Category: Tech news

We’re still here at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California watching Demo Dayfor Y Combinator’s Summer 2012 class, the storied incubator’s biggest yet. Today’s 75 presentations have been broken up into five batches, with the fifth being off-the-record.

The third round of startups just presented their wares to a room full of the crème de la crème of tech industry investors and executives (and a fair number of us digital ink-stained media types) — and although it’s the last round of startups before lunch, the energy has not started to flag one bit.

You can check out roundups from batches one, two, and four, plus our coverage of how Y Combinator pitches are changing.

Here are the 15 startups from the third batch that just gave their best song-and-dance routines:

GetGoing — Selling unused flight seats at a discount

It may seem hard to believe if you’ve ever been screwed over while flying standby, but on average, 20 percent of seats on airplane flights in the US are empty. This undersold inventory adds up to $25 billion in lost revenue in the United States alone. GetGoing aims to find these unsold seats and price them at a deep enough discount that they sell to leisure travelers that aren’t sure of where they want to go. This can mean 40 percent off of regular flight prices for customers — but it’s still a win for airlines, as those seats would have otherwise gone completely unused.

GetGoing has already signed contracts with two of the top five airlines. At this rate, GetGoing says it’s on track to “build the next Priceline.”

Canopy Labs — A customer modeling platform for any B2C company

Pretty much every company out there could benefit from getting data-driven advice to help hone their sales and business development strategy. The thing is, that kind of technology is normally only accessible for big companies with deep pockets who can hire outside consultants. Canopy Labs has built a self-serve technology platform that can be used in the same way that those expensive, customized lead optimization tools are — it helps sales teams identify their largest potential customers and prioritize their sales pitches.

According to Canopy Labs, uptake has been encouraging: In the past few months, Canopy has brought in $140,000 in revenue and is profitable, with 9 enterprise customers signed onto use the software. According to the company, the potential to grow is big — there are some 90,000 potential customers out there that could benefit from having Canopy Labs. Read more about the company here.

Dreamforge: Simple modeling software for 3D printing

Many people believe that if there’s one thing that helps illustrate the endless possibilities of our tech-enabled future right now, it’s 3D printing (well, also whatever technology makes PopChips so delicious and low-calorie. But then after that, it’s definitely 3D printing.) With the rise of 3D printing that’s easy and affordable enough to be used by regular people, though, we’ll need awesome software to help us design things to print.

That’s where Dreamforge comes in. Dreamforge says it has made 3D modeling software that can be used by average consumers to create things like toys (such as the superhero pictured above.) Most existing 3D modeling software right now has lots of bells and whistles that only experts know how to navigate, but Dreamforge has a streamlined user interface that can purportedly be used by anyone.

BigCalc: Fast number-crunching for making financial trading decisions

Bad computations can mean serious money lost when it comes to the financial space: Earlier this month, Knight Capital said it lost some $440 million in 45 minutes because of a “computer glitch.” BigCalc has set out to make software that financial firms can rely on to help them make fast, algorithmically-driven trading decisions.

BigCalc says its platform for financial modeling scales to enormous datasets, and purportedly does simulations that typically take 22 hours in 24 minutes. The startup says it is currently in talks with four major financial firms that might use its software to help inform its trading operations.

Easel: A single, simple tool for web design

The status quo for most modern web design is kind of like a game of telephone: A product manager creates a rough sketch of a web app in a design platform like Balsalmic, hands it off to a designer, who then turns it into a realistic-looking screenshot, who then passes it on to a developer that implements it with HTML and CSS. It’s a lot of back-and-forth, and often the final product is not close to the original concept because of all the tool transitions needed.

Easel wants to replace all these different formats with its one, simple, in-browser tool that can be used in all phases of a web and mobile design process, from mockup to implementation. Easel charges a minimum monthly subscription fee of $100, and it seems to be something that folks have been willing to pay to try out. In its beta release, Easel has had 10,000 users sign up, and 7,000 of whom have already created something with the platform. Read more about Easel here.

Kamcord: An app for recording mobile gameplay

Saving and sharing computer gaming moves is a hugely popular thing to do — but the process hasn’t made the leap yet to the increasingly powerful mobile gaming space. Kamcord, an app for the iPhone, wants to fill that gap. Kamcord lets you record and share videos of mobile game play through a tool that is integrated into your phone’s games and allows sharing to social networks.

The app has already taken off in a way — by the end of the year, Kamcord’s founders say they expect to be installed on hundreds of millions of phones. It also sees the potential to become a game-centered app store in its own right down the line. The real key here is that Kamcord actually owns the content that’s captured through its app, so it can monetize each and every video view. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that when tech is involved, playing games can actually be big business. Read more about Kamcord here.

Reel Surfer — Share short, snappy video clips

Everyone knows that people online have pretty short attention spans — and when it comes to video, that’s especially true. Even though people love watching video content, after just 15 seconds, the average online video lose half of its audience. Reel Surfer says it’s found a way to both feed our appetite for video content while not losing our attention by letting people take out short clips from any video and share them with their friends. And Reel Surfer says that it can guarantee that its app will find the best bits of any long video.

It appears to be pretty addictive: Reel Surfer says its traffic is doubling every week, as “short clips are really viral.” I believe it. You can read more about Reel Surfer here.

LeanMarket– An easy way to buy and sell banner ads

When it comes to online ads, buyers and sellers no longer negotiate one-on-one; they meet on big ad exchanges that function almost like stock exchanges. But in the banner ad space, if you want to play in the real-time bidding environment, today you have to buy expensive software that requires training.

LeanMarket aims to undercut these software platforms with its own self-serve system that functions like an e-Trade for banner ads — “bringing real-time bidding to the masses.” LeanMarket did $50,000 in revenue last month alone, and is on track to make $100,000 this month. You can read more about LeanMarket here.

TomoGuides — Mobile travel guide apps

TomoGuides is building free mobile travel guide apps that let people know about new things that old-fashioned travel guide books can’t: Last minute lodging deals, brand new tours and activities, and the like.

They’ve also largely cut out the notoriously expensive and unreliable “human writer” aspect that most travel guides use (trust me, we’re wretched) by building a computer engine for mass-producing travel guides. Tomo’s founders say they have made 12 guides in just 20 days, and by the end of the year it expects to have 120 apps.

DataNitro — A backbone for finance-related data

DataNitro’s founders have both worked in finance, and they say they know from experience that financial industry software is basically “held together with duct tape.” A big problem with the status quo is how data is exported from Excel. So DataNitro (formerly known as IronSpread) set out to revolutionize that process with a new engine for Excel based on the Python programming language that makes it very easy for Excel to interface with other systems used in the financial industry.

Since launch, DataNitro has grown 94 percent week over week, and its software has been used to pull data from sources such as Bloomberg and Reuters, interface with external databases, and optimize trades. Read more about DataNitro here.

Eligible: An API for healthcare eligibility

Before doctors do procedures, they need to check with the insurance company to make sure that a potential patient is actually eligible for the procedure — hospitals do need to get paid, after all. But despite the eligibility check being incredibly routine, it often takes overnight to complete. So Eligible has created a software system to speed that up significantly.

Eligible has built an API for healthcare eligibility queries that lets doctors process queries in real-time. Eligible says it is already processing some 1,000 queries every day — that’s a lot, but the potential to grow is even higher, as last year there were over 12 billion eligibility queries in the US alone.

