New Technology News

Monday, January 13, 2014

The Pebble smartwatch is a great gadget in many respects, but the one thing that has always struck me as less than convenient is the fact that it uses a proprietary magnetic cable to charge. I lose said cable with fair frequency, and in fact I have no idea where it is right at this very moment. New Kickstarter project Sidekick will at least make it harder to lose, with a Pebble dock that holds your charger cable and provides power to your Pebble.

The Sidekick is a small rounded triangle, hewn either from black or white plastic or from wood, with a special channel cut out to perfectly fit the cable. It also supports your Pebble in an upright position, providing a clear view of the screen if you’re sitting at your desk working on your computer for instance.

Sidekick creator and design company Documont founder Rodney Timbol says that he has become a devoted fan of the Pebble itself, but also found that it wasn’t quite as convenient as it could be for off-wrist use.

“My wife and I purchased the Pebble and both had the experience of the Pebble and charger dropping on the floor from our nightstand so needed a really simple way of avoiding damaging our newly purchased watches,” he explained. “I started thinking I needed a stand but I got so consumed by the functions of the Pebble and that began my quest to design a different docking experience.”

0afd838fe6ecaf1213aa47d7a533357a_large It’s definitely true that as a watch-wearer myself, I always take mine off while typing in order to allow for free and easy typing. Usually, I keep my iPhone in a dock next below my monitor to also keep up with info coming in on that device, but the Sidekick might better serve that purpose for those looking to maintain the kind of information prioritization that smartwatch notifications can provide.

With no moving parts and an attractive design, the Sidekick is a deceptively simple Pebble accessory that actually seems like something you’d expect Pebble might eventually ship in the box itself. It’s extremely affordable, too: $15 gets you one in the natural maple finish, and currently you can get a black or white version for just a $19 pledge. It can dock a Pebble either with charging or without (which means you won’t unnecessarily be putting stress on your battery), and it supports after-market bands as well as those that ship on the Pebble.

Timbol says that he plans to build a Pebble Steel version as well once he receives his device in early February, so anyone who has pre-ordered this device can expect something similar to emerge to suit the new Pebble magnetic connector, which differs from the original design. The Sidekick has an anticipated ship date of April 2014.

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The Sidekick Gives Your Pebble A Place To Rest Its Head And Recharge

8:54 AM

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The Pebble smartwatch is a great gadget in many respects, but the one thing that has always struck me as less than convenient is the fact t...

A little over six months ago, TechStars-backed Wander launched a photo-sharing app called Days, which asked you to think of photo-sharing in a totally different light. Instead of sharing a single photo in real-time, Days compiled a number of photos (none of which were edited or filtered or beautified) into one photo-package, meant to be shared the next day.

Today, Days v2 arrives with a number of new features and design changes to make the asynchronous photo-sharing service even better.

When Days originally launched in May, founder Jeremy Fisher wanted the experience to be more immersive than an Instagram-style sharing app.

Instead of doctoring up a single photo that ends up in a long stream of random moments from random people, Days was meant to give users a window into the real everyday lives of their friends and family.

Turns out, Days isn’t just about sharing with the ones you love, as users are growing increasingly interested in seeing the Days of total strangers. That said, Days v2 adds a Discover tab that helps you find people outside your usual social graph, along with hashtag search and clickable @mentions.

Days also now has a view count, letting users see how many of their followers have interacted with their content.

But what about people who have yet to download Days? According to Fisher, the onboarding process was a real deterrent to people who wanted to use the app the moment they heard about it. Because of this, Days has revamped the on-boarding process to allow for optional signup.

The update also brings an important change to Days’ Gif feature. Originally, Days strung together photos that were taken within ten seconds of each other to create a cute little gif. Now, users can remove individual frames from GIFs, just in case there happens to be one bad photo in a string of awesome ones.

Fisher is keeping mum about active users currently on the platform.

Days Version 2 is available now in the App Store for free.

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Days Asynchronous Photo Diary Launches Version 2.0 With Easier Discovery And Sign-Up

8:39 AM

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A little over six months ago, TechStars-backed Wander launched a photo-sharing app called Days , which asked you to think of photo-sharing i...

