New Technology News

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Versa is launching a new network for sponsored op-eds, which it calls Featured Perspectives.

The startup is also announcing that it has raised additional funding led by The Omidyar Network (the firm created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar), bringing its total seed round to $2 million. Other investors include the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as well as Quotidian Ventures.

We last wrote about Versa when it raised the first part of its seed funding ($1.3 million) and was called ElectNext. At the time, the company was offering publisher widgets that would display contextual political data, but founder and CEO Keya Dannenbaum told me yesterday, “We discovered the core problem [for publishers] — finding a way to monetize previously unmonetized parts of their site while hopefully enhancing the newsreading experience.”

Hence the creation of the Versa Media Network, which connects online publishers with organizations willing to pay to have their opinions and content featured in related articles. You can see some examples from Versa’s initial publishers — in this article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, a news account of Pennsylvania Gov. Corbett’s statements on gay marriage is followed by a comment from Human Rights Watch criticizing Corbett. And this column in RealClearPolitics looking at the problems with the Obamacare website is accompanied by a comment from benefits company Maxwell Health offering its own thoughts on the issue.

maxwell

Dannenbaum said Versa has built technology that analyzes news articles as they’re published and flags the ones that may be relevant to organizations that have signed up as a potential contributors. Then, once a contributor gets an alert and decides to write something, she said it becomes “a human process” of writing a comment and submitting it for publication.

Timeliness is definitely an issue, she acknowledged — if someone submits an additional perspective days after an article has gone up, it’s probably not going to be seen by that many readers. However, Dannenbaum said the average response time is under an hour.

She argued that this approach benefits readers, too. Traditionally, news stories and op-eds have been “sectioned off” from each other, but online, it makes more sense to present these things “side by side.” In addition, she suggested that many organizations are trying to accomplish similar ends already, by posting anonymous comments that back up their views. So having a sponsored comment or op-ed unit makes things more transparent.

As for the quality of these Featured Perspectives, Dannenbaum said that whatever content guidelines a publisher has, they’ll also apply to Versa’s content. Plus, publishers will always have the right to remove a Featured Perspective from their site, no questions asked.

With the technology moving out of beta testing and the new funding and, Dannenbaum said the company is ready to expand its publisher network. And while most of the early uses focused on political content, she argued that Versa can be used more broadly: “I don’t think this setup is vertical-specific.”

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With New Funding From Omidyar, Versa Launches Its Network For Sponsored Op-Eds

7:23 AM

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Versa is launching a new network for sponsored op-eds, which it calls Featured Perspectives. The startup is also announcing that it has rai...

As you whiz down the highway from LA to Las Vegas in your Tesla Model S, your Bluetooth humming, your Google Glass flashing messages from VCs trying to get into your next round, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to reach down and grab a refreshing cup of ice-cold Kombucha? Well now you can 3D print your very own custom center console designed to hold your fermented teas, fair trade lip balms, or any number of other tchotchkes, bootstrap-style!

Sure Tesla is about to release a premium center console with fancy Corinthian leather cup Snugglerz™ and his and hers matching USB 3.0 ports, but what about now? What can you do now that will improve your ability to hold a fresh-squeezed Vegan Blackberry Juice and Farm-Raised Civet Coffee Coolata from the Creamery? A 3D-printed center console cup holder, ya big lug!

You can have your assistant download and print this sexy little Model S center console rig for you right now so he can assemble it and place it into your car, allowing for an amazing range of potential pluses for you and your friends as you scoot across town in your futuristic transport. You can keep all sorts of drinks in there, but don’t go crazy with the phablets. iPhones only, please.

The drinkholders were tested with Diet Coke, various water bottles, a Tesla coffee mug, and an Amstel (!) Bigger drinks may not work. The phone holder was tested with an iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S. Bigger phones may not work.

So there you have it: improving the human condition one center console at a time. It’s almost enough to make you want to Selfie a smile.

via 3Ders

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An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the Tesla Model S did not come equipped with front drinkholders. This has been corrected.

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Now The Rich Can 3D Print Their Own Cup Holders For The Tesla Model S

7:23 AM

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As you whiz down the highway from LA to Las Vegas in your Tesla Model S, your Bluetooth humming, your Google Glass flashing messages from VC...

More and more live video events are being streamed online, and caching equipment startup Qwilt wants to help Internet service providers to meet growing demand from consumers. To do so, it’s adding a new feature that will improve network efficiency and video quality for live video streams, in addition to the improvement of on-demand videos.