Grid — A reinvented spreadsheet for the tablet age

Grid says it has completely redesigned from the ground up the classic spreadsheet interface for the mobile experience, dominated by touch-screen commands.

It’s a simple outcome that was probably quite difficult to do — and it seems that users have responded with enthusiasm. They have 15,000 beta requests so far, and those who have made it into the beta have become daily users. Read more about Grid here.

HD Trade Services — Software to handle warehouse inventory

Warehouse logistics is a huge industry, but it’s not one that you often associate with viral apps. But HD Trade Services says it has created technology has taken off virally in the typically stodgy warehouse logistics space. HD Trade Services has made an app that works on tablets for managing inventory and tracking shipments that purportedly lets businesses see a 27 percent increase in labor efficiency in their warehouses.

And during its beta pilot in New York and Miami, HD Trade Services founders say that its customers have been willing to pay for that boost in productivity to the tune of $60,000 per year. Read more about HD Trade Services here.

TapIn — Instant streaming video for the iPhone

Mobile video apps have been really hot lately, but there is one chasm that still hasn’t quite been crossed — and that’s going from previously filmed to real-time content. TapIn has made an app that lets you easily stream video content being captured on your iPhone. As its founders explain, there is a key difference between watching a video of something that just happened, versus watching a video of something that is currently happening.

People who have used TapIn seem to like it — the average visitor watches 17 minutes worth of video while on the app, and 83 percent of people who take one video take another. Read more about TapIn here.

Tracks.by — A promotional channel for celebrities

Big celebrities have certainly started to see the benefits to being online on apps like Facebook and Twitter, but most of them haven’t quite started to make money on the web in the same way that they do in other media venues. Tracks.by wants to help bridge that gap, by letting celebrities make the same kind of endorsements that they typically do on television and print through social media.

Brands pay Tracks.by on a cost per action basis to get celebrities to make endorsements on the web through online updates like Tweets. Things have started to take off pretty well — Tracks.by already works with 52 of Billboard’s top 100 artists, and is in the process of expanding to athletes and actors. All told, according to Tracks.by, it’s a $50 billion per year business. Read more about Tracks.by here.

Josh Constine, Anthony Ha, and Kim-Mai Cutler contributed reporting to this article.

Now check out TechCrunch’s Top Ten Picks From YC Demo Day, and choose your own favorites from the other batches:

• First Batch: BufferBox, Kippt, Airbrite, Amicus MicroEval, Vastrm, VoiceGem, 9gag, HubChilla, FundersClub, SpinPunch, Everyday.me, Double Robotics, SmartAsset, Submittable, Plivo Imgfave, Amicus
• Second Batch: Flightfox, Mth Sense, Scoutzie, Instacart, Profig, Zapier, Coco Controller, Collections, Keychain Logistics, Parallel Universe, Survata, Sponsorfied, Filepicker.io, Referly, Rentio
• Fourth Batch: Study Edge, Statwing, Hiptype, RegistryLove, Virool, Circular, Viacycle, QuicklyChat, Knowmia, Coinbase, Markupwand, Healthy Labs, Vayable, Tastemaker, Light Table, Clever

Early-stage venture firm Y Combinator‘s 15th Demo Day is underway with 75 startup presentations throughout the day. It’s the firm’s biggest and most selective class to date, and Mountain View’s Computer Science Museum is packed with roughly 400 or so investors and observers.

You can meet the startups from batches one, three, and four, plus read our coverage of how Y Combinator pitches are changing, but now let’s look at the second set of companies that demo-ed their work to VC firms, angels, and the press:

Flightfox: Human-powered Flight Search Engine

Flightfox says its search engine can be more efficient and and cost-effective than competitors like Expedia. It’s a marketplace of real people (like travel agents) who work competitively against each other to find you the very best flight. Basically the way it works is this: you put in your travel dates and places, choose an amount to award the finder of the best fare, and sit back and let the contest take place. The company says it has already made $120,000 in finder’s fees of about $30 or so. The company initially launched for the leisure market, but they eventually have plans to go into corporate flights. The company just closed an $800,000 round of funding from YC, 500 Startups, Kevin Laws (board member at AngelList), Matt Dickinson (early investor in Ark), Mick Liubinskas (from Pollenizer), and others.

Mth Sense: Improving Mobile Ad Targeting

This startup is tackling the very thorny problem of mobile advertising, which has vexed juggernauts like Facebook and Google because it is much harder to charge rates that are comparable to what is available on the desktop web. Mth Sense says that advertising is not as efficient as it could be because only 1 percent of ads come with any info about the users. Most ads served are blind. Mth sense’s solution adds demographic data to ads through predictive modeling based on app and device usage. For example, if you have the Pinterest, and Vogue apps, you’re more likely to be a soccer mom. The company generates about 10,000 profiles per day with trials seeing 35 to 65 percent click through rate increases. The say they can charge roughly a 4 cent cost-per-1,000-impressions for this data.

Scoutzie: A Marketplace For Designers

In a world where all consumer web products seem to have gone mobile-first, Scoutzie says that there are thousands of people looking for great mobile designers. There are brand agencies that could cost $50,000 and then there are marketplaces like 99Designs, which Scoutzie criticizes for focusing on cheaper labor. Since design is so vital to success of an app, paying $6 an hour is just not going to cut it. Scoutzie community vets all potential designers, either through a formal portfolio review or through a members-only invite process. This review process has resulted in 500 top notch members of the Scoutzie community and around 1,500 applicants who didn’t make the cut. The startup, which monetizes by taking a 10% cut of all projects arranged via the site (versus an agency’s traditional 50% cut), is currently focused on building community feedback tools to encourage its members to feel at home and valued — which even further sets it apart from 99Designs.

Instacart: Uber For Grocery Delivery

Instacart eventually wants to be an Amazon.com with one-hour delivery for anything and everything, but for now, it’s focusing on groceries. The startup says it has delivered thousands of items and orders are doubling weekly. “Every day is the largest day ever,” says founder Apoorva Mehta, who is a former supply chain engineer at Amazon. He made a winking reference to previous failures from the Web 1.0 era including Kozmo and Webvan. Mehta says what makes Instacart different is that it is entirely managed using software. The average order size is $55 and gross margins are 30 percent. He adds that best of all, users find Instacart addictive, with them using it on average 1.2 times per week. The service is now available in just three cities in California, but there are plans to launch in a new city every two weeks.

Profig: Fixing Phone Systems For Small & Medium Businesses

This startup just launched an instant virtual phone system for small and medium businesses. The service is geared toward companies and individuals looking for a professional phone solution without the cost and hassle of using legacy hardware and software solutions. For just $30 per month, Profig offers its users one toll-free number, two local numbers, 500 minutes of calling time and 250 text messages. The company says a custom call center can cost thousands of dollars to set up. A “holy grail” of phone system would be one that’s eight times cheaper than legacy phone systems, with a sales call center, a support center, customer advertising, all available in a single dashboard in the browser. Profig now has 62 businesses on its network and acquired all of them organically. The company says that its target market is worth more than $25 billion per year.

Zapier: Cross-API Connector For Web Apps

This startup makes it easy for businesses to automate common tasks on the web and sync data between different web apps. It recently announced the launch of its third-party developer platform. The company says the mass migration toward cloud-based services and a wealth of new web APIs have made it harder for services to connect with other applications. Zapier says its service acts as a hub and spoke for all of these different pieces.

