the first data provider to deliver open access to the commercial real estate marketplace. If you ask a member of the business-tech community about the benefits of closed systems versus their open counterparts,
Once concerned primarily with keeping hackers and other utsidersfrom accessing sensitive data consumers are now more aware of the importance of maintaining personal security and privacy from corporations, governments and other powerful nsiders.
a fake Occupy Central app that spread phishing malware in Hong kong poked a few more holes in the perceived security of ios closed system.
Transparency Leads to Trust Each year, GMI Ratings releases a list of the 100 Most Trustworthy Companies, inspired by the abuses that led to the financial collapse.
the companies on this list are keeping shareholders informed, leading to less investor uncertainty and, in most cases, solid stock prices.
What might surprise you (or might not) is that technology is cited as one of today most fraudulent industries along with pharmaceuticals.
This means that the opportunity is ripe to distinguish your tech startup from closed-up competitors by employing a model of radical openness with investors and clients.
and financial data being up front about long-term goals (or your more agile, wait -and-see approach,
Wikipedia is an obvious example, but also consider Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013. Waze uses user-submitted traffic data to recommend the fastest driving route,
which adjusts in real time as the user drives. Imagine the efficiencies that would be lost if Waze tried to generate this data by itself instead of tapping into the free, unlimited power of collaboration.
Investors in companies like IFTTT (which stands for If-This-Then-That) are also placing huge bets that the future lies in interconnection and open interaction among a multitude of platforms and devices.
While many tech startups were thinking about how to carve a niche, own it and charge for it,
IFTTT was strategically positioning itself as the go-to platform for the impending Internet of things. This brilliant, long-game strategy landed the company a $30 million investment in August of this year.
Imagine if the company had built instead a platform that only functioned with IFTTT-approved devices,
following a closed, vertical integration model. It might have enjoyed some early success, but it would have inevitably been unseated by a more open provider.
Even a closed behemoth like Microsoft is now recognizing the value of open-sourced collaboration,
recently announcing its decision to open source its server-side. NET Framework and also take it to Mac and Linux.
Launching a startup with rtificial wallsin place, such as exclusive partnerships or extensive restrictions, in all likelihood means signing your own death sentence.
but history shows that tech that doesn play well with others gets left behind as collaborative innovation happens outside its walls.
it will have to do on its own what the united front of Samsung (in other words, Google android OS), Oculus Rift (in other words, Facebook),
bitcoin for traditional currency; at home 3d printing for manufacturing; and right now in Hong kong, Firechat, which is enabling protesters to circumvent Internet service providers.
Let imagine the blowback the company would receive for trying to charge for its user-submitted information.
The largest data providers have served as arbitrary gatekeepers for the world commercial real estate listings by asking brokers and agencies for info on their available spaces,
The commercial real estate industry lost sight of one important fact the Internet has made kings of us All in a Google world,
and businesses built around proprietary data have an expiration date. If your startup is basing its business model on data that another company could feasibly gather
and give away for free, you can expect that very thing to happen in the near future.
as Makerbot learned after it suddenly clamped down on its open-source 3d printing hardware after a community of early supporters spent years contributing to Makerbot design (it worth watching rint the Legend, a new documentary that chronicles the whole ordeal, available
or Sony built in decades past. When it comes to relationship-building, innovation, and eliminating competition,
a care management platform designed to help low-income Utah residents suffering from mental health issues.
Doctors prescribe antidepressants in the Beehive state at nearly twice the average rate in the U s. Speculation as to
It uses predictive analytics from the way a patient interacts on their smartphone to detect warning signals in behavior.
The software then alerts a healthcare provider that something is off. Utah Smartcare partners with three local mental health authorities and 2 community health clinics in Utah.
The program is a patch between office visits to help patients stay connected to their healthcare provider. ee already receiving great feedback from clients enrolled in the program
one of the local mental health authorities participating in the Utah Smartcare initiative. his data will allow us to better assess how our clients are doing between appointments
Ginger. io is working separately on projects with UC San francisco, Partners Healthcare (Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women Hospital,
and Mclean Hospital), Duke university, UC Davis and University of Nebraska Medical center i
#TV s Disruption On Display As Netflix And Amazon Go Head-To-Head At Golden Globes More proof that good television doesn have to be developed by traditional industry players:
Amazon has received now its first Golden Globe nominations for the Amazon Prime Instant Video original show Transparent,
This is Amazon third scripted show after its entry into original programming last year, and the show itself has been nominated for Best Comedy,
including Alpha House, Betas, Transparent, The After, Bosch, Mozart in the Jungle, Tumble Leaf, Annebots, Creative Galaxy, Hand of God (2015),
and Red oaks (2015) some of which are aimed at kids. orange is the new black Transparent nom is not the first time that an Internet TV provider has earned a nod from a TV/movie industry awards show Netflix recently received dozens of Emmy
And Netflix House of cards earned 9 Emmy nominations last year becoming the first online-only web series to receive such a nomination.
and director David Fincher and actress Robin Wright both brought home a statue for their work.
however, will present an interesting battle as both Amazon and Netflix are up for the Best TV Series (Musical or Comedy) Golden Globe.
Transparent is facing off against Netflix original show Orange is the New Black which is now on Season 2. The show competed last year as a drama.)
television hasn been as quick to have been disrupted by the Internet as other industries, like music or books.
But now that there are large companies with large bankrolls that are capable of funding their own studios,
albeit small, study here in the U s. indicates that roughly a quarter of U s. customers are now asking for Internet-only service from their cable providers.
There are enough people watching these programs Internet TV now reaches 40 percent of U s. homes for Nielsen to begin to measure these services, too.
Nielsen data also revealed the impact of streaming video: TV viewing was down 7 percent year-over-year as of October among the 18-49-year-old demographic.
On a personal note, with HBO GO standalone service now on the near horizon, my final tie to cable TV has been severed as well.
I moved to a new house this week and opted for streaming video only with Prime,
Hulu and Netflix now taking the place of the cable TV subscription c
#Google translate Adds 10 More Languages Including Burmese Google s translation tool is constantly adding new languages
but its latest update is notable because it includes Burmese the official language of Myanmar as well as Malayalam one of India s six classical languages with 38 million speakers.
The latter is especially significant because it ties into Google s efforts to get more Indian users onto its services.
Earlier this month for example Google launched the Indian Language Internet Alliance which seeks to increase offerings for Hindi speakers as well as Hindi voice search.
At that time Google India MD Rajan Anandan said at a press conference that#to reach our goal of 500 million Internet users by 2017 in India we need to make the Internet accessible to those who don t speak English.#
#The Internet giant plans to add other Indian languages to its services and the addition of Malayalam to Google translate is a small but noteworthy step toward that goal.
India s official languages are Hindi and English and the government also recognizes about 20 other languages.
According to Google India currently has about 200 million Internet users with five million new users added every month
which means that India will have more Internet users than the U s. within the next year. But only 198 million Indian people are estimated to be proficient in English
so it s important for Google to increase its roster of offerings in different Indian languages
Meanwhile Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has stressed the importance of free speech in Myanmar. Last year in a speech he called for the Myanmar government to stay away from regulating the Internet saying#The answer to bad speech is more speech.
More communication. More voices. If you are a political leader you get a much better idea of
#Schmidt also added that Google s first priority in Myanmar is to improve access to information with its search engine and tools such as Google translate and Maps.
According to Google its latest additions brings Google translate s total number of supported languages to 90 and mean that 200 million more people will be able to use it to translate texts to and from their native languages.
In its blog post the company reiterated that the accuracy of Google translate depends on members of its Translate Community who supplement the tool s algorithms by correcting translations
#Amazon s Connected Speaker Echo Now Has An ios App When Amazon launched its $199 connected speaker Amazon Echo last month,
it also came with a dedicated mobile app for configurations and other settings. The app was initially available only for Amazon Fire OS and Android,
but not ios. Instead, iphone and ipad users had to use Safari or a desktop browser instead.
Today, that changes as Amazon has released now Amazon Echo for ios. Like its Android counterpart
the new ios app allows you to use your ios device as a remote control of sorts for interacting with Echo.
To get started, the app guides you through a simple set up process, after which you can use the app to control the output to Echo as an alternative to using voice commands.
Additionally, the main screen of the application shows you weather and other recent queries, including those Echo has looked up on Wikipedia on your behalf,
which is one of the hardware device more interesting functions. Amazon Echo, as a reminder, is not yet broadly available.
Instead, interested users can visit the Echo website an request an invitation to purchase the device.
The issue here is not likely whether or not Amazon can manage to produce enough hardware to fulfill demand
but rather whether there will actually be demand. After all, Amazon entry into the smartphone market with Fire Phone flopped,
and Echo is at best a shopping assistant not, you know, a Samantha. Or Alexa, as Amazon has named its virtual helper.)
As with its other hardware-based shopping assistant Amazon Dash, the company is basically running its hardware consumer trials in the open to see how people respond.
Amazon Echo for ios is a free download here
#Update Lending Club IPO Shows The Profit Potential For Financial Technology Investments Lending Club $5. 4 billion initial public offering on the New york stock exchange is more than just the largest IPO
for a U s.-based tech company this year, it also planting the flag for an entire ecosystem of startup companies engaged in overturning the ways in
which the world deals with money. his is not some narrow addressable market, it trillions of dollars and represent billions of dollars of opportunity,
says Matt Harris, a managing director with Bain Capital Ventures who specializes in backing financial services technology companies.
The most immediate winners are Lending Club investors among them Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Bay Partners, Foundation Capital, Union square Ventures,
and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Norwest Venture Partners is the largest holder with 50.8 million shares,
Equityzen has a breakdown of how much investors from each round stand to gain on their participation in each of the rounds here.
an investor in several financial technology companies including Lending Club, the soon-to-list Ondeck Capital, Motif Investing, and Lendinghome.
Moldow, whose lengthy white paper mapped the potential of marketplace lending, says that these companies are the vanguard of a larger host of companies that will remake finance. here are equity fundraising
and investment banking underwriting services that eventually will be transformed, but are still the old boy club, says Moldow.
Waiting In The Wings Beyond Ondeck a slew of online credit businesses are waiting in the wings with aspirations to take their own bow on the IPO stage
and their own twist on the lending business that was pioneered in the U s. by Lending Club and its earliest direct competitor, Prosper.
Companies like Social Finance are pitching student lending services; Funding Circle, Ondeck, Swift Capital, CAN Capital,
and others are appealing to small business borrowers; and Avantcredit, Lendup, Earnest all want to lend to different types of consumers.
Some startups are pursuing even more specialized types of loans, with Lendinghome and Assetavenue targeting home buyers with mortgage loans,
and Applepie Capital looking to lend to would-be restaurant franchisors. e see the lending club IPO as a bellwether for a major structural shift in the way that consumers
and small businesses get access to credit, says Funding Circle cofounder Sam Hodges. t one step in what will be a multiple step shift in companies like ours coming to scale
and changing the ways that parts of the market work. Shaky Beginnings The success of the lending business wasn always so certain.
As the financial crisis loomed in 2008 the U s. Securities and exchange commission took a hard look at both Lending Club
and Prosper and both businesses were forced to shut down while regulators assessed how they be overseen and by which watchdog.
Some investors point to the different approaches Prosper and Lending Club took to addressing regulatorsconcerns as one reason why Lending Club was able to take the pole position against its rival,
which had actually been the first peer-to-peer lender to launch in the U s. market. The two companies have approached always peer-to-peer lending somewhat differently.
Lending Club curated its borrowers and lenders from the outset while Prosper had a much more freewheeling,
pure marketplace approach to its business, investors said. And both companies stumbled in the face of regulatory scrutiny.
Lending Club was nearly out of money when investors like Salil Deshpande from Bay Partners (and now with Bain Capital) came in to revive the business in 2008.
Here how chief executive officer Renaud Laplanche described the situation on his own Linkedin page, alil invested in Lending Club as a Series A in 2008.
We were in the middle of the financial crisis and were awaiting for the clearance from the SEC to launch our program to investors.
Exit Music In the following years attention and capital turned to payments companies like Braintree (acquired by Paypal), Stripe or Square as the hope for fintech biggest home runs.
But those businesses all have potential (and actual) acquirers, while lending businesses almost as a rule, can only look to public markets for exits. here are no M&a acquirers of these lending companies.
Regulators will not let banks use equity to buy growth, says one investor familiar with the market. Also, the economics of lending make it a more profitable business then any of the other,
advisory services that could come to market. With loans there risk and a multiple that lenders make based on the risks they take,
whereas advisory services or transaction services are taking a percentage on the service they provide
or returns they generate for customers. So which businesses could be the next wave of financial technology companies to go public?
The financial advisory services companies like Wealthfront, which manages over $1 billion in assets, and Betterment,
which now has over 50,000 customers using its service and has a partnership with Fidelity,
are still too early. Bain Capital Harris has his money both literally and figuratively on business payments and transaction management companies. hese are companies that have very good enterprise facing products.
There again this wave of innovation in B2b payments and although there are a lot of M&a buyers,
there are a lot of CEOS in that category that are eager to go public. Bain Capital has backed Billtrust
but there are other companies like Payoneer, and Chrome River Technologies that are gaining traction. ee at the front lip of something big that happening,
says Harris. ublic markets are going to show us that financial services companies led by lending are going to be hugely valuable.*
*An earlier version of this post misrepresented the Equityzen infographic reporting returns for each round as returns from specific investors r
#Convoy! The Fueloyal Is A Smart Fuel Cap For Truckers Breaker breaker 10-4 good buddy.
We got Fueloyal on your tail coming up off the exit. This robotic fuel cap essentially keeps track of the fuel poured into your vehicle independently of the truck itself
and lets fleet owners ensure they no one is stealing the fuel poured into their 18-wheelers.
Called the icap 1000, the system fits into your Class-A truck gashole and tracks the gallons poured.
The system is tamper-proof and sends the data back to your home office via Wi-fi. It is powered self
and can be removed in minutes. Founded by Igor Hristov and Jurica Magoci the company is based in Chicago.
The team also found Roadmiral, a fleet management system. n challenging economic times like we are having in the last few years it is important to reduce cost of business
and to be more efficient. That is the reason we started this company. With load prices going down
and fuel prices going up it important to control costs, said Hristov. The product is being built now
and will be assembled in the EU. The team plans on shipping in four months. e have preorders worth $320k
and distributor agreement signed with one large US truck leasing company. Based on the increasing preorders and feedback we are estimating that in first year upon launching we will have signed contracts in total value of $3 million,
said Hristov. Fueloyal is unique in that you don have to modify the tank in order to gather the data.
Because it fits right into the gas inlet and measures the gas poured into the vehicle
and prevents siphoning. ompany owners can install it on the fuel tank in less than a minute.
It cannot be removed without the security key, and if unauthorized removal occurs the system will said lertheadquarters,
#Workflow Lets You Automate The Stuff You Do All the time On Your iphone Built for the tastes of power users with an interface that anyone can understand,
Workflow is a new app for ios that lets you create shortcuts for the things you do all the time on your phone or tablet.
You can create action extensions (a new feature in ios 8 that you can bring up by tapping the share button) that save the URL of the page youe on to Evernote
and also saves a PDF copy of the page to Dropbox in case youe worried it might go away.
You can access your shortcuts within Workflow or turn them into semi-apps in themselves via bookmarks on the home screen (with a customizable icon.
The app is able to throw first time users into the task because the shortcut-building tool is deceptively simple.
I sure that there are Apple power users who would pay as much as $10 for this
or down Workflow is cheap enough that anyone who bounces around between apps for complex tasks should consider investing in it s
#Kinsa Raises $9. 6m Series A For A Smart Thermometer That Tracks The Spread Of Illness Kinsa the company behind the world s first app-enabled FDA-approved smart thermometer
has announced today the close of a $9. 6 million Series A financing round with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Firstmark Capital and Andy Palmer among others.
which lets Kinsa track the spread of illness at schools and in other small communities.
Once you plug the thermometer into the headphone jack of the smartphone and open the app it ll show calming animations that are helpful with kids
#What s really special about Kinsa and the thermometer in general is that it is the first device the first piece of hardware that actually verifies that you re sick#said founder and CEO Inder Singh.#
#It s the most ubiquitous medical device in the world and we re simply piggybacking off of and improving regular behavior.#
Having a record of fever with a feature to take notes on prescriptions and symptoms that are dated automatically gives doctors valuable information
when diagnosing and treating issues. And when you add in social functionality parents can start to differentiate between a common cold (that may not require an immediate doctor visit) and strep throat.
