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Tuesday, February 4, 2014
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Microsoft has made official what we all pretty much expected: Its new CEO, replacing Steve Ballmer, is Satya Nadella. Nadella has spent 22 years at Microsoft, and was previously Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise. Nadella also takes a position on Microsoft’s Board of Directors.


Developing…





6:08 AM

Microsoft has made official what we all pretty much expected : Its new CEO, replacing Steve Ballmer, is Satya Nadella . Nadella has spent 22...

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Nymi

Toronto-based wearable startup Bionym’s Nymi band uses your ECG to securely identify you to various devices and services, and as of today there’s another trick up its sleeve – acting as a secure, easy to use Bitcoin wallet. The company revealed today that one of the launch applications that will ship with the Nymi will be a Bitcoin wallet, and that said wallet will provide a more secure method of storing your account’s private key.


All Bitcoin transactions consist of a key exchange: when someone is depositing funds into your account, they use the public key (it’s public since people don’t often get that cheesed about getting free money); when they want to send or withdraw the cryptocurrency, they use the private key. Recently, some evidence has suggested that it’s actually frighteningly easy to get at that private key if it’s stored on a hard drive or shared via QR code.


What Nymi brings to the table is a way to keep the private key securely stored independent of any computer, and tied to your unique ECG biometric signature. This makes it not only secure, but also more convenient than existing Bitcoin wallet solutions, Bionym President Andrew D’Souza explained in an interview.


“People just don’t understand how [Bitcoin] works, and how they gain access to it without putting themselves at risk,” “We see Nymi as essentially being that enabling technology that brings it to market. Everyone who buys a Nymi will get a Bitcoin wallet and be able to securely transact, and understand that their wallet is encrypted, and tied to their biometrics so that even if you lose your Nymi or it’s stolen they won’t be able to access your bitcoins.”


D’Souza says that while Bitcoin has a lot of potential, there’s a risk that it will either fade away into obscurity because of its perceived complexity, or that it’ll get legislated away and receive such a negative connotation that it doesn’t ever hit the mainstream. By making Bitcoin more accessible, and more secure, Bionym hopes to help it avoid those pitfalls. Their vision is of a world where you maintain a Bitcoin savings wallet on a computer, but then use your Nymi like a walkaround checking account for daily transactions.


“With Nymi, when you walk away from your computer your Bitcoin wallet will lock automatically,” explained Bionym Chief Cryptographer Yevgeniy Vahlis. “But it won’t just lock in terms of the interface; there’s nothing there to steal. Everything that’s important about your Bitcoin account is stored physically on the Nymi, so hacking into your computer won’t allow anyone to steal or misuse your Bitcoin, even if they hack into your computer while you’re using your Nymi.”


The Bitcoin Wallet will be shipping with the first Nymi armbands when they eventually ship. Bionym is keeping mum on when exactly that will be, but the company still states an “early 2014″ ship date on its pre-order page for the first batch of units. As with any hardware startup, demonstrating utility to early customers will be key, so Bitcoin integration, if it really can democratize the concept of the cryptocurrency, could indeed be a killer app.






6:08 AM

Toronto-based wearable startup Bionym’s Nymi band uses your ECG to securely identify you to various devices and services, and as of today t...

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confide messages

It’s been just a month since we first heard about Confide, the confidential messaging app designed for professionals. But already the app has drawn a lot of interest (and cash) from the very people it was made for — investors, entrepreneurs, and media professionals who don’t want their backchannel communications to be leaked.


Today, Confide is announcing that it’s raised $1.9 million in seed funding that was led by WGI Group and includes investors such as Google Ventures, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, CrunchFund*, Lakestar, Marker, David Tisch’s BoxGroup, Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman, Entourage creator Doug Ellin, and Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. Along with the raise, WGI partner Michael Walrath will join the Confide board.


By now, users are pretty familiar with the concept of ephemeral messaging, in which text and media shared between users automatically disappears. Snapchat, of course, is the most popular app of its kind, but there are any number of startups seeking to put their own new spin on the concept of disappearing messages.


The idea behind Confide is to make backchannel messaging between professionals totally secure. No more emails being forwarded to people who weren’t meant to see them. No more screenshots of your text messages floating about. The app, which was launched early last month, is designed to make it damn near impossible for users to capture and share delicate information.


From the recipient point of view, all text is hidden from view behind orange boxes until it is “wanded over” to reveal what’s beneath, just one or two words at a time. Even if you try to screenshot one of those words, the app will kick you out and notify the sender of the offense. Moreover, the app features end-to-end encryption, and there’s no data from the messages stored on any of its servers.


confide wanding


It didn’t take much for the idea to attract attention — and funding — from investors. Indeed, when a friend (who has way more connections than I do) recently installed the app on her phone, the list of early users read like a who’s who of folks in the venture industry.


According to co-founder and chairman Howard Lerman (who’s also CEO of marketing startup Yext), the whole funding round was done in 22 days without having to build a pitch deck. It’s a message — and product — that just resonated with investors. Now he and co-founder Jon Brod, who is a former AOL exec and co-founder of local news site Patch, can go back to work on the app.


First step is an update to its iPhone app which drastically increases the number of supported languages. Already, the app has been used in 110 different countries, but now it will have language support for English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, Swedish, and Arabic users.


But that’s just the start. The next obvious move — one that the team is working on now — is to bring the app to Android users. Making its communications cross-platform will enable Confide to reach a huge number of new users around the world. The company has even broader ambitions, however, which could include some sort of a desktop client or browser extension that would enable users to send communications from their PCs as well.


And now it’s got the bankroll to fund those ambitions. Brod said Confide would likely hire five to 10 new employees over the next 18 months, which could go a long way toward helping to make its particular brand of ephemeral messaging available to enterprise users.





