Random Post

Tuesday, January 7, 2014
no image
Little Eye Labs Facebook

Last month, we reported that Facebook was planning to buy Little Eye Labs, an Indian startup that makes a software tool for analyzing the performance of Android apps. Now the Bangalore-based company has confirmed it acquisition by the social media giant. A direct source told us that the deal is in the range of $10 million to $15 million. Little Eye Labs’ investors have included VenturEast and GSF.


“With this acquisition, Little Eye Labs will join forces with Facebook to take its mobile development to the next level! This is Facebook’s first acquisition of an Indian company, and we are happy to become part of such an incredible team,” the company said in a statement on its site.


As expected, the entire Little Eye Labs team will move to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, where it will build analysis tools to help develop apps.


“From there, we’ll be able to leverage Facebook’s world-class infrastructure and help improve performance of their already awesome apps. For us, this is an opportunity to make an impact on the more than 1 billion people who use Facebook,” they added.


TechCrunch’s Pankaj Mishra wrote last month that the acquisition of Little Eye Labs fits into Facebook’s mobile strategy, which has lagged behind rivals like Twitter even though 874 million of its 1.19 billion users (as of September 2013) access the social network primarily via their mobile devices.


Other acquisitions Facebook has made to strengthen its mobile products include Parse, a mobile-backend-as-a-service startup it bought in April 2013.


As Pankaj also noted, the acquisition of an Indian startup that is less than 18 months old is a significant boost for India’s startup ecosystem, where high-profile acquisitions are rare. We learned that Little Eye Labs also pitched to Twitter, but was offered a better deal by Facebook.


“The acquisition of Little Eye Lab by Facebook is transformative deal for not only Indian startup ecosystem but also for the whole of the emerging world. This validates GSF’s core tenet that Indian product startups are now ready for a global play,” Rajesh Sawhney of GSF’s accelerator program, which Little Eye Labs graduated from, told TechCrunch.


The company also said that current customers of Little Eye for Android, which helps developers measure, analyze and optimize their app’s performance, will “receive further information on plans to offer a free version of Little Eye until June 30, 2014″ and more information can be found on its downloads page.







7:24 PM

Last month, we reported that Facebook was planning to buy Little Eye Labs , an Indian startup that makes a software tool for analyzing the...

Read more »
Posted by at 7:24 PM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Devices ranging from the sublime to the strange are debuting this week at International CES 2014. Products unveiled at the show suggest growing trends toward wearable health-tracking products and increased human-gadget interaction. There's a bed, for example, that tells owners how they slept the previous night and what they can do to sleep better in the future. These technology categories are still nascent, and the products that survive no doubt will gain polish in the future.


4:40 PM

Devices ranging from the sublime to the strange are debuting this week at International CES 2014. Products unveiled at the show suggest gr...

Read more »
Posted by at 4:40 PM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
174250v2-max-250x250

Streaming TV startup Aereo generated quite a few headlines last year. Backed by Barry Diller and IAC, the controversial young company has become entangled in a lengthy and expensive legal battle with the major network broadcasters who want to see it shut down — a battle that’s now headed to the Supreme Court.


While the startup has been growing fast and announced big expansion plans early last year as a result — in which it expected to be in 22 new markets by the end of 2013 — the legal battles have slowed Aereo’s nationwide expansion. However, today Aereo looks to be turning that around with a big round of new capital to fuel these efforts, as the New York City-based company announced that it has closed $34 million in Series C financing.


The new round, in the company’s lead investor, IAC, was joined by media investor honchos like Gordon Crawford and Himalaya Capital Management, will support Aereo’s “rapid nationwide expansion” and allow it to ramp up hiring, the company said. Previous investors Highland Capital Partners, FirstMark Capital also joined in the round.


The company will be making a full presentation about the news at the Citi Global Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference tomorrow morning. Readers can find the live stream of the event here.


We’ve reached out to the company to learn more, and will be updating the post in the meantime.







4:09 PM

Streaming TV startup Aereo generated quite a few headlines last year. Backed by Barry Diller and IAC, the controversial young company has b...

Read more »
Posted by at 4:09 PM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
blaze05

More and more urban commuters are embracing cycling as a way to get to and from work and around the city, and more and more cities are embracing cyclists by adding bike lanes and making commutes safer and more fun. But bicycle safety is still a huge issue in even the most bike-friendly cities. A new startup called Blaze hopes to improve rider safety by reimagining the classic bike light.


