Category: Tech news

Are you a fan of TV? Do you like to watch TV on the Web? How about on your iPad? Do you hate not knowing where to go to catch up on all your favorite TV shows? Then I have a website for you. San Francisco-based Guidebox brings together full show and episode data from all the various websites and apps that have TV programs, ranging from aggregators like Hulu and Hulu Plus to branded network websites like CNN.com and CBS.com. As a result, it has the most definitive collection of full episodes available all in one place.

That said, Guidebox is all about TV — and just TV. It doesn’t care about movies; it doesn’t care about web video. Just TV! So if you are into TV, and want to watch TV on the web or on your phone or tablet, it’s worth a look.

Users can sort through a list of suggested shows from the front page, or they can find the shows they love through search, or by navigating through different network pages like ABC, CBS, NBC, etc. Once they click through to a show page, they can see all the most recent episodes and drill down to see previous seasons and episodes.

Since episodes usually live on various different places on the web, Guidebox showcases the best places to watch them — starting with free access through sites like Hulu. If a free version of the show isn’t available, Guidebox then suggests subscription video on demand services like Netflix and Hulu Plus. And if those don’t work, it’ll point you to places like iTunes or Amazon, where you can purchase episodes for a fee.

But the real trick for TV fans is the ability to save for later or to add a show to your favorite shows. Doing so allows users to create a queue of all their favorite TV shows, which will automatically update whenever a new episode becomes available. It’s almost like having a DVR Season Pass for streaming videos.

Not only does Guidebox work for the web, but it also works on tablets and mobile devices. Guidebox founder Jeremy Riney has created an optimized, HTML5 version of the site, which works on the iPad. The beauty of the tablet version is that it deep links into all the different apps where programs are available, so users never really have to worry about opening them all up and searching for a certain show or episode.

Even when a show isn’t available through an iPad app or the mobile web, Guidebox gives you other options for viewing: If they’re logged in, users can send the episode direct to a PC or laptop for viewing. Or they can save the episode for later, and watch it through a web browser whenever they have time.

Interestingly, Riney has no plans to make an app for the tablet experience. “I’m anti-app,” he said, pointing out that the whole reason he decided to create Guidebox in the first place was that there was no real good way to navigate all the different apps that were available for viewing shows. Creating yet another app would just cause even more steps for viewers, when instead they could just go to Guidebox in their Safari browser.

Guidebox makes most of its revenue today through affiliate links for services like Hulu Plus and Netflix, with the idea being that once you know a TV show is on one of those services, you’re going to be willing to pay to get at it. And even though that doesn’t sound like it’ll bring in lots of cash, that’s okay because Guidebox is really just one guy today — Riney — with no real plans to expand headcount anytime soon.

So what’s next for Guidebox? Mainly just adding new content sources, including maybe authenticated cable services like HBO Go or Comcast Xfinity TV Online. Until then, though, its users will have to make do with just some 10,000 TV episodes available now. Good luck getting through them.

Yesterday was a surprisingly interesting news day, given how close we are to celebrating the holidays. Facebook struck while the iron was hot and released a brand new standalone iOS app called “Poke”, leveraging a feature that has been around since the early days of the product, as well as a shot across the bow of Snapchat, who it reportedly attempted to acquire.

At first glance, it’s a competitive move, and also a whimsical one. The idea of sending someone a message that self-destructs is kind of “cute”, in the way that passing notes in class was when you were younger. But make no mistake about it, Facebook’s Poke is meant as a means to strengthen its social graph, as well as to crib signals from your daily lives and activities to make itself a better company. I’m not saying that anything is wrong with that, but these are the obvious facts.

Let’s discuss the idea of a social signal first, though. When you tweet something, and someone responds, that’s a signal that the person is interested in what you have to say. One could also infer that this person “likes” you, or has an affinity for you or what you just said. This could all be torn down as bullshit though, since we all know that sometimes we respond to people to simply get their attention.

The Facebook Poke is an interesting historical feature, one that hasn’t really been documented. It was Mark Zuckerberg’s baby, as Facebook was and is, but not much is known about it, only assumed. During yesterday’s ferver about this new Poke app, a phrase was repeated by outlets over and over again, here’s one from CNN:

The poke, which is still around but rarely used, is a minimalistic form of communication — the digital equivalent of a head nod or wink.

I take issue with the notion that it’s “rarely used”, because we simply do not have data to back that statement or sentiment up, Facebook has never made it public. I would challenge that it’s not public data because it’s quite important. Whispering to someone is way more interesting than speaking to ten people in a crowd.

Your closest friends

When you’re at a bar and you look around at the people there, are you interested in what a group of fifteen people are talking about, or what the two folks in the corner are speaking about directly? You could infer that they’re having an intimate conversation, perhaps a closely connected moment. If it’s a guy and a girl, you might wonder if they’re dating, married or are about to “hook up”. The group of fifteen, however, are simply blowing off steam and having a good time. There’s nothing wrong with that, but for a company like Facebook, the connection in the corner is more valuable to them as a company, and you as a user.

