Israeli High Tech Gets Aggressive

Israeli High Tech Gets Aggressive

Sunday, July 6, 2014 / No Comments

Israel has always taken a disproportionate share of global media attention. This has long held true in international politics, where Israel would prefer a little less attention, but also in high tech where the media attention on startup success has often been overstated and anecdotal.
For the better part of a decade, Israeli venture returns have been disappointing, frustrating many who were once convinced they had found the next big thing. But more than a decade after the last bubble burst, the Israeli venture capital industry has steadily matured, reaching a turning point over the past year.
The return profile in Israeli high-tech investments is improving remarkably as entrepreneurs build stronger, more ambitious startups with eyes on a much bigger prize and a higher probability of success. The Israeli tech industry may not be advancing at the pace that impatient investors and reporters demand, but the last decade has also proven that Israeli high tech is far from a fleeting trend.
As a fund that has been investing in Israel since 1992, with a dedicated office there since 2007, we at Bessemer see a stark difference today versus what we found in the Israeli startup environment 10 years ago.

Heightened Ambition

Israeli entrepreneurs have always been ambitious, but the maturity of the Israeli entrepreneurial ecosystem now gives emerging companies a better chance to deliver on big dreams and therefore a better chance of raising money to pursue them. Today’s crop of entrepreneurs has grown up in the startup ecosystem and seen peers disappointed by selling too early or shutting down only a couple years after raking it in. This means not only more serial entrepreneurs, but more maturity and experience in the first 50 hires these startups make.
The perspective shows. Venture-backed M&A and IPO exits have grown each year since 2011; Waze (Google) was the largest venture-backed M&A deal in 13 years, but so was Intucell (Cisco) when it was acquired earlier 2013 and XtremIO when it sold in 2012.
Wix, which started trading on NASDAQ late last year, was the largest IPO of a venture-backed Israeli start-up ever…and has since been followed by Varonis. But companies such as Mobileye, CyberArk, Outbrain and others will likely file this year if they haven’t filed confidentially already. And I am increasingly confident that in the near future, the first results of a Google search for “Israeli IPO” will yield links related to public offerings rather than the acclaimed Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

In most cases, these successes come years after rejecting otherwise lucrative offers, with management choosing an independent path despite higher risks. Remaining independent is generally much harder for Israeli startups relative to American peers.

To start, emphasis on cutting-edge tech and strategic partnerships triggers interest at a very early stage, well before a proper business has been built. And because scaling an independent business 6K miles away from the customer base is always daunting for the Israeli founder, accepting an early acquisition offer is often a very rational decision.

Direct Customer Acquisition

Startups become large, independent success stories when they “control their destiny,” which requires owning the distribution channel and, most importantly, owning the customer relationship. Historically, Israeli companies and their venture backers thought it sufficient to be the owner of unique and proprietary IP. For this reason, Israeli startup success typically hinged on building strategic partnerships and OEMs that could bring strong technology to far-away markets at a relatively low cost and low risk. It’s often forgotten, but this is how Checkpoint (Sun), Amdocs (AT&T), and Gilat (GE), became success stories.
Twenty years later, Israeli startups now know that such partnership shortcuts come at a profound cost to the company’s ability to stay independent long-term. Unfortunately, Israeli startups still tend to hire biz dev well ahead of sales, but the successful ones stand out for making every effort to own the means of customer acquisition as well as the resulting relationship.
This industry-wide transition is exemplified by the rise of Internet, SaaS and mobile companies — something once thought unthinkable in Israel. Wix, Waze and Outbrain each devised a method for scalable direct customer acquisition, whether it was through advertising channels, mobile platforms or sales reps. The same is true with many enterprise-focused companies, which increasingly eschew the “white knight” OEM and build an independent go-to-market strategy.

ShakeUp in the VC Landscape

American VCs first entered the Israeli market in the late nineties, focusing primarily on follow-on financings in startups originally funded by local Israeli funds. Over the last five years, the traditional roles of early-stage Israeli funds and later stage American funds have become blurred. Six American VCs with deal-makers residing in Israel, including BVP, are among the most active early stage investors in Israel and at least four newly established Israeli VCs are focused exclusively on later-stage opportunities.
The resulting American imprint at the early stage has been substantial, further fanning the flames of ambition and independence of Israeli entrepreneurs. American investors have brought not only larger checkbooks but a better read of the U.S. market and competitive landscape. American VCs have also introduced a more aggressive set of venture tools aimed at helping Israeli start-ups grow faster including growth equity financings, acquisition strategies and previously shunned founder liquidity. It’s American VC influence that’s behind the direct customer acquisition strategy and the spurning of strategic partnerships.

The Future Is Rosy

Recent high-profile exits have investors once again focused on Israel. Active VCs are reaping the rewards after much patience, and institutional investors – who were heading for the proverbial door – have paused and are taking a second look.
Some see these startups as not yet polished enough to warrant attention, but they do themselves a disservice. Israeli high tech has matured to a point where we will continue to see a steady stream of large M&A exits and IPOs for years to come. Israel is the only real technology rival to the Silicon Valley, and the Valley know this well. Just as political observers no longer view Israel as the underdog, few tech giants and investors are willing to underestimate the potential of an Israeli startup.

