Have a lot of stuff? Don’t have a lot of space to store that stuff? Don’t know how you’d get yourself organized enough to keep track of it, even if you did have the space? No worries. Urban storage startup Boxbee has the solution to all your too-much-stuff-having problems.

The idea behind Boxbee is simple: You put stuff in a box. Then Boxbee comes and takes the box and puts it in secure storage for $6 per month per box. If you want your stuff back, Boxbee will deliver it to you for $15 plus $2 per box. Boxes are 24 inches long by 20 inches tall by 12 inches wide, so they’re not HUGE. But they should provide ample space for users to keep their winter clothes stored away for a few months.

In addition to the storage service itself, Boxbee has a web interface and mobile app for keeping track of all the stuff you’ve stored. That is, you can take photos and categorize items that you’ve got in one box or another. That way, when you need items in a particular box, you can make sure that you get the right one.

On the storage side, Boxbee manages a network of commercial warehouses and keeps tabs on what goes where with the help of barcodes. Pretty soon, it’ll be moving to RFID tags, which should improve the process even more. Since it operates in a 15-mile radius of San Francisco, the company can make deliveries from its warehouses within hours of a request being made.

Boxbee hopes that by making storage more convenient and a little less expensive than renting out a whole unit, it will be able to tap into a new market of customers who should probably be storing their crap somewhere other than their tiny apartments, but don’t want to deal with the cost and hassle of doing so.

The company launched at um, LAUNCH, where it received the best new startup award. It has been operating in private beta since then, spending the last few months as part of the AngelPad startup incubator in San Francisco (which has its demo day next week!). The startup is in the process of raising a seed round, which it will use to make a few more hires and expand into new markets.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project looks at the future of libraries. The study, titled “Library services in the digital age,” doesn’t include anything particularly shocking or revelatory, but it suggests that many people still value the role of libraries, and that librarians are thinking about how their services can evolve.

Pew found that in the past 12 months, 53 percent of Americans who are 16 or older visited a library or bookmobile, 25 percent visited a library website, and 13 percent visited a library website using a smartphone or tablet. Of those “recent library users,” 26 percent said their usage has gone up in the past five years; the most commonly given reasons were the enjoyment of taking children and grandchildren; the need to do research and use reference materials; and plain old borrowing books more. Meanwhile, 22 percent said their usage had gone down, and the biggest reason by far was the Internet.

The study also mentions a bunch of additional tech-related services that libraries could provide, including an online research service for asking questions of librarians (37 percent of respondents said they’re “very likely” to use this); app-based access to library materials and programs (28 percent); GPS-style apps for navigating libraries (34 percent); Redbox-style lending machines (33 percent); and Amazon-style recommendations for books/audios/videos (29 percent).

At the same time, there was a lot of support for traditional library services. For example, of the people who have visited libraries in the past 12 months, 73 percent said they did so to borrow print books. And when asked if libraries should move some of their printed books and stacks away from public locations to make room for tech centers, reading rooms, and cultural events, 20 percent said definitely, 39 percent said maybe, and 36 percent said definitely not.

The study also includes a number of ideas from librarians about what else they could offer. It sounds like there’s plenty of interest around mobile apps, “makerspaces”/workshops, and RFID-tracking of books, though there’s some resistance too, as well as concern about funding. Here’s one of the more interesting responses:

We recently began circulating Rokus with HuluPlus, Netflix and Amazon Prime loaded onto them. As far as I know we are the first library in the world to do this. This type of out-of-the-box technologies are making a huge difference to the demographics we are reaching. I would like to further those types of technological innovations and push the envelope on the public’s perception of what libraries offer. These types of initiatives do cost money and staff time to develop the program—but if it is important enough, the money can be found.

The survey was conducted from October 15 through November 10, through landline and cellphone interviews conducted with 2,252 people. You can read the full study here.

[image from Paramount Pictures' Hugo]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Your Internet-connected devices may be getting more cooperative, thanks to group of startups and established players who have come together to create a new nonprofit group called the Internet of Things Consortium.

The “Internet of Things,” for those of you who aren’t too familiar with it, basically refers to the growing trend of uniquely identifiable, Internet-connected electronic devices. Jason Johnson, the consortium’s chairman, said that the term was first coined to refer to industrial technologies like RFID, but we’re now seeing a wave of consumer products, too, often funded on Kickstarter.

There are 10 initial participants in the group: Active Mind Technologies (which makes Game), Basis Science, Coin, Kease, Logitech, Movl (which makes KontrolTV), Ouya, Poly-Control, SmartThings, and Ube.