Facebook has attempted to help you connect to the people who matter most by automatically and algorithmically creating a “Closest Friends” group on the service. This is probably based on a number of factors, although none of us who aren’t working at Facebook are sure. It’s probably a mix of how often you message them directly, how often you comment or like their status updates, how often you message them directly or even how often you visit their profile. All of the actions are “data points” and “social signals” to Facebook. All of this data then gets analyzed by people and algorithms to try and display the best experience possible for you on Facebook.

The Best Experience Possible

When I say that Facebook is trying to make it a better experience for you, I mean that it wants you to stay there and never leave. There’s nothing wrong with that, it should be the goal for every company with a social product. When you see content on your News Feed that is interesting, and you feel the need and want to engage, that’s a huge score for Facebook and eventually it’s advertisers.

Spending more time on Facebook, be it on the desktop or on mobile, is always the goal. You don’t go to a restaurant that you hate and spend a lot of money there, do you? Of course not. Great restaurants figure out a way to make you feel at home, more comfortable, call you by your first name all in the hopes that you’ll return and tell your friends to come too. It’s just good business.

Facebook is a business, don’t forget that. As is Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Snapchat, Instagram, Yahoo! and every other company that you use products from, for free.

Business and Social

People get up in arms when business and social interconnect. Why? Well, showing us ads on Facebook is like being a part of that fifteen person conversation in a bar, and then a Coca-Cola rep jumping in the middle and saying “Hey! Becky loves Coke, you should too! BYE!” Sounds obnoxious, doesn’t it? But that’s business, it happens every single day. There are Bud-Light signs in bars to attract you to the product, it’s just how it works.

What Facebook is doing with Poke is trying to figure out who you interact with privately the most. If they know that, then they know what ads will work better on you. If I Poke Josh Constine a lot, then they know that an ad with his face or content on it might just work on me. That’s pretty smart. It also creeps some people out. Get used to it, though, it’s the present and the future.

Your whispers, while they aren’t technically being “read, watched or listened to” are being tracked as serious social signals. That’s why the app exists, it’s not because Zuckerberg was bored and wanted to code, don’t think that for a second.

The value of a whisper

Google doesn’t “read” your email, just like Facebook won’t “look at” your Pokes. They don’t have time for that, they don’t care, and well, it’s illegal. But what these companies are doing is watching how you use their services so that they can tune them better to fit yours, and everyone else’s, needs.

This is how Facebook is going to attract the rest of the world’s population that aren’t using Facebook. It needs your data to survive. If you’re not OK with that, you have a choice to not use it. You can leave the Internet entirely. But what you can’t do is complain about it over and over. It’s life, it’s business and you are the product. Period.

While Facebook does feel like it has, and will continue to, change the world, it is a company with business models and now shareholders. The same goes for Google. Don’t be a cynic and think that Facebook or Google is evil. They’re not, they’re people just like you. But do go in with your eyes wide open.

Your whisper is more valuable than a public shout, say a comment on someone’s public status update about how cute their dog or child is. You could be commenting on the update to remind them that you’re there, or to show off in front of others. Facebook can’t know that. Nobody can.

But know this, Facebook is interested in your conversation, winks, hugs and kisses with that guy or girl in the bar, way back in the corner by the jukebox. Especially if you’re in a demographic that it doesn’t have a hold on. Like, younger crowds that Snapchat has the attention of.

*Poke*

[Photo credit: Flickr and Flickr]

Game controllers for iPhone are no longer all that rare, even though once upon a time Apple didn’t even allow them to connect to its smartphone. Still, there’s plenty of room for innovation in this space, and Justice Frangipane’s new design is a perfect example of how things can still get better in this market. Frangipane’s project is an iPhone case that while only 3mm thick, holds a Bluetooth 4.0 video game controller that recharges via solar power.

Launching today on Kickstarter, the project is a concept that creator Justice Frangipane has been working on for the last year, but now he’s working with iDevices, the creators of the Bluetooth iPhone meat thermometer iGrill, to help make it a reality. It features a controller that snaps into the back of a super thin iPhone case, providing physical controls compatible with specific games on iOS that support Bluetooth accessories. It not only charges via solar power, but can also use “trickle charging” to sip on low light and indoor light sources, too. The goal was to build a device you never had to build in, and Frangipane says in the project description that they’ve managed to achieve that.

The controller also doesn’t need that much energy to do its thing, thanks to the use of Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy tech,. That will help it connect to the iPhone without sucking down too much juice on either side of the equation, in order to get four hours of play time on a full charge without any light source. And Bluetooth 4.0 also means that response time for input is dramatically improved: BLE has a 6 second response time, Frangipane says, vs. a sluggish 100 milliseconds for older Bluetooth specifications.

