Mobile Ideas

May 21 2012

TC/Gadgets Webcast: Live From Disrupt NYC

Category: Disrupt,Gadgets,gadgets webcast,TC,video — redwinner @ 2:14 am

This week we recorded live from the show floor at Disrupt NYC. We sat through 24 hours straight of hot-rod hacking at the Hackathon and now we’re preparing for the main show and, most important, the brand new Hardware Alley where we’ll have loads of great hardware start-ups for you guys to check out.

In this episode we talk about Disrupt, the new EVO 4G LTE, and the rumors of the four-inch iPhone. We also talk about the “thumb touches anywhere on the screen” iPhone chestnut, how good the battery life is on some Android phones, the late night Nerf wars at the hackathon, and my horrible sausage fingers.

Tune in today and look for another episode next week from the show floor.

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May 21 2012

From A Disrupt Win To $18M In Funding And 4M+ Downloads, Soluto Tells All

Category: Disrupt,soluto,Startups,TC,tomer dvir,where they are now — redwinner @ 2:01 am

Disrupt NYC 2012 begins in approximately 12 hours (tickets here).

But it’s been two years since Soluto, the software that will make your computer simply run better, took home the Disrupt Cup at the TC Disrupt NYC Battlefield in 2010. The company entered the competition with a total of $7.8 million, and after walking away with the $50,000 round, secured another $10.2 million in Series B from Index Ventures for a total of $18 million in funding under their belts.

It’s been a wild ride, starting with about 400 users as the then-stealth company stepped on stage, and only a few days later they were dealing with hundreds of thousands of users. In fact, CEO and co-founder Tomer Dvir said that the platform almost had trouble dealing with all the data being sent back by the flood of new users.

But, in his own words, “Disrupt is one of the best ways to release.”

Here’s the interview I had with Mr. Dvir in its entirety:

TechCrunch: What was it like to launch your product on stage at Disrupt?

Soluto: The amazing part was that we had about 400 users when we launched. It took a really long time to develop the product because it’s complicated and hardcore. It’s something that sits deep inside the OS. That 400 users was mostly friends and family and people we asked to install the product.

But just one minute after we came off the stage we turned it on, and suddenly were bombarded with quantities of users we couldn’t imagine before that. It was way beyond anything we were prepared for. It’s not just jumping into deep waters, it’s being pulled down into the deep water.

We weren’t really ready for that. We thought we were, but reality struck and we realized we had never learned to scale before. The challenge with our system is that every user’s machine starts sending us data. We were flooded with way more data than we had imagined. We knew that coming to Disrupt would get us some traction, and we expected maybe tens of thousands of users.

It ended up being around 50 times more than that.

It was a pretty awesome experience, launching on stage at Disrupt. We went from being with less than 1,000 users to several hundreds of thousands in a matter of days or maybe a week. We went from being nameless — no one knew what we were doing — to being known. We felt like stars at the show. People got connected to the idea, to the vision.

TechCrunch: You guys obviously won at Disrupt. It’s been two years, so what’s happened since, and how did Disrupt shape the past two years of your company history?

Soluto: I guess we learned what it means to be a company. Without Disrupt, it would have been the same growth but much, much slower. We might have gotten press here or there, but suddenly Disrupt was like a leap. A shortcut. I can’t even estimate how much time and money it would have taken to get to that state as quickly as we did.

Our biggest challenge since then has been scaling. We had to understand how to grow and not gradually, because on Day One it was already crazy.

We wanted to grow the company and get the right people. We got some amazing support, kept developing, and kept progressing and re-writing stuff.

We also had to learn how to answer reporters. We had to accelerate all processes in a company including growing our talent. We were around 20 people at launch, and now we’re at 50 employees.

Outside of the technical part, it was the first touch of the company with the press and blogosphere. The New York Times approached us. Everyone was suddenly approaching us. On Day One we were swimming with the big fish, and dealing with the press was just another thing we had to learn quickly.

TechCrunch: Do you think that winning Disrupt made it easier for you to get funded and/or bring in new talent?

Soluto: Winning or participating won’t get you funded, but it gets you the exposure you need to get there. If you have a good company you can get funded, but Disrupt works as a good foot in the door because you aren’t so nameless. VC’s meet a thousand companies a year, and after launching or winning at Disrupt you become one of the more interesting hundred or fifty, instead of just one of thousands.

TechCrunch: It seems that launching your product on a stage at a huge conference like Disrupt might be a little intimidating. Were you worried or do you think it served the company well?

Soluto: It may not fit everyone, but it was an awesome experience for us. There are several advantages.

The first is that you have a concrete deadline. It’s a good thing for a company to have something you can’t move. You can always move PR and even a TechCrunch post, but Disrupt is a freaking competition which people are trying to get into and people have bought tickets to. It’s going to happen no matter what, so you need to be ready on time.

In terms of timing, we came close to being able to release a product a few months before Disrupt and then we heard about the conference and it all aligned. It was perfect.

I don’t know if I would postpone a release for three months if it wasn’t the perfect opportunity.

Getting an on-stage launch also sends a company into the extreme. It forces you to be ready for an unexpected amount of users.

There’s also the advice you’re getting. Having Marissa Mayer and Michael Arrington see your product and give feedback, and sometimes tear it apart, it only pushes the entire company to get some awesome results on time.

It’s one of the best ways to release, I can’t think of anything to compare.

TechCrunch: I find the Battlefield to be intensely emotional. Obviously a lot of good came out of it for Soluto, but how did you feel up there on stage?

Soluto: All of us are going to remember it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It took two and a half years to release the product. Working so long and putting it out into the world in a single day is an amazing experience.

TechCrunch: Care to share any user/download numbers with us?

Soluto: Well, currently we have two products. The original product was a local download, and since launch we’ve hit 3 million downloads. We’re not sharing numbers around our web product right now, but it’s been only four and a half months and we’re definitely impressed with the numbers. We’ve really had no paid marketing, ads, or PR, so we’re certainly pleased.

TechCrunch: What advice would you give to people about to present their products at Disrupt NYC 2012?

Soluto: Acknowledge that you’re sitting in front of senior people that see good and bad companies. You have to be humble. You’re listening to people who have a shallow view of the product, but they have instincts and insights, so you must be in listening mode.

Don’t think you have all the answers. It’s fine if you don’t. Try to give your insight but really, really listen and see if there’s something they might say which is smart. Some of the smartest people around are the ones who listen.

We saw many companies present before us and they were looking for fast answers. We thought about that and felt that it wasn’t the way. Listen, be open, and make sure they understand the service and product that you’ve shown and then it’s up to you to think about the different angles.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

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May 21 2012

How Android Developers Can Thrive With Google Play

Category: Advertising,apps,Mobile,mobiles,Startups,TC — redwinner @ 1:39 am

Craig Palli is vice president of Client Services & Business Development at Fiksu (@fiksu), which helps brands boost iOS and Android mobile app ranking and secure large volumes of loyal users. You can find him on Twitter @cpalli.

Thriving with Google Play
Apple’s planned phase-out of the UDID has introduced considerable angst in the app marketing community. The UDID provides a standard, widely supported method for attributing performance of advertising campaigns. Unfortunately, there’s no single solution to replace the UDID and it appears the iOS market is fragmenting, with multiple technologies vying for developer attention. This is making it difficult for app developers to allocate their resources.

With all this uncertainty, some marketers are looking more closely at Google Play to fuel their continued growth in mobile. Unfortunately, many marketers are sidestepping Android development based on several published reports indicating that Apple’s iOS monetizes significantly better. Savvy marketers know that high-level statistics often mask a much more complex reality. While we’d never suggest that the iOS market be ignored, once you do the math you may find that Android represents a much more compelling (and profitable) opportunity than you thought.

Here’s why and how you can thrive with Google Play.

Bigger yet cheaper…
For sheer size, the Android platform has no equal. According to Nielsen, Android has more than 48 percent of the smartphone market, versus 32 percent for iOS. Google indicates there are 850,000 Android device activations per day and total Google Play app downloads have reached more than 15 billion. App search firm Xyologic reports that in March 2012 there were 617 million app downloads on Android versus 393 million app downloads on iPhone in the U.S.

Android also provides more advertising inventory, and at a lower cost. A recent analysis Fiksu did of available impressions concluded Android is able to deliver 12 percent more ad inventory than iOS. Further, the estimated cost of those impressions was 40 percent lower.

Android Advantages
Android also has a number of practical advantages over iOS that make it a great environment for market testing and quick rollout. Since there is no app approval process, you can quickly iterate your design and determine what features or offers work best. Updating an app can take weeks with iOS due to Apple’s submission and approval process.

In some ways, Google Play is also a more accessible market. Competition in the iOS sphere is extremely intense. Marketing any app is challenging, but the explosion of new apps and changes in Apple policy have made breaking a new app into the iOS market a much tougher hill to climb. Xyologic reports they “have seen the momentum of iOS for app publishers slow down considerably in the last 5 months. Several key performance indicators we track are down, especially the amount of new apps which make it to the Top 100. We view this as evidence of the new challenges the Apple environment puts on app marketers. ”

Unlike iOS, where rank is critical and often expensive to attain, Google Play has a strong search engine that makes it easier for interested users to find your app. Our experience is that 80% of the organic users in Google Play come from searches.

Finally, Android also solves the problem of marketing attribution, since it provides referrer information that anonymously identifies the source of a download. This is a single industry-wide solution that provides reliable data, yet balances the need for user privacy. You know exactly where your ad dollars go. You know exactly what is and isn’t working. And there’s none of the data ambiguity or user experience issues seen with some iOS tracking solutions.

What About Monetization?
Of course, the big concern about Android is monetization. There’s clearly a gap: an oft-quoted post last December by Peter Farago of Flurry indicates Google Play monetization is roughly 24 percent of that of iOS. It’s important to note that the gap is closing. Flurry notes that the biggest factor behind the gap is payment mechanisms, and expects this situation to improve with the integration of Google Wallet and Google Checkout. Evidence of improvement has already surfaced: app research firm Distimo indicates it saw an 80 percent improvement in average daily revenues for the top 200 US apps between December 2011 and March 2012. Furthermore, in a post titled Treat Android as a first-class citizen… it’ll pay off! TinyCo noted that Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU) for Google Play and iTunes is about the same as iOS, and found that Amazon performance surpassed that of iOS by a significant margin.

Beating the Averages
One problem with the monetization statistics on Google Play is that they cover the “average” experience. We’ve seen that if you target users effectively and you employ the right development strategy, Android apps convert and generate loyal users at roughly the same rate as iOS apps. More significantly, they do so at a lower acquisition cost.

In Q1, Fiksu conducted a study of six clients running the same apps on both iOS and Android to determine differences in acquisition cost and loyal usage conversion rates. (Loyal users are those who return repeatedly to an app and are most likely to monetize.) The cost of acquiring an install was 24 percent lower for Android than iOS. Given the monetization issues noted above we expected a higher conversion from installs to loyal users for iOS. Instead, what we saw was that once a user was acquired, the loyalty rate was exactly the same for both platforms. The only difference was that the cost of acquiring those users on Android was 24 percent lower.

There are, however some exceptions where iOS does beat out Android. For example tablet based shopping apps are an area where iOS excels. Other than the Kindle Fire, there is no Android-based tablet that can challenge the iPad. Further, payment processing is stronger on iOS. Fiksu data shows that for such apps loyalty is far stronger on iOS. However, these issues are being addressed in the market and those shopping apps that move to Android now will have a significant early mover advantage since Play’s algorithm rewards total downloads and usage.

How to Thrive with Google Play
It’s clear that there are many apps that are struggling in the Google Play environment, yet some are doing extremely well. Here are factors that we’ve found have made for a successful Android implementation:

Good design has its rewards: A key to rising above the averages is simply to design for Android. Many developers port iOS apps to Android as an afterthought, resulting in a sub-optimal or even buggy user experience. ESPN for example, shared during a recent webinar that their ported apps originally did not perform to expectations. When they took the approach of developing specifically for each environment, they found that performance was on par with iOS. Another example is game developer TinyCo. who specifically ascribes its aforementioned success with Android to taking “the Android pledge” to treat Android as a first class citizen. The result was that TinyCo doubled its market opportunity.

Prioritize device and OS support: With the large number of form factors in Android, developers can find themselves stretched trying to determine what devices to support. Fortunately, a subset of roughly 20 devices makes up about 80 percent of the volume for Android, so the problem is more manageable than one might suspect. Similarly, more than 90 percent of Android devices are addressed by supporting OS version 2.2 and later.

Look forward: In hockey, there’s a saying “skate where the puck is going” (not where it is now. ) The monetization issue that has received so much press is being addressed as more consumers adopt Google payment mechanisms. As noted above, there are already indications that this situation is improving rapidly. In addition, Google’s rank algorithm benefits longevity yielding an early mover advantage for apps debuting on Play sooner.

Leverage lower customer acquisition costs: The enormous scrum of developers scrapping over the iOS marketplace has resulted in higher acquisition costs. Android presents an opportunity to develop market share and test new strategies at a lower cost.

Best Practices
The following best practices will maximize the return on an Android implementation. Here are some practical tips for success:

Maximize search potential in your app title: identify your most successful keywords and make sure to include them in your app title. In fact, this is so critical to success (potentially 80 to 100 places in your search ranking), that you should seriously consider removing your app name from your title and focus your description on the best keywords. Include the app name in the body of the app description – users will still be able to find it by name. Unlike iOS, the body description is searched under Google Play.
Use, but don’t overuse, keywords: try to use the best keywords at five times the body of your app description. This can affect search ranking from 10 to 20 places. Anything over five times has no additional benefit, so don’t overdo it.
Test your search parameters: the above recommendations are guidelines based on accumulated experience, but search results can vary based on many factors.
Steady efforts work best: Google Play’s ranking algorithm is tilted towards long term user acquisition – apps that acquire and retain satisfied users are rewarded with higher ranks. Advertising campaigns should be run over a longer term and sustained over two to three months, as opposed to the short bursts of activity often seen in the iOS market.
Use closed loop attribution and target long term users: since retained users have an important impact in ranking, use closed loop marketing to ensure you are identifying and utilizing ad sources that bring loyal users.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and test market your strategy with Android. You can apply these learnings to your iOS versions and reduce your costs and risks.

Conclusion
The ecosystem continues to provide an unprecedented growth opportunity for mobile app brands. While there are several options that iOS-centric developers may explore to maintain their growth in the wake of UDID deprecation, perhaps the biggest opportunity has nothing to do with iOS at all. Android offers a bigger overall market, increased amounts of marketing insight, lower user acquisition costs and, in many cases, users who are at least as engaged as their iOS counterparts. Perhaps it’s time that we all thrived with Google Play.

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May 21 2012

Silicon Valley Can Do Better Than Facebook

Category: Facebook,Opinion,TC — redwinner @ 1:00 am

Editor’s Note: Alexander Haislip is a marketing executive with cloud-based server automation startup ScaleXtreme and the author of Essentials of Venture Capital. Follow him on Twitter @ahaislip.

Congratulations to Facebook for going public. Congratulations to the employees that are now millionaires. Congratulations to the founders who are now billionaires. Congratulations to the bankers, lawyers and investors who have added to their already considerable wealth. You’ve grasped the brass ring we’re all reaching for.

Yet the company that’s been created isn’t what I want from Silicon Valley.

Let’s lay aside for a minute the foibles of the founders: Mark Zuckerberg’s hacking Harvard’s servers and the email accounts of journalists, his decision to “fuck” the Winklevii “in the ear” and Eduardo Saverin’s ridiculous tax dodge. Let’s forget about the Facebook Beacon “mistake” or the comment censorship thing. Let’s forget about the privacy implications. Just take anything that makes you queasy about the company and put it in a box for one minute to consider Facebook objectively.

Facebook sells advertising—it may be the most effective advertising platform since Google, or not—but that’s not the best use of the brightest minds of our generation. Advertising doesn’t improve our balance of trade. It doesn’t lift people out of poverty. It doesn’t employ the modestly skilled. It doesn’t extend life expectancies or take away pain. It doesn’t improve our standard of living.

Silicon Valley is at its best when it uses its unique combination of talent and capital to advance society, to create even better tools for creation, to unlock the potential of people not just here, but across the globe.

Where Facebook Falls Short

There’s an old gambling saying that if you don’t know who is the sucker at the table, it’s you. The same might be said of online businesses these days: if you don’t know what’s been sold, it’s you. Facebook sells your content, your connections, your time, your attention, your personal information to advertisers. The company is only a conduit for what you do. Its value, set by the market on Thursday, is a reflection of the worth of what you’ve contributed and created.

Yes, each time you sign in to Facebook, you’re going to work for Mark Zuckerberg. Each time you update your status, post a video, check in or just sit and watch everybody else do it, you line his pockets.

And I wouldn’t mind that a bit. In fact, I would applaud it, were the product of these hours more profitable.

The fact is that much of the time spent on Facebook is wasted. The company says in its S-1 that users spent an average of 175 million hours per day on Facebook in February 2012. That’s a lot. Compare that to say, the 100 million hours Clay Shirky and a researcher at IBM calculate it took to create all of Wikipedia.

What’s Wikipedia worth? I think it’s priceless, but back in 2008, Business Insider estimated that if it were to become a commercial enterprise, Wikipedia would be worth $7 billion. Say it’s just half that—adjust for the Henry Blodget factor—and you’d see that the value of contributions to Facebook, were they as valuable as the time spent contributing to Wikipedia, ought to be worth $6.125 billion per day.

But it’s not. Contributing to Wikipedia increases the availability of the world’s knowledge. “Liking” Starbucks contributes only to the knowledge advertisers can use to better target you.

It’s much better to watch television. Television, like Facebook, gets paid by advertisers for your time.When advertisers pay TV channels, the money flows to many different pockets. There’s the TV stars, of course, but there’s also the crew: the craft-services, the set designers, the costumers, the line producers, the sound engineers, electricians, gaffers, writers and key grips. All the people who make the TV show get a slice of that advertising dollar and these are good jobs, many unionized, that don’t require a fancy Stanford computer science degree. And each person employed making TV shows pays taxes and pumps their salaries back into the economy.

And the product of their work can be exported. When the U.S. sells movies and TV shows abroad it improves our balance of trade and helps make the products we import, such as iPads and oil, less expensive.

When advertisers pay Facebook, the money goes into the pockets of Facebook shareholders, employees and computer makers. Most of Facebook’s stock is held by a single person and only a small, select group of highly skilled programmers can secure a spot on the payroll. The wealth created by Facebook gets concentrated into the hands of a few—some of whom have refused to pay taxes on their gains—instead of being recycled into the greater economy. And the computer makers that supply Facebook rely on components imported from other countries, sending capital abroad and weakening our balance of trade.

Facebook’s rise is great for Zuck, but unless you’re among a privileged few, it isn’t good for you.

There’s one other important difference between television and Facebook. Great television approaches art. I’ll remember the drama of The Sopranos and the laughs from 30 Rock long after I’m done looking at those pictures of your niece’s baby.

We Can Do Better

The Facebook fans are quick to defend the company’s value. It empowers connection! It brings people closer to each other! You can’t put a price on that! It helped organize the Arab Spring, for goodness sake.

Facebook enhances loose connections and keeps you in contact with the people you wouldn’t invest the time to call or write an email to. Seeing pictures of a friend’s ultrasound may be priceless, but the value comes from you, your connection to the friend and the miracle of life, not the service that delivers the image. Facebook did help people organize in advance of the Arab Spring, but so did Twitter, email, SMS and many other vectors. And there certainly were revolutions before Facebook and will likely be revolutions long after Facebook powers down its last server.

Facebook isn’t bad. It is just a low-value use of time that doesn’t contribute much to the economy beyond enriching the rich. What more valuable things could be done with the time, energy, effort, creativity and capital invested in its making and daily usage?

There are startups doing amazing things here in Silicon Valley still. Sure there are the electric cars, robot butlers, space rockets and a bunch of hyper-ambitious projects. But you can have a positive contribution to the economy and the world without curing cancer or feeding starving people in Africa (there is a venture firm in San Francisco working on sustainable agriculture if you do want to make a difference in the subcontinent). I’m often impressed by people working to prevent outbreaks of nasty viruses with rapid vaccination development or others creating systems to radically improve the energy efficiency of large buildings. These companies’ goals are obtainable, their achievement would be beneficial and the products would be the world’s envy.

With Facebook public, perhaps the past half-decade of social networking, casual games, virtual worlds, MMORPGs, app stores, avatars and “pokes” will give way to a renaissance of startup companies that make real products of tangible value that employ regular people. Such a return to Silicon Valley’s roots could reinvigorate the American economy and once again put this unique place at the heart of human progress.

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May 20 2012

Introducing Our 2012 Disrupt NYC Hackathon Winners: Thingscription, PoachBase, And Practikhan!

Category: Events,TC,TC Disrupt Hackathon — redwinner @ 10:26 pm

After nearly 24 hours of fighting fatigue and crafting code, our Disrupt NY 2012 Hackathon is finally drawing to a close. Not a moment too soon — I think some of our hackers are about ready to keel over at this point.

Nevertheless, we just got an eyeful of 92 projects that our wonderful hackers have been slaving away on through the night, but only three teams will be able to show off their work on the main Disrupt stage this Wednesday afternoon. In addition to that, our API sponsors — about.me, CityGrid, Microsoft BizSpark, Mobli and OpenTok — have offered up prizes of their own to the groups that made best use of their services, so there will be plenty of winners here today.

Our panel of judges have carefully sifted through these 92 submissions, but who exactly decided the fates of these hackers? The panel of judges include Tarikh Korula of Mahaya, Christina Cacioppo of Union Square Ventures, Kip Voytek of MDC Partners, David Tisch of TechStars, Dinesh Moorjani of Hatch Labs, Nora Abousteit of Kollabora, and Dave Jagoda of Andreessen Horowitz.

So, without further ado, meet our newest Hackathon winners!

Thingscription

A service that tracks user impressions to figure out what products to offer as a recurring subscription to customers.

PoachBase

A recruiting service that uses Crunchbase data to determine which startups may soon fold, and who’s worth swiping away from them.

Practikhan

A platform that lets teachers create their own online quizzes to share with their students.

Can’t get enough of the Hackathon? I don’t blame you — here are a few more photos of the closing festivities to tide you over until next time.

Click to view slideshow.

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May 20 2012

Twitter Back Up In Pakistan After An Order From The Prime Minister

Category: TC — redwinner @ 9:56 pm

A temporary solution to the drama that unfolded this morning when Twitter was blocked in Pakistan — some believe over representations of the Prophet Mohammed and Twitter’s refusal to block these images; and some believe while it was testing an image filtering service. Whatever it was, the site is now back up –after an order from Prime Minister.

Pakistan’s Express Tribune is reporting that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made the decision after the site was down for the day on a mandate from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. But it is still not clear why the authorities shut down access in the first place.

As we reported earlier today, some reports — still unconfirmed directly by any Pakistani authorities (we have reached out on this) — said that the government was concerned about images of the Prophet that were being tweeted as part of an activist campaign in support of the freedom of expression among Muslims and in Muslim countries.

A move to quash sites that facilitate Muslim activism is not unprecedented, so it is very plausible here. However, others have raised an issue about whether it might be something else: they allege that authorities were testing an image-blocking service. In other words: potentially equally restrictive, but different from the specific Prophet drawing campaign.

The whole event sparked off a huge amount of negative response both within Pakistan and further afield. In the country itself, more technically savvy / better equipped users were able to continue accessing the site: it still worked on the Opera Mini browser via the mobile Internet, according to several reports. But otherwise, access across the country was denied.

Since we still don’t know why access was denied in the first place, it’s hard to say whether the public outcry had a role to play here. Nevertheless, it’s a very encouraging sign when you see people coming together so quickly around an issue.

We’ll continue trying to figure out what exactly happened and for those in Pakistan returning to the Twitterverse, welcome back!

[Image: TakeBackPakistan, Flickr]

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May 20 2012

New Project, Roominate, Offers A Fully-Wired Dollhouse For Kids

Category: diy,Gadgets,kickstarter,projects,TC — redwinner @ 9:29 pm

Teaching kids – especially little girls – about electronics is a hard job. First, there’s the electricity. Then there’s the sense that soldering, wiring, and lining up LEDs is considerably less fun than watching Tangled. This project, called Roominate, aims to change the way girls think about electricity.

The kit consists of a set of tiny furniture with built-in wires and switches. You can wire up your dollhouse however you like, adding lamps and switches. $49 gets you one regular room and $95 gets you a “duplex.”

One Roominate Kit includes: 2 wooden walls, 1 wooden floor, interchangeable wooden building pieces to construct at least 3 pieces of furniture, 1 complete circuit, and assorted decorations to get you started. A Deluxe Decoration Pack includes: tons of additional decorations so that you can adorn your creation over and over again!

They’ve hit $13,000 of a $26,000 target and if it helps little girls think more clearly about science and electronics, I’m totally backing it. The project ends on June 16 so there’s still plenty of time to slowly replace the Barbie Dream House with a decidedly more DIY dollhouse.

Project Page

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May 20 2012

Watch The Hackathon Presentations Live!

Category: TC — redwinner @ 9:05 pm

A mere 24 hours ago, coders started hacking with hopes and dreams of building the next great app or program. Many participants stayed overnight, fueled on gumption and Red Bull. Others cut out early, apparently satisfied with their creation. But they’re all back now, waiting to present on our massive Disrupt stage. Watch it live!

Update: The presentations are over! The judges are deliberating and will soon announce the winner. Standby.

Click to view slideshow.

More Hackathon Coverage!

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May 20 2012

What’s Big, Blue, Hopes To Save Our Planet And Is Not Facebook?

Category: TC — redwinner @ 9:00 pm

There have been a lot of complaints voiced over the last couple of years from people who wish entrepreneurs would address the world’s “real problems” or do “something bigger” rather than create “me too” applications and websites. I’m not a fan of that sentiment but that’s really a whole other post I need to write. In all honesty, there’s a place and need in the world for all sorts of business visions – big and small.

And after watching a “big vision” TED talk from a few years ago, it has changed my life. Jane McGonigal presented this idea: Millions of people around the world are becoming gaming and computer virtuosos. Through video games, people journey to alternate “worlds” where they have epic journeys and become heroes. What if we tapped into that talent and desire for a world changing quest to change our own? What if we changed the idea behind gaming completely to create games that directly had a real world impact?

While at a recent Wild-Aid fundraising event, I was thumbing through the live auctions and found a company called The Blu that is trying to do just that. Created by Academy Award winner Andy Jones (for Avatar), a digital whale named “Big Blu” takes followers on a journey through a digital ocean that the creators hope will teach us all about our underwater counterparts and why we might want to save whales and their underwater friends. I was intrigued, and the whale, in fact, sold for a whopping $10,000. Proceeds go towards both the team behind Big Blu Wild-Aid’s outreach efforts.

Having been so enthralled by the concept, I was determined to meet the founders, so I sent this tweet:

Within 10 minutes, they were at my table. We chatted about the broader goals of The Blu and we talked about Jane’s vision, which they shared. The Blu is a beautiful digital ocean with revenue sharing for both the digital artists that create the fish and ocean life and the partner ocean conservation organizations around the world that support the educational mission. It’s not exactly a game, but it is a real-time immersive experience that by itself is a big idea and can become much bigger.

Revenue sharing with non-profits through games is not a new idea. Zynga raised millions for Haiti and has had other such fund-raising initiatives behind their games, but this is one of the first games/platforms that I’ve seen that specifically is targeting changing something tangible in the real world, and where the product experience is truly aligned with that mission.

Towards the end of our discussion, it occurred to me that they should talk to Dr. Sylvia Earle. She’s a personal hero of mine and this seemed right up her alley with what she’s trying to accomplish. Dr. Sylvia Earle won the TED Prize for her wish to protect our oceans. Sylvia has spent over 50 years exploring and working on ocean exploration and conservation. She spearheaded the Google Ocean initiative to help go beneath the water’s surface in order to help give the world access to what she sees on her regular ocean dives, so that we can help her in her quest to save it.

They were already on it; I had somehow stumbled into a breaking story.

Sylvia teamed up with Sir Richard Branson, Jackson Browne, Dr. Rita Colwell, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Graeme Kelleher, Sven Lindblad, Her Majesty Queen Noor, Nainoa Thompson, Ted Turner, Captain Don Walsh, Neil Young and Gigi Brisson (the founder) to create the Ocean Elders, a group based off Richard Branson’s idea of elders who help guide world leaders and world issues, but specifically focused on the ocean.

These elders are going to get on The Blu, June 8th, in honor of World Oceans Day and interact with members during the launch (remember the digital whale?) into the digital wild. You can ask live questions and join them on their mission to save the ocean.

From their press release they are going to send out after this post:

What: OceanElders, WildAid, and theBlu.com are holding a global online celebration at theblu.com, in honor of World Oceans Day, June 8, 2012. Entitled, “If You Love The Ocean, Download It!” Interested parties are encouraged to start registering immediately to ensure best interaction with the celebrities and leading ocean advocates expected to participate.

I’m so excited about this. I’ve downloaded The Blu and it runs as a screen saver so you are constantly reminded of our beautiful and bountiful ocean that is sometimes too out of sight and out of mind. I plan on sponsoring loads of little digital fish and I will follow the company closely to see how they evolve.

Even though 70% of the earth’s surface is water, if you took all of it and put it in a sphere of its own, it is quite small in comparison to the Earth. 860 miles in diameter, it is one of the single most important resources to our planet and human-kind, yet no one owns any of it and therefore it has very little protection. Thank you team Blu for dreaming big and using the virtual metaphor to make preservation of the ocean more real.

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May 20 2012

SpaceX To Attempt A Second Launch On Tuesday, May 22

Category: Gadgets,TC — redwinner @ 8:13 pm

SpaceX and Elon Musk will not be held from the history books. Last night the company announced that engineers were currently replacing a faulty valve on engine #5, and if successful pending a data review today, the company would attempt a second launch on Tuesday, May 22nd. This comes as SpaceX’s maiden voyage to the International Space Station was cut a half second short by an automated safety function built into the rocket.

SpaceX is attempting to become the first privately owned entity to reach and dock a capsule with the ISS, therefore increasing its chance to win what will likely be a lucrative contract to ferry cargo and humans between Earth and Space. So far these duties have been carried out by the U.S., Russia and Japan. However, as governments are cutting space budget programs they are looking to hand over these relatively nominal duties to the private sector and redirect funds to long-range space exploration and science programs.

Come next Tuesday, SpaceX will attempt to make history again

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