E-commerce startup Beauty Army is moving beyond its subscription commerce offering and opening up a full-fledged store for health and beauty products. And it’s doing so in a big way, with more than 200 brands and 20,000 products available for sale through its online catalog.

Beauty Army launched two years ago (on January 1st!) with a Birchbox-like subscription commerce platform for beauty products. But unlike Birchbox, which generally sends many of the same samples to its users, Beauty Army was built to give its users personalized recommendations for the products that they received.

It does that thanks to a huge data set on the back end that enables users to easily find products that are suited to their skin color and their personal style. When you first sign up for Beauty Army, you take a survey and create a profile that matches you up with products enjoyed by other users like you.

When Beauty Army was mainly doing this as a subscription commerce offering, the website would offer up a choice of nine products each month, of which users would pick six. It then used the data collected to better refine results over time. Now that it has all that data, it will be applying what it knows to full-sized products that can be ordered from its site.

When logging into Beauty Army, you still need to create a profile to get started, but once that’s done, you’re no longer limited to a certain number of sample items each month. Instead you can choose from any number of products available on the site.

But to get there, it still asks you a series of questions to help you find just the right product. Customers choose which category of product they’re looking for — either makeup, skin care, hair care, nail care, or fragrance — and then follow a series of questions to narrow down the results and provide a group of products that fits their preferences.

CEO Lindsey Guest compared that level of personalization to what you might find on other e-commerce sites, where it’s more or less impossible to find what you’re looking for — at least from a health and beauty standpoint. (Try shopping for ‘red lipstick on Walmart.com, for instance.) While there’s a bit more work involved in getting to a refined search page on Beauty Army, the company thinks the results that come in will be a lot better overall.

From a business standpoint, the e-commerce platform also makes a bit of sense in that it will open up a much bigger opportunity for Beauty Army. The platform was built by partnering with major online retailers, which actually hold the inventory and handle fulfillment.

In that way, Beauty Army doesn’t have to work directly with brands, and it carries none of the inventory risk of other e-commerce providers. The startup will continue to offer subscriptions for those who like that sort of thing, but with a full-fledged story, Beauty Army customers are no longer limited to six samples a month.

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Beauty Army Goes From Subscription Samples To A Full E-Commerce Shop For All Your Beauty Needs

8:09 AM

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E-commerce startup Beauty Army is moving beyond its subscription commerce offering and opening up a full-fledged store for health and beaut...

If you check out CNET or Engadget‘s top-ranked headphones, you won’t find many Monster products on the list. And yet, Monster is responsible for some of the most popular headphones in the world. But why?

Celebrities.

Monster understands that the majority of consumers aren’t concerned with best-in-class audio technology, but rather style and status. Monster capitalizes on bright colors, cool designs, and (of course) celebrity endorsements.

And why not? Unless you’ve made audio quality a priority and purchased top-of-the-line headphones from brands like Sennheiser or Audio Technica, you might not even know what you’ve been missing.

After a hugely successful contract with Beats by Dre from 2009 to 2012, Monster has put even more focus on celebrity-designed lines of headphones. This was made clear at CES 2014.

Approaching the Monster booth, with walls of red velvet that reached from the floor to the ceiling, was like approaching a fortress. Most booths at CES are open, with a number of entrances at various corners to come in and check out the products. Not Monster.

There was only one entrance to the Monster booth, and you had to go through a viciously rigid press relations desk.

Once inside, you can smell the celebrity. Pictures of celebrities hung from every wall. Marshawn Lynch loves Monster. Drew Brees loves Monster. Nick Cannon and Tyson Beckford love Monster. And, lo and behold, they were standing fifteen feet from us, explaining to various members of the press how much they love working with Monster to develop their own line of headphones.

We did our own interviews with the male super model and Mr. Mariah Carey, and they both made one thing very clear: audio technology is not the focus here. These celebrities trust Monster to get that part right, and instead focus on style.

Nick Cannon’s line of Ntune and Ncredible headphones come in wild colors, with bubbly over-ear cans. Tyson Beckford’s line of Inspiration headphones are more sleek, with colors like champagne gold and rose gold, and interchangeable headbands.