5:24 AM

It’s been just a month since we first heard about Confide , the confidential messaging app designed for professionals. But already the app h...

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FlightCar Biz traveler header

FlightCar is seeking to boost the number of business travelers who make their cars available through its peer-to-peer rental platform, with a new offering designed to appeal directly to them. While that offering requires that business travelers pay for their parking, they could also make more when their cars are rented.


For those not familiar, FlightCar is sort of like Airbnb for airport car rentals. The company runs a platform that allows travelers leaving town to park their cars in nearby lots and make those vehicles available for rent by people coming into town. Those visiting generally can use the cars for a lower rate than they’d pay at a traditional car rental agency.


Until recently, those who left their vehicles with FlightCar were able to get free parking, and could even get paid if their cars were rented and used. Rates are between $0.05 and $0.20 per mile. Also, there’s the side perk of having their cars washed and vacuumed both before and after someone rents it out.


As part of the new service, FlightCar is asking users — or at least their employers — to pay for their parking, but will offer higher returns for cars that are rented from business travelers. FlightCar provides parking for $15 a day, which is less than most lot owners ask per day. But if the cars are rented out, FlightCar will pay between $0.30 and $0.50 per mile driven, based on the make and model.


CEO and founder Rujul Zaparde says today that about 90 percent of the travelers who leave their cars with FlightCar are leisure travelers. But the company sees a big opportunity in the business traveler segment.


It might seem counter-intuitive for business travelers to pay to have their cars rented out, but most have their parking paid for by their employers anyway. The Business Traveler offering from FlightCar will allow them to expense their parking while still being able to make some extra cash if their cars are rented out.


Launched nearly one year ago, FlightCar now offers its peer-to-peer car rentals at three different airports: San Francisco International Airport (SFO), Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).


The company has raised $5.5 million from $6.1 million from investors that include General Catalyst, Softbank Capital, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Ryan Seacrest’s Seacrest Global Group, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Posterous founder Garry Tan, Auctomatic founder Harj Taggar, Justin.TV founder Emmett Shear, former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford, First Round Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.





5:08 AM

FlightCar is seeking to boost the number of business travelers who make their cars available through its peer-to-peer rental platform, with...

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Unlike in 1984, when the Macintosh was introduced, there weren't any Apple ads at the Super Bowl this year. Instead, on the day after the Massacre in the Meadowlands, the company raised the curtain on a 127-second video celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Mac -- on YouTube. Video for the project was shot entirely with iPhones over a 36-hour period on Jan. 24, the 30th birthday of the Mac. It includes footage from 10 countries on five continents. Whittled down from 70 hours of raw video, the tribute runs a tad over two minutes.


5:08 AM

Unlike in 1984, when the Macintosh was introduced, there weren't any Apple ads at the Super Bowl this year. Instead, on the day after ...

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loud

Apple has received a patent from the USPTO (via AppleInsider) for a method of wireless induction charging that can perform different actions based on the orientation of the device as it’s laid on the charing mat or pad. The patent application was originally published back in September, 2012, and we covered it then, but it’s interesting to revisit in light of recent reports about Apple using induction tech in iWatch prototypes.


The New York Times said earlier this week that Apple is working on versions of the iWatch that use induction charging to power up, so that users won’t have to plug them in. The idea is likely that charging yet another digital device has to be as easy as possible for consumers, who already have to deal with keeping their phones, tablets and computers juiced up and ready to go.


Apple has a number of patents related to this tech, which is already in use among various Android OEMs as well as Nokia in its Lumia line. Apple has yet to release a device that makes use of the tech, however. An iWatch is a good candidate because of its specific battery challenges, and this positional function switching could potentially apply to a smartwatch, too. You could see triggering an alarm or sleep mode by docking an iWatch in a certain way for overnight charging, for instance, or maintaining an active state for mounting when you’re at your desk and working.


Induction charging is far from a lock for a wearable for Apple (nor is the Apple wearable itself, in fact), but Apple is definitely investing in R&D around the tech. And however it addresses it, power management will be a key differentiating factor for any Apple smartwatch, I’d guess, so turning it into a value-add feature with orientation-based actions is an idea with a lot of potential.





4:53 AM

Apple has received a patent from the USPTO (via AppleInsider ) for a method of wireless induction charging that can perform different action...

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BaseKit

Website building platform BaseKit, a Seedcamp winner from all the way back in 2008, has raised a further £4.5m in funding. The round was led by Angel CoFund, with participation from existing investors Eden Ventures, NESTA and Nauta Capital.


The additional funding brings total investment to ~£14.5m, and will be used to continue development of the BaseKit platform and pick up more partner sites/resellers in the website hosting and telecoms space. On the product development side there’s an emphasis on mobile: BaseKit’s “Editor 7″, the latest version of the company’s drag ‘n’ drop website builder, works on mobile devices and will continue to see new capabilities.


BaseKit’s website building platform started out life pitching itself as a way to somewhat automate the process of turning a Photoshop design into a fully-functioning website. It’s since expanded into a more comprehensive offering, targeting small businesses and designers who want to build and manage nice-looking websites entirely in the browser. BaseKit’s website editor is available in 15 languages and multiple integrations are supported, including: On-premise, SaaS, cPanel plugin and Parallels APS.


It recently claimed its 100th partner/reseller — the B2B route is what’s fuelling growth — and says it’s currently deploying 40,000 new subscriptions’ on the BaseKit platform each month through partners across 25 countries. BaseKit counts over 80 employees, with offices in London, Bristol, Toronto, and Sao Paulo.





4:53 AM

Website building platform BaseKit , a Seedcamp winner from all the way back in 2008 , has raised a further £4.5m in funding. The round was l...

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