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Friday, February 21, 2014
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fitbit-force

Fitness tracking company Fitbit has just issued a recall of their popular product the Fitbit Force, a wrist-borne activity tracker that follows their Fitbit Flex but adds a display and more advanced features. The Force was a popular item according to most estimates, and was often sold out after its launch late last year.


Complaints began to arise from users who were experiencing skin rash issues from sustained wear of the band, however. The company previously offered to replace devices with other trackers, or refund the money of those affected, but now it’s going all in on a full-scale recall. Here’s the official word from the company on the move:



We wanted to provide an update on our investigation into reports we have received about Force users experiencing skin irritation.


From the beginning, we’ve taken this matter very seriously. We hired independent labs and medical experts to conduct a thorough investigation, and have now learned enough to take further action. The materials used in Force are commonly found in many consumer products, and affected users are likely experiencing an allergic reaction to these materials.


While only a small percentage of Force users have reported any issue, we care about every one of our customers. We have stopped selling Force and are in the process of conducting a voluntary recall, out of an abundance of caution. We are also offering a refund directly to consumers for full retail price. We want to thank each and every member of the Fitbit community for their continued loyalty and support. We are working on our next-generation tracker and will announce news about it soon.


For additional information, please contact our support line at: 888-656-6381, or visit http://ift.tt/1bSqBZg.



Developing…





11:09 AM

Fitness tracking company Fitbit has just issued a recall of their popular product the Fitbit Force, a wrist-borne activity tracker that foll...

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samaltman

After nine years at the helm of Y Combinator, Paul Graham is stepping away from his leadership role at the famed Silicon Valley startup incubator. Taking over as Y Combinator’s president is Sam Altman, the entrepreneur who was part of the first YC startup class in 2005 and has worked as a part-time YC partner since 2011.


The transition will be finalized next month, when the current Winter 2014 Y Combinator batch holds its Demo Day. After that, Y Combinator’s day-to-day operations, such as reviewing applications and serving as a public face of YC — he will, however, continue to hold office hours with startups in the program.


In a phone interview this morning, Graham said that Altman has been tapped to lead Y Combinator into a new chapter of its growth. “Really, what’s going on is that YC needs to get bigger, and I am not really much of a manager. Sam Altman is,” he said.


Graham says he first approached Altman about taking over the reins at Y Combinator in mid-2012. “When I realized that it would be a good time to recruit a successor, he’s the only one I thought of that would be perfect to be the next president,” he said. “I never had a title like that, but now we’re going to create the title.”


Graham has often pointed to Altman as an example of an exceptional leader: In a 2009 essay, Graham named Sam Altman as one of the “five most interesting founders of all time,” alongside Steve Jobs, Cypress Semiconductor founder TJ Rodgers, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit. He wrote of the then 24-year-old Altman (whose web handle is Sama): “Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I’m advising startups. On questions of design, I ask ‘What would Steve do?’ but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask ‘What would Sama do?’”


Stepping back from day-to-day duties at Y Combinator will enable Graham to focus once again on writing. Before he started YC, Graham’s status as a thought leader was first cemented by his influential essays on topics such as technology and entrepreneurship. “I would like to go back to writing some more essays. When we first started YC, I could still write essays. But that was when it was just small. Then it got bigger and bigger. It’s not so much the time, but it’s the attention. It’s the thing you think about in the shower in the morning. Now I will be able to write essays again, and maybe about topics other than startups.”


At a fundamental level, though, Graham says that the YC experience for startups will largely be unchanged. “A big misconception is that Y Combinator is Paul Graham,” he said. This change is about building a future where the perception of YC is much bigger than one person or idea. “It’s rare for a company to last 100 years, but for a university it’s nothing. The reason for the difference, I think, is that product companies always have in their DNA some assumption about the kind of thing they’re building, and about their market, and that eventually ends up becoming false. But a university is just a nexus of people… people go there because of the people that are there,” he said. “Now, I’m not claiming that Y Combinator is going to last for centuries. But it could.”





11:09 AM

After nine years at the helm of Y Combinator , Paul Graham is stepping away from his leadership role at the famed Silicon Valley startup inc...