Qwilt was founded on the idea of helping Internet service providers to handle the huge amount of video that is flooding their networks, by inserting its equipment into edge networks and transparently caching content closer to where users live. By doing so, the company believes that it can provide more efficient network utilization for ISPs, while also improving the quality of video that end users are watching.

That’s a win-win for network providers, who can use caching as a way to reduce the strain of traffic traveling over their networks, as well as the media companies delivering content to consumers. And, of course, to consumers themselves, who benefit from the improved video quality.

The pitch seems to be resonating with customers, as Qwilt has signed up a number of ISPs in Europe, Latin America, and even some big MSOs in the U.S. to install its caching equipment into their networks.

To date, Qwilt has worked primarily to alleviate the pain associated with on-demand video from streaming services like Netflix or YouTube. In a world where Netflix can make up about a third of all traffic during peak hours, such a solution is surely welcome to help offload some of the video traffic.

But what about the growing amount of live video that’s coming online, thanks to networks and programmers getting more comfortable with having the same major events online and on mobile apps as are on TV. You know, like streaming the Super Bowl, or putting all the major Olympics events online.

For viewers who have tried to stream those events, it’s clear that the experience generally hasn’t been great. There’s typically a lot of buffering and whatnot for live events, since more IP networks weren’t built to handle a large number of people streaming the same piece of content.

The new live stream caching from Qwilt helps to solve that issue, and to create huge network efficiencies in the process. That means programmers will be more likely to stream live events, and ISPs won’t have to massively overbuild their networks to meet demand.

Qwilt has raised $40 million in funding from investors that include Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Marker.

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Transparent Caching Equipment Vendor Qwilt Now Improves Live Video Streams

6:08 AM

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More and more live video events are being streamed online, and caching equipment startup Qwilt wants to help Internet service providers to ...

Lenovo’s aspirations for an established mobile handset company goes back a few years. According to a report published by the WSJ, Lenovo competed with Google for Motorola Mobility in 2011. Then just last October Lenovo submitted an offer for BlackBerry. That deal also fell through.

However, Lenovo’s search ended last Thanksgiving when Google Chairman Eric Schmidt called Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo’s chairman and chief executive, and asked if he was still interested in Motorola.

“And I said yes”, Yang told the WSJ. “This was a longtime love story.”

The story goes that Yang and Lenovo’s CFO attempted to acquire Motorola’s handset division in 2011. The pair visited company executives in Chicago. But they met with the co-CEO of the systems business, not the handset business Lenovo was after.

Google went on to purchase Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012.

Following that purchase, Yang invited Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt over for dinner. “I told him if they really want to run a hardware business, they could keep it. If they are not interested in the hardware business, they could sell Motorola to us,” he said, according to the WSJ.

This deal is similar in nature to when Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC division in 2005. The purchase gives Lenovo access to a historic brand and a vast support network that includes engineers, manufacturing rights and a struggling, but established brand. Lenovo reportedly does not plan on laying off any of Motorola’s 3,500 employees.

In a conference call yesterday, Yang said Lenovo expects to sell 100 million handsets the year after the purchase is complete. It’s a lofty goal by any measure, but, with Lenovo’s global reach and dominance in their home country of China, a goal that is certainly obtainable.

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Second Time’s The Charm For Lenovo’s Motorola Deal

6:08 AM

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Lenovo’s aspirations for an established mobile handset company goes back a few years. According to a report published by the WSJ , Lenovo co...

Facebook has made a big point over the years of having real identities for its users, but it looks like that requirement is soon going to disappear, and users will able to use made-up names for more anonymity. Call it the Snapchat effect.

According to a profile of Mark Zuckerberg published today in BusinessWeek — to mark the Facebook’s 10th anniversary — the social network plans to let users log in anonymously in a set of new apps it is planning to release (for more on that app strategy, check out Josh’s insightful look here). Paper, a new Facebook reading app out today, does require Facebook login, but that looks like it may now become the exception rather than the rule.

Zuckerberg once described the idea of having two identities as showing a “lack of integrity,” but he now says that real identity can be a millstone. “I don’t know if the balance has swung too far, but I definitely think we’re at the point where we don’t need to keep on only doing real identity things,” he told BusinessWeek. “If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.”

The profile notes that there has been a lot of internal debate at the company about the use of real identities, which some might argue was a throwback to another time. The requirement for real names came about in the first place because at the time Facebook was founded, most social networks and forums were based around made-up names, and Facebook — as a way of bridging the virtual experience with the real world, and drawing in more users (it worked!) — put in the rule to raise accountability.

“It’s definitely, I think, a little bit more balanced now 10 years later,” Zuckerberg notes. “I think that’s good.”

But to say that the decision to drop identity was born in a blue Facebook bubble may not be quite right, either.

Real identity may have helped persuade more people to join Facebook — and through Facebook’s social sign-in has become a way of identifying yourself in hundreds of other apps and websites. But some have also turned away from Facebook for the same reason. You may not want to post funny pictures of yourself drunk at a party if they may one day be easily found by someone who you didn’t intend to see them. (Yes, there are privacy settings, but they’re a lot more fiddly than the act of taking and posting a photo or comment are.)

Many have pointed out that part of the allure of new kid Snapchat for younger users is the ephemerality of the content — it disappears after it’s sent. But it’s also notable that you can use whatever name you like on there, too.

Something Zuckerberg also doesn’t mention in his reasons for embracing anonymity is the fact that the social network has been under pressure in some places specifically for its real-name requirement. In Germany, the regulator has said that Facebook’s real-name policty “erodes online freedoms.”

It’s also not Facebook’s first foray into letting people use different names on the network. When it first launched verified accounts in 2012, it gave those people verified the option of using nicknames in all of their interactions (although even then the registered names were still their real names).

There is also the example of Facebook Messenger, which you can opt to use without a Facebook account on Android, although you still have to give over another piece of your data — your phone number.

The lack of identity in future apps is a very interesting turn of events — it points to Facebook wanting to change with the times, and with consumer (and perhaps regulatory) sentiment, but it also shows that it’s figured out more sophisticated ways of tracking and monetizing your time on its properties regardless. Even if you’re Ingy123 instead of Ingrid.

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Facebook Will Give Up The Ghost On Real Identity In Future Apps

5:09 AM

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Facebook has made a big point over the years of having real identities for its users, but it looks like that requirement is soon going to di...

The iPhone 5c has been bugging me. As a product, it's so good -- and yet so wrong. By not saying much at all during the financial conference call with analysts this week, Apple has confirmed doubts while presenting new questions. Does the iPhone 5c represent a colossal misstep by Apple? Or is it just a mediocre product that remains profitable? Can it be both a misstep and a profitable device at the same time? As a product, it's surprisingly well-built but poorly positioned, inserted in a moment of time when it's not desirable.

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What Went Wrong With the iPhone 5c?

5:09 AM

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The iPhone 5c has been bugging me. As a product, it's so good -- and yet so wrong. By not saying much at all during the financial conf...

Apple is moving fast on securing intellectual property related to the making and usage of sapphire glass, filing another patent related to the material recently that has been published by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider). Previously we saw Apple file a patent for a method of attaching sapphire glass display windows to a device, and now its looking to insure that its method for manufacturing and shaping the material into forms usable in gadgets are legally protected.

The patent is fairly technical, describing how sapphire can be grown, the collected and polished down into wafers, as well as treated with various coatings including oleophobic coatings (the kind used on the iPhone to prevent fingerprints) and ink masking (presumably to enable printing of logos and other elements on the sapphire). Sapphire is a difficult material to work with in terms of manufacturing electronics, since it’s hardness makes traditional methods of cutting and shaping it more challenging.

Apple’s methods include using lasers to cut the sapphire into usable chunks, and it specifically mentions smartphone displays as one potential application. To get the material to where it needs to be for use in assembling phones and other devices, it describes a means by which it’s grown and then turned into cores which can be sliced into wafers. Those wafers can be sliced using lasers, which is both cleaner and faster than using machine grinding, which could be a clue into how Apple plans to make manufacturing sapphire components at scale cost-efficient.

A new report from 9to5Mac says that Apple is keen on ramping up its sapphire manufacturing plant in Arizona, which it will be running with GT Advanced Technologies as part of a $578 million deal. The facility should be live by February, according to 9to5Mac, and it will aid in producing “a new sub-component of Apple products,” say documents obtained by the blog. An earlier report also said that Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn was already doing test production runs using sapphire glass screens in assembling iPhones.

Apple gearing up for sapphire use on both the IP and the manufacturing front is a pretty safe sign that we’ll see this component feature prominently in future designs. In terms of timing, it’s likely that at this point we’ll have to wait until late this year before anything reaches consumers, but the wheels are turning, and the result could be much more durable devices.