechCrunch Disrupt winner YourMechanic just got a lot more mobile with an iPhone app that will help users to better diagnose repairs that ...

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Google has just announced a massive update to Google Glass which adds a lock screen, Hangouts chat, direct YouTube uploading via a Glass app and a ‘wink to shoot a picture’ mode. The wink photo mode is obviously interesting as developers had dug up references to it in the Glass firmware a while ago and it’s just making an appearance now.


You can shoot images by simply turning the mode on and winking your eye to snap photos. This eliminates the need to snap an image using the photo button or a voice command. There are some immediate privacy issues which raise their heads here of course — winking is a lot less obtrusive than a hand to the face or saying it out loud.


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“Glass is about helping you look up and experience the world around you without getting bogged down by technology,” reads the posting. “Based on this philosophy, we’ve got a new setting that lets you quickly and easily capture the moments you care about with a simple wink of the eye. Whether it’s capturing an amazing sunset on an evening walk, or photographing your receipt for the lunch you’ll need to expense, you can now stay in the moment and wink to take a picture instantly.”


The post says that photos are ‘just the beginning’. It asks you to imagine situations like ‘winking at a cab’s meter’ to pay for a ride, or winking at a pair of shoes in a shop window to purchase a pair in your size and have them shipped to you.


“You wink at a cookbook recipe and the instructions appear right in front of you – hands-free, no mess, no fuss. Pretty cool, right?”


Sure, maybe. For now, though, it will be a lot easier for people to take pictures with Glass without their subject’s knowledge. It seems likely that this will cause more friction with those who take exception to Google’s head mounted computer. Some restaurants have already banned the devices in the interest of customer privacy.


A new lock screen mode will now clamp your headset down until you unlock it via taps and swipes in a pattern you set. You can now also upload to YouTube directly from the Glassware app on your device, an experience that was previously enabled by developers hacking the platform. Google Music All Access subscribers now also have access to their music and playlists with this update.


Google also notes that it dropped the iOS version of MyGlass on the App Store too soon, but says that it will be up again later this week. The app showed up momentarily on the store before disappearing earlier today.







1:23 PM

Google has just announced a massive update to Google Glass which adds a lock screen, Hangouts chat, direct YouTube uploading via a Glass ap...

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Dropbox acquisition Mailbox has expanded from its single service roots with support for Yahoo Mail, iCloud, Me.com and Mac.com accounts. Previously, the client supported only Gmail inboxes, making its audience large but limited.


Mailbox said it had more requests for iCloud and Yahoo Mail support than for any other feature.


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This release displays the influence of Dropbox — which has been by its nature a platform agnostic offering. Confining Mailbox to only Gmail was likely a matter of expediency and growth. But now that Mailbox has the resources of Dropbox behind it, they’ve managed to add in additional services for the first time.


The Mailbox purchase was a good signal that Dropbox was making moves to expand beyond a syncing service into a platform of tools. Given that it’s on a crash collision course with Box, which is coming in from the opposite (enterprise) direction, it makes sense for Dropbox to be cobbling together a set of unique productivity offerings it can eventually show to enterprise clients as a reason to use the platform. Box is in the process of doing the same.


The Mailbox update is out today for iOS. Unfortunately, thought there are now more mail service options, the app remains absent on Android. And the app won’t truly be service agnostic until it gains support for adding custom IMAP or POP services, but that’s for another day.







1:23 PM

Dropbox acquisition Mailbox has expanded from its single service roots with support for Yahoo Mail, iCloud, Me.com and Mac.com accounts. Pr...

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Mark this up as one of those things that we’ve been waiting for forever and had to happen at some point: YouTube announced today that it’s launched a channel on Roku streaming devices. Well, one Roku streaming device at least. The new YouTube app is available on Roku 3 devices in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Republic of Ireland. And it provides fun stuff like HD streaming and the ability to control the YouTube app with your mobile phone.







12:25 PM

Mark this up as one of those things that we’ve been waiting for forever and had to happen at some point: YouTube announced today that it’s l...

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