Category: Tech news

HTC is the sort of company that’s never had the best luck at keeping new products under wraps, and it seems it won’t be bucking that trend any time soon. Case in point: Evleaks (now at UnwiredView) has recently obtained a what’s said to be a render of the company’s new top-tier M7 Android smartphone, and it’s definitely not what most of us expected to see.

Got your grains of salt ready? Good, because you’ll need them.

The M7′s rumored specs — 4.7-inch display, 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm processor — have been making the rounds for weeks now, but this render depicts a device that seems like a marked step back from the company’s current design language. It’s a… weird looking device to be sure, thanks to its abject lack of HTC branding and its multitude of drilled speaker holes, and the device bears more than a passing resemblance to RIM’s forthcoming all-touch BlackBerry Z10 device.

What’s more, there’s no sort of demarcation to indicate where the device’s screen ends and where the bezel begins — it could be that HTC has taken its CEO’s zeal for innovation to heart and crafted a phone with an edge-to-edge screen, but the end result would probably look more like this (courtesy of an UnwiredView commenter).

Now before you’re tempted to judge the device already, know that the device that’s expected to be unveiled in a few weeks in Barcelona may ultimately look nothing like this. It’s worth pointing out again that Evleaks has a fairly solid track record with this sort of thing, but the render in question was supposedly yanked from a video clip meant to teach users how to install their SIM cards for the first time, and he (she? they?) has expressed doubt that this is the design that will soon see the light of day. On top of that, another supposedly leaked image of a device in the wild doesn’t look much like this recently outed render (though in fairness, the image is an extreme close-up of the M7′s screen).

There’s really no way to tell how accurate the render is just yet, but it shouldn’t be long before a handful of new leaks shed some more light on things. Until then, let us gnaw on what few morsels of information we have and dream of what will come.

The original render, and a tweaked mock-up of what it may look like with the screen turned on.

Generally speaking, I don’t care much about cars, but Audi Canada, together with Toronto-based ad agency Zulu Alpha Kilo and Slot Mods USA have managed to use cars in a way that piqued my interest. The documentary above tells the story of how Audi Canada partnered with the slot racing company to build 1/32 scale Quattro models, as well as a detailed test track for those cars to drive. The best part? Users can hop on iPads to steer the cars, and get a driver-perspective point of view of the RC cars in action in real time.

The craftsmanship of the track itself is impressive enough, as is the effort put into making the scale models of the Audi cars, but the coolest part for me is the way they rigged the vehicles to not only be controlled by iPads, but also to deliver back to those devices a real-time view of the track as it’s being driven. If there’s one thing that’s disappointing in the video, it’s that they gloss over the technical details of how the router setup and video streaming actually works, presumably in the interest of not boring their audience. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a little less about painting trees and a little more about the technical backend. But if you’re looking for grittier technical info, rather than a look at a polished finished product, check out this similar project put together by Portugese hardware hackers.

This thing is actually playable, if you happen to be in Toronto, and it looks like it should feel a bit more real than even a Gran Turismo in action. One suggestion: Arcades could experience a renaissance if they invested in more things like this. I’m hoping for a kaiju/giant robot fighting game crafted with the same attention to detail myself.

Zettaset, a startup focused on big data management and security, has raised a $10 million Series B round of funding  led by HighBar Partners, with additional participation from Brocade and Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Epic Ventures.

Zettaset has developed a distribution-agnostic management platform for Apache Hadoop-based big data deployments. Designed for enterprise environments that require high levels of security and compliance, Zettaset allows for the mitigation of the common security vulnerabilities in Hadoop through role-based access control, authentication and logging capabilities, among others.

For the uninitiated, Hadoop is an open-soucre distributed data storage technology that allows for retrieval and analysis of large data sets. Originally used by Yahoo to optimize web pages, advertising and content, Hadoop has become an enterprise favorite for doing data analysis.

But optimizing web pages does not have the same security requirements as a company may have when analyzing sensitive or private data. There are access control issues, questions about data ownership, and how to treat new data sets that get created from the analysis.

Competitors in the market are still fairly new in developing solutions but players to watch include IBM and Cloudera.

MuckerLab, the up-and-coming L.A.-based accelerator program is hosting its demo day for the 10 portfolio companies in its winter class today. In addition, the accelerator just announced that its last class, which graduated almost exactly a year ago, has raised over $15 million so far and that it has partnered with AngelList to accept applications for its future classes.

MuckerLab provides the companies in its 3-6 month program with $21,000 in cash, office space, technical and fundraising support, as well as access to its mentor network.

• The Black Tux, which is reinventing the customer experience in the antiquated $10B+ tuxedo rental and sales industry.
• Blayze, the first online video audience development platform that empowers brands, YouTube channels, and media companies to buy and sell highly targeted new viewers.
• Eventum, an enterprise event marketing and engagement platform that enables Fortune 1000 brands to amplify event marketing dollars and create digital relationships with attendees.
• GetMeRated, a mobile app where teens and twenty somethings find new friends through photos and chat.
• MarkedUp, the first ever analytic solution for the $100B desktop and enterprise application industry.
• Panjo, a marketplace for the world’s most ardent auto, sport, and hobby enthusiasts.
• RocksBox, a new discovery and sales channel for designer fashion jewelry.
• Subblime, which allows influencers on YouTube to monetize their audience through authentic product recommendations.
• TouchFrame, a publisher of interactive game show apps that is partnering with top TV producers and YouTube channels, and is the first company to power, distribute, and monetize game shows as mobile apps.
• Younity, which creates a personal cloud for all your files, built from your devices and your online services.

This is MuckerLab’s second demo day. Its first cohort, which included a very diverse group of companies like Instacanvas, the smart credit card Walla.by, and all-you-can-fly membership Surf Air, the group tells me, has raised over $15 million to date. The investors in this company include well-known VC firms like Greylock Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Founders Fund, First Round Capital, Bullpen Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), Lightbank and Anthem Venture Partners.

The donkey lives! Apparently, Google did not kill a donkey with its Street View car in Botswana, after all. Donkeycide would totally go against Google’s whole “do no evil” credo, the company said. Okay, just kidding. But Google did take the time out of its busy schedule to respond to the accusations of donkey hit-and-run on the official Google Maps blog this morning, in a post hilariously titled “Never ass-ume.”

Ass-ume. Get it? Get it?!

Seriously though, if you haven’t been following this story – and, well, good for you for having a life – it started when some Caltech theoretical physicist styling himself as “the real Sheldon Cooper” on Twitter (@TheRealSheldonCooper) tweeted a link to a Google Street View image showing what appears to be a dead donkey lying in the dirt road, presumably behind the Street View car.

Why a physicist was spending his time browsing Botswana’s Street View remains a mystery. Maybe he had outsourced his job to China and was looking to kill some time surfing the Internet?

In any event, it was one of those little observations people make on Twitter all the time, but for whatever reason, the image went viral. Fox News even picked it up, because, well you know, they like to cover the news that matters.

Um, as do we.

(Dismounts from high horse).

Google, at least, cares enough about its reputation to respond to these outrageous claims of donkey murder. Reads the company blog post on the matter:

Over the last 24-hours concerned members of the public and the media have been speculating on the fate of a donkey pictured in Street View in the Kweneng region of Botswana.

Because of the way our 360-degree imagery is put together, it looked to some that our car had been involved in an unseemly hit and run, leaving the humble beast stranded in the road.

As our imagery below shows, the donkey was lying in the path – perhaps enjoying a dust bath – before moving safely aside as our car drove past. I’m pleased to confirm the donkey is alive and well.

Google’s post shows that in images 1 and 2, the car was driving on the left side of the road and approached the donkey, which was lying down, taking a breather.

In image 3, the donkey gets up and moves aside.

Image 4, taken from the back of the vehicle also shows the animal on its feet.

Crisis averted!

Unless…of course, well….this could all be just some sort of massive coverup to hide the fact that Google is testing its self-driving cars out in the wilds of Africa, and it has discovered a bug in the system: robots don’t brake for wildlife. I don’t know, that could happen, right? Did anyone check the photos for evidence of Photoshopping?

Betable, a San Francisco-based startup that makes it easier for casino-style game developers to offer players real money bets instead of virtual currency ones, just nabbed Jonathan Flesher. He was the vice president of business development that orchestrated Zynga’s recent partnership with bwin.party, an online gambling operator in the U.K.

He’ll become Betable’s executive vice president of business development, where he’ll do everything from sign developers, push licensing forward in other territories and sign other strategic partnerships. Before Zynga, he was a director of business development at EA after several years of working in banking and private equity.

“We’re seeing a convergence between the free-to-play social gaming world and online gambling world,” Flesher said. He said that developers that stick purely to virtual currencies may get left behind as studios that implement real-money gaming suddenly acquire a more lucrative player base and get more money at their disposal for marketing.

“If you incorporate real-money gaming, you’ll get a higher lifetime value from your players, and then you’ll be able to outspend other companies in the space that aren’t doing real money gaming,” he said.

Flesher did not directly leave Zynga for Betable. He took a few months off to spend time with family and then re-engaged with Betable later. While working at Zynga, he came across the company, but he declined to say whether Zynga had explored a formal partnership with the startup. That said, Bwin.party makes logical sense at a partner because it is the world’s largest publicly traded online gambling firm.

Betable, which has real-money gaming licenses in the U.K., lets casino-style game developers add real money betting to their titles. They won’t be able to reach players in the U.S. because of current state and federal regulations. But they will be able to reach U.K. players on iOS and players in most jurisdictions abroad on Android. Betable’s platform identifies which players they can legally show gambling-like features to based on their location or jurisdiction. So a developer that integrates Betable shouldn’t be concerned with exposing gambling mechanics to U.S.-based players, for example.

The company is pursuing licenses in other countries as well.

They’re already live in several games including Big Fish Casino, but they haven’t disclosed how many games or players are in the total network.

Betable is actually a re-start of an older company, that was “a stock exchange for betting where the odds were user-generated,” according to CEO Chris Griffin. That concept didn’t work out but in the process of building it, Betable acquired real-money gaming licenses. Through this, Griffin said he discovered this opportunity to be a platform for social games that integrate gambling. He pivoted, bought the old investors out and recapped the company.

The company has 20 employees and has raised funding from Greylock, CrunchFund, Yuri Milner’s Start Fund, Founders Fund, True Ventures, Path co-founder Dave Morin, former Wikia CEO Gil Penchina, Delicious’ Josh Schachter, StockTwits’ Howard Lindzon and LOLApps former CEO Arjun Sethi

Recently, I had the Founder and Chief Scientist of Cloudera, Jeff Hammerbacher, over to the studio to talk about his experience building out big data systems for Facebook. He explained to me how the lack of commercially available data storage and analysis inspired him to start Cloudera. Cloudera is an enterprise software company that provides analytical data management using Apache Hadoop.

Jeff discusses the importance of surrounding himself with interesting people. He also shares his advice on hiring engineers, learning his role as a founder, and knowing when to fire himself as the head of product.

Disclosure: Michael Abbott is a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, previously Twitter’s VP of Engineering, and a founder himself.

Apple’s courtroom skirmishes against its Android OEM enemy number one Samsung have not been going very well of late, despite Cupertino’s big $1bn+ damages win against Samsung last summer. Today another legal blow for Cupertino: a Dutch district court has ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets do not infringe Apple design patents.

The latest Apple vs Samsung court ruling concerns the rounded corners of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablets — which Apple had argued infringe the design of the iPad. The Dutch court rejected Apple’s argument — saying there is “no question of an infringement” — and citing previous similar decisions in U.K. courts.

A notice on its website (translated from Dutch with Google Translate) reads:

Today the Hague district court judgment in a case of Samsung against Apple. At issue in this case is whether the design of some of Samsung Galaxy tablets infringe a design right from Apple. The court believes that there is no question of an infringement.

The court refers to British law which the court already had found the same two instances on the same infringement question.

While it might seem logical to conclude that all these court misses are accumulating to weigh down Apple’s overall legal hopes against Samsung — Reuters notes that the pair are engaged in patent litigation in at least 10 countries — the reason for the Dutch court falling in line with the U.K. ruling comes down to this case being focused on a design/IP patent, rather than a technical patent.

According to the FOSS Patents blog, design/IP patents are currently subject to EU-level law, whereas technical patents are adjudicated on a country-by-country basis.  ”It would have taken some exceptional circumstances for the Dutch court to disagree with the UK court,” the blog notes.

Samsung provided the following statement commenting on the Dutch court ruling:

We welcome the court’s decision, which reaffirmed decisions made by courts in other countries that our Galaxy Tab products do not infringe Apple’s registered design right. We continue to believe that Apple was not the first to design a tablet with a rectangular shape and rounded corners and that the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples of prior art. Should Apple continue to make excessive legal claims based on such generic designs, innovation in the industry could be harmed and consumer choice unduly limited.

At the time of writing Apple had not responded to a request for comment.

Last October Apple lost an appeal in a U.K. High Court against a tablet design patent judgement that had found in Samsung’s favour. The U.K. court also ruled that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab did not infringe the iPad’s design (the judge in the original trial actually said Samsung’s tablet was ‘not cool enough’ to infringe Apple’s design). In that instance the court ordered Apple to publish an acknowledgement of the judgement on its website and run ads in paper-based media.

Today, Google.org’s VP, Matthew Stepka, announced that the non-profit arm of Google is going to be giving a large sum money to Sunlight Foundation and mySociety to promote civic innovation through technology. Specifically, its Civic Information API will help fuel new applications and services for places worldwide. Big and small.

Here’s what Stepka had to say about the initiative:

We’ve seen developers use our Civic Information API to bring election data to citizens in new and exciting ways. Our live election results maps have been viewed by billions around the world, bringing real-time transparency to elections in Egypt, Mexico, Ghana, and more. Last week, we launched the Kenya Elections Hub for citizens to access the latest news and resources for the country’s presidential election.

Sunlight Foundation and mySociety will be given $3.7 million to continue their innovation in civic leadership. By helping communities engage in a closer relationship with their government, Google hopes that the world can have more “open and innovative societies.”

Here’s what the money will be used for:

We are providing $2.1 million to the Sunlight Foundation to grow their programs for open government data, with a focus on making civic information for U.S. cities transparent, available, and useable. By opening up information at the city level for developers as well as citizens, Sunlight is creating opportunity for new ideas that can have an impact in local markets.

We are also supporting mySociety, providing $1.6 million to build a global platform to equip developers with tools and resources–such as open source code–to more easily and quickly launch new civic apps and services. This initiative can promote collaboration between civic-minded technologists, regardless of geography. For example, a civic app created in Finland might be easily replicated 9,000 miles away by a developer in Chile.

As you saw above, the company highlighted its Kenya Elections Hub as an example of why these initiatives are so important. That hub provides citizens with detailed and accurate information about the candidates, as well as links to all relevant news stories:

Google, through Google.org, has taken a long-term interest in providing sets of data in an open way, hoping that technologists all over the world would see it as a way to spread information and help their fellow man out. Google is most valuable in collecting the world’s information and then setting it free again in a structured way.

The company is putting its money where its mouth is, which is certainly not a bad thing.

Task management is a crowded space, but if someone had solved the problem of procrastination with an app we’d probably already be a much more successful society. That’s why 16-year-olds Ryan Orbuch and Michael Hansen developed their own task management solution called Finish.

The idea sprung up during 10th grade finals (how old am I?) when the duo realized they wanted a better way to stay on top of all of their work. They wanted something simple, with easy and quick input, but that automated the priority of each task based on due date.

And that’s what Finish is all about.

It doesn’t sync across devices or integrate with your calendar, so if you’re already deeply immersed in a multi-platform, robust task management system, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend Finish. On the other hand, if you’re a high school or college student, or a freelancer with deadlines, Finish’s due-date-based system will probably be just the trick.

The app first asks you to indicate various time frames for short-term, mid-term, and long-term. From there, you simply add a task and a due date by tapping on the proper day on the calendar. Finish automatically categorizes the task based on short-, mid-, or long-term, and it’s added to a home screen slider.

As tasks are completed, the next task in each sub category slides up to replace it. Short-term goals are always shown, and then the first from both mid-term and long-term goals are displayed. Just tap on either one of them to expand into the full list of tasks.

The app also sends you push notifications to make sure nothing slips by.

All in all, it’s not the most full-featured task app in the world, but it was built by high-schoolers to fit their exact issues with procrastination, so I’m willing to wager it’ll be of the same value to other students, as well.

The app is available now in the App Store for $.99.

photo (3)

Andy Page, Gilt’s President, is departing the luxury online retailer, we’ve learned.

Gilt promoted Page to the role of President from Chief Financial Officer in 2011, where he was responsible for the operations of Gilt’s various verticals, including Women’s, Gilt MAN, Gilt Children, Gilt Home, Gilt Taste, Park & Bond, and Gilt City.

He joined Gilt as CFO in 2010, leading the company through a number of fundraising rounds and acquisitions. Prior to joining the company, Page was Chief Operating and Financial Officer of mobile social gaming company PlayPhone. Page also served as Chief Financial Officer & SVP of Business Strategy at StubHub and helped lead the company’s sale to eBay in 2007.

Gilt has recently shuffled its leadership. Co-founder Kevin Ryan recently announced that he would leave the CEO position (but will remain as chairman of the board). Travelocity CEO, former Citigroup Exec, and Gilt Board member Michelle Peluso will be taking over the CEO this year.

Ryan explains that Page had been commuting to New York from San Francisco since 2010, and this taxing arrangement didn’t make sense for his personal life. He says that Page was integral in helping the company become EBITDA positive (the company turned profitable on EBITDA basis in Q4), and has helped turn Gilt from a company that was losing $60 million per year to one that is now approaching overall profitability. It’s unclear whether the company will hire someone to replace Page, says Ryan.

Page says that while he loves Gilt, and despite the company’s rapid growth; he couldn’t continue to do the commute while having a family on the West Coast. The leadership of the company has to be in New York, he explains.

Page is going to be at Gilt until March (when Peluso starts her role) and will then move onto other opportunities in the Bay Area.

Shenzen New Degree Technology was one of the companies showing its stuff in the Eureka Park portion of CES 2013, and this China-based hardware startup had some impressive tech to show off related to touch input. Combining capacitive and resistive touch-based input with a means to make it work even on solid stainless steel surfaces, Shenzen New Degree hopes to pave the way for a wide range of new products with built-in controls that are highly durable, retaining their touch sensitive abilities even after considerable wear and tear.

The interesting thing about Shenzen New Degree’s tech is that it can provide both the levels of accuracy and sensitivity it manages while still also remaining durable enough that you can pour water on it, as the company showed me at their booth in Eureka Park. The environmental toughness of this implementation means it’ll be able to be used in a wide range of applications where touch devices would be exposed to the elements, like in kitchen appliances, outdoor digital keypads and parking meters, and the high sensitivity will make for a much better user experience than the resistive touch tech generally used in most commercial-grade touch panels.

Another benefit, as you can see in the video above, is that the panels can detect not only standard number sequence codes, but also the degree of force used to press, meaning that if someone wanted to not only have the numeric entry, but also the force with which it was entered as a secondary security measure, they could easily do that. All in all, it’s a pretty amazing component technology that I’m sure we’ll see picked up by a lot of OEMs fairly quickly.

Following calls for an investigation into the prosecution and recent suicide of internet activist, Aaron Swartz, MIT’s website is currently down. MIT’s President L. Rafael Reif today called for an investigation into the handling of the case brought against Swartz for his release of pay-walled academic papers from popular database, JSTOR.

There is a possible connection to the hacktivist organization, Anonymous. An unverified Twitter account, AnonymousIRC, tweeted this curious message:

by the way. mit.edu down. #Anonymous #AaronSwartz

—
  (@AnonymousIRC) January 14, 2013

Anonymous, however, has a history of taking credit from their main, verified Twitter accounts, so their involvement is still speculative.

This is an ongoing story, we will update the post as new information becomes available.

Note: An earlier version of this post noted that DOJ.gov and W3.gov, possible redirects to official websites, were also down. In light of new evidence, the fact that they’re not redirecting may not be related to the ongoing issues with MIT’s network.

Here’s a novel way to keep track of your wallet, your cat, or, yes, your keys.

Jimmy Buchheim stopped by the the TechCrunch booth at the Consumer Electronics Show to demo StickNFind, a bluetooth sticker technology that you can use to track almost anything. Once you’ve attached the sticker to an object of your choice, you can track it down again using the StickNFind iOS and Android apps, which tell you whether you’re getting farther from or closer to the object in question — basically, it’s the tech version of that that hotter/colder game.

In the video, you can watch me track down a sticker that the TechCrunch crew has hidden. It took the app a little while to refresh as I walked around, but I was eventually able to find the “keys.” (Full disclosure: They told me the sticker’s location ahead of time.)

StickNFind uses Bluetooth technology, so it still works in situations — like CES — with limited cell phone reception. The company said it has a range of about 100 feet. Other features include a “virtual leash,” so you’re alerted when something moves a certain distance away. It plans to sell two stickers for $49.95 or four for $89.95.

StickNFind is also in the final stretch of an Indiegogo campaign. It has already blown past the goal, raising $734,000 on a $70,000 target, but you can still support the campaign and pre-order the product.

CES has come and gone, but the memory of this year’s show will live on forever. Not necessarily because the 15-20 TechCrunch staffers who attended will remember it — chances are the night-time debauchery has wiped away all recollection of the past week — but because this post exists.

We met a bunch of celebrities. We discovered a phone with an e-ink display on the back, a giant spider walking vehicle, and a fork that tells you when you’re eating too fast.

We conducted a ton of interviews. (Even one with a robot.)

We met the Nyan Cat founder, and we even had time left over to film a CrunchWeek episode. And, of course, we went on a rampage of destruction in the iLounge accessories area.

But most importantly, we realized just how much CES matters (for now, at least.)

We had a blast, and we hoped you enjoyed our coverage as much as we enjoyed delivering it.