Johnson said the goal is to play a “very active” role in finding new ways for Internet of Things-related products and services to work together (in part by taking advantage of new technologies like Bluetooth Low Energy and Low Power Wi-Fi) and create “a richer fabric of intelligent devices.” For that reason, one of the key criteria for new members is an open approach to integrating with other companies. Johnson said a meeting of the consortium would be “not unlike a standards body meeting,” except that the group won’t just focus on technology, but on business as well.

Here’s an email comment from Ube CEO Utz Baldwin about why this effort is important:

The successful adoption of [machine-to-machine] and connected home technologies is dependent on open standards for the provisioning and control of millions of headless devices. We are excited to be among other emerging companies that share the same vision and that are committed to moving the industry forward collectively.

Johnson may be best known to TechCrunch readers as a managing partner at the Founders Den, but his past experience includes serving as chairman of the Wireless VoIP Consortium and vice president of Dolby Laboratories’ technology standards licensing business unit. He said he’s also working on a stealth Internet of Things startup of his own.

The consortium will hold its first meeting on Wednesday at 5 pm, at CES in Vegas. If you’re interested in attending, you can email events@iofthings.org.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

For the past three years the White Bull Summit in Barcelona has been doing something that too few tech conferences in Europe really do: talk about exits for startups. In recent times it’s become so common to have a conference about early stage startups that almost no-one has really concentrated on this crucial life-cycle for companies, and perhaps the only other contender for this discussion has be NOAH in London which tends to attract late stage VC and Private Equity. So it’s refreshing to see founder Farley Duvall continue to plough this furrow. Duvall piloted Red Herring’s brand in Europe for many years, but with the decline of that brand he has struck out with his own, so he’s as much an entrepreneur as the tech companies he puts on stage. Some of the companies are familiar, some aren’t, but it’s an instructive filter on the market.

Part of the event is the Bully Awards where tech companies are highlighted for their particular interest to the attendees. This year Swedish companies have topped the list of winners (chosen from 60 companies) with nine companies represented, followed by Finland with four companies, Spain and the United Kingdom with three.

The awards like to divide up the companies into three categories.

Thus, the 2012 Bully Award winners include:

Yearlings (firms that seek or have received angel/seed rounds or equivalent; classic start-ups)
AlterGeo – Russia – Yearling
Boole Server – Italy – Yearling
Burt – Sweden – Yearling
CloudMe – Sweden – Yearling
Crowdynews – Netherlands – Yearling
Encap – Norway – Yearling
Everplaces – Denmark – Yearling
eyeOS- Spain – Yearling
MyWidz – Sweden – Yearling
Tictail – www.tictail.com – Sweden – Yearling
Transfluent – Finland – Yearling
Tribe Studios – Finland – Yearling
WeVideo – Norway – Yearling
zero2infinity (Spain) – Yearling

Young Bulls (firms that seek or have received Series A financing; early stage companies)
Canatu – Finland – Young Bull
dukaPC – Denmark – Young Bull
Epuramat – Luxembourg – Young Bull
IOVOX – UK – Young Bull
Kiosked – Finland – Young Bull
Maporama – France – Young Bull
Softkinetic – Belgium – Young Bull
TallyFox – www.tallyfox.com – Switzerland – Young Bull
Wrapp – Sweden – Young Bull
Zyncro – Spain – Young Bull

Longhorns (post Series A firms; growth stage companies)
eCommera – UK – Longhorn
iZettle – Sweden – Longhorn
Klarna – Sweden – Longhorn
Masabi – UK – Longhorn
Rebtel – Sweden – Longhorn
Tobii – Sweden – Longhorn

White Bull has a bit of a record in identifying Europe’s leading TMT companies with previous Bully Award winners identified including BuyVIP (acquired by Amazon), JayCut (acquired by RIM), Q-go (acquired by RightNow Technologies), Severa Corp (acquired by Visma Group), SunglassesShop.com (acquired by Glasses Direct), Ubitexx (acquired by RIM), Vilant Systems Oy (merged RFID activities with Swisscom Auto-ID Services AG), and WatchMouse (acquired by CA Technologies).

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

One of the geeky, cute contraptions of the early Facebook days was a web-enabled beer keg at company headquarters. Whenever an employee swiped their RFID badge on it, a camera would snap a photo of them pouring a beer and post a status update to Facebook. Whenever it ran low on beer, the keg would post pictures of BevMo to Facebook as a desperate refill reminder.

Even though Facebook’s beer keg world domination plans never played out, the technology behind the keg, called Presence, may still show up in the wild. That’s because one of the engineers behind Presence, John Stockdale, is starting a company around the concept. It’s aptly named Presence. Apparently, the naming and IP rights around the technology aren’t issues for Facebook.

A spin-off of Presence doesn’t mean beer kegs powered by ‘The Cloud!’ will suddenly appear everywhere. Presence happens to be a much broader concept than that. There isn’t a product out yet, but Stockdale’s calling it “digital identity for the physical world.”