NASA, Boeing to develop most powerful rocket for Mars

NASA, Boeing to develop most powerful rocket for Mars

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The initial flight-test configuration will provide a 77-tonne capacity.

NASA and Boeing have inked a USD 2.8 billion deal to develop a giant rocket which is set to be the largest and most powerful ever built, paving the way for manned missions to Mars.
Boeing has finalised a contract with NASA to develop the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket ever built.
In addition, Boeing has been tasked to study the SLS Exploration Upper Stage, which will further expand mission range and payload capabilities.
The agreement comes as NASA and the Boeing team complete the Critical Design Review (CDR) on the core stage – the last major review before full production begins.
“Our teams have dedicated themselves to ensuring that the SLS – the largest ever – will be built safely, affordably and on time,” Virginia Barnes, Boeing SLS vice president and programme manager said in a statement.
“We are passionate about NASA’s mission to explore deep space. It’s a very personal mission, as well as a national mandate,” said Barnes.
During the CDR, which began last month, experts examined and confirmed the final design of the rocket’s cryogenic stages that will hold liquefied hydrogen and oxygen.
This milestone marks NASA’s first CDR on a deep-space human exploration launch vehicle since 1961, when the Saturn V rocket underwent a similar design review as the US sought to land an astronaut on the Moon.
Scheduled for its initial test flight in 2017, the SLS is designed to be flexible and evolvable to meet a variety of crew and cargo mission needs.
The initial flight-test configuration will provide a 77-tonne capacity, and the final evolved two-stage configuration will provide a lift capability of more than 143
tonnes.

Beast Sensor On Indiegogo Tracks Your Weight-lifting In Real Time

Beast Sensor On Indiegogo Tracks Your Weight-lifting In Real Time

Saturday, July 5, 2014 / No Comments

In recent years hardware has appeared to track your gym workouts. PushStrength andGymWatch are both devices that will measure your reps as you grunt and build those muscles lifting weights.

A new kid on the block is Beast and it’s currently trying to raise $60,000 on Indiegogo.

This little device differentiates itself by being suitable for all exercises (not only a few) and by displaying results in real-time. In theory this creates more motivation and prevents you do the wrong movements as you lift.

Developed in Milan, Italy, the sensor is magnetic and can be attached to barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells or gym machines and to the body itself for performing free body exercises with the Beast Vest. It then links to a smartphone app to record the data.

The Beast shows you in real-time how much you are pushing yourself by lifting weights, using a machine or performing bodyweight exercises. You can chose to visualize speed, power or strength and monitor your performance while working out. On the accompanying app, you can review your results while resting between each set and get indications about how to make your training more effective. For example the Beast App accesses all your data to suggest the optimal weight to use or the number of reps to perform to reach your training goal faster.

Former Microsoft Engineers Launch Pixotale, A Social Networking App For Visual Storytelling

Former Microsoft Engineers Launch Pixotale, A Social Networking App For Visual Storytelling

Friday, July 4, 2014 / No Comments

A pair of ex-Microsoft engineers, Robert Mao and Haitao Li, have launched what they describe as a new social network based around photos and videos with Pixotale, an app that aims to re-imagine long-form storytelling for the mobile era.
Mao, previously having spent five years with Microsoft Research, says that to create Pixotale, the two had to basically “unlearn everything” they had learned while at Microsoft. Co-founder Li was there for a decade, as one of the core engineers on the Internet Explorer team, having lived through IE’s defeat of Netscape and more.
After leaving Microsoft, the former colleagues wanted to explore the world of mobile applications, and started a new company called Pixomobile last January to test the waters in today’s App Store.
Since that time, they’ve released a half-dozen somewhat utilitarian apps, all centered around photos and videos. The most popular of these is Levitagram, an app which lets you edit photos to make it appear as if the subject is floating in the air – a photography trend which grew popular in places like Japan and Indonesia, but has now spread worldwide. That app has grown to a half million users, which accounts for a significant portion of the company’s 1.5 million-plus users in total.
The revenue generated by Levitagram’s paid version has helped to fund the development of Pixotale, the company’s first effort to create a social networking-like app, instead of just a utility.

A Storytelling Network

Explains Mao, today’s social networks make it easy to get connected with others, but make it difficult for you to have deeper relationships with those connections. As one of the first bloggers in China, he remembers an era where users told their personal stories on their own websites, and formed communities around the commenting section and through trackbacks – which were the pings you’d receive when someone referenced your post in theirs.
With Pixotale, the overall goal is to connect people again via these sorts of personal stories – something that’s been a bit lost in the age of social media, Mao believes. After publishing your stories, you’ll be alerted to any likes or comments from fellow app users.