Frangipane says that the project has Apple’s support, and that in fact, the iPhone maker has agreed to work with their team to help make sure the controller works with iOS devices, thanks to help from iDevices. At this stage, the prototype still looks like something created by a home hacker in a garage, but it clearly demonstrates that the concept works: by the time it ships, Frangipane says the control pods will snap into place on the front of the device in the case frame, and of course any wires or connectors will be less exposed.

Backers can get shipping devices for $60, with an estimated delivery date of June 2013. If you’re feeling adventurous, there are 125 prototype testing spots open at the $500 pledge level. Overall, the team hopes to raise $135,000 to bring the controller to market.

Gun control is on many minds this week, but let’s not talk about guns. Let’s talk about drones. (With a reported 300 million guns in private hands in America already, it’s probably too late for gun control anyhow.) Drones are to nation-states what assault rifles are to psychotic mass murderers. Worse yet, the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time until alpha insurgencies like Hezbollah and the Zetas have their own fleets of armed or kamikaze drones.

The sound-bite anti-gun-control argument is, of course, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The counterargument is, “Yeah, but guns sure make it a whole lot easier.” The same applies to drone warfare. It’s suddenly so much easier to pull the trigger, and you’re not putting any of your own people at risk. And so more people die.

But surely sober, thoughtful, serious people make these decisions, you may say, aided by the fabled disposition matrix. If so, there are a few points you need to keep in mind:

1. If you think drone warfare is going to stay limited to the relatively checked-and-balanced trigger fingers of the U.S. military, you are living in one of the more astoundingly deluded dreamlands of recent times. China has its own deadly military drones already — oh, and it’s selling them to pretty much all comers.
2. If you think drone warfare of tomorrow will be as tame and limited as today’s, again, you’re dreaming. We’ve moved on from the Altair of military drone technology to maybe the Apple II. Imagine what the metaphorical ultrabooks will look like.
3. Most of all, if something is easier, it will be done more often, with less consideration. That’s basic, fundamental human nature. That’s why Amazon patented one-click shopping. Conversely, the more obstacles and inconveniences you put in the way, the less inclined people will be to go down that road — or at least, the bigger the reward at the end of it has to be. And that’s why military drones scare me even before they get into the hands of people who don’t much care about innocent lives.

We’re already seeing evidence that drone warfare slowly leads to less consideration for civilian lives: the (apparently deliberate) use of the “double tap” strategy, wherein a first missile is followed a few minutes later by another. From a strictly tactical point of view, this probably does kill more of the bad guys…but it also tends to kill rescuers and first responders.

Meanwhile, only 2 percent of the victims of the American drone war — a body count that now far exceeds the number who died in the World Trade Center — were “high-level militants” and hundreds upon hundreds were civilians.

And again, this is only the beginning. That’s what scares me most. Drone wars may seem to those who wage them to be bloodless and clinical — but there’s every reason to believe that they’ll ultimately be far worse and far bloodier than even many of the horrors of the 20th century.

Image: Hunter-killer, The Terminator.

Taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people will be travelling during the next week and a half — and assuming that at least some of them are not organized enough to have booked their accommodation yet — Airbnb today released a new version of its iOS mobile app with some significant updates. To better target weary travellers and innkeepers this holiday season and beyond, Airbnb is adding support for 18 more languages; the ability to add reviews; and calendar access.

All the updates bring the iOS app further in line with the company’s website, and pave the way for Airbnb adding in more interactive features in the future — possibly making use of its recent acquisition of Localmind, which allows users to post questions about specific locations that then get answered by local experts.

The enhanced features also point to how popular the iOS app is already, and to how Airbnb wants to capitalize on that. The company tells me that the iOS app has already had 1.8 million downloads to date, with an 80% increase over the past three months.

Some 26% of Airbnb’s overall traffic at the moment comes from mobile devices (compared to only 12% at this time last year), and it’s clearly a central part of how the company hopes to entice more people to list properties and book them: it says that at the moment the response time for messages sent between hosts and guest is three times faster when the Airbnb mobile apps are used — that’s across iOS, mobile web and Android combined.

But if you’re an Android user looking for similar upgrades, you’re out of luck for now. Airbnb will not give a date for when it will be extending these updates to the Android platform: “We are always working on ways to improve our overall mobile experience, but we don’t have an Android update to share at this time,” a spokesperson noted in an email.

The 18 new languages — including Malay, Turkish and Chinese — now bring the total number supported by the app up to 27. They are a sign of how the company continues to ramp up its international profile, not an insignificant effort because of the various clones — two European competitors for example are 9Flats and the Rocket Internet-backed Wimdu — that are emerging to meet demand. There is still some way to go in getting a fully-international operation up and running. Airbnb says that the 200,000 properties on its books now range across 30,000 cities in 192 countries.

Adding in the ability to read and write reviews, meanwhile, seems like table stakes and to be honest, it’s surprising that it’s taken this long to incorporate them, especially since they’ve proved fairly central to the company’s business model: “Reviews are foundational to creating trust on Airbnb and we’ve seen these become increasingly important to driving repeat traffic to hosts,” the company says.

