Jolla, a Finnish startup formed in response to Nokia’s decision to ditch MeeGo in favour of Windows Phone, has finally taken the wraps off the smartphone hardware that will be paired with its “unlike” Sailfish UI. Being a startup is challenging enough in any business sector but Jolla is seeking to compete in the fiercely competitive smartphone space, going up against giants Samsung and Apple who hold the majority of the market in a pincer grip. So it’s hard not to dismiss their efforts as too late. But it’s a lot harder to accuse them of doing too little.

Jolla’s strategy for fighting the mobile industry’s Goliaths is all about standing out by doing things different. Today’s hardware underlines how this startup is hoping to disrupt the concept of a single flagship device — such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 — that’s hankered after and owned by millions yet with only a little variation in case colourings to tell the difference between each one.

In seeking to break down software homogeneity with its Sailfish UI and a business model that encourages working with third parties to develop new types of smartphone experience that loop in others’ data, Jolla is also taking aim at hardware commoditisation via a cross-over feature in its debut device that it’s calling the Other Half. The Other Half refers to removable hardware shells that snap on to the back of the handset and can be changed and customised by the user. But the feature goes further than interchangeable shells — which is not at all new, dating back in spirit to early Nokia mobile phones of the 1990s with their removable facias, and more recently to a device like Nokia’s Lumia 820, which has a coloured and swappable backplate.

Jolla’s Other Half isn’t just decoration but links to the software on the handset — using an unconfirmed bridging technology that sounds to my ear like NFC — allowing content on the phone to be tied to the addition of a new shell, or even for new physical features to be incorporated and supported.

Jolla’s Marc Dillon, now head of software but until recently CEO, gave some examples of how the Other Half feature could be used — noting that this is about opening up the back of the device for others to come in and augment.

“You have the processor side of the device, the power side, the engine, and then the Other Half is about adding to that. This is a new kind of media where it could be anything from your favourite artist could release their latest album on the other half of the Jolla device, and then when the user buys this they have a physical thing from their favourite artist then when they snap it on to the other half of their Jolla device, then everyone can see it, that they support and love their artist and then on the inside they could get the content. They could get maybe special content, that could only be released in this format like videos or links to websites or tickets or special offers, things like that but because of this interface between the two halves,” he told TechCrunch.

“It can not only be media, it can be very simple things — so maybe you have a colour palette, so when you go out of an evening you might have a different colour depending on your outfit and that colour then carries through to the software updating the Ambience of the device. So you might have — if you have a green dress, you might have a green device and then you have green icons and green Ambience [Sailfish UI theme] on your phone. But it can also be more interesting — you can add features. Like the camera is a good example, the native camera of course has a flash but maybe you’re going to a party and you want to have a big flash so you can take pictures in the dark at a nightclub. So really the imagination is the only limit here.”

“Instead of having a device with some bulky things attached to it or some things sticking out the side of it to extend the capabilities of the device, or to add content, we’re giving a new way for users to actually design and co-create with us new ways of using the device,” Dillon added.

“Of course we will be offering a choice of Other Halves for the user to buy but this is a place where we want to see others get involved. Designers can design Other Halves for the device, engineers or hackers or techies can design new interfaces and maybe add physical hardware features that they wish they had on their device but might have a smaller market than to deserve having a whole entire device,” he said. “We talked about 3D printing them today. So it could be those kinds of things, but really we’re offering a new kind of interface for a device so that people can really take their imagination, and I believe there will be a lot of third parties and a lot of people who have a lot of great ideas in order to help you use the Other Half of the Jolla device.”

The Other Half may be a bit of a clumsy name but it’s a savvy move that taps into the custom hardware trend that’s growing off the back of the rising profile of 3D printing. That said, it does of course remain to be seen how much interest Jolla can spark for others to get involved in co-creation with only one device to its name and that device not launching for another six months. It will need enough traction to get the co-creation party started.

The idea to link the hardware and software has been part of Jolla company discussions and plans since the beginning, according to Dillon. “It’s been something that we’ve been planning and working towards the whole time. The Ambience was a hint of how this can come together,” he noted, adding: ”Hardware like many things, it’s become a commodity, so the problem with commodities is it generally forces things down — things become kind of lowest common denominator… We set out to make the greatest device that we could, and we understood that the software and the user experience is key because that’s where the value comes from in the device and the hardware is the realisation of that, it’s a productisation of the software.

“So we kind of took this tack, then of course the hardware has to be fantastic it has to support the software and support the user and be something the user can be proud of and my belief is that when people see the Jolla device they want to see what’s inside.”