Blaze’s bike light not only makes it easier for cyclists to see where they’re going when it gets dark, but more importantly, it’s designed to help motorists see them, even when they’re riding in a car’s blind spot. It does that with a laser light projection that projects the image of the bicycle five or six meters in front of where they’re biking.


The Blaze bike light seeks to overcome one of the biggest issues that cyclists face — that is, the propensity of motorists to turn without seeing them. Nearly 80 percent of all bike accidents happen when a cyclist is biking straight ahead, and a motorist turns into them.


(As a cyclist myself, I can say that the biggest wipeout I ever had was when a car tried to turn into me without signalling or seeing me.)


blaze02Not only does the Blaze bike light make you more safe, but it’s also got a lot of other things going for it. It’s rechargeable, USB compatible, and 100 percent waterproof. It has magnetic charging pins, so it has a completely sealed case.


The image it displays is green, which is the most easily seen shade, and also takes very little power to generate. The light has three different modes (high, low, and flashing) provides about 13 hours of usage per charge, and alerts users when the charge starts to run low.


The Blaze bike light comes with a mounting bracket and USB charging cord, and is available for pre-order for $200. It might be a little pricy compared to other bike lights, but you can’t really put a price on safety.







4:08 PM

More and more urban commuters are embracing cycling as a way to get to and from work and around the city, and more and more cities are embra...

Read more »
Posted by at 4:08 PM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Silk Road

The Silk Road moderator Gary Davis, aka Libertas, is officially free on bail and awaiting an extradition hearing on February 13. Irish and U.S. authorities arrested Davis on December 20 in an international operation that also nabbed Silk Road moderators Andrew Jones, aka Inigo, and Peter Phillip Nash, aka SameSameButDifferent.


All of the accused were active in the Silk Road 2, a replacement to the popular illicit marketplace that the U.S. authorities shut down in October.


“Ross Ulbrict has abandoned his ‘I will always defy Law Enforcement’ and has plea bargained,” said a source close to the proceedings.


Originally believed to be “on the run”, Davis was actually freed on bail. Charged under section 74 the Criminal Justice Act, Irish police arrested Davis and then freed him on bail later that night “much to the annoyance of FBI agents” there to interview and arrest him. The FBI flew to Ireland that night for the express purpose of taking Davis into custody on the charge of “being a moderator on a website allowing transactions to facilitate the sale of drugs online.”


“Libertas is currently in compliance with the law of his country, as a free walking man, bailed. Thankfully, we all don’t all live in the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave,’” said the source. However, Davis was found in possession of illicit substances which could result in a minimum sentence.


“The FBI’s next targets are senior vendors in the US and Europe,” said the source. “Again, some of these vendors are so big, that direct communications between Ross Ulbricht, moderators and senior vendors via PMs were frequent.”


“There is a plan. It’s in the working,” the source said.


Irish authorities did not respond to attempts for clarification.


In related news, the millions of dollars in bitcoin seized by the FBI from Ross Ulbricht and the first Silk Road, currently stored in a set of online wallets, appears to be on the move. A source in the U.S. Justice Department said that “authorities” have access to the Ulbricht’s bitcoin cache and may be selling it off for less volatile currencies in the next few weeks. Ulbright has given the U.S. government the private keys to the bitcoins.


“The reason for selling is that the Government has lost faith in the value of bitcoin and does not want to deal with the volatility of the currency,” the source said. The wallets are publicly visible here and here.







3:43 PM

The Silk Road moderator Gary Davis, aka Libertas, is officially free on bail and awaiting an extradition hearing on February 13. Irish and U...

Read more »
Posted by at 3:43 PM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
livemap02

Livemap, a Russian startup on-stage today at our CES Hardware Battlefield, aims to make GPS navigation more accessible to motorcyclists in the form of a new kind of helmet.


After all, CEO Andrew Artischev noted that if you’re riding a motorcycle, interacting with a GPS touchscreen interface isn’t exactly safe or convenient, and even looking at it means taking your eyes off the road. Livemap’s Motohelmet, on the other hand, is inspired by fighter pilots, who have “heads up” displays showing them important information directly in their helmets.