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secret-feature

Hot anonymous social network Secret has just pushed an update for its app that addresses a number of issues and improves performance. The new version allows users to subscribe or unsubscribe to any Secret post by swiping left, adds flagging of content that might be inappropriate, enables unlinking (more below on what that means), and speeds up the process of “hearting” posts. You can also now delete posts, including removing your own entirely or hiding those you don’t want to see from others.


These updates add a lot of highly requested features to Secret, which has attracted a lot of attention based on its sometimes scandalous, titillating and potentially newsmaking content. To date, however, it has offered only fairly limited functionality, with a basic stream and notifications when someone in your direct network shares something, plus updates pushed whenever someone comments or interacts with content you’ve shared. The ability to subscribe means you can keep up with threads and posts you find interesting, even if you don’t engage with them directly.


Flagging is another oft-mentioned feature when it comes to Secret criticism. Some have suggested that Secret might be used for bullying, and there is definitely some content I’ve seen that could be potentially damaging to the reputation or livelihood of certain individuals. Secret founders David Byttow and Chrys Bader previously promised to offer up more privacy controls for users, and this is a good example of exactly that kind of feature.


Another big improvement from a privacy perspective is the new Unlinking option, which allows you to remove “any association between you and all of your previous posts on our servers.” That means you won’t be able to comment on those posts as author, get notifications, or delete them, but it also means you can’t be tied to them at all.


UI improvements include the ability to swipe right to ‘love’ or ‘heart’ posts, and a way to not only delete your own posts, but also remove ones from others you don’t want to see in your stream.


This update also helps progress Secret’s efforts to foster communication between users. Subscriptions give users many more reasons to come back to the app, and to treat the network as more than just a Twitter-style stream of content that appears and disappears with a relatively short lifespan. One complaint I’ve heard about Secret from users who don’t necessarily have large, Silicon Valley-based address books to draw a pool of contacts from is that the stream doesn’t update frequently enough: letting users pay closer attention to the discussions going on within posts is a good way to make even smaller networks seem more active, too.


The update should be appearing shortly for all those with the app installed.





10:24 AM

Hot anonymous social network Secret has just pushed an update for its app that addresses a number of issues and improves performance. The ...

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BlackBerry is taking a page out of its messaging app rivals’ books today – or should I say STICKER BOOKS. Because it’s stickers I’m talking about: BBM is getting them, via a new BBM Shop being deployed that will live within the BBM app itself.


If you’re unfamiliar with stickers (not the actual adhesive things, which you presumably know about, but their digital equivalent), they’re basically big, elaborate emoticons that tend to be cute and can often involve licensed properties. BBM will indeed be partnering with brands on some of their sticker packs, as well as introducing some original characters. Each pack contains between 10 to 25 individual stickers, so that you can convey common emotions like “I fell on my skateboard and lost my eye and then fixed that with bandaids but I’m fine so thumbs up!”


The BBM Shop will offer Sticker packs for purchase, as well as some free collections including the old legacy BBM emoticons, blown up for additional emotional power. Both stickers and the shop launch today in a limited external beta, which means that you could conceivably be sticking it to your friends and family very soon.


BBM seems to be finally being treated by BlackBerry as a fully formed business line deserving of its own respect, and no doubt Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp has helped the company realize where its priorities probably should’ve been for the past five years. Stickers in BBM doesn’t mean the BlackBerry messenger gets sold tomorrow for $19.1 billion, but it does give the platform a feature common to many of its rivals, and a revenue stream (which could get more interesting, depending on what else gets sold or distributed through the BBM Store).





9:54 AM

BlackBerry is taking a page out of its messaging app rivals’ books today – or should I say STICKER BOOKS. Because it’s stickers I’m talking ...

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A French teen faces charges of "endangering the lives of others" over his use of a drone, which he sent skyward to capture impressive -- and seemingly harmless -- footage of the city Nancy. Eighteen-year-old Nans Thomas affixed an Internet-bought drone with a GoPro camera and then sent the contraption skyward. The ensuing video has been viewed more than 270,000 times already on YouTube. Alas, the would-be cinematic achievement runs afoul of a French law that prohibits such expeditions without both air authority permission and proper training.


9:53 AM

A French teen faces charges of "endangering the lives of others" over his use of a drone, which he sent skyward to capture impre...