The Calendar addition, lastly, is really a move to improve Airbnb’s dialog with hosts. The idea here is that hosts will now be able to check and update availability for a property directly from their mobile devices, which will make it easier for them to post and list days on the service.

We’ve contacted Airbnb for some details on how well they’ve fared to date with mobile app usage, and whether they can give us any indication of when they plan to update on other platforms — like Android. [Update: answers incorporated into text above!]

Q: Is Silicon Valley’s Series A crunch causing a chill in Europe? A: Yes and no.

A lot has been written about the Series A crunch/palpable chill in Silicon Valley that’s making founders pull their cardigans a little closer. Most recently a report by a venture capital analysis firm CB Insights suggests there hasn’t actually been a reduction in the amount of money available, but rather too much seed funding causing too much demand for the same amount of cash at the Series A level. Whichever way you cut it, a lot of U.S. seed-funded startups looking to upgrade their backing to Series A level are going to be going away with an empty begging bowl in the future.

But what about beyond the Valley? Does the funding situation in the U.S. have an impact on startup funding in Europe? As the old adage goes, if the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. So if Silicon Valley has a Series A chill, does that make the funding situation a little less forgiving for Europe’s seed-funded startups too? I asked several European VCs and investors for their views on whether the Series A situation in the U.S. is making life more difficult for startups in Europe. I’m not making any claims that this is a scientific poll — it’s a very small sample — but, nonetheless, it’s an interesting snapshot of opinion in the European investor community as 2012 draws to a close.

My takeaway from the poll is that while this group of European investors hold slightly differing views on how much influence the Valley has on the funding situation in Europe, they tend to fall into two camps on the Series A crunch: those that say there’s no change in Europe because it’s always been tough raising a Series A round here; and those that say Europe is having its own mini seed-funding boom — which means that getting a Series A is probably going to be even tougher in the future thanks to increased competition. Sucks to be a European startup then — but if you do manage to get Series A, rest assured you worked your ass off to get it (and probably deserve it).

Angel investor Jeremie Berrebi, who co-founded KimaVentures, says the U.S. Series A situation makes no difference to startup life in Europe. “The answer is simple: It was always difficult to raise Series A money in Europe…and it’s still difficult No change!” he says in an email. Berrebi’s view is that the key to raising a round in Europe is still a sound business model. “What I can say is that almost all of our startups proving that they have a real business model and a good team are raising easily and successfully a round in Europe.”

Berrebi’s view echoes a sentiment expressed recently by Jackson Hull, previously VP of Plum District and now relocated from the West Coast to London as CTO of UK startup onefinestay. Discussing the relative merits of London’s startup scene vs. the Valley last month, he told me: “Businesses here in London, startup businesses, often have a firmer footing in terms of their business models… There’s actually a little bit of craziness in Silicon Valley in relation to startup ideas and the amount of capital being thrown behind these startups, so [US tech folk relocating to London] could be… a reflection of the fact there are great opportunities in London with high growth potential and a lot less noise. There’s more of a focus on a sustainable business model for startups in London.”

Angel investor Julian Ranger‘s take on Europe and the Series A situation is akin to Berrebi’s — he says: “Europe will remain as tough as ever as SV effects are limited on early funding here.” He also flagged up the importance of nailing down the business model — and points out that if a European startup is going to the U.S. for Series A then the key ingredients are a “good business model, a good team and reasonable valuation.” “If these hit the mark then you’ll have a good chance [of raising Series A in the U.S.]; if they don’t you won’t,” he says. “Same as anywhere really.”

Ranger also notes that since equivalent U.S. startups — at “same stage, same team capability, same prospects” — can be valued two to three times higher than European counterparts, this can lead European startups to assume they will get an “immediate uplift” in valuation if they take a trip over the pond. But that’s just “wrong thinking,” he argues. ”Maybe the crunch (which is being over-hyped) will help startups realise that,” he adds. “You go the U.S. for funds because you want to access their market, their contacts and their scale — valuation will be a by-product and should not be the rationale.”

For Robin Klein, partner at Index Ventures and The Accelerator Group, Europe’s Series A situation looks like a microcosm of goings on in the U.S. — because he says the region has also had its own, albeit not quite so frothy, seed-stage investment boom, as governments have jumped on the startup bandwagon. ”There has been a marked increase in seed-stage startup investing here, too. More angels, more mini funds, partly EIS  [Enterprise Investment Scheme] fuelled,” he tells TechCrunch. He believes Europe is therefore set for its own version of the too-many-seed-funded-startups Series A crunch — with investor sentiment also being influenced by chillier climes over in the Valley. ”The change in sentiment in the U.S. will affect sentiment here, too. It will become harder for companies to get Series A funding and smart seed investors should ensure that ‘runways’ are long enough to achieve the milestones necessary. Boards of startup companies should try to focus very clearly on defining these milestones and ensure that they are achieved.”

Ond?ej Bartoš, partner at Credo Ventures, goes one further: there is already a Series A crunch in Europe that’s making it harder for seed-funded startups to get to the next funding level, he says: “Series A crunch is now a reality — and not just in the U.S., but we see clear signs (maybe not yet backed by statistics) of it in Europe as well. Today’s reality is that the chances of a startup with seed or angel funding to get venture financing are decreasing.” As to the cause, Bartoš also points to rapid growth in angel and seed deals — going so far as to describe it as “accelerator and angel investing hysteria.”

“As far as I am looking at the market, I think the reason is not that the amount of available venture funds is decreasing (well in Europe it never was too high), but that the number of angel and seed deals is rapidly growing. With all the accelerator and angel investing hysteria which we’re seeing, it is not too surprising that often the quality of the startups with seed funding is low. If that’s really the case, we should be happy for the Series A crunch as it shows the VCs are keeping their quality standards high – and raising VC is staying as tough as ever which should be the case — only the best ones should succeed.”

So it’s not that Credo Ventures has reduced the amount of Series A funding it is offering — it “still has more than half of the fund available”, says Bartoš — but as with the CB Insights report, the problem here is too many seed-funded startups chasing the same pot of funding (and too many “low quality” ones at that). “We like investing into startups with previous seed or angel funding and/or accelerator experience. On the other hand, none of it is a guarantee to get funding, and yet we’re seeing lots of low-quality startups with previous seed funding,” he adds.

Runa Capital partner Andre Bliznyuk also believes the level of funding on offer at Series A won’t change. “We expect that Runa itself will continue to invest in Series A rounds at the same pace as before,” he says. So the key to unlocking that crucial Series A round is still both as simple and as hard as ever: basically, be an awesome startup. “We continue to believe that the strongest teams with the best products will continue to be able to raise financing, be it in Russia, Europe or the U.S.,” he adds. On a side note, Bliznyuk suggests that being an enterprise/B2B startup may increase the odds in your startup’s favour as that portion of the market has historically been less crowded than the consumer space. “We have also historically been more focused on enterprise/B2B software companies vs. consumer Internet startups, so our portfolio has largely been unaffected by the overall market exuberance,” he adds.

[Image by BlatantWorld.com via Flickr]

Editor’s note: Maria Rocio Paniagua currently works as a project manager at Innku, one of the top mobile and web workshops in Mexico. She is very passionate about all things technology, entrepreneurship and innovation. Follow her on Twitter.

The lack of women in technology in Latin America and the Caribbean is an issue whose cause has deep roots. Latin American women generally are not expected or encouraged to enter the hard sciences and engineering — medicine being one of the biggest exceptions. And unfortunately, private and public programs have yet to be developed or don’t provide the necessary resources to effect change. One exception is Chile, where public and private programs look to foster startups and entrepreneurship.

Contrast this with what’s been happening in the U.S. and Europe: The high positions that women hold, especially in the tech sector, as well as the entrepreneurial support they enjoy, has helped to create a trickle-down effect, resulting in more women in tech. In Latin America and the Caribbean, however, the numbers haven’t moved much. Women who have begun to appear in the startup scene tend to come from urban higher classes, and their numbers remain low. In addition, the number of women in technical positions (namely, CTOs) is also very low, even though entrepreneurship is currently dominated by educated individuals living in cities. Roughly one out of 15 women found in the startup scene is a coder. And, according to Startup Chile, only 1 out of every 10 team members in a startup is a woman.

Still, despite the barriers, there are examples of women disrupting not only businesses, but entire societies all over the continent. They are working hard to solve complex problems in societies where they have a lot working against them. Entrepreneurship has proven to be an area where the few that excel really go the distance, particularly where technology is concerned.

Assessing The Problem

Last month, the UN organized a forum, which was hosted by UN Women in the city of Panamá, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United Nations Population Fund. The forum, entitled “Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Forum: Young Women Leadership and Governance, Sharing Experiences Worldwide,” attracted participants from civil and political organizations involved in the fight for equality and gender rights. And although entrepreneurship and technology were part of the agenda, only two participants and a couple of mentors came from the private industry, and just one represented the technology sector.

During the forum, the gaps between technology and social organizations became very clear. Most participants had very limited knowledge of the current technological resources available to them. Some representatives of indigenous groups were offline altogether. Women 2.0 did not attend the event, and few representatives from countries where the organization had recently launched its Founder Friday events (Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile) had heard about them or what they do.

And some interesting parallels were drawn between female entrepreneurs and activists in Latin America and the Caribbean: both groups strive in the midst of numerous and difficult obstacles and are used to assuming great amounts of responsibility. However, activism is typically an area that many women pursue; entrepreneurship — particularly technological — is not.

On A Mission To Slow The Spread Of AIDS

Despite the obstacles, examples of women throughout Latin America leading startups and entrepreneurial projects continue to surface. May Alba is a co-founder of Rubberit, a web platform that allows people to buy condoms online through monthly subscriptions. For every condom bought through Rubberit, DKT International donates another one to someone who can’t afford it. Rubberit just received its first shipment of DKT donations, which means they can return to their hometown of Guanajuato, Mexico, to distribute 5,000 condoms in one of the poorest communities in the area.

May says her original idea was not to start a web platform, but rather to develop an NGO to distribute condoms for free after seeing a good friend die from AIDS. Rubberit began with a social vision that matched entrepreneurship perfectly, particularly with the problem they’re facing: disrupting a mostly Catholic country where sex is taboo in many areas. May remained focused on solving her physical distribution problem but was running into all kinds of trouble.

She soon realized that helping people through a startup was easier and made more sense. It became more clear when someone directed her to Dollar Shave Club where she got the idea to develop Rubberit as an online subscription service. She went in search of a technical co-founder and her brother, who had recently begun to code, offered to help. With some luck, they met their current investors when a friend emailed them a link to the application page a couple of days before the closing date. They hustled to get a prototype together and went in for the interview. A few weeks later, they got some good news. “I didn’t over think it,” says May. “I just went with what felt right.”

Their biggest challenge has been distribution, since there is a widespread myth about the Mexican postal service not working. They have proved it does, since most of their distribution has been done through the regular national postal service. Getting the packaging right was no easy task, either. They make every package by hand, so it took seven prototypes to get to one that was sturdy enough, discrete, functional, and doable in under four minutes.

May says that their long-term goal for Rubberit is to become the main way condoms are bought (“the way you get water or gas — you get condoms and pay for them every month”). She says failure is an option only if they find another, more effective way to get condoms to everyone who needs them. Either way, they are keeping busy fighting big fights: namely teen pregnancy and AIDS.

From Buenos Aires To Boston To Santiago

Born near Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised by a doctor and a schoolteacher, Vanesa Kolodziej moved to Boston to work during the Argentine economic crisis. While in Boston, she worked briefly at Junior Achievement, a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs develop and scale through best practices. Soon after, she started her MBA at Babson College, though never finished her degree. She also managed Fortune 500 accounts as the Hispanic Director at BzzAgent, a venture-backed ad agency. After , she launched Bumeran. During the dot-com era, she led the creation of a crowd-buying company called Comunia. “It was a very intense period where I learned some of the harder lessons in my life as an entrepreneur,” she says.

Nowadays, after co-founding online tech community Palermo Valley for Argentina, she’s the managing partner and co-founder of Nazca Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Santiago, Chile. It is the first Latin American “founders collective” fund where the five general and all limited partners are entrepreneurs. They started the firm when they identified a gap in the venture capital ecosystem in Latin America: there were hardly any early-stage investments. They are currently in their final stage of fundraising and will start investing in April 2013.

Vanesa considers being a woman in the tech industry in South America an advantage. “It helped me attract amazing talent, access key clients and vendors and develop long lasting partnerships.”

Even though Latin America still has a way to go to increase the opportunities for women in tech, the region has taken steps in the right direction. A lot has been said about the next great company coming from somewhere outside of the U.S. I’d also put my money on it not being founded by a man.

Mark Zuckerberg invented Poking, one of Facebook’s earliest features, so it’s fitting he was part of the small team that built the new Poke app over the last 12 days. Sources say Zuckerberg actually wrote code for Poke despite saying he rarely programs for Facebook anymore. And that voice that blurts out “Poke” when you get a push notification? That’s Zuck, too.

My sources say that Facebook’s CEO recorded the sound snippet on his phone as a joke. But he was convinced to run the sample through some audio filters and let it become the soundtrack to the modern Poke. You can hear the goofy little noise here:

The app’s whole development process is an example of Facebook’s “Hacker Culture.” But it’s also a signal to both would-be competitors of the social network, as well as those who might want to work for it.

Facebook saw ephemeral messaging app Snapchat exploding with popularity. Users loved sharing silly photos and videos that deleted themselves a few seconds after being received.

We heard Facebook made attempts to buy the small startup, but the team wanted to stay independent. That’s when Facebook and Zuckerberg went into hacker mode. With just a few weeks until Apple stopped accepting submissions of new apps before Christmas, it would take a sprint to get Poke built in time.

So a small squad including Facebook Director Of Product Blake Ross kicked development into high gear, Zuckerberg lent a hand with the programming, designers Mike Matas and Sharon Hwang created the icon, and Facebook just made the deadline and launched the Poke app this morning.

But why would Ross publicly post to Facebook that the team built the app in just 12 days? Maybe to show that it could. The message to Facebook’s competitors, as MG Siegler writes, is that if you don’t join Facebook, it can clone your app and compete with you at a moment’s notice.

And to top engineers, designers, and product visionaries, the moral of the Poke is that Facebook isn’t a traditional company restricted by red tape. Things get done fast at 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park. You could work for a tech company where it might take years for your product to ship. Or you could work at Facebook where two weeks later up to a billion people could be using what you built.

Download Poke for iOS here

Read more of our Snapchat-Poke coverage:

Facebook Launches Snapchat Competitor “Poke”, An iOS App For Sending Expiring Text, Photos, And Videos

Facebook Poke Vs. Snapchat: What’s The Difference?

Snapchat Co-Founder Evan Spiegel Responds To Poke: “Welcome, Facebook. Seriously.”

Your Facebook Pokes Are Stored For Two Days, Then Their Encryption Keys Are Deleted

Facebook And Snapchat Go Toe To Toe: Why It’s Good For Both Companies

[Image Credit: Paul Sakuma/AP]

[Correction: Blake Ross was on the Poke team and is a high-ranking Facebook team member but didn’t lead the project.]

You know that annoying kid in junior high that used to give you his lunch money to hang out? That’s what incentivized mobile app downloads are like. Or rather, it’s that kid’s mom or older brother paying you to hang out with them.

So when we were blindsided by saw this post by our founder Michael Arrington earlier today, about the TechCrunch iOS app being offered in exchange for a whopping 9 premium plays of Goobers Vs. Boogers*, we didn’t believe it.

That’s not the TechCrunch app, we said. It has to be a clone. The logo is different, we said. Our COO Ned Desmond even downloaded a Tapjoy game and started playing it, just to prove it wasn’t the real TechCrunch app being offered up for fewer Premium Play credits than Bubble Safari.

“It’s not TechCrunch’s practice to pay for downloads or any traffic,” our Director of Product Christine Ying insisted when I asked her if she knew why our legit mobile app was hanging out with the likes of Big Win Slots in all of its desperate splendor in the middle of Draw Something Free! (or insert other lame mobile game here).

Finally, our COO got to Level 5 of Goobers Vs. Boogers or whatever, and we discovered that it was indeed the TechCrunch app being pushed upon innocent social mobile gamers, all with the eventual goal of pushing these terrible terrible apps to the App Store Top Charts. This is sad.

Because, despite our impassioned doubts, we were actually complicit in this without our consent. As far as we can tell, Aol has some sort of deal with Tapjoy for its other apps (I dunno, MovieFone) and TechCrunch was rolled into it. Neither Eric Eldon or I or anyone else at TechCrunch were consulted about or aware of this decision, which is not without precedent. This pisses me off. Eldon is on vacation, but I’m pretty sure it would piss him off, too.

Because straight up paying for downloads, or traffic, to a blog is insidious and it makes users and readers wrinkle their noses when they read the phrase “paying for downloads.” And we are good enough that we don’t need to do it.

Despite, or even because of, the trolls, people love TechCrunch. If they’re not downloading our app, it’s probably because it crashes. I’ve read the reviews. As Christine pointed out earlier, TechCrunch has traditionally been against paying for traffic (or downloads) of editorial content, because our content is actually interesting, and paid traffic tends to be very low quality. It’s our fault if the vehicle of that content is flawed to the point where people don’t want to use it, and paying people to do so doesn’t solve the problem.

So, since Michael raised a stink about it earlier, our occupying parent company is trying to pull us from whatever this deal is — to its credit. But, just TechCrunch as far as we know.

This is also sad. Why not pull all the Aol properties from Tapjoy, whatever they are? Why just one? Tapjoy is spammy and scuzzy and exists to game Apple’s top App Store rankings for apps that are probably not worth downloading. Otherwise, why would those apps be paying people to? In fact, Apple itself has cracked down on Tapjoy since it became aware of its practices. If they (Aol) pull a deal in one case (us) because of this principle, they should pull in all of them. Why make an exception?

Since we’ve investigated this, we’ve also been made aware that Aol pays for Google Ads on The Crunchies, but that sort of sits better with me, at least, because that event is very clearly defined as a revenue opportunity. People can buy tickets through those links, and the ads aren’t being used to artificially puff up our traffic numbers.

Aol and/or our business side may think it’s smart to extend these sorts of lame practices over to editorial content without telling us or asking for our input, but we don’t. And until they stop, we’re going to make fun of them, just like we would have in junior high. With all due respect, of course.

*Note: Goobers Vs. Boogers is not actually a Tapjoy app. I’ve only included it here because it sounds ridiculous.

True to the legacy of the legendary racer and auto designer who helped define the modern sports car, the Shelby GT500 is a Mustang with more power than any sane individual needs.

The EcoXBT is totally waterproof, making the rugged wireless Bluetooth speaker ideal for rocking to your tunes outside — at the beach, by the pool, on the river, in the rain, wherever.

If you take a photo and no one sees it, did it happen? With so many ways to share your pics, you’ll never have to find out.

Nokia’s Lumia 820 isn’t a flagship phone, and it’s not here to impress veteran smartphone users. But with an on-contract price of just $50, the Windows Phone 8 device is a bargain.

In an attempt to shed its web-based search roots in favor of a mobile-only media format, Qwiki today is unveiling an iPhone app that looks to channel the noise of mobile over-sharing through curated storytelling. The release leverages the combined success of the company’s iPad app and publishing tool, which allowed content creators, media organizations, and everyone in between to develop guided story-telling experiences around any subject.

CEO Doug Imbruce says that the new app aims to give users an alternative way to discover, capture and share moments while on-the-go by automatically pre-selecting a user’s best pictures and videos and creating a video-based slideshow, complete with a soundtrack from your music library.

In 2010, Qwiki captured the TechCrunch Disrupt Cup, thanks to an ambitious product that sought to transform the way people consume information online. Like an interactive, multimedia version of Wikipedia, Qwiki essentially combined images, audio, and video for pretty much anything you could search for on the web into multidimensional, narrated movies. Controversial and well-funded by big names from the start, Qwiki has has had plenty of ups and downs and seen a number of changes in directions since. Two years later, Qwiki’s evolution has finally led to what it hopes will be its decisive pivot.

The idea with the new iPhone app, Imbruce says, is to give users the ability to share their experiences in real time, whether in full moments or experiences, packaging them in 30-second mobile videos. Users can watch, comment on, and “like” each piece of media individually, easily sharing those Qwikis via Facebook and Twitter, as well as within Qwiki’s community. This allows them to discover and interact with other Qwiki users, bloggers and media outlets, while customizing their video slideshows by adding or removing pictures and videos, inserting captions, selecting filters and editing the soundtrack auto-selected by Qwiki.

In essence, the new Qwiki is like Viddy meets Slide (with automation), in that the app automatically pulls pictures and videos together from events you’ve captured on your phone and produces a short movie. The app automates those moments and the pacing between frames, adding its own transitions and pulling in an appropriate soundtrack.

If you don’t like what Qwiki has automatically selected, you can edit away. The whole thing is customizable, so you can add photos it missed, take out ones that include your ex-significant other, and add text and filters as you would for a slideshow. And to that point, Qwikis can be viewed either as reels or as actual photo albums, allowing friends, family and stalkers to explore your birthday, graduation, company barbeque (etc.) stories at their own pace.

Qwiki’s iPhone app has been in development for over a year, and that extra time spent shows. The user experience improves on that of its iPad app, especially for the iPhone 5, as Qwiki developed it significantly for the latest generation.

The CEO says that he believes this first version of its new mobile product will take it out of the realm of gimmicky novelty and into the realm of real utility, removing the hassle of curating your photos, links, videos and moments into galleries, instead giving you access to one-tap storytelling. Less work, more enjoyment. And, since Qwikis are embeddable, you can post them on your Tumblr or your friend’s website. Portable web-compatible Qwikis from a mobile-only world. Mind. Blown.

The app is still in invite-only beta, and the startup will be granting access gradually over the next few weeks. For readers interested in testing it out, click over to the Qwiki’s homepage here and enter your email address. The first 100 or so readers will get immediate access.

The Rockettes. The Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Ice skating in Central Park. There’s definitely no shortage of things to see and do in New York City once the holiday season rolls around, but that means a considerable number of tourists are now trying to navigate the city’s (sometimes obtuse) public transit system.

That’s where social transit app Moovit comes in. It aims to help users simply and easily trek across cities and has just recently launched support for the Big Apple.

Here’s the Moovit formula in a nutshell — once the Android or iOS app has been installed on a smartphone, travelers can use it to plan their jaunts around New York City and determine when the next bus or train is due to arrive in real time. Unlike seemingly similar services like Google Transit and Embark, though, Moovit seeks to tap into its own users as a source for valuable transit information.

Ideally, those folks will leave it running in the background as they embark on a bus or train commute. Should they encounter any trouble spots along the way, more conscientious users can send alerts to let others know if their ride is running behind schedule, if the bus/station stop is overly crowded, or if the driver in control is just plain crazy.

If that sounds more than a little like a transit-friendly take on the Waze formula, then you’d be in good company: Waze co-founder Uri Levine is an investor and sits on the company’s board of directors. It seems like a strange relationship at first glance as both companies are bent on disrupting transportation by tapping into their respective user bases. Apparently, the distinction between social driving and social transit is considerable enough that the two companies don’t mind sharing some brainpower.

As someone who’s never really gotten the hang of public transportation (the joys of living in the suburbs, I suppose), this strikes me as a terribly clever idea with a few critical question marks. The big issue with a service like Moovit, though, is scale — unless enough people are riding around the city in question with the app running on their smartphones, there’s a good chance that you’ll find the data it can provide awfully lacking.

For what it’s worth, the service has already racked up nearly 300,000 downloads, but its user base is scattered across cities from Chicago and Los Angeles to farther-flung locales like Milan, Italy. That doesn’t do you New Yorkers much good unless you’ve got a vacation on the books, but it’s an interesting little indicator of momentum and with any luck the city will soon be full of avid transit trackers.