Similarly, Livemap plans to build motorcycle helmets that display navigation information directly in your field of view. The helmets will use an Android operating system with Nuance-based voice control and NAVTEQ mapping data. As for the display itself, Artishchev said it employs “a beaming scheme.”


“That means it doesn’t contain a display that could hurt the user’s eye or make obstacles for his view,” he said. “The image is beamed on the clear visor, is not visible from outside, is transparent, [and] all elements of the beaming system are hidden inside the helmet in a safe way.”


The Livemap team argues that there are no direct competitors — in other words, no other companies building this technology into the helmet itself. What GPS companies like Garmin and TomTom are doing to address this market is building navigation devices that can be mounted on motorbikes, can be shock-resistant and waterproof, and can be connected to headsets via Bluetooth.


But those features don’t fundamentally address the issues mentioned above, because you may still have to physically interact with the navigation device, and it might not be directly in your field of view.


Livemap’s approach has also been compared to Google Glass, and Artishchev discussed Glass as a potential competitor, saying his company will offer better image quality and won’t force users to look at “the upper right corner of the human field of view.”


The team previously demonstrated a full-face helmet using this technology, but now they say they’ve found a way to build the technology into a modular helmet that’s smaller and more convenient. (It also has the benefit of allowing Livemap to go into production with existing helmet shells, which is more affordable.)


Instead of spending the money to build a full new prototype, Livemap has come to CES with some of the key components of the technology. They showed me the actual display that motorcyclists would see while riding, and it was transparent as they claimed — so I could imagine seeing the directions without having my view obscured. They also showed me the voice-controlled navigation application running on an Android phone, and it was able to give me accurate directions around San Francisco.


Part of the Livemap team comes from Sukhoi, a Russian company that has been developing heads-up displays and optical systems for military helmets over the past 50 years. Through a combination of grants, debt, and Artishchev’s own money, Livemap has raised $1 million in funding, and it’s looking to raise another $10 million now. He said it’s been a challenge to get money from Russian venture capitalists who are more interested in backing hardware than software, particularly clones of services that have been successful elsewhere.


“If we speak about my motivation, I want solve to real problems, not invented ones, not social networks for dogs or cats,” he said. Ultimately, Artishchev argued that this could “save the lives of motorcyclists on the road.”


The company has already made deals with the key manufacturing partners, he added, and it plans to start selling the helmet in the US and Canada in the last three months of 2014 for $2,000. The Motohelmet is available for pre-order now at a $500 discount, and you can also get updates by following the company on Facebook and Twitter.







3:43 PM

Livemap , a Russian startup on-stage today at our CES Hardware Battlefield , aims to make GPS navigation more accessible to motorcyclists in...

Read more »
Posted by at 3:43 PM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
cubesensors01

In the future, your home will know you just as well as your smartphone does. The era of the connected smart home is upon us, and that all starts with sensors.


CubeSensors, a competitor in our CES 2014 Hardware Battlefield, is looking to help you track the health and comfort levels in your home the same way wearable fitness trackers like the Fitbit Force and Nike Fuelband measure your health.


Simply place CubeSensors throughout your home, one in each room, and get a read on various factors that affect your health and well-being. Specifically, CubeSensors are equipped with seven different sensors measuring air quality, temperature, humidity, noise, light, weather pressure, and accelerometer.


A CubeSensor can tell you when the temperature in your home is off, costing you money, or alert you that your office is too dark to be working without a light on as the sun starts to go down.


Plus, it tells you about indoor pollution as well as CO2 readings, ensuring that the air you breathe in your home is fresh and clean.


The idea behind the project comes from consumers growing increasingly interested in data about their own lives, especially where health and fitness are concerned. Yet there’s no all-encompassing product that monitors the health level of your own environment.


Knowing that people often care a great deal about the aesthetics of the home, CubeSensors was designed to be discreet and attractive, with the option to be wirelessly connected (and charged periodically) or plugged in.


When you shake one, the CubeSensor emits a colorful glow that lets you know whether or not there is any adjustment that can be made to make that room more comfortable, relayed to the user via the app.


CubeSensors come in small, medium and large packs, with two, four, or six sensors respectively and a base station. They range from $300 to $600 with the option to add more cubes or base stations at a later date.







3:43 PM

In the future, your home will know you just as well as your smartphone does. The era of the connected smart home is upon us, and that all st...

Read more »
Posted by at 3:43 PM 0 comments
Labels:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)
 
Google Analytics Alternative