The app is also designed to make creating longer-form content easier on mobile, with a simple interface for adding text, photos, a map and soon video and audio. You can tap to add elements to the story or adjust its layout on the page before publishing. You can also work on stories while offline, and save them to publish later.
The end results are polished, professional creations you can then share to other social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, and more. The stories are also viewable via the web, which you can see here, here, here or here, for example.
While Pixotale is simple to use, it doesn’t currently offer image editing controls, which means your photos will need to be cropped and straightened and filtered the way you want before launching the app.
For now, the bootstrapping company is looking to grow Pixotale’s user base before turned to other means of monetization, but the team imagines that they’ll eventually sell in-app upgrades to help users embellish their content further, at some later point.
Pixotale is a free download on iTunes.

Now, a smartphone that translates English to Gujarati with a swipe

Now, a smartphone that translates English to Gujarati with a swipe

Thursday, July 3, 2014 / No Comments

Firstouch, a company founded by IIT graduates, has launched what they call the world’s first regional smartphone.

The biggest barrier for adoption of smartphones in India now is language. A lot of people, who have the ability to buy a smartphone, prefer not to, because they are intimidated by the use of English on these devices. Feature phones are icon based and easier for people who look at the Queen’s language as Greek.
Firstouch, a Mumbai-based company founded by IIT graduates, has launched what they call the world’s first regional smartphone which can translate and transliterate text in Gujarati to English and vice-versa with just a swipe. Priced at Rs 5,999, the Firstouch A10 is entry-level Android Jelly Bean smartphone powered by a dual-core 1.2 GHz CPU on a 4-inch screen.


The phone is simple to use and users can switch to an icon-based Firstouch interface which is easier to use for those not used to smartphones. Here all the text is in Gujarati. In case, you get a text in English, the user can just swipe on the text to translate it into Gujarati. The same works for outgoing text too. The entire process is as simple as it gets. The rest of the phone is what you would expect from any Android phone in this price range.
“Our market research established that Gujarati’s are far more enterprising and ready to experiment with new products in the market. Our existing relationship also helped us to get quick access to the market in Gujarat,” explained Co-founder & CEO Rakesh Deshmukh on why he chose the language first. The company is promising versions in other Indian languages after they launch the Hindi  and Marathi smartphone.

Quoting an IDC report, Deshmkuh said the next 500 million subscribers will come from the rural market. “If any company has to penetrate this segment of market then it will be possible only with regional offering. Firstouch’s vision is to bridge digital divide in India by bringing language based technologies integrated with operating system,” he said.

The company hopes its customised Regional Language Android operating system will play a most pivotal role in propelling this growth.
While the company wants to cover all leading languages in the country by 2015, it also plans to launch 10 models of Firstouch regional smartphones priced between Rs 3,500 and Rs 12.500 in the next one year.

The Story Of Slenderman, The Internet’s Own Monster

The Story Of Slenderman, The Internet’s Own Monster

Wednesday, July 2, 2014 / No Comments

Every generation creates its own monsters. Folk tales tell of witches and wyrms in the woods, my TV-infused generation feared Jaws in lakes and Bloody Mary in the mirror. This generation gets its monsters from the Internet.

Slenderman is a pure product of electronic media. He appears in places we rarely frequent, these days – abandoned, crumbling halls, deep woods, a playground with a rickety steel jungle gyms. He is a suburban ghoul with his own history and his own methodology and, of late, he has become the object of controversy due to an attack in Wisconsin during which two girls stabbed another in order to appease Slenderman’s dark needs. It was a horrible story and it underlies how little we understand about the psychology of a generation weaned on the Internet and how images can morph from fiction to fact in the course of half a decade.


Slenderman’s origin is surprisingly clear. Unlike most urban legends, we can trace his provenance with absolute certainty. He was born on June 8, 2009, on a forum site frequented by Photoshop pranksters. He belongs to a guy in Florida named Eric Knudsen who has a young daughter and is surprised as much as anything that his demon hasn’t yet been thrown onto the slag heap of forgotten memes. An entire history, an entire corpus, has grown up around him in a way that would have been impossible a decade ago.

He is the first pure product of the Internet, a demon spawned not out of a specific place but out of bits. Here’s some of his story.

Slendy

Slenderman first appeared on the SomethingAwful forums under a thread titled “Create Paranormal Images.” One user, Slidebite, said “You just know a couple of the good ones are going to eventually make it to paranormal websites and be used as genuine.” He was right. The first image of Slenderman- of a tall, out-of-focus figure, next to a tree – was accompanied by a bit of text that sounds like the dialogue from a badly-translated horror game.

“One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.”
– 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.

Other posters added their own interpretations of the material, creating a backstory that stretched out to 16th-century Germany and even to 5000 BC. The creator, Victor Surge, added a few more photos, while other visitors created their own. One particularly clever image is a modified woodcut. In the original, a skeleton takes a child from its parents, perhaps into death. In the modified version, the skeleton has long arms and legs and its misshapen skull is hidden by the eaves of the house.



Over the intervening months, SomethingAwful posters and fan fiction enthusiasts added to the corpus. He gained a specific definition, courtesy of a poster on Yahoo Answers in 2011, two years after the original posts:

The Slender Man is a supernatural creature that is described as appearing as a normal human being but he is described as being 8 feet tall and he has vectors or extra appendages that are described to be as sharp as swords. The creature is known to stalk humans and cause many disappearances. He is described as a shadow creature that has missing a face. The creature fits into many mythologies in legends from nations such as germany and celts which brings up the possibility that he could be real. A man named victor Surge found this legend and made his own version of it which he called slender man. The slender man is not exactly evil according to mythology but victor Surge’s version shows him as an evil creature that stalks humans to kill. In mythology he was actually trying to save you from a painful death by taking you to the under world early.



Slenderman is a product of this century. He appears and havoc follows. He murders in undescribed ways or he compels others to murder. He is a dark god in an age of digital media and he fills the empty place between the news and the unknown.

Interestingly, Slenderman was born of the previous generation’s boogeymen. From a long interview with Slenderman’s creator, Knudsen AKA Victor Surge.

: I was mostly influenced by H.P Lovecraft, Stephan King (specifically his short stories), the surreal imaginings of William S. Burroughs, and couple games of the survival horror genre; Silent Hill and Resident Evil. I feel the most direct influences were Zack Parsons’s “That Insidious Beast”, the Steven King short story “The Mist”, the SA tale regarding “The Rake”, reports of so-called shadow people, Mothman, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. I used these to formulate asomething whose motivations can barely be comprehended and causes general unease and terror in a general population.

One popular video game created around the mythos involves walking through a darkened forest surrounded by chain-link fence. All you have to do is find eight pieces of paper tacked to nearby trees. As you find the papers, the buzzing of crickets and the rustling of the photorealistic trees changes to a steady pounding. Slenderman is afoot. He doesn’t kill you. You simply disappear in a cloud of electronic snow.

Forums and video series were filled with fan fiction and content. The quality varies widely but it has grown oddly popular. One popular web series, MarbleHornets, is described as found footage of a man haunted by Slenderman. Most of the footage is mundane b-roll of woods and country roads. Then, every so often, Slenderman appears by fuzzing out the screen or pushing one of the characters into a violent coughing fit. There are no demons screaming “Gotcha.” Instead, you get an endless, nameless dread.

Wanting to find out the draw, I asked on the forums and chat rooms for input on the phenomenon. One Reddit fan, MLPTTM, wrote:

I like him because most creepypastas try to scare you with blood, gore, and if you’re lucky hyper-realistic blood. Slenderman scared me with psychological horror; making me scared of fields, trees, and sometimes nothing. He has made me as paranoid as I’ve been in my life and I love the thrill. His design is simple and terrifying because it can make him visible in a field or invisible in a forest. His humanoid figure makes him seem real like him stalking you can happen. I think the biggest thing that makes him interesting is that nobody has any full idea what happens when he gets you.


Another poster said they liked Slenderman because he was relentless:

Slender hunts you, but he doesn’t bang on your door, claw at your walls or howl at the moon. He’s just there, standing, waiting in the corner of your eyes. It’s bogus, you know it. You’re just seeing things ’cause you’re tried as shit. Or it’s Jake, pulling your leg.
Then it gets real, you have to get away. Despite your best efforts, Slender is still there. Always standing, always waiting, always watching.
Sadly, he’s also taken on a life of his own.

Too Much

To understand what Slenderman has become of late all you have to do is watch a Twitter stream of mentions. In 2014, Slenderman is now Slendy, a quasi-comical, quasi-serious figure that has taken on a life of its own. The feed is full of game walkthroughs and links to creepypasta – essentially fan fiction – as well as bits of doggerel that sound like early Eminem lyrics passed through Hogwarts:

Slendy is a sort of goblin that posters use to scare themselves. Sadly, he’s also become a focal point for madness.

On May 31, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin stabbed a third girl nearly to death. The girls, who called their plot “Stabby, stab, stab” said it was intended as a sacrifice to Slenderman. Authorities are trying the pair as adults pending a mental evaluation. The tragedy here is that all the girl’s lives are damaged now – even potentially ruined.

The girls believed Slendy would appear to them if they killed in his name. They also believed he had threatened them and their families and could read their minds. Children have always had fanciful flights of imagination. These claims sound much like the Salem witch hunts of the 1690s when young girls accused each other of riding with the devil. The resulting panics led to countless false confessions and over 20 executions. The same could probably happen here.

Then a few days later, around the anniversary of Slenderman’s creation, a teen in Cincinnati attacked her mother. The teen, who had a history of mental illness, was obsessed with the character. The lack of detail in this and the previous case points more towards mental illness than anything else. Slenderman, then, became the a focus for a mania that forced these girls to act out violently.

Thus far, no more reports of Slenderman-related violence have surfaced. The creators and maintainers of the mythos are adamant about their disapproval. “We are not teaching children to believe in a fictional monster, nor are we teaching them to be violent,” wrote Creepypasta moderator David Morales.

“I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act,” said Slenderman creator Eric Knudsen. I attempted to contact him for this story, to no avail.

Where the Slenderman mythos goes from here is anyone’s guess. He is a new villain, a new scapegoat, and a new demon. He won’t be the last of his kind but he is the first pure product of the Internet, a digital demon that haunts websites and sometimes spills over into the real world. Thankfully, no one has yet been killed in his honor. The 12-year-old Wisconsin victim is recovering and doing well.

In a statement, the girl’s parents wrote:

“Our family would like to thank everyone who has supported our daughter on her miraculous road to recovery … Our little girl has received thousands of purple hearts from numerous countries and from most continents. We simply cannot put into words how grateful we are for the prayers, packages and heartfelt messages. We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support.”

They added: “Together as a family, we continue to adjust to our ‘new normal.’ Though many days consist of medical appointments and rehabilitation, recently she and her father enjoyed a ‘daddy-daughter night at the movies’ and thoroughly enjoyed a Disney film. It also included (after much persistence) a stop for a much-deserved treat in the snack area.”

Knudsen, for his part, stopped development of the character a few years ago. “I don’t spend a lot of active time on the Internet since I usually have a lot of real-life stuff going on,” he said.

Samsung launches two Galaxy Tab S versions with same innards

Samsung launches two Galaxy Tab S versions with same innards

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The 8.4-inch version has been priced Rs 37,800 while the 10.5-inch one will cost Rs 44,800.

Samsung on Tuesday launched two versions of its new Galaxy Tab S tablets in India. The super thin tablets feature Super Amoled displays and are primarily aimed for those who use their tablets to consume a lot of video. The 8.4-inch version has been priced Rs 37,800 while the 10.5-inch one will cost Rs 44,800.

“We noticed that most tabets users, especially in India,  use their devices primarily for consuming video. This tablet will cater primarily for those users… the Samsung Galaxy Tab S offers the most immersive visual experience possible on a tablet,” said Asim Warsi, VP, Mobile & IT at Samsung India.

The tablets have a WQXGA (2560x1600p) display, which will be the biggest selling point of these tablets. They will both be powered by Exynos 5 Octa processor running a 1.9 GHz QuadCore and 1.3 GHz QuadCore running simultaneously. Running Android 4.4 KitKat, they will both have 8 MP rear cameras. The tablets come with voice calling and are LTE (FDD) compatible. There is internal storage of 16GB which can be raised to 128GB with an external card.

The big difference between the two devices is the battery which is 7,900 mAh for the larger screen and 4,900 mAh for the smaller one.

Samsung is pushing the Tab S as a range different from the Note tablets and aimed primarily at those who want to use the device for consuming content. So the tablets will comes with access to 100 free HD movies on MyPlex, 3-month free subscription of 21 Indian magazines and a free e-book every month from Kindle.

Clever Oculus Project Lets You Live Your Life In Third Person

Clever Oculus Project Lets You Live Your Life In Third Person

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Ever wished you could tap the “Change Camera View” button in real life to switch to a third-person view?

These guys made it happen. Sure, it requires the user to wear an Oculus Rift and a big ol’ dual camera rig built into a backpack — and sure, it’s probably only fun (and not nauseating) for about a minute. But it works!

Built by a Polish team of tinkerers called mepi, the rig uses a custom-built, 3D-printed mount to hold two GoPros just above and behind the wearer’s head. With a joystick wired up to an Arduino and a few servos, the wearer is able to control where the camera is looking.



If we may suggest a next version of the project: have a drone follow you automatically, blasting its camera feed to the Rift wirelessly. For maximum effect, dress as a mustachioed plumber:

[Via: 3dPrint.com]

Play With Google’s Psychedelic New Interactive Music Video Cube

Play With Google’s Psychedelic New Interactive Music Video Cube

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It’s called The Cube, and it’s a trip. Built by Google Creative Labs as “an experimental platform for interactive storytelling”, The Cube is an in-browser manipulateable 3-D box with a different video and audio track on each face. It debuted online today with indie dance band The Presets’ new single “No Fun”. You decide what to watch and hear by clicking and dragging The Cube to show a single side or a combination.

And no, Google didn’t take some bad acid. The whole thing is a multi-pronged promo. The Cube only runs in Google Chrome and Android, it links to buy the song on Google Play where it’s exclusively available for the next 48 hours, and it’s sure to help Google recruit designers by showing it can do art, not just algorithms.

And since The Cube is embeddable, you can play with it below. There’s a story about a girl in a bathtub and a dude dancing himself silly laced in with technicolor heads and pulsing

This isn’t Google’s first foray into weird, interactive msuic videos. The Chrome Experiments has done two with Arcade Fire. “The Wilderness Downtown” used your address and Google Maps to customize the video with aerial shots of your home. “Just A Reflektor” employed your phone and webcam to let your movements control the action.

But rather than a one-off experiment, Google is calling The Cube a “platform”, indicating more art could be built on it eventually. It was conceived by the Google Sydney Creative Lab team and demoed last month in person at the local Semi Permanent creative conference. Google hooked up with The Presets to show what The Cube can do, but the possibilities go far beyond music.

Imagine a short film told from six different perspectives simultaneously, or using The Cube for interactive data visualizations. Groovy.

For more on the making of The Cube, check out the behind the scenes video below (you’re probably gonna want to pause The Cube itself first)

Hack Your Brain With A Machine That Reads Minds

Hack Your Brain With A Machine That Reads Minds

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Star Wars first planted the idea over 35 years ago that we could move objects with our minds. That idea is now a reality that has come a long way in the last few years. Emotiv is on the cutting edge of that technology with headgear that allows you to do things, such as make a toy car whiz by or help a quadriplegic mix music like a DJ using just their brain power.

It works by scanning your brain for signals using the Emotiv EEG device on your head. That device then relays your signals through a brain-computer interface to detect emotions, interest and a slew of other things. It takes some work but, as the video above shows, it also helps you use your Jedi training skills to move objects with just the power of thought.

There are numerous applications for this tech. Those with disabilities could become the best DJ you’ve ever heard or play video games or command robotic arms using just their minds. It could help those with epilepsy, ADHD, sleep disorders or the occasional panic attack to quiet the mind and focus. A project commissioned by the Royal Automotive Club of Australia is even using Emotiv to ensure safer driving. During the research phase, a signal sent from the brain of a distracted driver caused their car to slow down or stop on the road.

But it also steps into the world of market research. Emotiv can tell whether you really like something or not just by detecting the reaction of your brain signals to a certain product you see in a store. This would allow researchers to know whether something will be popular without even having to ask you questions. They’ll just see it on your brain.

A greater threat with this tech could be brain spyware, particularly in video gaming. This ability to capture neuro-cognitive feedback not only helps with more responsive gaming but could also make available a user’s private information or thought processes without them being aware someone had hacked in and was getting that information from them. A captured EEG signal can reveal your bank card number, determine whether you have a mental illness or are prone to addiction, according to this 2013 research paper.
Emotiv offers both the EPOC and EEG versions of its system. The EPOC headset (listed for $299) allows developers to create their own applications using the licensed SDK software. The EEG headset (listed for $750) adds to what the EPOC offers but also enables users to conduct research from collected raw EEG data.

The technology has a long way to go still, but what we have so far with quadriplegic DJs moving about in virtual worlds, ability to detect mental disorders and to conduct market research from brain waves, is pretty impressive so far.

Google Launches Drive For Work With Unlimited Storage For $10/Month

Google Launches Drive For Work With Unlimited Storage For $10/Month

Tuesday, July 1, 2014 / No Comments

At its I/O developer conference today, Google didn’t just launch a completely revamped version of Drive. It also launched Drive for Work, a new version of Drive and Google apps for businesses that comes with a number of extra security features. The one feature most users will notice first, however, is that Drive for Work doesn’t have any storage limitations.

If you’ve followed along, this doesn’t come as a major shock. Google already reduced the price of Drive storage drastically earlier this year. As Google Drive’s director of product management Scott Johnston told me earlier this week, IT departments shouldn’t have to think about storage anymore, but as many services moved to the cloud, storage pricing was somehow left behind.
Now, with a $10/month/seat Drive for Work subscription, users won’t have to worry about that anymore. To clearly show that Google is serious about this, the team has also raised the maximum file size for uploads to 5 terabytes. Nobody in their right mind is going to upload a 5 terabyte file to Drive anytime soon, but if you feel like testing it out, be Google’s guest.
The regular Google Apps for Business account is still available for $5/month/seat, too, and users on those accounts will also get access to the new web interface and updated mobile apps.
While unlimited storage is the most eye-catching feature of Drive for Work, though, it also comes with a number of other tools that businesses have been asking for. Just like the current $10 Apps for Business plan, Drive for Work includes support for Google Apps Vault, for example, which allows companies to retain files and emails for compliance reasons.

The new subscription also gives companies access to the Drive’s audit features so they can track who accesses which documents and where they are shared. In addition, Google has launched an Audit API so that companies can create their own dashboards based on this data.
Drive for Work, Google tells me, also offers enterprise-grade security and compliance, including a SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II, SOC 2-audit, ISO 27001 certification, adherence to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, and can support industry-specific requirements like HIPAA.
In a similar vein, Drive for Work also allows businesses to set more fine-grained access controls and lets them turn certain Drive features like sync on or off for different business groups (in case you don’t want your legal team to be able to sync files, for example).
As Johnston told me, companies of all sizes have been asking Google for these features. While tools like Vault may seem most useful for larger corporations, many small- and medium-sized businesses have been asking for many of these features, too — not necessarily because they need them now, but because they want to know that those tools will be there as they grow.

Google Play For Education Goes Beyond Tablets, Now Available For Chromebooks, Too

Google Play For Education Goes Beyond Tablets, Now Available For Chromebooks, Too

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Last November, Google launched Google Play for Education, a portal for teachers and schools to more easily buy Android apps, books and educational YouTube video, and distribute them to their students. At the time, the program was solely focused on tablets, but starting today, the team also launched support for Chromebooks.
With the revamped Google Play for Education, teachers can now give students access to Android apps and Chrome apps, books and videos from a single site. According to Google, about 10,000 schools currently use Chromebooks (and some of them use both Chromebooks and tablets).
As Rick Borovoy, Google’s product manager for Google Play for Education, told me earlier this week, the team decided to start with tablets because it was especially interested in the use cases that tablets enable in a classroom. At the time, Borovoy wasn’t completely sold on the idea that schools would be interested in having students read books on their Chromebooks or that they would be interested in Chrome apps for their students. Teachers, however, immediately started asking Google for a Chrome OS version of the store and Borovoy and his team started piloting this program earlier this year.
On the Chrome OS side, Google Play for Education works very much like it did before. Apps are curated by a select group of teachers, for example. Borovoy noted that consumer app stores tend to provide users with an overwhelming number of choices, so the team wanted to give teachers a smaller number of apps that were previously vetted instead.

Just like in the old version, they also get access to Google’s bookstore for schools where they can then rent or buy books for their students starting at $1 per student for 60 days of access. Borovoy noted that most of the interest from schools right now is in trade books and that most aren’t all that interested in textbooks in e-book form.
Schools can also set up purchase order accounts with Google, so that it’s easier for teachers to go ahead and make purchases for their classes or just for individual students who may show an interest in a specific topic, for example. Previously, this often meant that teachers would pay out of their own pockets and then try to get reimbursed — which doesn’t always happen. With Google Play for Education, schools can simply give teachers the ability to make purchases (up to a set limit).
“Our goal is to find the pain points and untapped opportunities,” Borovoy told me. By offering support for both tablets and Chromebooks, he said, “schools don’t have to think device first.” They also don’t need to involve IT when they want to add an app to their students’ laptops or tablets, something that can be a major hassle and take away any spontaneity from teachers, especially in school systems where the IT departments are often understaffed.

Get to Know Your Neighbourhood Better with Shout, the Locality Based Social App

Get to Know Your Neighbourhood Better with Shout, the Locality Based Social App

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An app that lets you shout anything and everything to social media users within 1 km radius, Shout is the new locality based app from Idea Labs. If you are wondering if it really is shouting, your updates are termed as shout. A tool for self-expression and interaction, Shout doesn’t ask you to add people to your circles or wait for their friend requests to be approved.

Shout was created by Ashutosh Vikram, Thirukumaran Nagarajan and Sharath Loganathan, alumni of IIM,Kozhikode.
Shout, Echo and Shut up

So basically a shout is your update. If a receiver likes it, he can echo it which increases the visibility of your shout. With each echo, the radius of your shout increases. If he doesn’t like it or disturbs him, it be can be made to shut up. Shut up is used to differentiate noise from shout. There is a comments section as well where you can talk and interact with fellow users.

The audience is default, set by the geographical position you are in. If you want to reach a particular radius, you could move and set a new one.

Stay connected to your neighbourhood

This is a huge relief. You dont have to necessarily add friends and maintain circles.You could ask for help or even say hi to a person in the specific geographical region.You could also find  the nearest restaurant or complain about the bad roads. Essentially it is a good way to stay connected to your neighbourhood.

The Alter Ego
We hardly reveal things or shout what we want to when our identity is disclosed. In this app, you could choose an option called the Alter Ego where you can mask your personality and choose to be someone else, probably with a catchy nickname. It is an opportunity to give a virtual personality to your alter ego.
Launched in April 2014, the app has around 2000 downloads so far and is being used in over 10 countries. With a user-friendly interface, Shout lets you sign up with your Google or Facebook account.
The app does not use GPS oriented location but selects it from the network. Hence the battery drain is very low. Currently focused on building a huge customer base, the team expects to monetize by creating a local marketplace within the application.
Currently available in Android, the app will soon be in the iOS platform. Click here to download the app.
There are various other apps with the same name and similar features, some even with a shouting range of 20kms! Will this app stand out?

MapmyIndia launches NaviMaps, A Navigation App With In-House Addresses

MapmyIndia launches NaviMaps, A Navigation App With In-House Addresses

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GPS navigation and location app for consumers and enterprise MapmyIndia has launched a ‘glocal’ navigation app on Android. The app follows freemium model — while maps and directions are free for life, voice guidance in several regional languages will require some bucks.

Users will also be pleased by automatic traffic based re-routing, and real time journey updates on Facebook. In our brief testing, we didn’t find the app lagging, which is quite nice.

Features

The app features several more exciting features, as mentioned below.

• NaviMaps offers maps for Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.
• While commuting you will be pleased by the real time turn-by-turn voice guidance, NaviMaps offers Furthermore, the guidance is available in 10 regional languages.
• The app features auto re-routing which will help you find the best route to your destination.
• Social Navigation with Real-time journey progress updates on Facebook.
• Realistic 3D landmarks and house number search on maps.
• Superfast navigation with single line predictive destination search.
• Instantly check for traffic delays along your regular routes before you start out.

The app touts that it will work even when the network is poor. Android users can download it from here. Windows Phone and iOS users can expect the app soon.

Google Glass Service Could Make All Customers Feel Special

Google Glass Service Could Make All Customers Feel Special

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There are many reasons companies should consider making a Google Glass investment aside from making their customers feel good. Personalization works. Emails with personalized subject lines tend be opened more and clicked on more, as surveys have found. Customers find personalized ads more engaging and educational. Conversely, customers become irritated with ads that are irrelevant.

Virgin Atlantic recently announced the expansion of a pilot project in which flight attendants use Google Glass to meet and greet customers. For the initial project, the airline equipped the concierge staff in its Upper Class Wing at London's Heathrow airport with Google Glass so they would have easy access to such information as connecting flights or loyalty points.

Virgin Atlantic ultimately decided on Google Glass instead of tablets or smartwatches, which it had been contemplating, because looking at a watch might give people the impression that the staff members were bored with their clients, while tapping through a tablet and not maintaining eye contact might be distracting for both passenger and attendant, reported Skift. 

The Drawbacks of Tablets, Smartwatches

Other companies opting to use smart devices at the point of sale or point of engagement likely will come to these insightful conclusions as well. A tablet can work well and stay unobtrusive in many customer engagement scenarios, such as a retail store.
However, for scenarios in which a company wants to provide a lot of handholding and personalized one-on-one service (translation: these are high-value customers), smart glasses may be the best bet among options available on the market today.
Another reason smart glasses work in this context: The service reps are expected to be wearing them, much like they are expected to be wearing ear pieces and communicating with larger a network of agents or a customer service desk. In other words, the customer can see that this is no glasshole, but someone in a corporate uniform who has a legitimate reason to be using the technology.
In short, the customer service case for Google Glass, or smart glasses in general, is a strong one. Virgina Atlantic's pilot project suggests the possibility that at some point in time companies will offer all customers the same personalized, one-on-one service currently reserved for their most well-heeled clients.

Personalization Pays Off

There are many reasons companies should make this investment aside from making their customers feel good. Personalization works. Emails with personalized subject lines tend be opened more and clicked on more, as surveys have found.
Customers find personalized ads more engaging and educational, a Yahoo survey has found. Conversely, customers become irritated with ads that are irrelevant.

Automating Customization

However, there is a downside to being able to automate the personalization of customer service. Too often nice little touches such as using a customer's name come off as insincere, especially if the underlying policies are not customer-friendly.
"Oh hello Mrs. Brown, how was your flight? Really, your luggage is missing and this is the vacation you've been saving for and dreaming of for 25 years? Well, I am sorry, Mrs. Brown, but it shouldn't take more than 24 to 48 hours to locate and deliver your suitcase."
Google Glass probably is not completely immune from awkwardness, though. Imagine the above conversation with an agent wearing Glass, who might be able to intersperse her comments with observations about how the trip Mrs. Brown took from Florida to New York last year went off without a hitch, and even mention that when her husband travels, he

usually brings his luggage on board. "So, Mrs. Brown, you can see that as an airline we usually are on the ball."
Google Glass has great potential to bring customer service to the next level. Companies just have to make sure that besides having the infrastructure, back-end systems and employee training in place, they have customer service policies that are at least as nifty as those glasses.

Secure Messaging App Wickr Raises $30 Million Series B

Secure Messaging App Wickr Raises $30 Million Series B

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Self-destructing and encrypted messaging app Wickr raised $30 million in Series B funding, the company is announcing today, in a round led by Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, with participation from CME Group and Wargaming. Breyer will now join the company’s board. The new round comes on the heels of Wickr’s $9 million Series A announced earlier this year.
The app was created by CEO Nico Sell, also longtime organizer of the DEF CON security conference, as a tool that allows senders and receivers to communicate privately. Only the receiver is able to decrypt the message after it’s sent, as the company itself does not hold the decryption keys.
Security and privacy are popular topics in this post-Snowden era, where a backlash against mainstream social services is finding new footing with those of a younger generation, as well as those wanting to protect themselves from overzealous ad-targeting or even in some cases, totalitarian government regimes.

Wickr also resells its technology to other messaging apps that want to include a more private and secure component to their service. Meanwhile, the company’s new strategic investors Wargaming and CME Group see Wickr’s potential in their own industries, gaming and financial services, respectively.