“This iteration, the direct stuff here, has been about a year in development. It started getting really good for me about six months ago and I’ve been using the device for a while now, and it’s really started to feel fantastic, when the hardware and the software have come together. They were done by the same designers and the same people so it has been kept in mind that the two go together, that the two have a synergy the entire time. We’ve had a roadmap the entire time as well so we’ve had a set of hardware specifications to work with,” he added.

It’s worth flagging that Jolla is not the only mobile maker to take an interest in 3D printing and custom hardware, even if it’s taken that further by creating a link between custom hardware and phone content. 3D printing is something Nokia has done with the Lumia 820 shell, for instance. Dillon said Jolla may also look to open source the 3D design of the Other Half, telling TechCrunch “I could see that happening”.

Asked specifically about the bridging technology between the hardware shell and the software, Dillon declined to give specific details, saying: “There’s a number of options here but there is a connection between the Other Half and the software. And of course all of that needs to be open as well.”

Asked whether the device will launch in the U.S. he said Jolla is looking at other markets but opting for Europe and China first. ”We’re starting with Europe and China and we will be extending to other markets as we go. We’re in the delivery phase at the moment so we’re building the infrastructure, and the logistics in order to be able to deliver and care for the users of the device, and we’re of course going to look at other markets as we go.”

“It’s the target to get the Christmas market in Europe, Chinese New Year. That’s the big milestones,” he added. “The most important thing is we come out with a fantastic product… When we’re shipping at the end of the year if it’s a fantastic product then it’s really going to resonate and I think we’re really going to have a lot of demand.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I remember waking up 6am, going downstairs, and firing up my Atari 800XL. The disk labeled Karateka inserted, the drive would grunt a few dozen times and the screen would flash. Suddenly, with barely any warning, the opening titles would appear and then the music would start – six notes to signal a game that was menacing in its simplicity. The story was simply told. Characters stood in darkened rooms. The Shogun aimed a finger at a door and the princess was forced into bondage. You were the Karateka, the hero, your pixelated motion was as fluid as any humans. I marveled at the realism. The whiffed punches sounded like a fist smacking a ham hock. The fight music, the little fanfare of victory, was all I needed for those few hours before school. Karateka was a marvel in an era of cheap gaming. In a world populated by Pac Men, Karateka foretold the future.

Karateka begat Prince of Persia and the creator of both, Jordan Mechner, went on to become one of the greats in the gaming industry. Luckily, he and his clan of programmers haven’t been resting on their laurels. They have just re-released Karateka in its original glory on iOS or Android, allowing us oldsters a brief moment of nostalgia and ensuring the younger generation understands the magic of a game that sparks the imagination.

They’ve also created an updated version of the game but I suspect most of us will want to experience the pixelated splendor of Mechner’s virtual world instead of the modern, cartoony style so popular with mobile gaming recently. Pro tip: watch out for the freaking eagle.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A little disconnection goes a long way.

In the tangled web of digital social networks that we weave one thing is increasingly absent: a sense of mystery.

We are so wrapped up in our digital social graphs there’s rarely room for gaps. Our networks offer the promise of being entangled with ever more connections — reaching out to grasp the hands of friends’ friends (and so on to the edge of the digital universe) – reminding us how few degrees of separation there are between citizens of the wired world.

Networks turn strangers into quasi-acquaintances before we’ve ever met them IRL. Based on the digital recreations our networks generate, we may decide we never need to meet such and such a person. A social snub online doesn’t have to involve any socialising at all.

Add in the various knowledge graphs we constantly tap into — Internet search skewed to be social, networked mobile apps & services, the low and high level chatter of our connections as we track and trace their activity online – from what they watch and listen to, to who they talk to, where they go, what they see — and the sum of our networked knowledge starts to feel all seeing, all knowing.

Context is being pushed at us faster than we can escape it. Ignoring the minority of intentionally gated personal data, our digital networks are ripping off the masks of the many, leaving only the Anonymous few fighting for the right to remain unknown. We triage email, triangulate individuals.

Sidestepping the issue of privacy – which is a whole other (highly polarised) debate — where’s the fun in knowing everything before truly knowing anything? More importantly, what happens when we’re not engaging our creative faculties half so much because the mind isn’t being asked to fill in all those blanks? The ellipses are being overwritten.

It’s no longer about making mental leaps to join dots. The challenge now is about piecing together the endless jumble of data that’s being pushed at us. Instead of dreamers, we’re policemen sifting through a bottomless box of evidence.