Here’s what Stockdale posted about the company on Presence’s new page:

We aim to simplify and modernize a whole slew of ordinary interactions that you have with the real world. Many of you will remember Super Secret Door (http://facebook.com/supersecretdoor), a facebook-enabled door that three of us* built during Hackathon 18. It was only a proof of concept, but it’s one of many ideas that Presence as a platform will enable.

Using our platform, your home will know who is trying to access it. A hypothetical lock application allows you to specify access rules for your door and garage (…car, ski-house, bike, etc.), on an individual or group basis. You and your roommates have 24/7 access. Your housekeeper has access between 2pm and 6pm on Tuesdays. When you’re out of town, your kickball group can get into your garage over the weekend to pick up and drop off the bases and gear. Any unauthorized access results in an email notification explaining who attempted access and when.

By giving the places and things we interact with the capability to understand who is interacting with them, and in what manner, we can enable a whole new generation of real-world user experiences.

It might be easy to slot Presence into the whole slew of “Internet of Things” companies that connect physical objects like thermostats (Nest) or souped-up pedometers (Fitbit, Nike Fuelband) to the web. But Stockdale thinks many of the companies from the previous generation are more about elevating the status of objects in people’s lives instead of merely allowing the material things we own to enhance our interactions with other people.

“This is about making your interactions with spaces and objects more similar to your interaction with people and friends,” he says. Stockdale isn’t very explicit about what kinds of technology he’ll end up using. It might not even be RFID or NFC, which is what was used for Google Wallet. It should be more ambient.

Presence actually made a more public debut back in 2010 at Facebook’s f8 developer conference. It powered a bunch of different stations at the venue where attendees could “check-in” or have their photos taken by swiping their badges. It raised speculation that Facebook was going to pursue more ambitious concepts around “location” involving RFID, but that didn’t end up being the case in the short-term. However, Facebook recently acquired a mobile loyalty startup called TagTile earlier this month. That company gave away free hardware to merchants, who would let their customers collect and redeem loyalty points, coupons and other rewards through mobile apps.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories:

Multi-Pinhole Technique “Paints” Objects With Photographs From Life
Huge LED Wall For Playing Games On At Hungarian Festival
You Know, For Triathlons: Polar RCX5 Heart Rate Watch Review
Kinetic Space Framework Allows PCs To Read Dance Moves, Sign Language
Mini RFID Device Stores Personal Medical Data, Makes It Instantly Accessible

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Japan-based chemical and tech company Asahi Kasei has developed a small healthcare product that should make life for paramedics, emergency doctors (and patients) easier: the portable device (pictured) makes it possible to instantly access all medical data on a specific person with a PC or smartphone, via RFID.

Asahi Kasei uses the FeliCa smart card tech (instead of a self-developed solution), as this system has been widely adopted by all of Japan’s mobile carriers, several major PC makers (i.e. Sony for their Vaio computers), and other electronics companies. In Japan, FeliCa as a brand has actually been around since 1994.

In an emergency situation, doctors or paramedics can tap Felica-equipped equipment against the device to view medical data of its owner, for example the blood type, date of birth etc. on the screen in seconds. Asahi Kasei says that the entire medical history of patients can be stored. If doctors need to view very large files, for example X-ray images, the device can make access possible by letting users click on links that lead to that data (but stored on external servers).

The device is just sized at 3x3cm. According to Japanese business daily The Nikkei, Asahi Kasei is planning to market it within a year (and priced at $25 a unit).

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Innovation in social commerce is coming thick and fast. Big business is experimenting with how social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, can be used to facilitate and execute transactions.

One recent example is the leading European car manufacturer Renault.  At the top automotive event of the year in the Netherlands, the 2011 AutoRAI Amsterdam Motorshow, Renault offered all 250,000 visitors free RFID cards that could be linked to their Facebook profiles.  Visitors could then automatically ‘Like’ exhibited Renault model by simply swiping the card on information posts next to each car, and in doing so post a link to that car in their news feeds.

Yes, yes – it’s marketing not commerce per se – converting offline presence into online recognition and recommendations, but it is also a superbly smart ‘foot-in-the-door‘ sales technique.

The foot-in-the door sales technique is a powerful use of the social psychological principal of ‘consistency’ (see social psychology of social commerce) - our desire to be, and critically, be seen to be consistent in our thoughts and behaviour. It works like this.

If I make a big request upfront – “So you like the new Renault, then buy it!” then you’re likely to say no.  But if I make a small request, “So you like the new Renault, they why not like it on Facebook?, then you’re more likely to say yes – if indeed you  do ‘like’ it.  It sounds harmless, but my foot is now in the metaphorical door – and here’s the clever bit.