Coco Controller: Making Your iPhone The Perfect Handheld Game Controller

From a Thiel 20-Under-20 fellow, the Coco is a case for your phone that provides all the tactile buttons you need for gaming. It communicates through the audio jack, so there’s no battery needed, no syncing required, no Bluetooth necessary. Ic can be sold for the price of normal phone case at a similar margin. The company says it’s already in talks with some of the largest retailers out there and by the holiday season, it should be the hottest gift. Right now, the Coco is a game controller, but if it gains wider distribution, it could become its own platform for new games. It has a central app that works in tandem with the controller. It can also connect to TVs, so the startup speculates that it could be competitive to the X-Boxes and consoles of the world. In the past month alone, the company has signed up 40 games to support the controller.

Collections.me: A Universal Finder For The Cloud

Collections.me is a file manager connected to the cloud. The company says that there are more than 1 billion PCs in the world and every one comes with a file manager like Finder. Ten years ago, that was all you needed because files were housed on your computer. But now with cloud apps, those old file managers don’t cut it anymore. The “Collections” native app lives on your computer or mobile phone. The startup says it’s super fast and always available whether you’re online or offline. Launched in beta testing four weeks ago, the app has seen 8,000 downloads, and found five million documents and photos. The company has a freemium model and will charge for enterprise support and premium services. They say it could replace Finder on a Mac or the equivalent on a PC and become the one app that everyone uses to access their digital content.

Keychain Logistics: Directly Connecting Truckers With Shippers

This startup says it’s “going to eat ” a $150 billion-a-year market in the U.S., because this is what trucking brokers make in fees every year. The largest broker in the U.S. alone commands just 2.8 percent of market and last year, they did more than $10 billion in revenue. Trucking is an extremely fragmented marketplace. Brokers connect shippers with truckers, but they don’t know where the trucks actually are. Truckers are also fragmented and dispersed throughout the country through mom-and-pop shops. It can be hard to find a shipment, especially on a return trip. Keychain Logistics knows where the truckers are and says that one in every 500 trucks are already on the platform. They bring visibility into the world of trucking. Keychain takes $168 through $336 per shipment and is already attracting name partners like Tide and Kellogg’s.

Parallel Universe: Fast Data

This Israeli company says it handles parallel databases, with an initial use case being in massive-multiplayer online gaming. With new kinds of data and new ways of processing it, Parallel says new approaches are needed. But CPUs aren’t moving any faster and concurrency is very hard to do. The company’s first product is an offshoot of the military technology one of the co-founders developed. It offers server-side, in-memory, low-latency, dynamic, concurrent and distributed spatial data-store for 2D and 3D spatial objects. For example, a system that tracks large aircraft should be able to prevent two from colliding immediately. Parallel says its product Spacebase could be applied to self-driving cars or gaming.

Survata: Replacing Paywalls With Surveywalls

Survata’s product replaces paywalls on premium content from online publishers with surveys that conduct market research. They say market research is a $7 billion per year industry. The company launched last month and says it has grown by 30 percent week-over-week in terms of questions answered. But it faces a formidable competitor in Google, which announced a very similar initiative just a few months ago.

Sponsorified: A Marketplace for Sponsorships

A majority of the very largest companies have sponsored trade shows or conferences. Microsoft, for example, spent $30 million on conference sponsorships this year while Pepsico spent more. Sponsorfied says the problem is this market is stuck in the 1990s. It’s fragmented, offline and extremely hard to manage. Sponsorfied says it will centralize the market onto its network for sponsors and do for sponsorship what Google did for advertising. They’ve already done 200 deals with $400,000 in sponsorships and are working with brands like PBR, Popchips, and Red Bull. Two weeks ago, they signed an exclusive deal with a major sports team that sells over $100 million in sponsorships every year.

Filepicker.io: Filepicker as a Service

Filepicker says that web and mobile apps can only work with content on users’ hard drives and can’t access web-based files. Say, if a user wants to edit a photo on Facebook, it has to go back and forth with other applications. But if Facebook and a web app could speak to each other directly, it could be easier. Filepicker provides a single uniform API for developers, so that when they want to upload a file, they can pull them all directly from Facebook, Google Drive, Instagram, Box, and all the other places they have content stored online by just implementing a simple line of code. The startup says that developers love it, because it makes their applications better. The company has seen 20 percent week-over-week growth for last 12 weeks. The platform has 134 apps total, including Scribd, SurveyMonkey and Alfresco, and will be profitable next month.

Referly — Allows regular folks to earn affiliate revenue

Referly makes it easy to recommend products and take a commission from affiliate links, potentially opening the world of affiliate revenue to a much larger group of consumers. Users create special links that track whether they’re driving sales to other sites, displayed in a simple, consumer-friendly dashboard, then they take an average of 5 percent commission on those sales.

Since launching in May, the company says it has signed up 30,000 merchants and generated more than $100,000 in sales. You can also donate your earnings to charity. And last month, Referly launched an API that should allow any site to have a referral program. Read more about Referly.

Rent.io — Rent Price Prediction

Rent.io says it wants to “optimize pricing of the single biggest recurring expense in lives of 100 million Americans.” Apartment owners are losing tens of billions of dollars because they don’t have accurate pricing information, the company says — so it assesses the revenue potential of a property for those owners. Customers pay $25 per apartment per year. The company launched two weeks ago, and it says there are now 15,000 apartments in the system.

[Additional reporting by Anthony Ha, Colleen Taylor, and Josh Constine]

Now check out TechCrunch’s Top Ten Picks From YC Demo Day, and choose your own favorites from the other batches:

• First Batch: BufferBox, Kippt, Airbrite, Amicus MicroEval, Vastrm, VoiceGem, 9gag, HubChilla, FundersClub, SpinPunch, Everyday.me, Double Robotics, SmartAsset, Submittable, Plivo Imgfave, Amicus
• Second Batch: Flightfox, Mth Sense, Scoutzie, Instacart, Profig, Zapier, Coco Controller, Collections, Keychain Logistics, Parallel Universe, Survata, Sponsorfied, Filepicker.io, Referly, Rentio
• Third Batch: GetGoing, Canopy Labs, Dreamforge, BigCalc, Easel, Kamcord, ReelSurfer, LeanMarket, TomoGuides, DataNitro, Eligible, Grid, HD Trade Services, TapIn, Tracks.by
• Fourth Batch: Study Edge, Statwing, Hiptype, RegistryLove, Virool, Circular, Viacycle, QuicklyChat, Knowmia, Coinbase, Markupwand, Healthy Labs, Vayable, Tastemaker, Light Table, Clever

Intuit reported fourth-quarter earnings today, with Q4 revenue increasing by 14 percent to $651 million. The company missed analyst expectations, with $0.03 in Non-GAAP earnings. Analysts expected $0.06 cents a share on revenue of $652.6 million. Net income came in at $4 million for the quarter.

“Fiscal 2012 was another strong year for Intuit, with 10 percent revenue growth and earnings per share growth of 16 percent,” said Brad Smith, Intuit’s president and chief executive officer. “Our results and our outlook reflect the steady strength of our core businesses and Intuit’s resilience in the choppy macroeconomic environment.

For the fiscal year 2012, Intuit increased revenue by 10 percent, to $4.15 billion. Intuit, which offers a Square-competitor GoPayment, says that payments revenue was up by 31 percent for the quarter, driven by fee structure changes, higher card transaction volume and strong merchant growth. GoPayment fueled merchant customer growth of 13 percent for the year, says the company.

Intuit also announced on August 15 that it will be selling its unit, Intuit Websites to Endurance International Group. Although terms were not disclosed, Intuit Websites contributed $76 million in revenue in 2012. For the first quarter 2013, Intuit expects revenue of $630 million to $640 million, and Non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.06 to $0.07.

Simple was launched with a pretty brilliant idea: Make banking easy. Uh, simple, even. To date, the startup has been doing that by allowing users to keep track of where their money is going, with a no-fee banking system, an intuitive iPhone app, pretty neat data visualization tools, and the ability to keep track of how much money is “safe to spend,” based on a user’s current balance minus upcoming bills. Now it’s nudging users to start putting money aside, with the launch of its new Goals feature.

In a blog post today, Simple (formerly BankSimple) announced the new feature, which is designed to help users put aside cash, without having to really think about it. It works like this: You tell Simple how much you want to save, and by what date, and it moves a certain amount of money out of your “Safe-to-Spend” balance every day. The money is still there, sitting in your account, it’s just set aside from the rest of what you can spend.

For those who want to set aside a certain amount of money immediately, they can create a Goal of that amount, and it’s automatically deducted from your Safe-to-Spend amount. And users can drag-and-drop cash from their Safe-to-Spend toward a Goal whenever they want to. They can also pause or resume saving toward a Goal whenever, even straight from the iPhone app.

The idea is to make saving seem seamless, basically by tricking the user into seeing Goal money as not a part of what’s “Safe-to-Spend,” even if the balance is higher. In doing so, users can better budget for major purchases (like the iPhone 5, available September 21). Simple sees the Goal feature as the “antithesis” to credit cards, by providing simple tools for budgeting around those big deductions. In a blog post, Simple’s Ian Collins writes:

“When success is easier to achieve, you’ll save more–and more often. You might even forget about the completion date, and one morning wake up to see that you’ve achieved your Goal. That would certainly be a good day.”

It sure would.

Facebook announced on its Developer Blog today that it will allow users to mention their friends in messages in Open Graph apps.

While users can already “action tag” their friends using other apps (Facebook uses foursquare as its example), the update will allow users to “mention tag” friends as well. The difference, as inferred from their names, is that action tags are for doing something with a friend, say out eating a meal together, whereas mention tags can be used for anything in the text of a user post.

When users mention a friend in another app, the mentioned friend receives a notification and the story is added to their timeline (or pending approval, depending on the user’s privacy settings).

As you can see, mention tagging (on the left) links to user profiles in the text body, whereas action tagging (right) links to profiles in the “story text.”

Facebook notes that there are no privacy changes associated with the feature, and users have to be friends with who they tag (just like on Facebook).

“This new feature is ideal for situations when people are doing activities where they want to reference friends,” Facebook’s Cyndi Li writes in the blog post. “For example, people want to mention friends when they share a special song; call a particular friend’s attention to a great movie or restaurant; or describe a photo that includes a friend.”

For users, this adds a new way to share with friends in third party apps; while not a huge upgrade, it’s a nice additional feature.

For developers and Facebook, this should be a big positive. Obviously, developers are hoping it will increase the number of features they have available, keeping users around longer and coming back more frequently.

For Facebook, this adds another way for users to see a link to Facebook in a third party app and click back to the platform. Mobile is the name of the game right now for Facebook (no, really? Tell me more!) and if it can see greater mobile engagement, especially driven by foursquare and others, this would be a big win.

Developers can apply to implement the feature now.

DataSift, company that provides developers and third parties with access to Twitter, Facebook and other social data sources, is debuting new tools today to help businesses easily mine, filter and incorporate large amounts of social data into existing business and development platforms.

For background, developers, businesses, media companies and organizations use DataSift to mine the Twitter fire hose of social data, as well as Facebook, YouTube, blogs, forums and online message boards. But what makes DataSift special is that it can sort through billions of social interactions then filter this social media data for demographic information, online influence and sentiment, either positive or negative.

As we’ve reported in the past, DataSift does not limit searches based on keywords and applies natural language processing to turn unstructured data into structured, digestible information. The company’s product allows companies of any size to define extremely complex filters, including location, gender, sentiment, language, and even influence based on Klout score, to provide quick and very specific insight and analysis.

Push allows businesses to more easily integrate and analyze Social Data alongside their own business data. Using DataSift, companies can set up feeds and manage when, how and where the data will be pushed. Push integrates with existing BI applications, databases, data warehousing platforms and other cloud services, including Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3, MongoDB, CouchDB, FTP/SFTP, ElasticSearch and WebHooks.

DataSift’s Query Builder wants to give non-technical managers the ability to do massive data searches with complex filters. Basically the feature provides a graphical interface within DataSift to create sophisticated filters that mine the Social Web both real-time and historically without needing to learn a programming language.

DataSift is also open sourcing the Query Builder, which is written in HTML5 and Javascript, so that it may be embedded into customer products and customized.

DataSift’s Nick Halstead says the company deals with 700 million data interactions a day with over 20,000 data streams. Currently, DataSift processes two to three terabytes of data a day, and the company says that the volume of data passing through the platform has tripled over the past year.

With its red-state styling and reassuring heft, the Mercedes-Benz SL has attracted the likes of bankers, barons, and busty housewives for the last six decades.

The SL’s reputation congealed through a curious combination of conservative marketing, aggressive engineering, and a meticulously crafted Hollywood presence — from High Society to American Gigolo, each generation of the German roadster came factory equipped with the whiff of a certain something, a range-topping aura that has set the pace for the triple-pointed star lineup.

But focused, purebred performance? Not so much. For a real kick in the pants, spendy car freaks tended to plant their Tod’s driving moccasins on the accelerator pedals of other Deutschland drives, namely BMWs and Porsches.

Driver detachment grew in tandem with the SL’s burgeoning body mass index until drastic measures were finally taken with the sixth-generation roadster. For 2013, der neue SL introduced lighter, stiffer aluminum underpinnings that veer closer to the spirit of the car’s original “Sport Light” designation. In spite of its unconvincing aesthetic sensibilities — this is a convertible only a wind tunnel could love — the newfound lightness prompted me to land the entry-level SL550 on my Wired Lust List. And yet lust, like all irrational emotions, is a relative force, and that sliding scale has since escalated to the next tier of automotive lasciviousness, the new SL63 AMG.

When I got the chance to sample the latest demon child from Affalterbach, I quite frankly became conflicted over the SL63 almost immediately following my first press of the “start engine” button. On one hand, its 275 pounds of weight loss and power leap to 530 hp make it devilishly quick and noticeably more lively, with palpable, feel-it-at-the-wheel maneuverability. But while it’s admittedly more handsome than its more pedestrian counterpart, the SL63 has also been gussied up by the oldest visual tricks in the tuner handbook: spoilers and ground effects. Understated as they may be, they’re still a reminder that beneath all the go-fast trinkets, the SL’s bones aren’t exactly supermodel material. Adding insult to injury, some its dermatological features aren’t even functional; the straked “vents” just aft of the front wheels are decorative, about as useful to engine cooling as a trumpet to a sea bass. You can practically hear Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler groaning in their graves.