Of course it’s churlish to complain about the interconnectedness afforded by networks and digital devices. Go back a handful of generations and the entire plot of a novel could hinge on whether someone received a paper letter slipped under a door at the right moment in time. That plot is no longer possible for those of us who have chosen to be wired in.

We don’t have to wait to get news. We’re unlikely to miss a message once it’s fired at us from the myriad channels now open for communication unless we’re deliberately trying to. Our problem is filtering the signals we’re receiving. Tuning out the noise so we can hear the stuff that’s relevant, important, valuable.

That’s the quotidian challenge. The philosophical and emotional challenge is that we’ve replaced life’s little mysteries with a barrage of sound and fury. That may not sound very important – and perhaps it’s not. But in my view it does leave a gap that developers could think about tapping into.

What’s mystery for? It fires the imagination, as well as working our logical, critical, analytical faculties (which are still getting a good workout online). If boredom is good for creativity – and there’s been lots written on the need to give the mind downtime to come up with great ideas — it follows that mystery oils the wheels of imagination.

An app I wrote about in March does just this: Rando is an anti-social photo sharing app. You take a photo and share it to a random stranger. It doesn’t tell you who gets it. In return you get a photo back – shared by another random stranger, with nothing to tell you who sent it beyond a general location which is revealed when you tap on the photo to turn it over.  There are no social networking tie-ins. You can’t post the photo straight to Facebook or Twitter. It’s deliberately disconnected.

Rando offers little glimpses into other worlds. Stripped of almost all their context, they are fascinatingly rich, replete with mystery – in a way that the photos your friends post to Facebook can never be. That’s not to say those photos don’t have any value or aren’t important — they do, and they are. But they just engage a different part of our minds.

In the same way that falling without distraction into a good book entices the mind’s creative faculties – really invites us to fall down our own mental rabbit hole like Alice tumbling into Wonderland — Rando’s randomness is a pocket-lighter for the imagination.

I find myself continually firing it up, just to see what it sparks.  And looking back through the photos I’ve received, trying to imagine a context for them, trying to figure out who sent that image, and why, and what they were trying to say.

The creativity flows both ways too. Creating a photo to send in this app means gifting a small piece of your world to a stranger. And when you start to see your world through the eyes of an unknown person, you see details afresh. Find mystery in dusty, overlooked corners. Kindle things and thoughts laid dormant.

A little disconnection goes a long way. Think on it.

[Original Alice in Wonderland illustration by John Tenniel, now in the public domain]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Zynga’s revenues for the first quarter of 2013 declined 18% year-over-year to $264 million as the company is in the midst of doing a big pivot onto mobile platforms. Last year, during the same quarter, Zynga earned $321 million in revenue.

Analysts had estimated on average that the company would pull in $209.8 million in revenue and lose 4 cents a share. The quarter had net income of $4 million million and shares are down 13 percent in after-hours trading.

In the earnings release, CEO Mark Pincus said:

We are encouraged by the strong execution from our teams and the breakout hit performance of FarmVille 2, which captures the imagination of nearly 40 million players every month. 2013 will continue to be a transition year as we face the challenging environment on the web and invest in developing the leading franchises and network across web and mobile platforms and offer our 253 million monthly players a connected experience that can follow them from work to school to home and anywhere in between.

The tough cuts and studio closures of last year are largely over, and Zynga’s shares have climbed 35 percent since the beginning of the year.

Now the company is looking ahead to a couple potential growth areas: 1) mobile games 2) midcore games 3) third-party publishing and 4) real-money gaming.

On mobile platforms, which is the huge growth area for the industry, Zynga has a couple of reliable franchises like Poker, which is currently ranked #15 on the top-grossing charts in the U.S. It also has the “With Friends” line-up which has top-grosser Scramble With Friends and the newly-launched Running With Friends, which could be compared to Imangi’s Temple Run or Kiloo’s Subway Surfers. They’ve also pumped up the release of the Draw Something sequel too.

But Zynga’s performance has paled in comparison to old rivals like the U.K.’s King or Finland’s Supercell, which is the industry’s darling of the moment. With just 100 employees, that Helsinki-based company made nearly as much as Zynga did in the same quarter with $179 million in revenue.

On the real-money gaming side, Zynga only recently made its debut after the quarter ended with the launch of two titles in the U.K. market. So we won’t see the performance of any of those titles until the next earnings announcement.

In terms of user growth, Zynga saw 52 million daily active users last quarter, a slight decrease from 65 million during the same period last year. It also saw 253 million monthly active users, down 13 percent year-over-year from 292 million users.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google Glass is getting closer and closer to becoming a shipping product. It’s already making its way out to early “Explorer” program pre-launch testers, and we’ll almost definitely see a lot more from Glass at Google I/O in mid-May. Drew already got his lucky mitts on an Explorer set, and provided some useful insight about how it operates, and how it might be useful as someone goes about their average day, but Glass, and how we think about its level of success or failure as a consumer product, are still big question marks.

It’s too early to do a review of what Google has already made available, and that’s fine; this isn’t for sale yet, so no one out there is mulling the value of dropping something like $1000 on a pair as of yet. But when it does come time to evaluate Glass, there’s going to be very little to compare it to, and plenty of challenges in terms of making a judgement call about how useful it is or isn’t to the average potential buyer.

An analogous experience might be the iPad, and its first round of reviews and impressions. People had created tablets before, including some aimed at the general consumer, but for the most part there was a lot of confusion about what to make of the product. TUAW recently put together a good collection of reactions to the original iPad that show most people were left scratching their heads. And Glass is a step beyond even what we saw with the iPad, and likely to generate even more skepticism and uncertainty.

Apps and what third-party developers do with Google Glass will be a big part of how it’s received, because even based on recent statements made by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt at the AllThingsD Dive Into Mobile conference this past week. Schmidt’s own comments about how he uses Google Glass didn’t exactly set the imagination alight, and mostly centered around basic functionality we’ve already seen. Being able to snap photos and check things like incoming messages definitely seems interesting, but it also doesn’t seem particularly revolutionary. That’s where a variety of third-party experiences will really help out.

The problem with trying to provide an evaluation of Google Glass will be the same one with trying to provide a first impression or early review of the iPad: it involves a certain amount of trying to predict the future. With the iPad, at least we had the iPhone as a loose guide about where things might be headed in terms of third-party software experiences. With Glass, we’ll be charting almost entirely new waters with even less to navigate by. Not to say we shouldn’t try, just that five years down the road, the comparison of where Glass ends up compared to how we perceived it initially will probably be equally as amusing as the retrospective look at the iPad’s launch linked to above.

Will Glass be judged as good based on its ability to entertain? Its power to keep our smartphones in our pockets? Its ability to deliver real-time information when we need it most? It could easily be all of the above. One thing’s for sure: trying to evaluate what is and isn’t a “good” Glass experience will be one of the more exciting undertakings the tech world has seen in a long while.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hidden amidst the winding pathways of Llewelyn Park, New Jersey, America’s oldest gated community, steampunk designer Will Rockwell is building a future that never was. He began his career as a TV producer but he always loved to tinker with metals, leather, and wood – the three components of good steampunk. After building a set of Rocketeer-style USB keys, friends turned him on to Etsy. He opened a shop and almost immediately was flooded with orders.

These designs are a labor of love for Rockwell who scours the junkyards of New Jersey for cool odds and ends. He has two workshops, one in Pennsylvania and one in the basement of his 1912 home.

Rockwell doen’t expect to get rich with his hobby but he’s doing well, nonetheless. His unique style, nautical-themed designs, and electronic additions to his devices meld the modern and the mysterious in a quirky way. My favorite project? His electric guitar outfitted with wild effects and knife switches, although his handmade USB keys are still amazing.

Will is definitely following the maker spirit and is even making a little money. His world is one of the imagination, full of undersea starships and steaming hard drives run by pistons. It’s enough to make you think you’ve stumbled upon the world of Captain Nemo via the Jersey Turnpike.

TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Jeremy Liew is a managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Follow him on Twitter @jeremysliew.

As a VC, my interest in the Bitcoin ecosystem is not ideological but mercenary. I see the opportunity for Bitcoin to disrupt multi-billion-dollar markets, but in doing so also create new big markets. There are three key markets in Bitcoin:

Wallet. Holding your Bitcoins for you, serving some of the checking account functions of a bank.

Exchange. Converting from USD to Bitcoins and back.

Payments. Helping merchants accept Bitcoins for their transactions.

As a rule of thumb, VCs like to see billion-dollar markets to get excited. How can each of these markets get to be a billion dollars in size?

Wallet

It is free to get your own Bitcoin wallet, a piece of software on your computer that you can use to send or receive Bitcoins. However, this entails storing your Bitcoin private key on your computer, which risks loss or theft. Increasingly many Bitcoin users are turning to hosted wallets, which hold the money for you, and are accessed over the web. But you have to trust that your hosted wallet will not run off with your money (which has happened before). Because client wallets are free, hosted wallets have typically been free, as well.

Let’s assume that one day in the future, hosted wallets will be able to charge 0.5 percent of funds in the account as an annual fee. This is likely a high estimate, but not impossible if the wallet offers enhanced security, insurance against loss, and perhaps some kind of escrow or other fraud purchase protection. For the wallet market to be worth $1 billion, this would imply that $1 billion/0.5% = $200 billion in Bitcoins would need to be held in hosted wallets. This means that the market cap of Bitcoin would need to be at least $200 billion, relative to $1.5 billion today. Bitcoin would need to appreciate by almost 150x to reach this level. Bitcoin has gone up by 30x in the last year, so that isn’t impossible to believe. Two more years like that would get you there.

Exchange

It will be a long time, and probably never, that Bitcoin becomes the default world currency. As a result, there will be demand for exchanging between Bitcoin and fiat currency for a very long time.

Consumer level exchanges charge between 50 to 100 basis points on each trade. Bigger trades currently pay closer to 10 basis points. Let’s assume that in the future trading commissions run around 25 basis points. To get to $1 billion in market size we would need to see $1 billion/0.25% = $400 billion in annual trading volume. Last month, exchange volume was around $60 million, this month it looks like it may get to $200 million. Annualizing this gets you to between $720 million – $2.4 billion in annual trading volume. Assuming the top end of the estimates, trading volume would need to go up by 200x current levels to hit this market size.

Transaction volume, i.e. transfers of Bitcoin within the real economy, has historically floated within a constant multiple of trading volume of between 2 and 20. If the relationship between transaction volume and trading volume remains roughly linear, transaction volume would need to rise by 200x current levels to hit our target $1 billion market size. This is believable given that transaction volume has gone up 30x in the last year.

Payments

Ultimately, the key driver of both Bitcoin price appreciation and exchange volume has to be payments volume. If people aren’t using Bitcoin to pay merchants for transactions, then there is no real economic driver for either price or exchange volume to rise. It would be driven purely by speculation.

One of the key advantages of Bitcoin is that it nominally has zero transaction costs. That being said, there are a number of additional merchant services that could be added on top of transaction processing that could justify 25 basis points or more in merchant fees. Bitpay today charges 1% or more. To get to $1 billion in market size, we would need to see $1 billion/0.25% = $400 billion in annual transaction volume.

Last month, transaction volume was around $250 million, and this month it looks like it is on track for $750 million. Annualizing this gets you to between $3 billion and $9 billion in annual transaction volume. Again, taking the top end of estimates, this would require an increase in transaction volume of around 50x current levels. In the last year, transaction volumes have gone up by 30x. As a comparison point, world GDP is around $82 trillion, so this would represent about 0.5 percent of all world transactions using Bitcoin. As a comparison point, $2.5 trillion is spent on credit cards per year in the U.S. alone out of $15 trillion in GDP, so about 16 percent.

How Do We Get There?

All of these market-sizing analyses require a 2 to 2.5 order of magnitude increase over current levels. Those same metrics have shown a 1 to 1.5x order of magnitude increase in the last year, so it doesn’t stretch the imagination to think that it might be possible. But the question is how? It would be impossible to get to those sizes on illicit usage only and you can’t get there just on speculation. Bitcoin usage would have to become mainstream. The only way to get there is through merchant preference because of the lower transaction costs. This could be appealing to industries with low net margins (e.g. grocery, Amazon.com), or with high transaction costs (e.g. cross border trade, micro transactions), and these may be the industries that pioneer Bitcoin acceptance.

But merchants won’t switch to Bitcoin for lower transaction costs if the tradeoff is volatility of exchange rates. As long as their costs are in fiat currency, they will want to switch out of Bitcoin and into fiat immediately when they take payment since they won’t want to bear currency risk. That requires deep liquidity in the exchanges, and this is where the professional traders come in. They have already started to enter the market.

If the current volatility in the Bitcoin exchange rate is reduced in the future, merchants may be willing to hold Bitcoins for longer periods of time, and even make payments in Bitcoins.

The other way that Bitcoin may become mainstream is in countries where the currency or financial system is already more volatile than Bitcoin.

Mainstream adoption will require bright line regulatory compliance by all elements of the Bitcoin ecosystem. That is why last month’s guidance on virtual currencies from FinCEN (part of the U.S. Treasury) caused Bitcoin prices to go up. As Bitcoin gets closer to the U.S. regulatory umbrella, it moves closer to legitimacy. These rules and the ones that will follow will increase the overhead costs of all players in the space, but that is a small price to pay for legitimacy.

What Does It Mean For Startups?

Not all big markets are opportunities for startups. Bitcoin has some attractive characteristics because it is so disruptive to the current system. The innovator’s dilemma may keep the big players in payments out of the market for a long time, as they may fear cannibalizing their current very attractive margins. But one day that competition will come.

The key questions for any startup are: What is your competitive advantage and how do you defend against a large late entrant? For exchanges, liquidity is the barrier to entry. Although there have been examples where new entrants have cracked open marketplace businesses, it is hard. For wallet and merchant services, it is less clear what the barriers to entry will be.

The risks associated with Bitcoin are worth mentioning as well. The six biggest hacking, theft and fraud incidents involving Bitcoin exchanges, wallets, or investment vehicles have resulted in a total 1.2 million Bitcoins being stolen, out of a total of 11 million Bitcoins in existence. This means that more than 10 percent of all Bitcoin has been stolen, and this does not include many smaller thefts and losses from individual wallets. Just this week, another wallet service was shut down after suffering an attack. Given this environment, Bitcoin startups cannot remain bootstrapped for long and will need to raise more substantial capital from VCs to mitigate these risks with better security and proactive regulatory functions.

In all the scenarios that I’ve painted above, Bitcoin prices need to go up by 100x or more. If that were the case, then maybe just buying Bitcoin is a better investment than putting money into a Bitcoin startup. You get plenty of upside and no execution risk, but it won’t be anywhere near as much fun.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A group of MIT students created an app at a PennApps Hackathon that can do amazing things, connecting multiple iOS devices into a single, interactive screen. The app itself, which doesn’t require any kind of jailbreaking or special access and is currently available in the App Store for free, is impressive enough, but Mosaic has much bigger plans: They’ve also created an SDK to let other developers incorporate similar functionality into their own apps.

The possibilities are immediately attractive. Imagine a board game that spans four iPad minis, one for each player. Or a dungeon-crawling RPG where you build the map by laying iPhones end to end. There are obvious uses too in display advertising and customer-facing terminals and POS applications, but the prospect of interactive apps that can use the multiple iOS devices already residing in many households to add up to something more than just the sum of its parts is what really excites the imagination.

“We’ve talked to a lot of casual developers and there’s a significant amount of interest for things like board games, that’s like the easiest one for everyone to do,” Mosaic co-founder Ishaan Gulrajani explained by way of examples. “Everyone has an iPad, you put them together, and then you have a surface that’s huge enough that you can play board games, or you have something like Angry Birds, where you have the birds on one phone, and then on another the second player can build a structure that the first tries to knock down.”

For tabletop gamers eager for a digital version of Settlers of Catan or Warhammer that accurately recreates the experience of the physical board game, but with the flexibility and added extensibility of digital, the appeal is clear. Mosaic has also been talking to creative agencies, and they’ve observed that people will actually open the app just for the novelty of this new way of interacting with the device. For brands and advertisers, that’s a huge selling point, since it’s a draw for an audience that might otherwise pass something by entirely. For increasing engagement on in-store display advertising, or on branded content, that’s a big plus.

“Brands can do things like ‘Swipe this Starbucks coupon from one phone to another, and you both get a dollar over your next Starbucks purchase,’ for instance,” Gulrajani said. “We have something that’s inherently viral, and we want to be able to leverage that in every way that we can.”

The Mosaic.io app itself, which is designed mainly as a proof-of-concept and sales demonstration tool for the tech behind it, nonetheless offers some useful features for end-users, too. You can instantly get set up sharing photos stored either locally or on Dropbox, and as you can see from my demo photos, the display will update to reflect different orientations when you swipe across screens. You can tell it’s just meant for demo purposes when you use the app, but even the limited functionality is enough to wow anyone watching.

So far, the Mosaic team has tested up to 10 iPhones, and has found that even with that many devices, video latency isn’t a huge issue. The way they achieve that is by using a single synchronized clock across the various devices using clock synchronization algorithms, and while quality will vary depending on the strength of a user’s Internet connection, Gulrajani says it’s “definitely” acceptable for playing back video.

Mosaic is looking to launch initially by connecting with developers eager to use it. They aren’t implementing any kind of queuing system, and are treating requests on a first-come, first-served basis. The startup is bootstrapped, and hopes to remain that way for the foreseeable future, with plans to later charge for API use based on the volume of calls required by developers.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I keep seeing this topic push up about how data is affecting creativity. Some say we are losing our sense of narration and storytelling. It’s not this at all. We are just experiencing a shift that other civilizations have faced when the traditional means for storytelling transform to give a sense of the changing times facing society.

That does not mean a rejection of the narrative form. The ancient Greeks developed a rich oral tradition for telling stories. Out of that they created a common language, which formed the foundation for fables, legends and myths.

Now we see that data, shaped by software, creates a space to tell stories in new ways. Narrative methods to express our imagination will change as techniques emerge that allow us to use programming languages to carry on what we know for the next generations.

Om Malik says it’s this sense of data storytelling that will become so important. Today, he explains, data is used as a blunt instrument. The ones that use data more effectively well remind of us how we relate to each other.

Cloudera Co-Founder and Data Scientist Jeff Hammerbacher said on the Charlie Rose show earlier this month that it’s not that “numerical” imagination” is better than using “narrative” imagination. It’s just that now, for the first time in thousands of years, we need to think more about using data analytic methods for developing stories.

For example, Hammerbacher is working as an assistant professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, developing a storage and data analysis infrastructure. Like Malik, Hammberbacher said it’s how we find ways to pair data that will give us insights. For instance, finding ways to integrate genetic databases and electronic health records that tell a story that both physicians and patients understand.

Hammerbacher recounted a story to Rose about a lump that appeared on his chest. The doctor examined it and sent him to another doctor. Hammebacher asked the question: “Don’t you want to quantify what is in my body?” He followed by saying the amount of insight we get into a server at Facebook is greater than we have about our own bodies. The ones who can quantify our own human data and network it will give society new ways to explain who we are through dimensions we never imagined.

Hammerbacher and Malik have views from different spaces across the information spectrum. But they both point to a new reality that will require us to think much differently about how we imagine our world and the data that is now far visible than ever before.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

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If you’re looking for a great story to end your week, here’s one. Below is a mission statement that’s brief, to the point and something that is easy to get behind:

StudentRND inspires students to work on tech projects in their spare time.

For younger folks who really love technology and the idea of hacking things with others, there is a place for them. Just a few years ago, you probably wouldn’t be able to say that. These days, a Seattle-based company called StudentRND has a program that gives high school kids a place to be as creative as they want to be, with others that want the same thing. It’s like space camp, but it’s not a one-time thing by any stretch of the imagination.

When you foster an environment of innovation for younger minds, you’re setting up everyone’s future for really amazing things. While we’re stuck in the world of social networking via Twitter and Facebook, the developers that will end up making their mark on the world over the next ten years are thinking way bigger, and deeper, about the problems that affect all of us.

Someone who is fifteen years old right now could end up building the next huge evolution in transportation, cure a serious illness or just bring a smile to people’s faces in a new way. This is a great thing, and StudentRND is helping it happen.

I spoke with its CEO and Founder, Edward Jiang, about StudentRND’s mission and what’s next for them.

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TechCrunch: Why did you start StudentRND?

Jiang: I believe that students have incredible amounts of potential. However, not many realize that they can do amazing things.

Some high school students start to tinker around with technology in their spare time — learn how to code, mess around with electronics, but never do anything substantial because they never really get around to it. There’s always a homework assignment due tomorrow, and a test next week to distract them from doing something they want to do.

Others want to learn how to do things with technology, but don’t even know where to start. None of their friends, teachers, or parents are involved with technology, so they assume that it’s some sort of rocket science that isn’t easily accessible.

I believe that the best way to learn about technology is to do things with technology. When I was in high school, I learned a lot about technology because I started building a flash games website so that my friends & I could play games in the computer lab. Friends requested more and more features in the site, and I went out to learn how to do it. As time went on, I got pretty adept at solving problems with technology!

Later on in my high school career, I stopped working on websites, and started competing in tech competitions. I loved the communities surround the competitions, but didn’t like how most competitions encouraged students to win awards for their resume, instead of doing something meaningful. So — right as I was about to graduate, I recruited several of my friends, and asked them to hang out at my house and focus on building cool tech projects over the summer, instead of getting a job! And that was the start of StudentRND.

Right now, StudentRND has a really cool ecosystem in Seattle consisting of StudentRND Labs (formerly known as the StudentRND Incubator), and CodeDay.

TC: What are some of your favorite moments since starting the group?

Jiang: We have too many interesting stories to tell! However, here are a few:

Most Exciting: We actually raised our initial $25,000 seed funding from Chase Community Giving, in a Facebook competition. Right after we got our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in 2009, Chase had a competition on Facebook, asking people to vote for their favorite small, local (under $1M in annual revenues) nonprofit organization (the top 200 would get $25k each)! Many of the smaller nonprofits in 2009 were either not very adept at social media, didn’t know about, or chose not to participate in the competition. We ended up with ~3,000 votes from our friends, and won Chase’s grant!