Kinsa s Fluency program begins with a campaign that lets schools sign up to receive free Kinsa thermometer kits for each family.
The Kinsa costs $29. 99 and alongside hardware sales the company is considering how they can be a communications layer for other companies working on telemedicine prescription delivery and other startups in the health ecosystem.
Kinsa s new funding will go toward growth with plans to hire engineers and marketing employees to help build out the product and the brand.#
#The greatest challenge ahead is just hiring amazing talent so we can go as fast as we want#said Singh.#
#We need marketers engineers operations people who can handle the hardware and supply chain side of our business.
#If you want to check out Kinsa you can learn more on the website here
#Page365 Grabs $420k To Professionalize Social Commerce In Southeast asia Starting In Thailand Facebook and Twitter both have introduced uybuttons this summer,
but social commerce has been around far longer than that. Southeast asia is one hotspot, and it there that Softbaked, the company behind Thailand Page365, has raised a $420, 000 seed round.
The service started two years ago latching on to a trend that saw Facebook used to market
with buyers using bank transfers to overcome payments issues, the postal service/meeting in person tapped for delivery,
Page365 aims to make things more professional with its platform that plugs into Facebook and Line, the chat app with 20 million registered users in Thailand,
to provide a central point for managing communications, payment, stock, etc. There plenty of demand:
Page365 estimates that social media commerce niche is worth $510 million per year in Thailand alone. The round is provided by Inspire Ventures and existing investor Galaxy Ventures.
It will be used to expand the company sales and marketing teams, and continue product development such as finding a way to integrate Instagram,
Now its sole revenue source is a cut of paid-for value added services offered by partners, such as payments and logistics.
Cofounder Prathan opthananart explained that the company will take a revenue hit from its pricing change,
but it was deemed necessary to grow its market share in an increasingly competitive space. hailand social commerce scene was very quiet two years ago
although he did admit that expansion will require a further round of funding e
#Microsoft Begins Accepting Bitcoin For Windows Windows phone And Xbox Purchases If you want further proof that Microsoft is going through a transformative phase,
you may be interested to hear that the company has jumped on the bitcoin wagon. The Redmond-based tech giant is now accepting bitcoins for buying games
and other digital content on its Windows, Windows phone and Xbox platforms, as the folks at Coindesk noticed today.
Members of Reddit bitcoin subred noted that Microsoft appears to be working with payments firm Bitpay to make this happen.
Neither Microsoft nor Bitpay have announced formally the partnership or details but the former does have a series of instructions related to bitcoin payments within its illing helppages.
Wee contacted both companies for further information, but did not hear back at the time of writing.
Update: Microsoft has confirmed now that it is indeed working with Bitpay. It described its adoption of Bitcoin as being bout giving people options
and helping them do more on their devices and in the cloud. There are some caveats to note, however.
Customers can use bitcoin to load money into a Microsoft wallet or to create digital gift cards,
but direct payments with the cryptocurrency are supported not at this time. Finally, bitcoin payments appear to be limited to customers in the U s.,according to feedback from Reddit members d
#Sidecar Follows The Competition Starts Charging A $1##Ridesafe##Fee Last year, Uber introduced a afe Ridesfee that added a $1 charge to uberx fares.
This fee, they said, was meant to help them cover the cost of background checks, vehicle screenings,
and he development of safety features. When Lyft introduced a similar fee, they dubbed it he trust and safety fee.
And now Sidecar a perhaps lesser mentioned competitor in the taxis-that-aren-actuallyaxis arena that wee come to call idesharingfollows suit.
Starting tomorrow, Sidecar will charge $1 more per ride for what they call the idesafefee.
So what does that buck cover? According to the company: -A $1 million insurance policy on each ride (as personal auto insurance generally doesn cover commercial use)- Background checks-Regular vehicle records checks Sidecar is taking on Uber et al. with an interesting tactic:
Its prices will vary based on prices set by the driver, but the passenger gets to pick the driver based on the calculated trip price (or whatever other factor they care about,
like type of car or estimated time of arrival) before they get in the car. The new fee will automatically be tacked on to that trip price up front
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