But from the driver seat, faith renews. The small center console-mounted aluminum dial, when set to Sport+, unleashes a ferocious flow of torque from the twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter V8, summoning a rush of forward motion that yields an official zero-to-sixty time of 4.2 seconds. Proving that the geeks shall inherit the earth (or at least the dynamometer bragging rights), the $9,000 AMG Performance Package yields a 27 horsepower gain and 74 more pound-feet of torque, a tenth of a second advantage in the 0- to 60-mph sprint, and a top speed boosted to 186 mph — all essentially thanks to a software hack to the engine ECU.

Take that, jocks!

Mercedes-Benz’s active body control suspension setup does wonders calibrating from “vaguely firm yet surprisingly cushy” to “stiff as a board” when cornering calls for it, and the rigidity of the aluminum structure conspires with the exuberantly whirring, subtly snorty engine to invite potentially stupid acts of high-velocity passing, hot corner entry speeds, and enthusiastic launches upon exit. The brakes are well up to task, especially when ordered in virtually indestructible carbon ceramic form (a $12,625 option).

As inspiringly competent as this German sled proved itself to be, I observed two weak links during my test drive. First, though gearshifts came flawlessly fast and smooth in automatic mode, tapping the paddle shifters resulted in a slight lag. How is the computer capable of doing such an impeccable job of shifting, but resisting human input so stubbornly? The other sore spot was the electromechanical steering, which felt less than optimal on one tester, and more lacking in feedback on another. Tobias Moers, AMG’s head of vehicle development, didn’t disagree, saying his team was fully aware if the issue and that it would take “no more than two days of software re-programming to fix the steering before it goes to production.” In other words, Team Geek can pull it together. We hope.

Does the lighter, quicker, more fuel-efficient and better-handling SL63 win on all fronts? At $146,695, it’s mighty expensive, and the price only soars as the options pile on. The BMW M6 Convertible, at 4,508 lbs, is too portly to be considered a serious sports car, but its $113,995 cost also makes it a relative steal, especially when a heavily equipped SL63 can easily approach the mighty SLS AMG’s $189,600 price tag. Then there’s the AMG’s sheetmetal which, while admittedly sexier than the standard SL’s, won’t be on permanent display at the Louvre any time soon.

You’ll pay dearly for the privilege of becoming a member of the newest and fastest SL club, which for most drivers is still a heady place to be; this is, after all, one of the most stirring SLs to grace the world’s roads, and a potent status symbol, to boot. But for the well-heeled and eternally nitpicky, this high-priced roadster might be a couple of heartbeats away from inspiring unfettered lust.

WIRED The only way to commute between the Gulfstream and the Palmer Johnson. Sprightly in a sprint, spry in the esses. More power than Gozer the Gozerian.

TIRED Other cars offer more bang for your (copious) bucks. Laggy manual shifting. Un-pretty, and the bunting is cheesy. Occassionally buggy assisted steering in my tester, but this should be cleared up in the future.

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Simon Rothman of Greylock Partners. Rothman is particularly passionate about Marketplace technology (Etsy, Kickstarter, Airbnb, etc) and how to garner success in that category.

Marketplaces are endemic to the consumer web: Largely popularized by eBay, we’ve recently seen quite a few variations on the theme, like young guns Etsy, oDesk, Airbnb, and Kickstarter. Old or new, the two elements that bind all marketplaces are network effects (a good thing) and the chicken-and-egg problem (not such a good thing).

Obviously, marketplaces are tough to build. But hey’re even harder to kill — And they can be incredibly durable and profitable once they reach liquidity. But that’s the hard part. Despite the difficulties, there’s a tried and true way to structure a marketplace, one that hopefully ends in success. Let’s start with the basics:

The first marketplace to reach liquidity wins.

Ten years ago, there were an enormous number of auction startups: forward auctions, reverse auctions, live auctions, group auctions, and more (much more). Today there’s really only one… eBay.

Two-sided markets are naturally dominant: unlike other models, the bigger you are, the stronger you are. Marketplaces strengthen with scale and scale comes from liquidity.

Liquidity isn’t the most important thing. It’s the only thing.

Until you reach liquidity, you’re vulnerable. After, you have the opportunity for dominance.

But what is liquidity? Liquidity is the reasonable expectation of selling something you list or finding what you’re looking for.

It isn’t an exact science. Some guidelines:

–       A conversion range of 30-60% is a reasonable expectation.

–       The higher your average selling price, the lower the conversion rate may be.

–       The harder it is to find a good elsewhere, the lower the conversion rate may be.

–       Price dispersion is a sign of the inefficiency of your market, and in turn, illiquidity.

Marketplace Structure.

There’s a question of who are your market participants: individuals, small businesses, or large businesses. But the more fundamental question is centralization vs decentralization.

For every aspect of the marketplace, ask: does the user do the work or does the platform do the work?

If the user does the work, it’s decentralized. If the platform does the work, it’s centralized. At a high level, decentralization gives you speed, but the cost is an inconsistent and possibly poor user experience. When you structure your marketplace you need to evaluate each action and decide whether it should be centralized or decentralized. It may be instructive to look at a few case studies to appreciate the decision points:

Examples to Follow.

eBay centralizes customer support and payments. It decentralizes everything else, including ratings, reviews, photos, pricing, metadata (for most, but not all items), fulfillment, transaction terms, and communication. This enabled rapid early growth with the community absorbing much of the work. The byproduct has been a folksy feel and inconsistent purchase experience.

Uber centralizes almost everything, the exact opposite of eBay. For example, drivers are almost treated as Uber’s own workforce, having to go through an interview and test process. The platform, not driver, determines pricing, plus the platform centralizes payments, driver verification, vehicle location, transaction terms, and customer support.

The only thing decentralized is ratings. Why have they done this? It’s a premium service with high customer expectations, so it centralizes everything to have a clean and consistent user experience. The tradeoff is speed of expansion.

Airbnb is a hybrid approach and sits somewhere between eBay and Uber. They’ve centralized photography, payments, user verification, ratings and reviews, communication, terms, customer support, and insurance – everything that feels like booking a hotel room. They’ve decentralized pricing, description, profile, and key exchange – everything that feels like a home. It has created the safety and convenience of a hotel room without losing the charm of a bed and breakfast.

It’s an understatement to say that building a thriving marketplace is tough. Getting both sides of a transaction at the same place at the same time for the same thing can feel like it’s an order of magnitude more difficult than a more traditional one-sided commerce business. But when the magic happens, it happens, and all of a sudden you’ve got Kickstarter.

Image:  hospi-table

[Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written ten books. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and 40 Alternatives to College. You can follow him on Twitter @jaltucher.]

I’m pretty mediocre. Particularly as an entrepreneur. I’m ashamed to admit it. Many of the readers here are great visionaries. I’m not even being sarcastic. I have reason to believe Larry Page reads all of my articles. Elon Musk prints out my articles and tapes them to his bathroom wall just in case he forgets to bring a book in there. Jerry Yang and his wife discuss over breakfast the merits of the points I bring up. You can say, “Hey, Jerry Yang should’ve accepted Microsoft’s buyout offer.” Ok, but Jerry Yang has made a few billion dollars just by getting a bunch of links together and assembling them by what category they are in. That was pretty cool back in the day. You and I should’ve thought of that.