Proudest: Tapin.tv (Tyler’s company) actually first met at StudentRND. More info here:

Coolest: Issaquah High School student Marshall Meng builds a Plasma Speaker, a taser-like device that uses the electricity to actually play music. They put it on Kickstarter and raised $18,500 — over 9x their original goal!

Most Caffeinated: For several CodeDays, this one group of students would come to the event and have a soda drinking competition. Each one of them would drink 20+ sodas within the course of 24 hours! At one event, I was making cup noodles to serve as a midnight snack, and realized that a carton of cup noodles had less carbohydrates than a can of soda! I told the group, and they immediately stopped drinking quite so much soda =D

Most Caffeinated 2: Clearing out an entire Safeway’s worth of Safeway soda:

Silliest: There’s a bunch of high school students involved in StudentRND — we goof around a lot! After this one event, we ended up with some extra styrafoam, so Vu made the most rediculous paper airplane:

TC: What can be done in schools to further technological innovation, specifically in high school?

Jiang: Via curriculum? There are already science/tech magnets schools out there for students interested in technology. They’re just not focused on the Silicon Valley ideal of developer/entrepreneurs. That’s fine, because education doesn’t have to be about the flavor of the week. There are many constraints around national standardized tests, college application processes and requirements, etc, that make it almost impossible for you to have a substantially different curriculum.

Via culture? This might be a bit harder. Attendance at magnet schools seems to be determined by parents lately (especially the competitive ones that want their kids to get into a good public school). You can have subcultures focused on technology/entrepreneurship in schools though. I think that having a balanced culture and meeting more than a specific group of people is a good thing though. There’s a lot of hubris in the tech entrepreneurship world. (Software is eating the world, etc. Yes, software is eating the world, but not everything just yet!)

These things I’d like to change about HS though –

* Treat students with respect, like adults.
* Computer Science courses in every school.
* Fewer classes per quarter, but more in-depth (we had 7 classes per day at my high school)!
* Let the higher performing students do more, instead of slowing them down via busy work! (Related: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/09/24/the-scary-smart-have-become-the-scary-rich-examining-techs-richest-on-the-forbes-400/)

For the most part, it’s very difficult to be running a high school. I don’t envy the administrators. StudentRND’s strategy is to get a group of passionate, motivated students, and spread the community from there — inspiring and energizing more and more students. Schools have to deal with every single student, no matter how slow / fast they are.

TC: Tell us about the organizers and sponsors, what do they get excited about the most?

Jiang: Many organizers and sponsors tell me that StudentRND is something they wish they had when they were younger — relating directly to some of the problems I outlined above — and they’re involved because they want to provide this opportunity to others.

TC: What do the kids who are in the program tell you that they get out of it?

Jiang: Several things:

* They get to do things that they wouldn’t have in a regular summer internship, or in their own house.
* They have lots of fun! Truly.
* They’re doing something they find meaningful
* They make lots of new friends and love the passionate community!
* They learn

TC: What’s Next?

Jiang: We’re currently scaling our CodeDay events across the country — in a similar fashion to Startup Weekend and TEDx — where volunteers across the country organize CodeDay events according to our model.

We’re also aiming to double the number of students participating in StudentRND Labs each summer for the next three years — last summer was 30, this summer we plan to have 60. Within 3 years, we’ll be taking more passionate, motivated students through StudentRND Labs than University of Washington (Seattle)’s Computer Science Department (they graduate 160 per year). As we start to reach capacity in the Seattle area, we will start looking at building out StudentRND Labs in other cities across the country.

As we do this, we’re developing relationships and funding partnerships to make this happen.

TC: How can we help?

Jiang: Two ways:

1. Help us organize a CodeDay! We’re looking for passionate, motivated students in different schools across the US to help us organize CodeDay in their city. If you or a student you know is interested — let us know!

2. Donate! Whether that be $25/mo, a larger donation (feel free to contact us), or getting your company/foundation involved, we could really use the financial support to fund our growth!

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Would you have attended meetups and participated in groups like this when you were younger? You can help make a difference by spreading the good word about StudentRND and its CodeDay initiative. You could even start your own program or help out with something that’s already happening in your area. Technology is a global thing, and its accessible for all ages and skill-sets.

Pretty awesome, huh?

In case you’ve missed our previous Weekly Good pieces, have a look here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch