New Technology News

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

SparkLabs Global announced today that John Pleasants, the former co-president of Disney Interactive and former COO of Electronic Arts, has joined the fund as an advisor. SparkLabs Global, which focuses on seed-stage startups around the world, also disclosed new investments of $250,000 each in Good.co and Zanbato.

Pleasants joined Disney Interactive after it acquired Playdom Inc., the online gaming company he founded, in July 2010 for $563 million. During his three years at Disney Interactive, Pleasants oversaw the launch of Disney Infinity.

In a statement, Pleasants said: “I’m excited to be part of SparkLabs Global because the depth of their experiences and global reach. The timing for such a seed-stage fund is ideal because of how rapidly innovation and great companies are being founded throughout the world, and many are looking for help to cross the Pacific and Atlantic which this team excels at.”

Based in San Francisco, Good.co is a career site that wants to help put the “human” back in human resources. The startup has raised $1.45 million from Norwest, Sparklabs Global, and other venture capital firms. Good.co users fill out a variety of surveys to help determine what their working style is, and whether or not they are a good fit with specific companies or managers.

The site’s goal is to enable job seekers find positions they will flourish at, which in turn helps employers save the hassle and expense of hiring people who end up leaving or getting fired within a few months. Good.co fits into the same niche as startups like 15five and Culture Amp, in that they all seek to increase employee retention rates boosting workplace morale.

Zanbato is a platform that helps institutional investors find opportunities in alternative asset classes. The company’s founders include Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of Palantir Technologies, Nico Sand, Dan Settel, and Kevin Leung.

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SparkLabs Global Adds Former Disney Interactive Exec As Advisor, Invests In Good.co And Zanbato

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SparkLabs Global announced today that John Pleasants, the former co-president of Disney Interactive and former COO of Electronic Arts , has...

Apple has been granted a patent by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider) that could fit in with its apparent plans to get into health and fitness tracking in a big way: the document describes a headphone system that builds in sensors to detect heart rate, temperature, perspiration and other info to track a user’s movements and activity levels.

The patent describes ways of integrating this monitoring system into both earbud and on-ear type headphone designs, with accelerometers and other sensors embedded in each. They could communicate data back to an attached iOS device via cord, or wirelessly using Bluetooth. Sensors might be housed either directly within the headphones themselves, or in a detachable component that can be removed when not in use. The patent also includes a description of a system for controlling playback via head movements using the headphone accelerometers, too.

While the patent was originally filed in 2008, the concept is much more practical in terms of being something we could see in real shipping product now. Just last week, we wrote about The Dash, a Kickstarter project that aims to put fitness sensors into headphones with a device shipping later this year. Breakthroughs in the miniaturization and availability of components have made this concept much more fiscally realistic at this stage.

Apple is reportedly moving into a greater focus on health and fitness with iOS 8, the upcoming version of its mobile OS. A previous report from 9to5Mac says that update could feature a new dedicated app called “Healthbook” that keeps track of a user’s vitals and activity data over time. Apple is also rumored to be working on a smartwatch, but if it were to integrate activity and health sensors into the headphones it ships with devices anyway, that would make it a lot easier to get users on board and engaged with the platform. On the other hand, it might lessen the appetite for any standalone tracker like an iWatch.

This is an older patent, and we haven’t heard much from the rumor mill about Apple working on such a solution, so don’t hold your breath for any kind of health tracking earbuds coming from Cupertino anytime soon. Still, it’s interesting to see yet another example of Apple’s interest in the health and fitness monitoring market, especially one that originated so early in the history of the trend.

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Apple Patents Headphones With Integrated Activity, Health And Fitness Tracking

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Apple has been granted a patent by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider ) that could fit in with its apparent plans to get into health and fitn...

The studio behind addictive matching puzzle game Candy Crush has begun the process of filing for its U.S. IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Re/Code reports. The UK company will look to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ‘KING’ ticker symbol should everything go according to plan.

Last year, Candy Crush was the top earning title on any mobile platform according to mobile app analytics firm Distimo, since it occupied a top spot on both iOS and Android all year. Candy Crush was released halfway through 2012, but it has managed to retain much of its momentum since then, which is impressive in the fickle casual games market. As Re/Code points out, however, King’s revenue declined between the third and fourth quarters of 2013, so it may need its next hit to come along sooner rather than later.

Currently, however, King’s games bring in 1.2 billion daily plays from 128 million daily active users according to the most recent numbers from the company, of which 73 percent come from mobile devices. Candy Crush has definitely been a defining moment for the company, but it has been in the casual games business since 2003, and in its IPO King cites its massive built-in player network (which includes 324 monthly active users in total) as a key competitive advantage.

Still, it’s hard to deny that Candy Crush has been the overwhelmingly dominant source of growth for King. In its IPO documents, the company reveals that it apparently grew from a profit loss of $1 million in the first quarter of 2012, to a profit gain of $269 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.

King admits in its list of potential risk factors that “a small number of games currently generate a substantial majority of our revenue,” and that even developing new games could just recirculate its existing audience instead of growing a new one, but also says it plans to strengthen its new game and intellectual property development pipeline, and expand its existing titles to new platform and geographies to retain its competitive edge.

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Candy Crush Maker King Files For U.S. IPO

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The studio behind addictive matching puzzle game Candy Crush has begun the process of filing for its U.S. IPO with the Securities and Exchan...

Monday, February 17, 2014

This week, we have two VCs who will be joining us in the studio (separately) for Ask A VC— Next World Capital’s Ben Fu and Translink Capital’s Jay Eum. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show.

At Next World Capital, Fu recently helped lead Datameer’s funding and is a board member of the company. Prior to joining Next World Capital, Fu was mostly recently a Principal with Scale Venture Partners, where he helped originate the firm’s investment in Box and uTest, and also worked closely with HubSpot, RingCentral, BrightRoll, and Jaspersoft. Prior to his six years in venture capital, he was a Senior Sales Engineer at Symantec and IMlogic, and worked in technical sales roles at Akamai.

JEum_Square Eum is a co-founder and Managing Director of TransLink Capital and has backed Carbonite (NASDAQ: CARB), Chartboost, Enterprise DB, Livescribe, nWay, Peel, Quixey, SoundHound, and YuMe (NYSE: YUME). He is also responsible for supporting TransLink’s portfolio companies with their customers and partners primarily in Korea.

Most recently, Eum was the head of Samsung Ventures America, the venture investment arm of Samsung, and helped lead their U.S.-based investments. His investments at Samsung Ventures include AnalogTech (NASDAQ: AATI), Athena Semiconductor (acquired by Broadcom), Continuous Computing (acquired by RadiSyS), DivX (NASDAQ: DIVX), InPhi (NASDAQ: IPHI), Intellon (NASDAQ: ITLN), MontaVista (acquired by Cavium), Pure Digital (acquired by Cisco), Sandbridge (acquired by Qualcomm), SiBeam (acquired by Silicon Image), Techwell (NASDAQ: TWLL) and Teknovus (acquired by Broadcom). Jay also led investments in GCT Semiconductor and Intematix.

Please send us your questions for Fu and Eum here or put them in the comments below!

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Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Next World Capital’s Ben Fu And Translink Capital’s Jay Eum

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This week, we have two VCs who will be joining us in the studio (separately) for Ask A VC— Next World Capital’s Ben Fu and Translink Capital...

Facebook on Thursday added custom gender options for users to identify themselves other than "male" and "female." Users now can identify themselves as bigender, androgynous, cisgender, or in one of more than 50 ways. The move initially applies only to the company's 159 million monthly users in the U.S. Facebook plans to provide the additional options to users outside the U.S. as well, but it did not reveal a time line. Facebook teamed up with several leading LGBT groups to compile a list of gender identities.

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New Gender Identity Options Let Facebook Users Be Themselves

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Facebook on Thursday added custom gender options for users to identify themselves other than "male" and "female." User...

With sites like Codecademy and Stack Overflow, there are plenty of ways to learn programming and get help online — but there’s nothing like a live human being who can answer your questions and look at your code, according to the co-founders of a new website called HackHands.

One of those co-founders, Forest Good, described the site as an “Uber for programming” — in other words, it allows you can get programming help at the moment that you need it. The company has built out a global network of mentors, so Good said you should be able to visit the site at any time, describe the problem that you’re facing, and then get connected to a mentor within 15 minutes. The two of you are connected via video chat (powered by TokBox), and you can also work on the code together in a collaborative text editor (or just share the relevant screen on your computer).

Good said that there’s a “spectrum” of users that HackHands is targeting. On one end, there are people who have never coded before. On the other end, there are people who have just graduated from a programming bootcamp. Wherever they are on that spectrum, they’ll probably have moments when there are concepts or problems that they can’t figure out on their own, so they’ll appreciate talking to an expert.

For now, HackHands is focused on Ruby on Rails, and Good said all of its mentors are vetted based on both their communication and programming skills. (“I have a personal relationship with all of our experts, and we have some plans to scale that as well,” he said.)

Co-founder Geraldo Ramos said the goal is to offer something that’s both fast and affordable, with easy-to-understand pricing. HackHands charges $1 per minute for each session, although there’s a five-minute grace period where either party can back out without any charge — if, for example, the expert realizes that they can’t help with a specific problem or topic after all. Customers will also be able to tip based on their satisfaction. To offer further incentive for expert participation, HackHands will create leaderboards where the most active mentors are both celebrated and financially rewarded.

HackHands was created by 6PS Group, a web development agency that trying to move to more of an incubator model — if HackHands and subsequent projects are successful, 6PS plans to spin them off into separate companies.

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Though Its Network Of Mentors, HackHands Offers Live Help For New Programmers

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With sites like Codecademy and Stack Overflow , there are plenty of ways to learn programming and get help online — but there’s nothing lik...

Take a Lite-Brite and turn it up to 11. Add Bluetooth, tuck in animation support, and let people draw their designs via smartphone. What do you get? Something like PIXEL.

The (aptly named) PIXEL is a display built specifically for showing off pixel art. A pixel art photo frame, if you will.

Want an animated loop of Sonic tapping his foot atop your mantle? Sure. An endless chain of Marios coming out of a pipe in your bathroom? Okay! Want Pac-Man to waka-waka around the screen until the end of time? Hell, why not.

When you want to change up the photo, you’d just pop open the app on your smartphone and draw away. Want to do something a bit more complicated — like animation? Make your design in your favorite editing app, then transfer it to the PIXEL over USB or Bluetooth. If you’re drawing a still, you’d send it a PNG; if you’re doing animation, you’d send it a GIF.

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PIXEL has raised $20,000 on Kickstarter so far, having originally set their goal at just half that. This is actually the second version of this product — the team raised $50k for a slightly-less-pretty version back in early 2013.

If you’re able to squeeze in and grab one of the few remaining early-bird deals, a fully assembled PIXEL will set you back $260. After those are gone, the rest will go for $300. Alternatively, you can save a few bucks by opting for the DIY Kit version at $220 — but it’s a bring-your-own-soldering-iron type of thing, so make sure you know what you’re getting into.

If you’d told me a few weeks ago that I’d soon be wanting a pixel art photo frame, I’d have responded by saying “What the hell is a pixel art photo frame?”

Two weeks later, I’m trying to figure out which pixel art photo frame I want.

Just last week, Darrell pointed out the Game Frame, a strikingly similar concept that has raised $60k on Kickstarter with nearly 3 weeks left in its campaign.

pixel gameframe

PIXEL and Game Frame are parallels in many way, but each has its own strengths. Game Frame comes with art from the much-adored pixel artist eBoy, while PIXEL comes with art from 10 different artists. PIXEL has a higher resolution (1024 pixels vs. Game Frame’s 256), but Game Frame uses some clever optics voodoo to make each individual LED into a massive, evenly-lit square pixel. Each ends up having its own totally different visual style.