I’ve started a bunch of companies. Sold some. Failed at most. I’ve invested in a bunch of startups. Sold some. Failed at some, and the jury is still sequestered on a few others. I can tell you overall, though, everything I have done has been distinguished by its mediocrity, its lack of a grand vision, and any success I’ve had can be just as much put in the luck basket as the effort basket.

That said, all entrepreneurs should be so lucky. We can’t all be grand visionaries. We want to make our business, sell it, make some money, raise a family, and try to be happy. My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure. For every Mark Zuckerberg there are 1000 Jack Zuckermans. Who is Jack Zuckerman? I have no idea. That’s my point. If you are Jack Zuckerman and are reading this, I apologize. You aimed for the stars and missed. Your re-entry into the atmosphere involved a broken heat shield and you burned to a crisp by the time you hit the ocean. Now we have no idea who you are.

If you want to get rich, sell your company, have time for your hobbies, raise a halfway decent family (with mediocre children, etc), and enjoy the sunset with your wife on occasion, here are some of my highly effective recommendations.

– Procrastination – In between the time I wrote the last sentence and the time I wrote this one I played (and lost) a game of chess. My king and my queen got forked by a knight. But hey, that happens. Fork me once, shame on me. Etc.

Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing. When you procrastinate as an entrepreneur it could mean that you need a bit more time to think about what you are pitching a client. It could also mean you are doing work that is not your forte and that you are better off delegating. I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that. In my first business, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head the first time I delegated a programming job to someone other than me. At that time, I went out on a date. Which was infinitely better than me sweating all night on some stupid programming bug (thank you, Chet, for solving that issue).

Try to figure out why you are procrastinating. Maybe you need to brainstorm more to improve an idea. Maybe the idea is no good as is. Maybe you need to delegate. Maybe you need to learn more. Maybe you don’t enjoy what you are doing. Maybe you don’t like the client whose project you were just working on. Maybe you need to take a break. There’s only so many seconds in a row you can think about something before you need to take time off and rejuvenate the creative muscles. This is not for everyone. Great people can storm right through. Steve Jobs never needed to take a break. But I do.

Procrastination could also be a strong sign that you are a perfectionist. That you are filled with shame issues. This will block you from building and selling your business. Examine your procrastination from every side. It’s your body trying to tell you something. Listen to it.

[See also, “5 Great Things About Procrastination”]

– Zero-tasking – there’s a common myth that great people can multitask efficiently. This might be true but I can’t do it. I have statistical proof. I have a serious addiction. If you ever talk on the phone with me there’s almost 100% chance I am simultaneously playing chess online. The phone rings and one hand reaches for the phone and the other hand reaches for the computer to initiate a one minute game. Chess rankings are based on a statistically generated rating system. So I can compare easily how well I do when I’m the phone compared with when I’m not on the phone. There is a three standard deviation difference. Imagine if I were talking on the phone and driving. Or responding to emails. It’s the same thing I’m assuming: phone calls cause a three standard deviation subtraction in intelligence. And that’s the basic multi-tasking we all do at some point or other.

So great people can multitask but since, by definition, most of us are not great (99% of us are not in the top 1%), its much better to single-task. Just do one thing at a time. When you wash your hands, hear the sound of the water, feel the water on your hands, scrub every part. Be clean. Focus on what you are doing.

Often, the successful mediocre entrepreneur should strive for excellence in ZERO-tasking. Do nothing. We always feel like we have to be “doing something” or we (or, I should say “I”) feel ashamed. Sometimes it’s better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all.

Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

Not when we are rushing and panicking.

[See also, “Multi-tasking will Kill You”]

– Failure: As far as I can tell, Larry Page has never failed. He went straight from graduate school to billions. Ditto for Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and a few others. But again, by definition, most of us are pretty mediocre. We can strive for greatness but we will never hit it. So it means we will often fail. Not ALWAYS fail. But often.

My last 16 out of 17 business attempts were failures. I made so many mistakes in my first successful business I’m almost embarassed to recount them. I remember one time I was trying to pitch Tupac’s mom that I should do the website for her dead son. I had a “CD” (what’s that?) of all my work. I went to Tupac’s manager’s office and he said, “ok, show me what you got”. The only problem was: I had never used a Windows-based machine. Only Macs and Unix machines. So I honestly had no idea how to put my CD into the computer and then view its contents. And I had gone to graduate school in computer science. He said, “you have got to be kidding me”.

It was a $90,000 gig. It would’ve met my payroll for at least two months. It was a done deal until I walked into his office. I left his office crying while he was laughing. When I came back to my office everyone asked, “How did the meeting go?” I said, “I think it went pretty well.” And then I went home and cried some more. I roll that way.

Then I bought a Windows-based PC for myself and learned how to use it. I don’t think I ever bought a Mac again actually. It’s possible to learn from successes. But it’s much easier to learn from failures. Ultimately, life is a sentence of failures, punctuated only by the briefest of successes. So the mediocre entrepreneur learns two things from failure: First he learns directly how to overcome that particular failure. He’s highly motivated to not repeat the same mistakes. Second, he learns how to deal with the psychology of failure. Mediocre entrepreneurs fail A LOT. So they get this incredible skill of getting really good at dealing with failure. This translates to monetary success.

The mediocre entrepreneur understands that persistence is not the self-help cliche “Keep going until you hit the finish line!”. The key slogan is, “Keep failing until you accidentally no longer fail.” That’s persistence.

– Not original – I’ve never come up with an original idea in my life. My first successful business was making web software, strategies, websites for Fortune 500 companies. Not an original idea but at the time, in the 90s, people were paying exorbitant multiples for such businesses. My successful investments all involved situations where I made sure the CEOs and other investors were smarter than me. I wrote a TechCrunch article on this titled “My Angel Investor Checklist”. 100% of my zeros as an angel investor were situations where I thought I was smart. I wasn’t. I’m mediocre.

The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the bastard, ugly child that results. The child that was so ugly nobody else wanted to touch it. Look  at Facebook: combine the internet with stalking. Amazing!

And, by the way, it was about the fifth attempt at such a social network.  Twitter: combine internet with antiquated SMS protocols. Ugly! But it works. Ebay, combine ecommerce with auctions. The song, “I’ll Be There”. Combine Mariah Carey with Michael Jackson. If Justin Bieber sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” it would be a huge hit. I might even listen to it.

– Poor networking – I’m that guy. You know the one at the party that doesn’t talk to anyone and stands in the corner. I never go to tech meetups. I usually say no to very nice networking dinner invitations. I like to stay home and read. When I was running businesses I was often too shy to talk to my employees. I would call my secretary from downstairs and ask if the hallway was clear, then ask her to unlock my door and I’d hurry upstairs and lock the door behind me. That particular company failed disastrously.

But many people network too much. Entrepreneurship is hard enough. It’s 20 hours a day of managing employees, customers, meetings, and product development. And the buck stops here sort of thing. And then what are you going to do? Network all night? Save that for the great entrepreneurs. Or the ones who are about to fail. The mediocre entrepreneur works his 20 hours, then relaxes when he can. It’s tough to make money. Not a party.

– Do anything to get a “yes” – Here’s a negotiation I did. I was starting stockpickr.com and meeting with the CEO of thestreet.com. He wanted his company to have a percentage of stockpickr.com and in exchange he would fill up all of our ad inventory. I was excited to do the deal. I said, “Ok, I was thinking you would get 10% of the company.” He laughed and said, “No. 50%”. He didn’t even say “We would like 50%”. He just said, “50%”. I then used all my negotiating skills and came up with a reply. “Okay. Deal.”

I’m a salesman. I like people to say yes to me. I feel insecure when they so “No” or, even worse, if they don’t like me. When I started a company doing websites we were pitching to do “miramax.com”. I said, “$50,000″. They said, “No more than $1,000 and that’s a stretch.” I used my usual technique: “Deal!”

But the end results: in one case thestreet.com had a significant stake so that gave them more psychological stake. And for my first business miramax.com was now on my client list. So Con Edison had to pay a lot more. I’m a mediocre salesman and probably a poor negotiator although I try to learn from the best. But consequently, I get more deals done, I get the occasional loss leader, and then ultimately the big fish gets reeled in if I get enough people to say “yes”. It’s like asking every girl on the street to have sex with you. One out of 100 will say “yes”. In my case it might be one out of a million but you get the idea.

– Poor judge of people. The mediocre entrepreneur doesn’t “Blink” in the Malcolm Gladwell sense. In Gladwell’s book he often talks about people who can form snap correct judgements in two or three seconds.

My initial judgement when I meet or even see people is this: I hate you.

And then I veer from that to too trusting. Finally, after I bounce back and forth, and through much trial and error, I end up somewhere in the middle. I also tend to drop people I can’t trust very quickly. I think the great entrepreneur can make snap judgements and be very successful with it. But that doesn’t work for most people.

At this point, when I meet someone, I make sure I specifically don’t trust my first instincts. I get to know people more. I get to understand what their motivations are. I try to sympathize with whatever their position is. I listen to them. I try not to argue or gossip about them before I know anything. I spend a lot more time getting to know the people who I want to bring closer. I have to do this because I’m mediocre and I’m a lot more at risk of bringing the wrong people into my circle.

So by the time I’ve decided to be close to someone: a client, an employee, an acquirer, an acquiree, a wife, etc I’ve done a lot of work into thinking about them. This means I can’t waste time thinking about other things, like how to put a rocketship on Jupiter. But overall it’s worked.

–

“I thought being mediocre is supposed to be bad?” one might think. Shouldn’t we strive for greatness. And the answer is: “Of course we should! But let’s not forget that 9 out of 10 drivers think they are ‘above the median in driving skill.’” People overestimate themselves. Don’t let overestimation get in the way of becoming fabulously rich, or at least successful enough that you can have your freedom, feed your family, and enjoy other things in life.

Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest with yourself and the people around you. And being honest at every level is really the most effective habit of all if you want to have massive success.

[See also, “The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur” and PLEASE follow me on Twitter at @jaltucher] 

When we first wandered up to the suburban split-level that houses Centeye Inc., we were a bit confused. Could this be the place where a mad roboticist was building tiny robots with insect eyes and brains that could interact with their environment? We rang the doorbell and weren’t disappointed.

Founded by Geoffrey Barrows, Centeye is dedicated to computer vision. They make little electronic eyes that are cheap to reproduce and “see” only a few thousand pixels. He has a staff of two engineers who work with him on designing and building chips and has just released the open source Arudeye board, a tiny Arduino board with camera built-in.

Barrows does everything from his basement. Recent advances in fabrication allow him and his staff to design chips on a computer at home and then send the plans to manufacturers in Asia. They can then mass produce their eyes, driving down the cost per unit to a few dollars. They don’t need a big lab because everything is done remotely.

Their robots are actually proofs-of-concept but they’re really cool. The little helicopters use Centeye eyes to remain stationary in space and other models can avoid objects as they move. Because each eye takes in a small part of the scene, not much computing power is needed to process each bit of input. Like insects, the brain doesn’t have to work very hard to get a lot done.

Centeye has contracts with DARPA but is trying to commercialize their hardware with the Arduino offerings. It’s fascinating to see makers in their own habitat and even more exciting to see them make cool stuff in the oddest of places. Check out the video for more information and you can watch all of our TC Makers episodes here

If you’d like to chat about your project, drop me a line at [email protected] with the subject line MAKERS.

I wanted to take a moment to pour out a little Club Mate in honor of Flash on mobile and to point out that it wasn’t two years ago that the Flash/iPhone wars were top of mind for most people. Heck, even Steve Jobs chimed in when it looked bleakest.

But, as we learned last year, mobile Flash was dead. Kaput. Deceased. No longer. Ex.

And now it’s gone forever. You can’t download it, you can’t run it on many mobile devices, and Adobe has set its sights on Air as a capable replacement for whatever Flash was good for.

And you guys are quiet?

I only bring this up because I want you guys to remember the anger we all expressed in regards to Flash and the iPhone. The results for “iPhone flash sucks” brings up countless top ten lists talking about why Flash on the iPhone would be totally amazing and why Android is much better because it supports Flash. And now, suddenly, it doesn’t matter.

Where is the outrage? Where are the flame wars? Why are there no open letters to Adobe? It’s because people have moved on and it’s actually kind of appalling to see. All that energy wasted. All that ill-placed anger. We see hundreds of comments almost daily accusing us of some sort of fanboism. We write a pro-Google post and we hate Apple. We write a pro-Apple post and we get nailed for being against Google. But you guys are going to let Flash go without a fight? Show some anger, because as I recall this used to be a big deal for you guys.

Or maybe it isn’t a big deal (and maybe it wasn’t such a big deal, then?) And maybe the tribalism you guys exhibit really isn’t that important to you, really? Maybe you really don’t care?

All I’m trying to say here is that the Internet is a big and wonderful place. Today’s heated argument is tomorrow’s burnt squib. Maybe we can all just look at technology for what it is – a continuum that aims to bring us to a bigger place – and less like a schoolyard filled with squabbling cliques.

Not to get all Beatles on you here, but the concordance you make is the concordance you take. Arguments are fine on points that matter, but in the end everything fades away.

On Friday, Google’s Motorola Mobility unit filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington. So far, Motorola has only confirmed that this lawsuit has indeed been filed. The details of the lawsuit remain elusive, as the actual documents won’t be available on the ITC’s website until Monday and Motorola hasn’t released any concrete information about its allegations, yet. We have now learned, however, that the lawsuit, which seeks to ban imports of Apple’s hardware into the U.S., accuses Apple of infringing on seven of Motorola’s patents.

These patents involve location reminders, email notifications, video playback and Siri, the flagship feature of Apple’s current iOS lineup. According to this information, Motorola’s lawsuit argues that virtually every single hardware product Apple currently sells in the U.S. (with the exception of the classic iPod and iPod nano) infringes upon these seven patents. Sadly, that’s the extend of the information we have so far, but we will update this post once we learn more or once the full text of the lawsuit is available online on Monday.

When Google bought Motorola, it also acquired the company’s 17,000 patents (and 7,000 pending ones). At the time, many pundits assumed that one of the reasons for the acquisition was this trove of patents. Google itself, by virtue of being a relatively young company, does not have enough patents to defend its Android OS and other mobile projects from potential lawsuits by more established players in today’s litigious environment. Now, as the patent wars continue to escalate, it looks as if the company is ready to use Motorola and its patents to go on the offensive.

If you’ve been to cities and you’ve had enough, have you been to Paris, France? Paris is defined by a few magical characteristics – the street signs, the architecture, the street features – and a new system at Carnegie Mellon identifies cities based on their special traits.

The project describes a fairly complex algorithm that is able to find aspects from Google Street view.

The system currently works in multiple city using large samples of images from cities around the world. Using these, the system can identify where a random photo was taken with some degree of accuracy. Interestingly, the system can also be used on everyday objects, including “discovering stylistic elements in other weakly supervised settings, e.g. “What makes an Apple product?’”

You can download the study PDF here.

via VisualNews

Oracle is holding back test cases in the latest release of MySQL. It’s a move that has all the markings of the company’s continued efforts to further close up the open source software and alienate the MySQL developer community.

The issue stems back to a recent discovery that the latest MySQL release has bug fixes but without a single one having any test cases associated with it.  That creates all sorts of problems for developers who have no assurance that the problem is actually fixed.

It’s pretty clear that Oracle is trying to make it as difficult as possible to use MySQL. The result is a wave of unsettlement in the developer community about what Oracle considers open and what it sees as closed. The move is causing problems for developers in all manner of ways as expressed here and here.

MySQL is the popular database used by developers throughout the world.  Oracle gained control of the software distribution when it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010.

According to a post on MariaDB, MySQL has used a testing framework called mysql-test since 1999. Over the years tests have been built for new features and regression tests that guarantee that a bug fix is permanent. Developers such as those from Facebook and Twitter rely on the testing framework. At Twitter, MySQL serves as the “persistent storage technology behind most Twitter data: the interest graph, timelines, user data and the Tweets themselves.”

It also appears that Oracle pulled the revision history for MySQL. The revision history groups changes to the millions of lines of source code into what are known as change sets. A change set shows the changes for a particular feature. It shows who made the bug fix, when and why. By removing the revision history, Oracle will keep developers guessing about what is fixed and what is not.

For observers, these moves do not look like simple oversights. More so, it appears that Oracle is making its revision tests and histories closed source. It’s not so surprising knowing Oracle and its history.

But it does raise questions for the open source community about what to do as seen in the comments on Hacker News.

I like what one commenter said about the issue. Forget Oracle. It really is time to move on.

Earlier this week, a few reports emerged about Apple’s upcoming plans to disrupt the TV market. The first mentioned that Apple was trying to work with cable providers on finding new ways to distribute TV through its hardware, rather than trying to license content itself. The second report gave a few more details about what that hardware would be capable of. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days, and this is what I think we can expect from any Apple TV efforts being announced over the next few months, possibly even next month at its rumored September 12 event.

New box, same as the old box

The new set-top box hardware that Apple is talking to cable operators about using is none other than an updated version of its Apple TV product. Which is to say: Apple probably isn’t creating new hardware to suit the needs of cable operators, or to try to replicate their existing set-top boxes. Instead, Apple is trying to convince them to build new apps for its existing device.

No doubt, the new Apple TV will have some interesting new features under the hood — likely a faster processor, better graphics capabilities, and the like, but the form factor and underlying hardware will probably remain the same. Also, Apple will likely keep the same $99 price point and just make the product more useful. The WSJ’s report pegged the hardware at sub-$200, but anything over $100 is a tough sell, as Boxee, Logitech, and anyone building streaming boxes (other than Apple and Roku) can attest.

New software, new UI, new apps

Along with maybe a better processor and support for improved video playback, I expect the Apple TV to get a UI refresh, one which will allow users to customize the apps on their home screen, in the same way that they would an iPhone or iPad. It’s also aiming to help content owners appify the way that users discover content, according to the WSJ report: “Another significant feature of the Apple set-top device is likely to be its user interface, which could resemble the navigation icons on Apple’s iPad.”

That will be a welcome improvement over existing electronic program guides, which provide little more than a grid view of whatever is on and upcoming, and are generally a pain in the ass to navigate and impossible to find anything on. But that doesn’t mean that just anyone will be able to create apps for the device.

A curated list of partners

To date, the number of apps available through Apple TV have been fairly limited, and I think they’ll probably remain that way. While it clearly needs to find a better way to search and navigate through them, it’s doubtful that the company will open up its Apple TV SDK to all comers in the same way that it did for the iPhone or iPad. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one seems to be that there are few really good TV apps out there right now.

Just ask Samsung, which spent the last several years trying to build up a robust app ecosystem from third-party developers, only to find that there’s only five or six apps that users genuinely care about. Sources have told me that internally, the consumer electronics manufacturer has been trying to scale back its openness, with reagards to third-party apps. While having a long tail of apps can be a benefit in the mobile world, app discovery and quality control can be a real problem. Apple will likely keep its walled garden closed, in the same way that Microsoft has, when it begins accepting more third-party apps.

Control and navigation on the 2nd screen

Let’s face it: the up-down-left-right-click control of the current generation Apple TV sucks. While there’s the Apple Remote app, which makes the experience slightly better, especially from a search perspective, anyone building an app for the next-gen Apple TV will want a lot more control. In the next version, I expect Apple will tie in more robust second-screen capabilities, rather than introducing a new touch control just for the Apple TV.

And what happens if you’re not one of Apple’s chosen partners, asked to participate in building apps for the Apple TV? Well then, you can just go around that restriction and build apps that use the iPad or iPhone for search and navigation but leverage Apple’s AirPlay technology for video display on the TV. We’re already starting to see some of these dual-screen apps emerge, like the recently released ShowYou iPad app.

Regardless of whether or not they actually build Apple TV apps, I’d love to see more apps like HBO GO or Comcast’s Xfinity app take advantage of this magical technology to fling videos they’re watching to the Apple TV, and use the iPad for interactive features or navigation.

Don’t expect too much disruption

The general response to this latest round of news around its TV efforts is that Apple has adopted a sort of, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” philosophy toward the industry. And that’s mostly true. But it’s also reportedly pushing technology which could still be considered a little too disruptive. Take, for instance, its network DVR idea, which would let users start a show from the beginning, even if they turned up late. It’s a great idea, but frankly, it’s also one that is tied up in all sorts of rights issues and unlikely to be adopted right away by distributors.

As for the display aspect — the whole channels- or shows-as-apps idea that it appears to be pursuing — there are plenty of companies that are already doing this on their own. Comcast’s new X1 set-top box and cloud-based user interface emphasize individual programs and recommendations over the legacy grid interface, at least at the home screen. And others are learning that, in a world of Netflix and Hulu, which emphasize content over programming time, that’s the way consumers are learning to discover content.

One other thought about this whole “too much disruption” thing. I don’t think anyone — not Apple, not the cable companies, not the content owners — see this new hardware as a set-top box replacement. You’ll still have at least one big, ugly, shitty box sitting in your living room. But the Apple TV will work great as a complement to that, or as a way to extend content into rooms where leasing an HD DVR set-top box made no sense. Like in a child’s bedroom, for instance. Even so, that could help cablecos and consumers alike reduce their reliance on crappy set-top boxes throughout the home.

Still no actual “Apple TV”

And finally, the big underlying theme here is that the actual TV that Apple has been rumored to be building for damn near forever, will remain unbuilt, at least for now. And why not? Apple is selling more Apple TV units than ever, and pretty soon it could be partnering with cable TV operators to get their content on the device. But it’s far from fully baked. Before Apple gets serious about building a high-profile device like a TV set, it’s probably going to want to get the kinks out first.