We don’t often think of it this way, but headphone makers are the pioneers of wearable technology, and it seems that Monster and its army of celebrities have figured out that the key to wearables is style. Of course, technology has to be present — the Inspiration line lets you share music (wired) from one set of headphones to the next.

But at the end of the day, if someone is putting technology on their face or head or wrist, it better look good.

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Monster’s Keys To CES Success Are Celebrities, Style, And Hype

6:54 AM

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If you check out CNET or Engadget ‘s top-ranked headphones, you won’t find many Monster products on the list. And yet, Monster is responsi...

It looks like Facebook has acquired Branch Media, the startup behind conversation service Branch and link-sharing service Potluck.

Co-founder Josh Miller made the announcement on Facebook. He said his team will be forming a new Conversations group, which will be based in New York City, “with the goal of helping people connect with others around their interests.” He added, “Although the products we build will be reminiscent of Branch and Potluck, those services will live on outside of Facebook.”

The post is light on details (Miller said he’s currently on vacation and is only posting now because he “was tipped that the story was going to leak”), but The Verge is reporting that the price was $15 million. I’ve reached out to Facebook for more information and will update if I hear back.

Branch Media’s investors include Obvious Corp. (the incubator led by Ev Williams, Biz Stone, and Jason Goldman), Lerer Ventures, Betaworks, SV Angel, and others.

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Facebook Acquires Branch Media To Lead New “Conversations” Group

6:54 AM

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It looks like Facebook has acquired Branch Media , the startup behind conversation service Branch and link-sharing service Potluck . Co-foun...

Google is reportedly working on an airfare comparison site, according to Ryanair founder Michael O’Leary speaking to the Sunday Independent. O’Leary was much more candid about Google’s upcoming plans than the search giant itself is ever likely to be, describing Mountain View’s intent to build a price shopping engine for comparing airline ticket prices.

Existing sites that compare flight prices including Kayak, Expedia, Skyscanner and others are at a disadvantage compared to Google, in that it can act with complete independence from the airlines it lists. Many travel sites enter into marketing arrangements with their airline partners, which is understandable as that’s the obvious revenue model to exploit. Google, however, is seeking only access to the data of airlines, asking nothing in return in terms of payment, and instead selling its standard ads on the back of its ability to reach a massive audience.

O’Leary told the Independent that it would be sharing its ticket pricing “with all of the Google outlets,” making it possible to find routes and cheapest ticket prices, presumably on multiple platforms powered by Google software. It’s unclear exactly how this might work in practice, but presumably users Googling for airfare to a certain destination would see a comparison table of flight options in results, or this could be built in to something like Google Now, the personal assistant built in to all Android devices on later versions of that OS.

We’ve reached out to Google to find out more about these plans, and will update this story if they provide additional details.

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Google Said To Take On Kayak, Skyscanner And Others With Its Own Airfare Comparison Tool

6:39 AM

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Google is reportedly working on an airfare comparison site, according to Ryanair founder Michael O’Leary speaking to the Sunday Independent ...

More acquisitions for Groupon to widen the net of consumers using its platform to buy things online and take it further away from its earliest roots as a daily deals site. Today it’s announced the acquisition of ideeli, a flash fashion retailer, for $43 million in cash. The news comes on the heels of the company completing its acquisition of Living Social’s business in Asia for ticketing services.

This is both a product/customer and technology acquisition, with Groupon continuing to run ideeli’s business and also using its mobile expertise, possibly to expand into other flash sales categories.

“We are thrilled to add ideeli and their team to our company,” said Groupon CEO Eric Lefkofsky in a statement. “Ideeli extends our fashion presence and brings great relationships with many of the top brands in apparel. Our customers have a demonstrated appetite for these offers, and by broadening our reach in this space Groupon is even better positioned as the place you start when you want to do or buy just about anything, anytime, anywhere.”

“Groupon’s brand, reach and vision as an ecommerce destination make it a tremendous place to continue to grow our company,” said ideeli CEO Stefan Pepe. “We look forward to bringing the great deals we offer to Groupon customers.”

More to come.