If I now go on to make the same big buy-the-car request, now or later, then whilst you’re still not likely to say yes, you are more likely to say yes.  Why? Because of the principal of consistency.  If we like something and can buy it, and have behaved publicly in a way that is consistent with liking it (especially to friends), but then don’t buy it following an opportunity to do, we feel psychological discomfort called cognitive dissonance.  It’s a light form of psychological torture – and is incredibly powerful, resulting in one high profile case with an entire estate of middle class home-owners voluntarily wrecking their own gardens.

Psychologically, the Facebook Like is deceptively powerful, perhaps too powerful.  Renault has just scratched the surface.  And as for opportunities, we believe that any start-up developing ‘swipe-to-like’ event marketing or in0store mobile rewards app, without all that tedious messing around with RFID cards, will become embarrassingly rich. Licence. To. Print. Money.

Article courtesy of Social Commerce Today

Leave it to those ambitious, young grad students to show us the objects of our desire that we didn’t even realize we desired. Thanks to Jordi Parra, an Interaction Design student at the Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden, we now have a futuristic new music player that lets you listen to Spotify from the comfort of your living room. (Only if your living room is in Europe, however, as Spotify is not yet available in the U.S.)

At first glance, the player — which Parra made as part of his final design project in collaboration with Spotify — looks like a digital lovechild of Jonathan Ive and the brilliant Swedes at Ikea. Perhaps the coolest feature of the product’s design is its inclusion of 192 LED nodes, which display volume levels, battery life, and Internet connectivity on the device’s face. Not too shabby for a degree project!

How does this bad boy work? The player uses radio frequency identification (or RFID) technology: place one of the colored RFID tags, which contain your playlists, onto the magnetized volume knob, and voila! As soon as the tag sticks to the knob, the antenna/Arduino in the player reads the tag and plays your hot jams. You stop those hot jams by simply removing the tag. Kinda cool, right?

In the case of Parra’s reader, the information is actually transmitted via magnetic induction using the player’s magnetic volume knob and an Arduino processing board to sense the tag and extract its contents. (Pictures of Parra’s Arduino and the player’s insides here if you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.)

How you go about encoding your playlists on the RFID tags is a little equivocal, but it sounds like this is done by connecting the player to a computer via USB. This should automatically call up Spotify and begin configuration. The RFID tags are read-write, so once the tag is connected to the player (while the player is connected to your computer), you can change your songs or link to a new playlist.

The player is sold with a unique serial number that will essentially register your device with Parra, though “register” may be a strong word in this case. The serial number allows Parra (and perhaps his future company) to track the player and its corresponding tags. Obviously, as you may have guessed, RFID technology has the potential for myriad security and privacy issues. (Think of the ad technology in Minority report that is essentially Philip K. Dick’s conjecture on RFID technology.) So, this will require some sensitivity on Parra’s part should the player end up being sold at market by Spotify.

Though the inner workings of the device works may sound a bit complex at first glance, the UI is sleek and simple. Use the two small buttons in the lower left corner of the speaker (as seen in the above image) to skip to the previous and next tracks in your queue. The adjacent magnetized knob holds your tags and controls volume. The slick packaging that would ship with the player will include 8 RFID tags (which incidentally look suspiciously like pogs), a USB cable, and a stand for the tags.

It seems that, thanks to collective consciousness (or the relative novelty of applying RFID tech to music players), a few other designers and firms have been developing their own RFID devices. You can check out IDEO’s retro (whoa! Cassettes! Turntables!) player here. Or this guy’s squeezebox here.

You can also check out Jordi Parra’s blog for a stroll through the product’s development.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

With all the hur-de-hur about technological gadgets on these very pages, I submit to you that there is one subset of the community that is underserved by our constant reportage: the Luddite. To that end, I propose a short exploration of the Luddite’s psyche and suggest a few possible items for their consumption this Holiday period.

The term Luddite comes from Ned Ludd, the mythical or at least apochrphal head of a group of anti-technologists from the 18th century. Ludd, a weaver, grew so agitated by his working conditions one day that he beat some weaving frames into a “heap.” Like “Notme” and “Ida Know” of Family Circus fame, the refrain “Ned Ludd did it” became the comic excuse for broken gear in the 19th century.

So what about modern Luddites? It seems to me the modern Luddite is tired of computers. He or she needs something tangible, usable, and extremely inexpensive. Yet he/she doesn’t want to end up on the wrong end of a homemade blunderbuss when the end times come and he’s raiding someone’s log cabin for MREs. He’s (or she’s) not a survivalist but is looking for a way to survive in an increasingly complex world. Here’s what you should buy them with your RFID-chipped credit card or via Paypal.

Read more…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch