#Here Are connected The First Home Devices For Apple Homekit Apple Homekit is finally starting to roll out to actual consumers,
via the first crop of Homekit-enabled accessories from third-party manufacturers. This means youl soon be able to get your hands on a range of products for the connected home that work with Siri on your ios device,
and that youl be able to do so as soon as today, since some of the new Homekit accessories start shipping now.
The accessories in question range from sensors, to lights, to thermostats, to smart outlets and come from a group of accessory-makers with a trusted reputation in the connected home industry.
Homekit may have taken a while to arrive, but it doing so in grand fashion, with a practical lineup to get your home connected to your ios ecosystem in an essential way.
The Elgato Eve is a set of connected wireless sensors that monitor key factors like indoor air quality, temperature, humidity as well as conditions outside, like temperature, humidity and air pressure.
Four sensors are included in the box, including Room for indoor monitoring, Weather for outdoor stats,
Door & Window for checking open/closed status of those entry points, and Energy for checking what drawing power and switching them on and off remotely.
Using Homekit, ios device users with 8. 1 or above can check on all the stats gathered by the Eve from their devices,
and even do so when theye away from home using Apple TV (generation 3 or later with OS version 7. 0 or later),
thanks to its ability to act as a Homekit remote hub. Pre-order for the Even sensors kicks off today, at Walmart. com and Amazon
and youl be able to pick them up from the Apple Store starting in July
when they hit shelves. Sensors are sold individually at $79. 99 for Eve Room, $49. 95 for Eve Weather, $49. 95 for Eve Energy and $39. 95 for Eve Door & Window,
and the app is free. Connected thermostat maker ecobee is adding Homekit to its ecobee3 hardware,
which is designed for houses that have multiple rooms in need of climate control. Remote sensors help it monitor temperature in multiple rooms at the same time,
letting you save energy and maximize comfort in every area. With Homekit ecobee3 owners can group actions together for control via Siri,
and control things remotely with the Apple TV component. It starts shipping later this month,
and will be in Apple Stores, Home depot, Best Buy and Amazon in July for $249, with additional remote sensors available as add-on purchases for $79 per pair.
The Caséta Smart Bridge is a wireless lighting hub that makes up a core part of the Caséta Wireless Lighting Starter Kit from the company.
This Homekit version lets users control lights in specific areas, as well as check with Siri to see
if lights are either on or off in specific areas of the house you might not be able to see at any given moment.
With Homekit you can control specific rooms or groups of lights separately, or turn everything off with voice commands.
You can also control things remotely provided you have that late-generation Apple TV. Lutron Homekit-enabled Caséta Smart Bridge is part of the Lighting Starter Kit that also includes two dimmers
(which work with your existing bulbs), two remotes and two pedestals to hold them. It available at Apple Stores starting today, with a retail price of $229. 95.
Additional dimmer/remote combos sell for $59. 95. The Insteon Hub with Homekit allows users to control the whole range of Insteon connected devices from the company
including LED bulbs, plug-in lamps, thermostats, wall outlets, cameras, door locks and more. And in addition to its full range of first-party products,
the company is also now offering up a brand new version of its Insteon+app for ios 8. 1 or later,
which will also work with Homekit-enabled devices from other manufacturers. Insteon is clearly looking to be a one-stop shop for users looking to create an Apple-friendly connected home,
letting you group a range of devices and functions together. The new Hub is available at Amazon com and Smarthome. com right now for $149. 99
and will make its way to physical retail stores starting in early July. Accessory maker ihome is getting in the smart home game with a new Homekit-enabled smart plug model, the isp5.
The smart plug allows you to turn anything that plugs into an outlet into an intelligent device,
and to use multiple isp5 plugs to create ceneswhich turn on or off multiple gadgets at once.
The Smartplug itself is designed to be low-profile, and to allow for two to work in a standard wall outlet at the same time,
or to keep one outlet free. The isp5 Smartplug will be on sale in retail beginning in late June or early July
but pre-orders kick off at ihome. com starting on June 15. The plug pricing is announced not yet.
In case youe hazy on the details of Homekit, here a quick primer: Devices that work with the protocol can be controlled via Siri
so long as you have installed their app on your device, and are running ios 8. 1 or later.
Set up and discovery is handled automatically just by tapping, and yo can use groups to control different collections of devices.
If you also have an Apple TV (generation 3 or later) you can also control Homekit-enabled devices remotely,
when youe outside of your home Wi-fi network. Apple had told us the first Homekit accessories were coming in June,
and this crop of initial partners delivers that. It interesting to see Apple announce this ahead of WWDC
#Hands-On With Thync Mood-Altering Headset Thync is launching its mood-altering headset today,
or boost your energy with controls on your smartphone. As we reported back in October, the Los Gatos-based startup has raised $13 million to change your mood using electrical stimulation.
Unfortunately, we weren able to try on the headset (or even see it) when the startup was ready to talk about its financing.
That no longer the case. During a recent visit to Thync beautiful offices (theye renovated an old opera hall),
I got to strap the startup mood-altering wave generator to the olnoggin. As it turns out
Thync gadget is more of a module than a headset. It small, plastic, and contains a Bluetooth radio for connecting to your phone.
You attach it to a disposable adhesive strip, which you apply to your temple and neck.
calm and energy. Once you begin, you can dial the intensity of the experience up
Instead, it uses tiny pulses of electricity to stimulate the skin at your temple, which then activates the instinctual fight-or-flight response in your brain to indirectly affect emotional response.
In use, you get a wavy, tingly feeling on your upper forehead and the front of your scalp.
I didn have time to try out the Energy mode, but if it works as effectively as the Calm mode, it should make users wired.
I could see myself using it to get that initial boost of energy needed to get to the office
and started on work that coffee gives today. At its $299 launch price those who buy Starbucks or the like every day might have found that use case making some monetary sense,
though the need for $20 replacement packs of the disposable adhesive strips after five to fifteen uses
and the Borg-like visage of having the module strapped to one forehead might turn potential users away for now s
A kidnapper grabs a person on the street and begins to drive away. A diner at a restaurant starts choking on their food and enters cardiac arrest.
plagued by an infrastructure that can handle cell phone location data and that can repeatedly drop emergency calls.
The system was developed by AT&T in the late 1960s to centralize access to public safety services such as fire, police,
Given AT&T monopoly then, it developed a system compatible with its network of landline phones.
Unfortunately, telecom technology has grown far more complex than when our 911 infrastructure was deployed first. The rise of mobile phones has posed a massive challenge to the 911 dispatch system,
since physical location can no longer be derived from the network topology of the landline PSTN network.
Since most 911 calls today are from mobile phones location data that could be crucial for saving a life
or finding a kidnap victim is often unavailable to the emergency operator. In one test in Texas, for example, two-thirds of calls lacked such data.
The problems don end there. Due to peculiarities with the 911 system calls may not even be routed to those who can most help.
In Oakland, 911 calls from a cell phone will end up in Vallejo, so the city recommends storing a special city emergency number.
Even worse, poor infrastructure may result in dropped calls or long waiting periods exactly what can happen when a caller needs help.
For consumers, the company has an app that allows users to immediately connect with emergency services no matter where they are through ne touch.
It even works internationally, where 11isn usually the number for emergency services. That one touch will immediately send location data to 911,
but also includes data on medical conditions that a user can pre-populate into the app.
Thus, if you have a medical emergency and press the button, it will automatically send potential allergies
and blood type info to first responders to help them properly handle your conditions. This data is compatible with all U s. dispatch centers
although international compatibility for data transfer is not yet fully ready. For institutions like universities and corporate campuses, Rapidsos offers a product it calls Geoalert that allows public safety officers to send out mass alerts to precisely the people they need to go to,
reducing confusion in an emergency. Today, such alerts are broadcasted often without regard to a user location,
which can greatly increase the risk of misunderstanding police instructions. Finally, the company also has a product for emergency call centers called Next Generation 911,
which allows operators not only to receive inbound calls, but to take advantage of the photo, video, and microphone capabilities of smartphones.
Compared to a simple voice call, that greater context can provide an operator with the information needed to properly direct first responders.
Obviously, these products work best in concert with each other, but they are designed so that each may exist independently of the others.
The startup has been careful to build a platform that is entirely compatible with the existing 911 infrastructure,
They have taken pay cuts to be part of a meaningful effort here, he said. The team is a prototypical mix of Harvard business students and MIT nuclear engineers,
currently numbering around 20. Since starting the company two years ago, Rapidsos is deployed now in 44 dispatch centers in North Central Texas as a case study of its 911 platform,
and its institutional product is currently being tested beta by 25 companies and universities. The consumer product is free for users,
but the startup charges institutions a fee for its Geoalert product. Longer term, Martin expects that the company data around emergencies will allow it to offer a predictive analytics platform that might be of interest to Wall street investment funds and insurance companies.
Interestingly the startup has raised not previously venture capital, but has subsisted instead on dollars won from startup competitions,
which currently amounts to around $500, 000. Last month, the team won $70, 000 from the President Challenge at Harvard ilab and $50, 000 from Harvard Business school New Venture Competition all in the span of 24 hours.
In addition, the company held a successful Kickstarter fundraise, where it raised $60, 123 for its one-touch emergency app.
It is currently raising a seed round Martin hopes will propel the startup fully public launch.
when every piece of technology really just has to work. Rapidsos hopes to increase the reliability of our 911 infrastructure,
And Card Chip Reader This Fall Apple today announced a new partnership for Apple Pay with Square,
which will release a new card reader designed to allow small businesses to take Apple Pay payments as well as credit card chip payments,
However, Square says it will ship its standard magnetic card stripe reader with the new NFC/EMV card chip reader
so merchants can accept all forms of payment. Merchants can now register to receive the new Square Reader,
It can either be plugged into the Square Stand USB hub, or merchants can charge the reader battery
and then connect wirelessly. Charge the battery and connect wirelessly, or plug it into the Square Stand USB hub.
The partnership announcement came during Apple WWDC conference keynote, which wee liveblogging here. Apple also announced new retail partners and an expansion to the UK for Apple Pay.
To pay, customers will either tap their phone to the new Square reader, dip the chip on their credit card,
or ask to swipe with the old dongle. e
#Rhombus Lets Businesses Accept Payments By Text Since millennials don use credit cards, cash, or even beads and shells, the only way to get them to pay for anything is through their smartphone.
Add in a text-to-pay service like Rhombus and youe got Williamsburg catnip. This new app allows people to pay you via a special contact number.
For example, a customer can text you an order ive large soy chai latte soylents with almond milkand you can request cash.
The system lets them confirm payment and it automatically debited from their account. Rhombus was created by Edwin Elodimuor and Taiwo Oyeniyi
two fintech gurus who worked at Navigant Consultin and Goldman sachs respectively. Oyeniyi has a Masters in Computer science and Elodimuor one in Economics.
The system is live and has seen about $400, 000 in transactions. Theye processed 3, 656 charges and there are over a hundred merchants on the platform.
Unlike Square and Venmo the system doesn require an app. Instead, users simply text a special business number and all of the transactions are performed between the customer
and the business. e started Rhombus to solve our own problems, said Oyeniyi. y cofounder
and I really wanted a simple way to send donations to our local church, which typically collected cash
or checks in paper envelopes every Sunday. We quickly saw interest from regular businesses that wanted a better way to accept payments.
Adding messaging felt like a natural extension of that simplicity we offered our merchants and customers. he system works with any phone and requires no hardware.
The system can also text you a list of Rhombus-enabled businesses. ustomers don have to signup to chat with businesses, it like texting anyone on your contact list.
primarily when picking up your protein cupcake, reducing the total payment friction sounds like a great thing c
#Nanometer-Sized Robots Can Now Take Colon Biopsies Researchers have invented a noninvasive way for thousands of nanometer sized robots to perform tissue biopsies.
Developed by Professor David Gracias at Johns hopkins university, these starfish shaped robots are able to enter the body, collect a minuscule tissue sample,
then be extracted by a doctor. These tiny devices are made of materials that react to things like temperature, ph level,
Eventually, the team will work on creating versions that can perform biopsies in the brain bloodstream, and even more locations throughout the body
#Google, Microsoft, Mozilla And Others Team up To Launch Webassembly, A New Binary Format For The Web Google, Microsoft,
Mozilla and the engineers on the Webkit project today announced that they have teamed up to launch Webassembly, a new binary format for compiling applications for the web.
The web thrives on standards and, for better or worse, Javascript is its programming language. Over the years,
however, wee seen more and more efforts that allow developers to work around some of the limitations of Javascript by building compilers that transpile code in other languages to Javascript.
Some of these projects focus on adding new features to the language (like Microsoft Typescript) or speeding up Javascript (like Mozilla asm. js project.
Now, many of these projects are starting to come together in the form of Webassmbly. The new format is meant to allow programmers to compile their code for the browser (currently the focus is on C/C++,
with other languages to follow), where it is executed then inside the Javascript engine. Instead of having to parse the full code,
though, which can often take quite a while (especially on mobile), Webassembly can be decoded significantly faster The idea is that Webassembly will provide developers with a single compilation target for the web that will,
eventually, become a web standard that implemented in all browsers. By default Javascript files are simple text files that are downloaded from the server
and then parsed and compiled by the Javascript engine in the browser. The Webassembly team decided to go with a binary format
because that code can be compressed even more than the standard Javascript text files and because it much faster for the engine to decode the binary format (up to 23x faster in the current prototype) than parsing asm. js code, for example.
Mozilla asm. js has aimed long to bring near-native speeds to the web. Google Native Client project for running native code in the browser had similar aims
but got relatively little traction. It looks like Webassemly may be able to bring the best of these projects to the browser now.
As a first step, the Webassembly team aims to offer about the same functionality as asm. js
(and developers will be able to use the same Emscripten tool for Webassembly as they use for compiling asm. js code today).
In this early stage, the team also plans to launch a so-called polyfill library that will translate Webassembly code into Javascript
Over time then, the teams will build more tools (compilers, debuggers, etc. and add support for more languages (Rust,
Go and C# ,for example). As Javascript inventor (and short-term Mozilla CEO) Brendan Eich points out today,
once the main browsers support the new format natively, Javascript and Webassembly will be able to diverge again.
The team notes that the idea here is not to replace Javascript, by the way, but to allow many more languages to be compiled for the Web.
Indeed, chances are that both Javascript and Webassembly will be used side-by-side and some parts of the application may use Webassembly modules (animation, visualization, compression, etc.),
while the user interface will still be written mostly in Javascript, for example. It not often that we see all the major browser vendors work together on a project like this,
so this is definitely something worth watching in the months and years ahead s
#Bringing Eye Exams To The Palm Of A Doctor Hand, Smart Vision Raises $6. 1 Million Commercializing a new tool to bring the basic eye exam into the palm of a doctor hand
could save the eyesight of nearly 1 billion people worldwide. That the goal that Zhou Yaopeng and Marc Albanese, two former photonics researchers who met at Boston University nearly a decade ago,
have set for themselves and for their two-year-old startup, Smart Vision Labs. The company has raised just $6. 1 million in its first major round of institutional funding from a group of investors led by Techstars Ventures.
Other investors in the round included Heritage Group Connectivity Capital, and Red sea Ventures. Smart Vision device, the SVONE, is based on initial research that Zhou
and Albanese conducted while at BU. It a piece of hardware that attaches to an iphone to provide mobile vision exams.
Traditional devices, which measure what called wavefront aberrometry, can cost anywhere from $20, 000 t00 $40, 000.
Smart Vision Labsco-founders say theye managed to drive the cost down to $3, 950.
the technology is impressive in that it opens up yet more avenues for mobile devices. Everyone talks about the phenomenal computing power available in mobile devices,
but Smart Vision tech is one of the few that harnesses mobile computing in a novel way that make the device a new technology platform for healthcare.
It been two years since Albanese and Zhou first concocted the idea that would become Smart Vision Labs. The two former colleagues reconnected at NYU where Zhou was studying business at Albanese alma mater.
from Verizon (the new owner of Aol, which is the parent company of Techcrunch. Hi bosses!.
National Vision Inc.,one of the largest eyecare chains in the country is seed a investor and a partner with the company,
and Smart Vision is already generating revenue selling its devices. he money is really going to be used to scale out our operating team
The potential size of the market was enough for Techstars to lead the investment round in Smart Vision a first for the firm latest $!
50 million early stage investment fund. his is the first one where we are the sole lead,
Ds doctors of optometry, and doctors get to put something in the palm of their hand that used to be a 40 pound machine,
says Newman. own the road, the number of applications for this technology is much bigger. r
#Google New Health Wearable Delivers Constant Patient Monitoring Often when we think of the wearable tech category,
Google has unveiled a new niche device that designed to do serious work in a specific setting,
however, with a health-focused wristband that provides constant patient information for participants in medical studies and clinical field trials.
is the product of Google X, the experimental group within the search giant that is responsible for some of its more noteworthy oon shotprojects,
The health wristband can monitor pulse, heart rhythm, skin temperature, light exposure and noise levels, providing valuable data not just about a patient,
the readings it takes are more scientifically rigorous than those achieved by the current crop of Android Wear-powered devices,
and the dedicated medical wearable unveiled today also monitors and reports information continuously, for better delivery of real-time actionable info to researchers and medical professionals.
Testing for the medical band begins this summer, according to Google, and it going to pursue regulatory approval for its use in medical contexts in partnership with academic institutions and drug companies, per Bloomberg.
This isn Google first move in building medical hardware; Google X is also creating contact lenses that can monitor blood glucose level to help in managing conditions like diabetes.
The competition is also eager to contribute to the medical research community pple has introduced Researchkit,
which allows studies to use iphones and ipads to gather participant data from a wider potential user pool, for instance o
#Lexus Teases A Real, Liquid nitrogen-Cooled Hoverboard Well everyone now racing to make a hoverboard
because we decided some time in the last couple of years that proving Back To The Future II prescient was the best way to highlight technological achievement.
Lexus is the latest to throw its hat into the ring, posting a teaser for its own hoverboard technology with at the promise of a long,
drawn-out staged reveal. To its credit, Lexus has the best-looking Hoverboard Ie seen, provided it does actually work, with nice bamboo surfaces and even a Lexus grille.
The car company is keeping things dreadfully close to the chest about what going on here, but says that it uses agnetic levitationand iquid nitrogen cooled superconductors
and permanent magnetsto achieve hover flight. The board is real enough to be undergoing testing with an actual skateboarder in Barcelona (with videos of actual use to follow)
and it the result of a research project spanning 18 months and engineering teams across two cites.
Remember there was a time machine in those movies, too, companies with money to burn; Il be impressed
when you make that y
#A Look at The Tech That Could Mean We Never Have To Charge Our Phones Again Technology that can wirelessly power our devices on the go could change our world.
Imagine never having to plug in your cell phone again, or technology that continuously keeps your electronic car battery running.
According to Energous Corporation, that day is just around the corner. Energousattup is a wireless charger for electronic devices.
It can charge your cell phone and other battery-enabled devices on the go using something that is already abundantly flowing all around us radio waves.
There are several companies approaching this same problem in different ways. Nikola Labs presented at Techcrunch Disrupt a couple years back with the same idea turning radio frequency signals into battery power.
Energous told us that their tech will be ready for the consumer market this next year.
We went to the company San jose headquarters to take a look at how it works h
#Name Your Price On Shopping App Compelation Browse products. Name your price. If the merchant accepts your bid,
you automatically buy it. This is how Compelation is flipping the concept of ecommerce and giving consumers the power.
Normally, a merchant sets a sale price, and a buyer simply accepts or rejects it.
That fast, but leads to tons of missed opportunities and a fundamental lack of transparency.
Compelation wants to make sure consumers don overpay, while scoring data on price sensitivity for businesses.
And with a preset demand curve, merchants can choose exactly how much revenue they want to earn
or products they want to sell if theye willing to drop the price low enough. Compelation ios app beta is normally invite-only,
but it opening signups for the next 24 hours to let Techcrunch readers give it a try. Here how it works.
You first tell Compelation a little about what you like to buy. I note that I into music and fashion related categories.
You then browse reams of products that each show their typical retail price. But that not what you pay.
Instead, you ake An Offerusing a slider to select how much you be willing to pay,
your credit card is charged and the item gets shipped to you. For example, you might find a $100 backpack on Compelation.
from people only willing to pay $25 to those willing to buy for just a few bucks cheaper than the retail price.
and ruthless economists out there, the real fun is in buying gift cards through Compelation.
Unlike a some random retailer, Uber credits are sure to be useful to me, so I happily bid $20 for a $25 gift card
This type of asynchronous, buyer-priced shopping couldn happen before the rise of ecommerce, but it holds a ton of advantages over traditional discounting.
%they may be throwing away money because some of those buyers would have purchased happily with just a 10%discount.
or incentivize users to wait rather than purchase. Worst of all, these public discounts decrease the perceived worth of the products.
was it ever worth the original price? That why merchants despise the typical discount platform that gives them exposure in return for price cuts.
But Compelation lets businesses see a demand curve of how many people will pay what price before they ever start selling,
If their warehouse is overflowing with product or they need to meet a sales count quota,
If they need to hit a revenue target, they can go down the curve and sell to each buyer at the maximum price theye willing to pay until they reach their goal.
Plus they can learn what the optimal price for selling elsewhere like on their site or in retail stores.
Other attempts at name-your-price ecommerce typically don aggregate demand, so merchants have to deal with offers one by one,
which doesn scale. Compelation offers merchants a dashboard where they can track demand and sell to everyone at a certain price point
or above in one fell swoop. realized group selling was completely brokencompelation cofounder Dave Gudai tells me. his one-sizes-fits-all discount wasn working.
He had this revelation four years ago while being the CMO of paper invitations site Storkie.
In 2014 after seeing no true evolution from in the janky Groupon model Gudai began to work full-time on bootstrapping Compelation,
and recruited dev shop Cybergroup Nicholas Babb as CTO. The two had worked together for six years already,
It will need smart ways to alert users when great items that match their taste are added.
Wouldn the store make more money that way even with a reduced margin? Compelation could let buyers
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