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For the first time in its history, Berkeley saw an introductory computer science course with predominantly female students – 106 women vs. 104 men. This slight turnaround signals a promising trend in the male-dominated STEM world.


To be sure, Berkeley is an exception: according to the National Science Foundation, just 18.4% of computer science degrees were given to women (as of 2010), a trend that has been steadily decreasing since 1991, when it was a more impressive 29.6%.


In an email, Professor Dan Garcia, who taught the Berkeley course last Spring, tells us that he attributes the gender flip to a drastic transformation in the curriculum, including team-based project learning, opened-sourced materials, and opportunities to become research assistants. “The course & curriculum really does capture the “Beauty and Joy” of computing; learning can be a lot of fun,” he writes.


There is still a long way to go. Worldwide trends in the gender balance aren’t any better than the U.S. Recent data from UK universities, shows that while women do earn a majority of the degrees (60% vs. 40%), they vastly underperform their male counterparts in computer science (82% vs. 17%).


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The gap has its origins going back at least as early as high school. Statistics, biology, and calculus courses all have roughly equal gender balance, but in computer science, the pie chart skews heavily male. (chart by Exploring Computer Science, with data from the College Board).


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Garcia says there’s still barriers to keeping women interested throughout their entire tenure, such as “the lack of female role models in our industry, in our faculty, and in the graduate student population.” Even if they go on to advanced courses, there’s no guarantee they’ll get a job in the cut-throat tech industry.


Indeed, last Fall, men slightly outnumbered women (53% men), but the Spring enrollment is up again (50.6% women).


As one of the important feeder schools to Silicon Valley’s top companies, Berkeley is not a passive player. If it can succeed in dramatically increasing female enrollment, it could set a chain reaction that breaks down norms for future generations to come.


[Image Credit: Flickr User brainchildvn]





8:24 AM

For the first time in its history, Berkeley saw an introductory computer science course with predominantly female students – 106 women vs. ...

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I like backup batteries – I carry more than a few, and they all get used eventually, especially when I travel. But sometimes I worry: What will happen to my portable backup power in case of the The End of Days? Should the world be buried in a never-ending blizzard, or should a meteor impact block out the sun and bury everything in a three foot layer of ash, will my juice reserves still be operational?


With the Limefuel IP66 Rugged external battery, the answer is yes. The gadget is being crowdfunded on Kickstarter right now (and has already blown past its $30,000 goal in just a few days), offering up a maximum of 15,000 mAh in reserve power, depending on the configuration you choose. Other backup chargers out there offer up that much spare energy (including a number of low-cost options on Amazon), but none offer it in a case that’s quite so rugged.


The L150XR is waterproof, dirtproof, and crush or shock proof (not just ‘resistant,’ you’ll note), and is IP66 certified. For those who aren’t familiar with the ratings system for rugged devices, IP66 means that the pack is completely sealed against dust, and that it can with stand “powerful water jets” from any diretion, fo rup to three minutes, in addition to submersion. You’ll have to have all the flaps closed to ensure that level of protection, of course, but that’s still very impressive.


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Other features of the L150XR include that massive capacity, which is good for probably around 10 charges of your smartphone, as well as two charging ports that work simultaneously, and 2A input for faster charging of the backup battery itself (though it’ll still take between 9 and 15 hours to fill it up). It even has pass-through charging (meaning you can charge it and an attached device simultaneously), which is something people missed in the Mophie Powerstation XL I recently reviewed.


Boulder-based Limefuel was founded in November 2012, and already makes charging gadgets for mobile devices, so it stands a good chance of making its projected May 2014 ship date. Pre-orders start at $50 for a lower capacity, 10,400 mAh version, but the big 15,000 mAh edition starts at $70 (still cheaper than many top-end competitors, however).


You may not need the intense environmental resistance the L150XR provides, but on the other hand, there’s not good reason not to have it, either. And if you do back this, know that the end of time, when your phone is long gone and everyone you know has succumbed to high levels of particulate matter in the air, you’ll still have power left in the bank.





8:09 AM

I like backup batteries – I carry more than a few, and they all get used eventually, especially when I travel. But sometimes I worry: What w...

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Posted by at 8:09 AM 0 comments
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