Category: Tech news

No one buys a Mercedes-Benz S-Class by accident. This is Mercedes’ largest and most comfortable sedan. By no coincidence, it is also the most expensive. An S-Class is a rolling, four-door announcement. It says you know what you’re doing with your life, and while you have money to spend, you do not spend it foolishly.

Or at least that’s the stereotype. In reality, gobs of people buy S-Classes without thinking about it. Parking lots from South Beach to Palm Springs are dotted with the cars, and New York City boasts almost as many chauffeured S-Classes as it does yellow Ford sedans. For many people, an S — the letter stands for the German word sonderklasse, or “special class” — is simply a status symbol. It’s the cushiest, fanciest sedan from the oldest and most respected carmaker extant. What more could there be to consider?

Lots, actually. Mercedes-Benz has been making cars in one form or another for 125 years. You do not stay in business that long, no matter the product, without being good at what you do. Similarly, while there are a lot of S-Classes on offer — in the United States, the model range encompasses six cars and runs from the $92,275 S400 hybrid to the $211,775, 621-hp S65 AMG — each is a distinctly different machine and does different things well.

Still, most S-Class buyers seem to just waltz into a dealer and pick up the most expensive version of the car they can afford. At the risk of being blunt, this is stupid. And the 2012 S350 Bluetec 4Matic diesel, the latest entry into the S-Class range, is proof.

Let’s take a brief detour and examine the rest of the S-Class range. At the bottom, there’s the aforementioned S400 hybrid. It gets 19/25 mpg city/highway and is the slowest S to 60 mph. Directly above that is the S350, which we’ll get to in a moment. One step above lies the $95,375 S550, which offers a 429-hp, 4.6-liter, twin-turbo gas V-8 and 15/25 mpg. Above that is the 536-hp S63 AMG (twin-turbo V-8, 15/23 mpg, $140,175), the 510-hp S600 (V-12, 12/19 mpg, $160,375), and the twin-turbo, V-12-powered S65 AMG (12/19 mpg).

Confused yet? Each of these cars is suited to a specific customer. The S400, for example, is best for captains of industry with a long, chauffeured commute in stop-and-go traffic; its forte is keeping gridlock green while still making you feel like you’ve arrived. The S550 is what you buy if you want a good all-rounder, neither outrageously fast or wanting for power. The S63 is the canyon-carver special, loud and fast enough to satisfy your hot-rod urges but lacking the nose weight of the V-12 models and thus relatively light on its feet. The S65 offers autobahn-crushing power and remarkable refinement with a bit of the S63′s edge and exhaust note. The S600 pairs most of the S65′s grunt with the understated grace of the S550. It’s best for those who want to own the highway but don’t want to be obvious about it.

Where does that leave the $93,425, diesel-powered S350? Easy: It’s what you buy if you’re smart.

The S350 is the first diesel S offered in America since 1995. It’s also the only full-size diesel luxury sedan you can buy in the U.S., Mercedes or not. Its turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 produces 240 hp and a thumping 455 pound-feet of torque at just 1,600 rpm. (This sort of power delivery is common with diesels, which generally thrive at low rpm.) 60 mph comes up in 7.0 seconds. Fuel economy is 21/31 mpg, an astounding figure given that the S350 weighs almost 5,000 pounds. A version of Mercedes’s excellent seven-speed transmission is the only gearbox available, and all-wheel drive is standard. (The latter is optional on the S550 but unavailable on other S-Classes.) The end result is one of the best big sedans on the market. In the interest of science, I drove an S350 from Chicago to Key West and back in the middle of winter. The idea was to capitalize on the S350′s strengths — tremendous range, decent fuel economy, peerless comfort — while figuring out just who, exactly, would want an oil-burning autobahn sled.

Like all S-Classes, the S350 is basically a rolling living room on wheels. You can buy it with massaging front seats, each of which comes with multiple massage styles (From the menu, and I quote: “Fast and vigorous.” “Slow and gentle.”). Headrest video monitors are an option, as are electrically reclining rear seats, a split-view front screen — the driver can view the navigation system while the front-seat passenger watches a DVD — radar cruise control, and a host of other high-tech options. In typical Mercedes-Benz fashion, all of them work exceedingly well and do exactly what they’re designed to do, which is more than you can say for most of what’s on a modern Lexus.

But the S-Class’s interior appointments and available tech aren’t the main draw, nice as they are. The big pull is that the S350 is a no-excuses large diesel sedan, with everything that entails. To wit:

Economy: Like a lot of modern diesels, the S350 delivers more than what its EPA numbers might indicate. Over 3,000-plus miles, I saw an average of 25 mpg in city use, 32 mpg on the highway. Range varies with use, but figure on between 500 and 700 miles a tank, depending on use. This is outstanding. While rocketing down I-65, my bladder was repeatedly outlasted by the car’s fuel tank.

Torque: You get lots of it, and everywhere on the tach. The seven-speed automatic is a bit slow to downshift but goes about its business smoothly, launching the car away from stoplights with a velvety, refined surge. The only thing really missing is an excess of highway passing power — traffic maneuvering at speed sometimes takes a bit of planning.

