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Tuesday, February 4, 2014
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Major tech companies are giving away $750 million worth of products to help bridge the digital divide. During a speech earlier today, Obama gave details about the pledges from the tech companies, along with a commitment to connect more schools with broadband Internet.


Here’s the breakdown:



  • Apple’s pledging $100 million in iPads, Macbooks, products and teacher training.

  • AT&T is giving $100 million in mobile broadband for 3 years to middle schools and for teacher development.

  • The Verizon Foundation is giving $100 million to educate teachers, with the Verizon Innovative Leading Schools program, among other initiatives.

  • Autodesk will offer free design software to every secondary school.


During the State of the Union, Obama announced that Apple, Microsoft, Sprint and Verizon would help connect 15,000 schools and 20 million students to speedy Internet.


“Now, this is an extraordinary commitment by these business leaders, but they’re business leaders, so they’re not just doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They want the country to do well, but they also understand that they want educated customers,” said Obama. “They want customers who are able to get good jobs, who are going to be using these tools in the future. They want that next young architect coming out of here to be familiar with using that iPad so that they’re designing buildings and using their products.”


Research on the effectiveness of broadband in schools is more scant, however. The Urban Institute found that broadband in the home slightly decreased math and reading proficiency [PDF], while an experimental study in Portugal found the same for broadband in schools [PDF]. The authors cite heightened distraction as a potential explanation.


Though, technology could allow schools to also radically change their curriculum, which would teach a different set of skills that may not be captured by test scores. So it seems like the government is funding a project that we don’t entirely understand the outcome of.





4:58 PM

Major tech companies are giving away $750 million worth of products to help bridge the digital divide. During a speech earlier today, Obama...

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munchery

San Francisco-based Munchery, the startup that offers prepared gourmet meals on demand, is in the process of raising a new $20 million funding round, multiple sources familiar with the deal have revealed to TechCrunch. The new round adds to its existing $4 million Series A, and $700,000 in seed funding.


The startup currently counts Sherpa Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Anthos Capital, e.ventures and individual investors including Matt Mullenweg, Randi Zuckerberg and Eric Ries as backers. Founded in 2010 by Tri Tran and Conrad Chu, the point of Munchery was to make it possible for busy professionals to have a convenient meal option that wasn’t just your garden-variety fast food or greasy takeout.


Munchery plays on current trends in diet and nutrition, providing meal selection based on categories including “dairy-free,” “vegan,” “low carb” and more. All meals are made from scratch and will be delivered same-day within the SF Bay area upon ordering. You just choose the dish and the delivery window (in one hour increments), enter delivery and payment info, and your food will be prepared and ready by the end of the day.


The value proposition isn’t just fresh food that’s relatively healthy: Munchery has a buy-one, give-one system through which it provides another meal for those in need for each one ordered, plus it uses eco-friendly packaging and uses professional local chefs for meal preparation. That kind of attention to detail can’t come cheap, which probably partly explains the need for more cash coming off its A round, which was announced in November 2012 but only officially closed in September of last year. Last fall when that round closed, Munchery was claiming a 20 percent month-over-month growth rate in its business.


Then in October, Munchery redesigned its web-based menus, rebuilt its mobile apps and introduced wine, beer and cider ordering. It also hired Bridget Batson, a three-star chef, as a step in building out its roster of in-house culinary talent. Those kind of product and organizational moves don’t come cheap, so it isn’t surprising to hear that the company is looking around for fresh funding.


As with any offline service business, expansion for Munchery is going to be expensive. Given what it managed to accomplish with its existing $5 million or so, however, we could see growth accelerate rapidly once it nails down this funding, complete with Munchery making its way out of its Bay Area crib.





3:58 PM

San Francisco-based Munchery , the startup that offers prepared gourmet meals on demand, is in the process of raising a new $20 million fund...

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social operating platform

Social advertising company Unified just launched the new version of its “social operating platform” today, and it sounds like the biggest change is the addition of business intelligence — basically, more customizable, big-picture data to help advertisers see how they’re doing.


The company already offers ad-buying tools as well as a system of record for monitoring different ad-buying systems. (It also bought social ad startup PageLever last year.) With the new version, Vice President of Marketing Dave Donohue said Unified is the “only social marketing platform with fully integrated BI.”


To be honest, I wasn’t totally clear at first about how this is different from the data that Unified was already providing its customers, but co-founder and Chief Product Officer Jason Beckerman told me this is much more about tracking general trends and benchmarks, not just a few social metrics around an individual campaign. He added that a lot of this data is currently trapped in Excel, while Unified can bring it together and make it accessible in real-time.


For a more concrete example, Donohue said a large auto manufacturer could use Unified’s BI tools to bring up different visualizations about how their awareness campaigns are performing, broken down by car model and region.


Other features in the new version include one-click sign-in to all of Unified’s applications and global currency support.


unified screenshot


The company, by the way, says it works with more than 500 customers, including Lenovo, Edelman, and PBS. One of the keys to its approach, Donohue said, is the way that it can bring together different agencies and teams, as well as organic content and paid advertising.


“If you ahve organic content that performs well, you basically 24 hour window in order to amplify that content [with advertising],” he said. “Absent [Unified's] social system of record there’s no way to do it within a day.”





3:40 PM

Social advertising company Unified just launched the new version of its “social operating platform” today, and it sounds like the biggest c...

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The U.S. Department of Transportation on Monday announced it would move forward with a plan that would make car-to-car communication mandatory among light vehicles, a measure that could lead to safer roads. Vehicle-to-vehicle, or V2V, communication allows cars to share data including speeds and brake applications with nearby cars. That data can then help warn drivers about possible collisions. For instance, a car that unexpectedly slams on the brakes could communicate the action to nearby vehicles, which then could warn their drivers.


3:09 PM

The U.S. Department of Transportation on Monday announced it would move forward with a plan that would make car-to-car communication manda...

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vaio_logo

Sony is apparently looking to shed the dead weight that is its PC business. According to Reuters, relaying a report by Nikkei, Sony is in talks to sell its personal computer business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners for up to 50 billion yen ($490 million).


A new company would be formed to sell the computers, with Sony retaining a small stake in venture, the report states.


Just last week, another report surfaced stating that Sony was talking to Lenovo over a joint venture. Sony flat-out denied this report. Still, when there’s smoke, there’s often fire. And Sony’s VAIO brand is burning a hole in Sony’s ledger.


This move shouldn’t come as a surprise. Sony’s PC division has long been a weak link in Sony’s chain a poorly performing business. Besides, when Kazuo Hirai took over Sony in 2012, he didn’t list personal computers as one of Sony’s cornerstones. Instead, Kaz pointed to digital imaging, gaming, and mobile to which rebuild Sony upon, a strategy clearly present as of late.


Sony has released innovative, and frankly, killer products in the three aforementioned categories as of late. Still, despite making amazing products, Sony is trailing others in those spaces. By ridding itself of a forgotten appendage, perhaps Sony can better compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple.





1:53 PM

Sony is apparently looking to shed the dead weight that is its PC business. According to Reuters , relaying a report by Nikkei, Sony is in t...

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FarFaria, which has built a children’s subscription book service for the iPad, is announcing that it has raised $3.25 million in Series A Funding.


The round was led by Inventus Capital Partners, with Inventus’ Manu Rekhi joining the board of directors. The firm, which recently raised a $106 million second fund, touts its ability to connect Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with “India’s natural advantages”, but in this case FarFaria CEO Ajay Godwhani told me that he plans to stay focused on the US market for now. (In the FarFaria funding release, Rekhi also said digital subscription services are a “key theme” for the firm.)


Godwhani argued that offering a curated library of books through a subscription model is ideal for children’s books, because it means bookworms can read title after title without having to pay for more books, and parents don’t have to worry whether the content is appropriate. (Other children’s book subscription services include MeeGenius and Reading Rainbow.)


He also said FarFaria adds five new books every week, with 600 books in the library already — 20 percent is licensed from traditional publishers, while the rest comes from independent creators. The content that’s most-liked by readers is also “the most heavily rewarded,” Godwhani said.


Other features include a “Read To Me” feature (so parents don’t have to be there to read to there kids, though they can if they want to) and map-like menu for finding books.


“The layout, the design, the colors — it’s less Silicon Valley, more like what Disney or Hollywood do,” Rekhi said. Noting that Godwhani used to work with Disney Interactive, Rekhi added, “It’s a good marriage between his experiences.”


Next, Godwhani said he wants to continue growing the library and add more devices.


FarFaria offers one story per day for free — beyond that, a subscription costs $3.99 per month. You can download the app here.





1:38 PM

FarFaria , which has built a children’s subscription book service for the iPad, is announcing that it has raised $3.25 million in Series A F...

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Barack Obama’s presidency was supposed to usher in a new wave of data transparency. And, with the exception of the NSA, the administration has pioneered groundbreaking open government initiatives, from maps of stimulus spending to the vaults of consumer energy use. But, as the Senate pushes to make federal spending transparent to the public, forces inside the White House are silently defang-ing the most powerful provisions without any explanation.


“The Obama administration talks a lot about transparency, but these comments reflect a clear attempt to gut the DATA Act,” Senator Mark Warner told FedScoop. “DATA reflects years of bipartisan, bicameral work, and to propose substantial, unproductive changes this late in the game is unacceptable.”


The DATA Act, which had overwhelming approval in the House of Representatives, would essentially allow citizens to monitor federal spending. Right now, groups such as transparency advocate The Sunlight Foundation, argue that federal spending is nearly impossible to track.


Remember when taxpayers footed the $823,000 bill for a government agency to party it up in Las Vegas? The DATA Act, would, theoretically, make this type of accounting available in a format that could be monitored and analyzed by experts.


The powerful Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has made unusual efforts to centralize authority in making spending transparency. A proposal to gut the most important provisions of the DATA Act was leaked to the Data Transparency Coalition.


The leaked document reveals OMB wants to strip rules requiring standardized data from all agencies and would significantly delay the implementation.


“The stance taken by OMB in the leaked document does not reflect the administration’s stated values, but it does reflect OMB’s shoddy history of commitment to quality spending data.” writes the Sunlight Foundation.


I work with the White House on a lot of open government stories, so usually I can just email a few folks and get an explanation. On this, I’ve gotten nothing but a cold shoulder and boilerplate responses.


“The Administration believes data transparency is a critical element to good government, and we share the goal of advancing transparency and accountability of Federal spending. We will continue to work with Congress and other stakeholders to identify the most effective & efficient use of taxpayer dollars to accomplish this goal,” was the answer I got via email.


I followed up with my sources, who are usually quite forthcoming about open data. Nothing.


The thing is, the DATA Act has the support of transparency advocates who previously worked in the White House. “It’s an act of law that makes people do things,” says former US Inspector General Earl Devaney, who was tasked by Obama to oversee Data.gov. I interviewed him a few years ago when the DATA ACt was being debated. The benefits of transparency, he continues, “can be codified best by a piece of legislation like the DATA Act.”


Someone within the ranks of the White House, most likely at a senior level, is torpedoing a bill and no one seems to know why. If there was a legitimate reason, someone could just walk us through the arguments and we could have the debate out in the open.


We will continue to investigate and hope the White House is more forthcoming with the American people.


[Image Credit: Flickr user Daniela Vladimirova]





12:39 PM

Barack Obama’s presidency was supposed to usher in a new wave of data transparency. And, with the exception of the NSA, the administration h...

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Posted by at 12:39 PM 0 comments
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