Noise: You get little of it. Diesel clatter is audible from the street but almost never from the cockpit; At 90 mph, there’s a slight wind whoosh over the A-pillars, just enough to remind you that you’re moving.

Highway stability and long-distance comfort: Oh lord. Oh lord, lord, lord. If there’s a greater highway joy than cranking out thousands of miles behind the wheel of a large, pavement-crushing Mercedes, I don’t want to know about it. As a driver, you’re given just enough information — just enough steering feel, wind noise, and body roll — to stay awake, informed, and interested. As a passenger, you tend to fall asleep a lot, which is the nicest compliment anyone can give a big sedan, no matter the price.

Either way, you climb out of the S350 at the end of a 12- or 14-hour drive feeling refreshed. When I hit Key West, it was like I’d spent the past three days lounging on the couch, not hammering down the highway. At 70 mph, the engine is spinning at just 1,600 rpm in seventh gear. The steering is heavily weighted and slightly wooly but incredibly pleasant; it feels like you’re commanding a helm change from somewhere in the car’s bilges. (This isn’t a knock. The steering fits the S350′s torque delivery and laid-back personality.)

The point here is balance. The S350 is a subtle piece, an advanced, confident car that doesn’t broadcast its ability or price tag. It offers all the power you need, remarkable fuel economy, and just as much comfort as anything else on wheels. In that sense, it’s the most old-school machine Mercedes offers. It harks back to a time when luxury cars were sold on how they made you feel, not how they made you look. Because it trades flash for capability and excess for practicality, it oozes intelligence like few other modern machines.

The irony is, people don’t buy luxury cars with their brains. They buy them with their hearts, which means that the S350, like other diesel S-classes before it, will probably never outsell its gas-powered siblings. What a shame.

WIRED Impossibly refined. Sips fuel. Makes 100 mph seem like walking. Compresses time and distance like nothing else in the business.

TIRED Wants — ever so slightly — for highway passing power. Diesel V-6 is quiet from the driver’s seat but clattery from the curb. Touchy brake pedal requires a frustrating amount of attention for smooth operation.

All photos: Sam Smith

Photo: Courtesy Luminox

Lots of watches glow in the dark, but not for long.

The most common technique is to use phosphorescent paint — it’s activated when exposed to light, though the glow begins to fade moments after the coated elements are removed from the light source. There’s also Indiglo, Timex’s patented, push-to-light system which requires you to push a button to activate a battery-powered light source. Both work alright, but neither are ideal.

I’ve found a promising alternative in an illumination technology from Swiss manufacturer Luminox, which claims to make the markings on its watches always visible, 24/7, with no activating light or battery needed. This is cool, a watch that glows all the time.

The watch I tested, the Valjoux Field Chronograph, lights up using micro gas lights — borosilicate glass capsules, chosen for their resistance to breakage, are filled with radioactive tritium gas. As the tritium decays, it releases electrons, lighting up the hands and hour markers (all without harming the human wearing it). Even the bezel becomes visible in darkness.

Watches using this tritium illumination technology are very popular with military and law enforcement — people who need to be able to read their watches in all conditions, from under water to pitch-black darkness. Luminox is a trusted supplier in these circles, and the military influence is immediately obvious in the Valjoux Field Chronograph’s butch design. With its buckram-like thick buffalo leather wristband and its 48 mm, black steel case that weighs over a quarter of a pound, this handsome watch exudes a sense of adventure-seeking masculinity. While I’m sure the name “Valjoux” warms the hearts of those in the Luminox marketing department, a more descriptive name might simply be “Balls.”

The Valjoux Field Chrono has a screw-in crown and is water-resistant to 100 meters. The textured, white-on-black dial centers make the hour and minute hands, as well as the pair of stop-watch chronograph insets, sharp and very readable. The three-hand chronograph is activated with a firm press of two buttons that sandwich the main crown.

While Luminox’s battery-operated quartz watches are well-known, the Valjoux Field Chronograph is an example of the company’s recent expansion into automatic mechanical movements. Every swing of your arm energizes the Swiss-made Valjoux 7750 movement by spinning its engine-turned rotor. There’s never a need for a battery. Of course, this means that when the watch its off your wrist, and after its 36-hour reserve power has expired, you’ll need to reset the time. As with all automatic watches, you also need to kick-start the movement with 10 to 20 clockwise twists. It’s a minor inconvenience, and one you’ll never encounter if you wear it every day (or close to every day). The back of the watch is dominated by a sapphire crystal, which provides a see-through exhibition case so you can study the automatic mechanism.

The manual that comes with the watch advises: “A mechanical watch is somewhat less accurate than a quartz watch.” As far as I can tell, this is just for liability reasons. I encountered no perceptible loss or gain in a week-long test of the Valjoux Field Chronograph. In fact, my only pet peeve has nothing to do with time-keeping — it was the less-than-comfortable fit of the bulky wristband. But I balanced that with the thrill of taking people into an unlit closet to see their “Oh wow” reactions by the light of the brightly glowing dials.

WIRED Tritium illumination keeps the hands and hour markers visible even in total darkness. The chronograph watch design is handsome. Mechanical auto-winding movement is accurate and has a 36-hour reserve. No batteries required, ever.

TIRED Tritium has a half-life of 12.5 years, so the watch will lose half its brightness by the end of 2024. Second hand doesn’t light up, so chrono is tough to see in the dark. Ultra-thick buffalo leather strap and steel buckle are too bulky for most wrists. Though watch nerds may find $2,300 a fair price, that’s as high as the Swiss Alps for everyone else.

The automatic movement's workings are on display. Photo: Courtesy Luminox

When Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion earlier this month, quite a few pundits were left wondering if Facebook hadn’t overpaid for the photo-sharing service. Another company that is currently rumored to be raising funding at a $1 billion valuation is CloudFlare. The service, which promises to protect websites from security threats and helps speed up loading times in the process, launched a little riff on the rumors around its valuation today – and is making some fun of Instagram in the process – by launching Instaflare. With Instaflare, website owners on the CloudFlare network can apply five Instagram-like filters to the images on their sites with just one click and make their photos look “like a billion bucks.”

The Instagram joke here and the riff on the company’s $1 billion valuation, is pretty obvious. There is more to Instaflare than that, though. As CloudFlare’s CEO Matthew Prince told TechCrunch alumn Paul Carr, what CloudFlare really wanted to show here was that it could add a simple feature like this in less than a day. For the most part, then, Instaflare is really just a way to advertise the company’s new developer platform, which it is launching today.

As the newer crop of Internet and mobile technology companies gradually become the big industries of tomorrow, they are slowly entering the world of corporate sponsorship, previously the province of older giants like IBM and Cisco. It’s an area not for the faint-hearted. We’ve already seen IBM come under fire for backing the US Masters, run by a golf club that refused membership to IBM’s CEO based simply on her body parts, when people with other kinds of parts normally get let in. Interesting choice there guys.

Now we have a new issue altogether. The Formula One circus is staging a Grand Prix in Bahrain right now, a nation not normally associated with the most fabulous human rights record, exactly. Admittedly there are few such things as untarnished countries, but right now – as we you read this in fact – citizens in Bahrain are actively demonstrating for greater democratic reforms, along the lines of the Arab Spring movement, in the very city the F1 action is taking place.

Meanwhile, the cuddly image of a Rovio Angry Birds character is currently doing laps on the Bahrain circuit and a major tech VC is sponsoring one of the teams.

Now, no-one is out to call anyone names here, but let’s review: when South Africa still touted Apartheid in the 1970s/80s sports people and sponsors were encouraged to avoid the country. But apparently it’s OK for companies associated with the tech industry to associate with a sporting event in Bahrain, even as the free press is banned from the country and activists are beaten on the street and tear gassed.

Finnish Formula 1 driver and (apparently) Angry Birds enthusiast Heikki Kovalainen recently agreed a sponsorship and co-branding deal with the gaming company (see images). Heikki and Rovio are also planning to sell related merchandise around the theme of racing.

All good clean fun – though the question remains, is Rovio happy with its cuddly birds being associated with an event that seems utterly tone deaf to the violent suppression of pro-democracy protests going on nearby?

We reached out to Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka for comment and he responded thus:

Interesting.

Meanwhile, an unfortunate third party to be literally dragged along for the F1 ride is Mangrove Capital, long time backer of some home-run tech companies like Skype, Nimbuzz, Jamendo, Seatwave and others.

Mangrove’s green splash logo appears on the side of Renault’s F1 car, thus:

How, you ask? Well, Gerard Lopez, co-founder and managing partner of Mangrove Capital Partners, acquired a majority stake in the Renault F1 Team back in 2009 via his other company, Genii Capital, a Luxembourg-based investment firm. Indeed, he helped secure the team’s future as that year Renault was about to drop out of Formula 1 entirely after 35 years in the sport.

We haven’t had any official comment from Mangrove but privately we hear at least a few of the guys there are, how can we put this, pretty damn uncomfortable with the whole situation.

Perhaps it’s to be hoped that Rovio and Mangrove consider their continuing involvement in F1 quite carefully, given that organisation’s continuing disinterest in the plight of ordinary people in their host nation.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to pick on these guys – merely to point out that the ‘newer’ tech industry is now playing at the level where these kinds of conflicts are inevitably going to arise and where there needs to be plenty of thought about who you get into bed with when you sponsor something.

Is it too late for them to pull out their sponsorship? That’s up to them. But it would be an interesting question for Nelson Mandela, or perhaps Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, let’s ask!

Mr Lincoln, what do you think of slavery?

“It is was it is.”

Nelson Mandela was not available for comment.

WeVideo has just secured $19.1 million for its cloud-based collaborative video editing platform, in a round led by Crest Capital Ventures of Houston, Texas. The company says it plans to use the funding to further ramp up its B2B focused development team.

Unlike desktop editing software, which is restricted by computer hardware limitations, WeVideo’s online video editing solution can scale up processing speeds on demand, based on an end user’s needs. As users move up through the company’s paid tiers, speeds increase, as does the available storage space and video resolution.

For those unfamiliar with WeVideo, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup first launched in fall 2011, and is a spinoff from a European venture called Creaza, which offers a similar, but education-focused, movie editor to a quarter million students across Europe.

In addition, videographers can collaborate on projects together, where all project members can share their video clips via a single interface. (This feature is available to paid users only).

WeVideo’s free version offers 1 GB of workspace and scales up to offerings that range from $6.99 to $79.99 per month for 10 to 100 GB of workspace, as well as varying export qualities and additional features. An enterprise version is offered, too, with pricing on request.

The company is notable for having formed a partnership with YouTube in October which saw it integrated directly on YouTube’s website at YouTube.com/create. WeVideo also recently celebrated its commercial product launch, a partnership with Qatar Foundation International (www.qfi.org), adoption by Startup Idol and the TechZulu news organization, the launch of a power video editing app for Android tablets and more.

So yep, they’ve been busy over there at WeVideo.

CEO Jostein Svendsen previously estimated the service would amass over a million users by year-end 2012. (They had over 125,000 in January). The company isn’t disclosing how many users it has now, however.

The company also said in January it saw 1,000 video projects per day using the online platform. Svendsen says that number is “much higher now,” but was not able to provide specifics.

He mentioned that, next week, the startup will be announcing several new B2B partnerships involving “very large global companies” that will supercharge its growth in terms of “adding thousands and even millions” of users to its platform.

“Some of these might be business customers of ours,” says Svendsen of the new partnerships, “but ultimately, the end users are consumers. But we’re also expanding heavily into business users…but that’s not next week. Next week is B2C announcements.” Again, Svendsen declined to provide details, this time due to the embargoes the partners had placed on their end for the release of their news.

WeVideo’s team of a dozen is set to expand rapidly over the next few days, due to the new funding and the impact of forthcoming announcements. They will also be opening new offices in Europe, Asia and even the U.S.

Svendsen says we can also soon expect new product offerings at new price points, some of which have a B2B focus, others which are consumer-facing. These, too, will be announced sometime in the near future, possibly related to the planned announcements in the upcoming week.

Pixelpipe, a San Francisco-based startup that offers a ‘content distribution gateway’ that allows people to upload text, photos, videos and other files to a variety of social networking and media sharing sites at once, is debuting a new service today, called Pi.pe that aims to help move content across services. We have 1,000 invites for TechCrunch readers to use the service; you can enter the code ‘techcruncher’ here.

While Pixelpipe allowed is focused on getting media off of phones or desktops onto your social services, Pi.pe service is all about moving content from your Flickr account to Facebook, or from your Instagram account to Dropbox. The startup has made it fairly simple to copy one to thousands of items in just a few clicks between services.

On Pi.pe, you can authenticate your accounts with 12 services, including 500px, Facebook, Facebook Pages, Flickr, Instagram, Kodak Gallery, Myspace, Photobucket, Picasa, Shutterfly, SkyDrive and SmugMug. Once authenticated, you see your files from these services on Pi.pe and click which ones you’d like to transfer to another service. The startup says the back-end has been built to scale to hundreds or even thousands of transfers a second.

You then authenticate with the storage or media service that you want to import the photos to (these include, 500px, Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and others). For example you would be able to back up all of your Instagr.am photos to Dropbox, print them at Shutterfly or post to 500px. Or your could import photos to Facebook, and Pi.pe will parse the EXIF information and insert the media into your timeline on the date it was captured.

As founder Brett Butterfield (the former director of R&D at Kodak) explains to me, Pixelpipe was more of a broadcasting service and Pi.pe aims to help users solve the distribution problem they may have when photos are collected across a number of services. Building the ability to import and export has been technically challenging, he says, but he believes having a central repository where you can easily pull and push files will be inherently useful for consumers.

Butterfield says that the company will be working on adding the ability to import and export audio into Pi.pe, and will also support other types of files in the future, such as documents and more.

Pixelpipe, which has 1 million users and has distributed 40 million photos and videos, has raised $2.3 million in funding from investors including James Joaquin and Russ Siegelman.

TechCrunch Disrupt NYC will be here before we know it and we have been working incredibly hard to make it especially amazing this year. This incomparable conference is being held next month, May 21st – 23rd, following our ever popular Hackathon, which is taking place on May 19th through the 20th, where red bull gulpers and pizza eaters will gather together to hack a product within 24 hours.

During the three days of Disrupt NYC, we will launch over two dozen startups in the Startup Battlefield competition, where startups from all over come to battle it out for the ultimate prize of $50,000 and the Disrupt Cup. Winners of past years have included Shaker, Getaround, Qwiki, Soluto and many more.

Disrupt NYC will also bring together the best and smartest people in technology, where we will discuss how the Internet is disrupting industry after industry.

We have already announced many amazing speakers and judges, and will continue to announce more as we get closer to the event. We are incredibly excited to have our very own Michael Arrington back with us this year, along with MG Siegler. Both will be on stage and will be helping judge the Battlefield competition. Who knows what could happen?

This event is going to be fantastic. Last year in New York, we had over 2,000 attendees and had over 500 hackers join us. It’s really an event you do not want to miss.

We have extended Early Bird registration until April 30th. That means you have ten more days to get the best price on Disrupt tickets. We will also have ticket giveaways and more announcements and surprises coming up week after week, so be sure to be on the lookout for those.

We hope to see all of you there. Get your tickets now.

You may have heard of Zocdoc, the site that lets you search for doctors based on location, specialty, what insurance providers they accept, and then book appointments instantly. Zocdoc brought a simple and effective solution to a problem that frustrated consumers for year (the time consuming nature of physician search), and has blown up as result. Earlier this year, Zeel launched to bring Zocdoc’s model to alternative healthcare providers, like massage therapists, personal trainers, nutritionists, and acupuncturists, allowing users to easily search for and book appointments with these providers.

To accompany its launch, Zeel raised $1.5 million in funding from Matt Ocko of Archimedes Capital, Esther Dyson, Ken Cron, and a host of other angels. Today, only three months later, the startup is adding another round of funding, led by Prolog Ventures, a life sciences VC firm based out of St. Louis. The round also included previous investors Ken Cron, Tim Kendall, and Eric Ober, as well as new investors like CEO of Shopwell.com and EIR at IDEO, Brian Witlin, Ritesh Veera, and FAO Ventures Founder Farooq Oomerbhoy. The team isn’t disclosing the size of the around, but we’ve heard it’s close to the size of its first round. Really the second tranche of a two-part seed round.

As part of the new investment, Ilya Nykin, the co-founder and managing director of Prolog, and Cron, an angel investor and board member of LogMeIn, Computer Associates, and Midway Games, will join the startup’s board of directors.

At launch in January, Zeel had about 1,000 practitioners on board, a number that has since grown to 2,300. These practitioners are spread across 11 different cities, with about half located in New York. Why the disparity? Two reasons: Zeel is based in New York and wanted to reach critical mass in the local market before expanding, and between 10 and 12 percent of all health and wellness appointments in the U.S. happen in NYC.

That being said, there are approximately 750K health and wellness providers in the U.S., Zeel CEO Samer Hamadeh tells us, and the startup eventually wants to list them all. Of course, the highest densities of providers are in the top 20 metro areas, so over the course of the year, Zeel will begin filling in the blanks.

But, “I’ve never gotten acupuncture or a massage,” you say, “so why should I care”? Well, my friend, in case you haven’t noticed, the cost of healthcare in this country is fairly high, making a good case for preventative and alternative approaches to medicine. Instead of paying for the astronomical cost of hospital care, surgery, or drugs, many are turning to preventative methods of healthcare and treatment. And this only going to continue as consumers get over the stigma attached to anything with the word “alternative” in it.

Beyond its 2,300 providers, Zeel connects consumers to an additional 30K qualified preventative and alternative health practitioners, plus some original content to help guide consumer decisions. (It also added chiropractors last month.) Obviously, when it comes to treatment, and your health, quality is essential. Hamadeh says that these aren’t the type of massage therapists you’ll find on Groupon, they’re vetted, certified experts.

While Zeel allows consumers to search for health and wellness experts by price, location, years of experience, and certification, the real key is search by availability. At this point, Zeel is plugged into about half of their providers’ schedules, so they have the ability to show consumers when the business has open spots. This is huge. It means that users get to pick and choose and book up to the last minute, while offering providers the opportunity to fill in the gaps in their schedules. If open slots expire, that’s a sunk cost. (For local businesses, scheduling is a huge problem, especially as it relates to daily deals. See here.)

As to its business model, it’s a bit similar to TaskRabbit, in that they’re the middleman between consumers and providers. If users book an appointment, Zeel charges a 12 or 13 percent fee at the point of the credit card transaction. This means they net about $9 a transaction. This means that there’s no advertising on the site, and it’s not really lead gen either, and most importantly, consumers don’t pay anything extra.

Up next? The Zeel CEO says that the company is in the process of developing mobile apps, which will show up this year, and it’s also working on a loyalty points program. Zeel was founded by husband-and-wife team Alison Harmelin and Samer Hamadeh. Samer is the former CEO of Vault.com and EIR at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

For more, check out Zeel at home here.

Spain is getting its own version of Netflix, thanks to a company called Youzee, which exits its private beta period today. Like Netflix, Youzee offers streaming movies and TV on-demand, but it also features titles for rent, too. The company has agreements with a number of distributors, including BBC, Sony, Disney, Fox International Channels, TVE, Telemundo and more.

To kick off its launch, Youzee is offering new users to try out the service for free.

New users can watch up to 10 hours from Youzee’s catalog for free, without entering in their credit card information. Another option invites users to try out Youzee for 30 days for free, if they’re willing to hand over their payment data in advance. Both offers provide access to the entire catalog, and will include the ability to stream from desktop, tablet or mobile.

After the free trial ends, Youzee’s subscription service is 6.99 euros monthly to continue watching, plus the option to rent out of catalog content for 2.99 or 4.99 (HD). In terms of content, while the company may have deals in place with several distributors, clicking on them from the drop-down box provided sometimes leads you to an empty section – so, clearly access to content is not on par with U.S.-based Netflix, for example.

The service also includes social sharing options built-in, which let its users post to Facebook and Twitter. Also revealed today is the Youzee iPhone application, which will become available in the App Store in a couple of weeks and will feature a remote control. Youzee’s Paula Pérez-Gándaras also tells us that an app for Samsung’s Smart TV’s has also been developed and will arrive in the “upcoming weeks.”

Youzee was founded by Carlos Cruz and Fernando Évole. It’s backed by Spanish venture capital and employs a team of 46. Based in Madrid, Youzee describes itself as a startup with “an international outlook,” and the company previously told us that it plans to develop the model in other European countries in the future. The service launched into private beta in December 2011, and now counts nearly 50,000 users, according to the ticker on its website.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to venture into the depths of AT&T’s New York offices and check out the Research Lab. In essence, AT&T has about a zillion APIs that relate to cloud computing, navigation, translation, and a plethora of other fun technology, and its researchers then take those platforms and create really interesting products.

We met up with Don Henderson, who’s built an app called Got My Stuff, which basically makes sure that you aren’t leaving anything at home when you get in the car. Using RFID tags, the car will instantly scan its own contents as you twist the key in the ignition. Anything you’ve previously tagged, including a phone, wallet, bag, laptop, or sunglasses, will be displayed on a check list. If you’ve forgotten it, the check list will notify you.

You can even change the list of items based on where you’re going. If you’re headed to work, you’ll likely need very different items than you would if you were driving your kids to school. The idea is that car OEMs will build this system right into their cars, so that it’s up and running as you make your purchase.

Another cool prototype we saw is bio-acoustical transmission. It’s a bit complex, but at its core the idea is that even the slightest movement in your body creates vibrations in your bones (and thus, noise). If a sensor is placed on my wrist, it can detect the noises I’m making through tiny finger gestures, and a command can be attached to those gestures. But developer Brian Amento took this a step further, realizing that a phone could transfer those vibrations from myself to another system. In this case, it’s a locked door.

So Brian built an app to mark whether or not you’re the owner of a house, or just a visiting friend. If you’re the owner, the door will automatically unlock and open once you touch the handle, as long as you’re touching the phone or any other sensor that can pick up your vibrations. If you’re a visitor, the window in the door will become translucent and the system will announce you as the visitor to anyone chilling in the house.

Very cool, to be sure.

Last but certainly not least, we got the chance to check out a connected Porsche model that was built in conjunction with AT&T, QNX, and Panasonic. The car employs AT&T’s Watson Speech API (so that you can talk to it), along with AT&T’s LTE network and cloud computing infrastructure.

By using those APIs, the car can take information from the driver and integrate that request with the cars internal systems like GPS to bring up local shops, or perform other tasks. As you can see in the video, the system isn’t quite ready for full-scale deployment, but it’s a good start to say the least.

There was a lot of startup excitement in Tallinn, Estonia this week, where investment and mentoring program Seedcamp organised their first ever event in Estonia – a tiny country, but best known for being the cradle for the development of Skype.

However, the Nordic tiger is no stranger to Seedcamp as six companies from the country – GrabCAD, Sportlyzer, Campalyst, Qminder, Transferwise and Pult – are already invested startups. In fact, Estonia is raising a few eyebrows given its tiny size, already producing a number of high quality startups at a prodigious rate. Even Estonian president Toomas Hendrik turned up to welcome attendees to “the startup country” and stayed on for the pitches!

20 startups were shortlisted for Seedcamp Tallinn event, eight of them from Estonia, others from Finland, Lativa, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden, UK and Slovenia. The list includes young entrepreneurs aimed at disrupting the online tutoring industry (Arkademy) or concert rider management (easyRider), bringing clarity to the car buying process (Carfitsme), making you the editor in chief of your own social magazine (Kula Magazine), send you “audio tweets” or ads (Notif5), rescue you from energy over-consumption (UtilityCamp) or boosting farming by mixing science and weather (WeatherMe).

The list, with links is here, but for the record:

• Arkademy, Tallinn, Estonia – The first live video seminar community in the world

• Browserbite, Tallinn, Estonia – A service that helps to create web pages that look the same in all browsers

• CGTrader, Vilnius, Lithuania – is a peer-to-peer platform where designers collaborate and trade 3D models to each other

• Carfitsme, Tallinn, Estonia – Carfitsme helps to find and buy right car without spending days and weeks.

• easyRider.me, Tallinn, Estonia – is an online tool helping bands and promoters get technical riders rolling right.

• Kula Magazine, Moscow, Russia – an innovative multi platform magazine

• Merkanty, Ljubljana, Slovenia – Our goal is to make Merkanty the best platform for all traders/sellers and advertisers

• MightyFingers, Riga, Latvia – are making cross-platform game engine on HTML5 to run games on every device.

• Notif5, Tallinn, Estonia – A location based audio notification platform.

• Opuss – London, UK – End-to-End Social Publishing Platform. We apply Github to publishing with game mechanics.

• Pinevio, Vilnius, Lithuania – is a social content discovery platform enabling our users to discover more relevant content.

• Sayduck, Helsinki, Finland – solves the missing link between the online-offline retail experience using Augmented Reality.

• Sketchfab, Paris, France – is the first service to publish interactive 3D content online.

• TaxiPal, Tallinn, Estonia – is the only taxi app that helps you find trusted taxis in 31 countries.

• Tellyo, Helsinki, Finland – An app and small device converting 2nd screens into TV remotes for better TV experience

• UtilityCamp, Tartu, Estonia – We will be the RescueTime for the household energy saving.

• Viewsy, London, UK – is creating Google Analytics for the real world.

• Warmbreeze Studios AB, Gothenburg, Sweden – Healthy Heroes – World of Warcraft meets health and exercise!

• WeatherMe, Tallinn, Estonia – boost farming production by combining farming science and weather data in a simple way

• Zonear, Tampere, Finland – is a startup that focuses on adaptive HTML5 applications and web developer tools.

“The biggest wow for me was to see tech folks from Estonian, Latvia and Russia having finally started expressing themselves clearly,” a Seedcamp mentor and former Head of Engineering at Skype, Ott Kaukver conculded. Although some of the ideas pitched in Tallinn sounded very similar and even too common (another CAD library, another taxi app or social content filter etc), that didn’t bother Jüri Kaljundi, member of Estonian Startup Leaders Club.

“There’s a taxi app presented in every other Seedcamp or Garage48 event. Yet the problem is not yet solved, so more work has to be done!” he said.

Kristjan Hiiemaa, CEO of the Seedcamp company Erply commented: “It’s a classical Seedcamp, having a bunch of guys with market ready products and super cool teams, but the other bunch of guys with just mockups. They will all learn from the mentors and are all winners already, as they are on the Seedcamp boat.”

The pitches were followed by a panel discussion, where Estonian seedcampers Taavet Hinrikus (Transferwise), Kristjan Hiiemaa (Erply) shared their advice on starting internationally from day one and localizing the business.

Speaking about the value coming from Seedcamp network, Hiiemaa pointed out that Erply found their investors an hour after David McLure tweeted about the company. Localization, according to Hiiemaa, is not always a good idea. Instead, a startup should focus on their core markets an postpone localization as long as possible. Erply, that is now the core retail operating system of Elizabeth Arden and other US companies, had their page in Latvian once, with “exit” button translated as “get lost”!

Estonia still has plenty of challenges. One of them was hinted at by Seedcamp’s Espinal, who shared how he had to spent two days in five airports before arriving to Tallinn. Another challenge raised was how to get startuppers to live and work in Estonia, a place known for its cold weather.

But Espinal remains optimistic: “It’s the more high quality startups and repeat of success that turns countries like Estonia, similar to Israel, around. I see all the right things being done in this startup country.” Seedcamp will announce 1-2 companies which will be accepted to the program in a week. Estonian startup community has their thumbs up for 7. Estonian member of the Seedcamp family.

Whip out the out the old anagylphs, folks, because you’re going to want to watch this. Some kids at the Wonderland Elementary School sent up a weather balloon mounted with a carbon fiber frame carrying six GoPro HDHERO2 cameras. Four of the cameras were set in 3D configuration and, after editing, they were able to create the first stratospheric 3D video shoot using a balloon. You can watch it in YouTube with red/blue glasses.

The resulting footage, while fun, is actually a testament to the durability and low price of modern HD cameras. I remember shooting Estes rockets with a tiny camera in the nose to get blurry photos of my friends standing on the ground. Now you’re literally taking in hours of HD video data. In space.

You’ll also notice they attached a model of Space Battleship Yamato in front of the cameras. In layman’s terms, they did this because that ship is badass.

A new report from Nielsen this morning delves into the mobile and social behavior of U.S. Hispanic consumers, finding they’re highly engaged in their usage of smartphones, online video, social networking and other types of entertainment. According to the study, Hispanics outpace all over ethnic groups in mobile downloads of music and photos, and are more likely to watch video online and on the their mobile phones than others.

Specifically, Nielsen says that Hispanic video viewers are 68% more likely than non-Hispanic White viewers to watch video on the Internet, and 20% more likely to watch video on their mobile phone.

They’re also heavy phone users in general, sending and receiving some 941 SMS text messages per month – more than any other ethnic group. And they make 13 calls per day on their mobiles, which is 40% more than the average U.S. consumer.

The group is also increasing its access to social networking services and blogs. In February, visits were up 14% to sites like Facebook and WordPress.com, for example. In February, 16.7 million unique U.S. Hispanics visitors headed over to Facebook, which is up 8% year-over-year. Visits to Blogger (+10% YOY), Twitter (+32% YOY), LinkedIn (+52% YOY), WordPress (+27% YOY), and Tumblr (+85% YOY) were up, as well. (See above chart).

They often have a blog of their own, too – Hispanics are 17% more likely than the average consumer to build or update a personal blog, Nielsen found.

Plus, Hispanics are 25% more likely to follow a brand, 18% more likely to follow a celebrity, 21% more likely to post links, articles, videos and website, and 7% more likely to have one or more social networking profiles.

Perhaps the most interesting part to all this data, though, is the part that hints at the “why.” Hispanics are actually less likely to have Internet access at home than the average U.S. consumer (62% and 76%, respectively). Although this is increasing – home broadband use is up by 14% over the past year, which is higher than the 6% growth rate of the general market. So that can account for some of the activity.

However, mobile is a key factor here. Says Nielsen, “mobile presents a significant avenue of opportunity for marketers looking to reach Hispanic consumers,” and the firm also notes that the group has “amassed significant buying power, despite perceptions to the contrary.”

Marketers, though, aren’t the only ones who could successfully target this group, leveraging mobile to do so. If you’re building a mobile app or service – especially a social or entertainment-focused service – you would be lucky to have a group that’s as engaged as this one is to tap into.

I try my best to stay away from writing about speaker docks and phone cases. In my experience, they’re all the same, save for a few minor tweaks here and there. But today I stumbled upon a pretty novel little iPhone speaker dock that just so happens to be 100 percent green and uses no electricity whatsoever.

You’re intrigued. I can feel it.

Meet the iBamboo iPhone speaker dock. It’s made from a single piece of bamboo, and holds the iPhone in place as it plays music to amplify the sound. Granted, you won’t get any extra power in the lows or feel that bass keep bumpin’ bumpin’ (this beat goes boom, boom), but you will get some added volume and that’s all the casual listener needs anyways.

Plus, the iBamboo is pretty damn beautiful, in both bamboo and black color flavors. It exists in perfect harmony with the minimalist design of Apple products, and is eco-friendly to boot.

The folks over at iBamboo also make some other cool stuff, including a Bamboo iPhone 4/4S case, as well as a new line of iBamboo speaker docks made of recycled plastic. That line is called the iBamboo Speaker Urban, and while it looks exactly the same in terms of design, it comes in translucent and black plastic rather than Bamboo.

Stock is currently quite low on the iBamboo, so you may have to wait, but the site lists a notification alert system so if you’re really excited about this, I’d recommend signing up.

If you’re still not sold on this things legitimacy, check out this video of the iBamboo speaker doing its thang:

[via DVICE]

In 2009 a Russian teenager named Andrey Ternovskiy created random video chat website ChatRoulette, which at its peak in March 2010 attracted 1.8 million unique monthly visitors, but suffered from offensive content. The phenomenon inspired Shawn FanningandSean Parkerto create Airtime, which raised $8.3 million in funding and is rumored to go live soon.

While Airtime engineers are still hacking, 33-year-old Alex Krizhevich and 24-year-old Anton Melnyk from Ukraine built and already launched a video-based social discovery platform called Runfaces in October 2011. Runfaces went viral, reaching 280,000 unique visitors in its first month, mainly in the US.

Introducing video communication into the existing social graph has been done before: SocialEyes was launched as a Facebook app last year, but has pivoted to become a video calling app for Android. Runfaces, which like Airtime was inspired by ChatRoulette, is about social discovery based on interests.

The tag line of Runfaces is ‘real communication in the virtual world’. The users sign up with their own Facebook accounts for authentication reasons (email signup is also possible) and select their interests to start meeting new people in a video format.

Social discovery works through recommendations based on specified interests, direct search, interest groups and random video chat. There is a section called Pulse, which shows a stream of publicly shared video messages as well as YouTube and Vimeo videos. Users interact via video messages and a live video chat.

To deal with adult content the founders rely on Facebook login and moderation. Importing social graph from Facebook helps acquire new users quickly, and sharing recorded video messages via Facebook adds to the viral factor (Twitter sharing is coming soon).

To bootstrap the startup, Krizhevich and Melnyk used proceeds from their respective businesses: Krizhevich runs a creative agency, and has a background in advertising, whilst Melnyk co-founded 12 successful Internet projects. Six people in total are involved in the project.

Runfaces attracted 10,000 new registrations within days after it launched. It went viral, especially in the US states of Kansas and Missouri, where users spent over 1 million minutes video-chatting, recorded over 7 million video messages and subsequently crashed the website.

With these stats the team successfully applied to Eastlabs, the Ukranian accelerator backed by local billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who rebuilt the site on the new technology platform and has just closed a seed funding of $70 000 from EastOne Group. Coincidentally, John Fanning, the uncle of Airtime co-founder and CEO Shawn Fanning, is a mentor at Eastlabs, yet the Runfaces team has not had interactions with him during the accelerator program.

Runfaces members seem to be using the network for meeting new people, sharing music videos, Chinese food cooking tutorials, college advertisement and inevitably dating. According to Krizhevich, artist groups are quite active on the network. Some users have over 1000 friends.

To understand the extent of video used in online dating, I connected with David Evans, who runs the Online Dating Insider blog. Evans does not believe that people are ready to use video in online dating. Besides, it is still difficult to monitor for the prevention of abuse, and otherwise it mostly attract kids with no money. According to Evans, video chats have been used by video-based introduction sites such as WooMe (acquired by Zoosk). Then there is SpeedDate. As far as adult content goes, video introductions have been around for years.

Yet the social video broadcasting appears to be a hot spot. In addition to Google hangouts there is a highly anticipated launch of OnTheAir, which is slowly opening up its private beta. A video messaging application called Tout, favored by celebrities, has been visited by 12 million people in the first year since it launched.

The Runfaces team plans to monetize the service by selling virtual goods, using a freemium model where the invisible status and personalized video player branding will be offered to the premium accounts. It also plans to introduce advertisement and sponsorship.

Before that, the total investment of $140K, including own capital, will not get the company too far, even if it relies heavily on viral marketing. Runfaces is currently fundraising.

This post is written by our regular contributor Natasha Starkell, the CEO of GoalEurope, the outsourcing advisory firm and a publication about outsourcing, innovation and startups in Central and Eastern Europe. Twitter @NatashaStarkell. Gplus.to/natashastarkell.