As edtech startups continue to challenge the current state of higher education, and various niche startups focus on educating people through digital means, yet another company is getting a boost when it comes to helping people learn.

PopExpert, a learning marketplace that lets students connect with experts in one-on-one video chats, has just raised a $2 million seed round led by Learn Capital, with participation by Jeff Skoll, Ken Howery, Michael Chasen, and Expansion VC.

The site’s premise is simple: users can sign in and search for what they want to learn. Right now there are experts in multiple fields across the spectrum of “life, work, and play,” including meditation, nutrition, relationships, productivity, career mentoring, language and music.

Once you log in, you can search for something like “yoga” and see a list of experts, validated with credentials and tagged with a price per session. From there, just choose your expert, schedule the session, and get ready to learn. PopExpert even facilitates payments, so the entire process can be completed in one place.

According to the company, one-to-one learning is “vastly superior” to any other method.

“We are focused on areas that relate more to EQ development than IQ development, for example meditation vs. Excel training and personalized style vs. photography techniques,” explained founder Ingrid Sanders. “These areas of EQ development are particularly suited to personalized interaction with an expert, and a one-to-one interaction is by far the most efficient way to experience them.”

For now, the service is only available by invitation, but there are already more than 1,000 experts using the service to teach and make some money. PopExpert recruits these experts after doing their own mini head-hunt, looking through reviews, online sources, and books to find the best possible teachers for the platform.

PopExpert generates revenue by taking a small service fee from every transaction.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Joshua Pearce, PhD, is a researcher at Michigan Tech who rearches open source and low-impact solutions to engineering problems. He is also the founder of the Printers For Peace contest, an effort to bring together clever 3D-printed ideas that have loftier aims. You can win one of two 3D printers if you submit a winning project.

We asked Pearce a few questions about his goals for the project and about the future of 3D printing.

John Biggs: Why Printers For Peace?

Joshua Pearce: I think it is clear that low-cost open-source 3D printing has enormous potential to do real good for the world – particularly for the poor as it radically reduces the cost of high-value products like scientific tools and consumer goods. This threatens a lot of entrenched interests because the average Joe can fabricate extremely complex products at home for pennies, which is disruptive to say the least. I have noticed a clear bias in 3D printing news coverage – any advances on the low-end of the spectrum are generally ignored or vilified. The media frenzy about 3D printed guns is actually having terrifying consequences – and I don’t mean the guns. A California senator has already proposed registration, background checks, and licensing for 3D printers!

Michigan Tech and Type A Machines sponsored the contest to get the more positive truth about 3D printers into the conversation. There are over 90,000 open-source 3D printable designs available and only one low-quality gun. We do not want to lose the baby with the bathwater. Our aim is to raise awareness of the power of 3D printing to change the world for the better.

JB: What do you think will happen now that the 3D printed gun is out of the bag? It was inevitable, obviously, but what does it mean?
JP: The 3D printed gun is a red herring. Anyone who wants a gun can make a much better one using more traditional tools found in any machine shop and many garages — or just buy one. I am, however, very concerned that the debate about 3D printed guns will be used to squash the incredible technological development we are seeing in the open-source 3D printing community.

JB: What’s the coolest Printers for Peace project you’ve seen so far?

JP: The contest just opened, but there are some really cool designs already developed that I think would make good starting points for derivatives. I really like some of the small-scale 3D printed windmill designs – and there is a graduate student working on what looks to be a printable recyclebot. I would love to see a reliable 3D printed treadle pump as this is one of the most successful appropriate technologies for lifting rural farmers out of poverty in the developing world.

JB: What’s next? 3D printed bazookas? 3D printed heart stents? Where do you see this headed, in either direction?

JP: I think it is clear that existing manufacturers will continue to move from using high-end 3D printing for rapid prototyping into actual manufacturing creating entirely new classes of jobs (e.g. automobile parts, human body parts, etc.). This is exciting, but not nearly as exciting as what is happening on the low-end of the spectrum. As open-source 3D printable designs continue to grow exponentially the value of owning a 3D printer is climbing as their quality improves and actual costs continue to decline. Thus, low-cost open-source 3D printers will become ubiquitous household items, which people use to make a wide array of consumer goods, replacement parts, and highly customized products. Following shortly after I hope to see recyclebots become similarly widespread – with people recycling their waste plastic inhome to make their own products. The implications for improving human well-being are staggering.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The spring tech tour continues next week in Santa Clara with Deploycon, and I will be there to discuss the spectrum of PaaS providers and how they play across this broad, malleable and often manipulated sector of the market.

It has become apparent that the platform as a service (PaaS) market has reached a pivot point. I have written about two companies that have pivoted in recent weeks, and we should expect the transformation to continue as the forces build apps faster with ever more data.

It’s also evidence of a greater shift in the market to more standard ways to build apps and APIs. Developers often build out apps that require multiple APIs to connect. Data has to be accessed, signaling a greater need to develop a linking structure and visual way to see updates and interactions in the lifecycle process.

For context, I thought it would make sense to look at Krishnan Subramanian’s spectrum of the PaaS market and where the market players fit.

At every space on the spectrum is some level of abstraction. On the far left, business users get a high degree of abstraction but primarily so they can focus on creating apps out of custom processes, tasks and other business functions. Coding is not a requirement. Everything except making the connectors is done on the backend. Force.com and OrangeScape are the two most noticeable players while companies such as workXpress also compete in this market.

The further you get to the center, the abstraction comes with creating more sophisticated apps by having some control over the infrastructure. For example, Subramanian said use cases could be some big data applications or some real-time processing based on various performance parameters. It is about offering different choices. Cloudbees, Heroku, Appfog, and Google App Engine play in this space.

With private PaaS, the difference is choice. The developer can have a granular level of control but not necessarily have to worry about middleware or finely tuning the infrastructure. Extensible architectures give developers a way to scale if need be. Cloudfoundry.com, Cumulogic, Apprenda, OpenShift, Uhuru, ActiveState and Iron Foundry (Tier 3) are companies in this space.

PaaS players further to the right give developers the capability to do continuous development and provide access to the infrastructure but not worry about backend operations. These platforms also offer open-source plugins and other advanced features.

DevOps PaaS simplifies the “assembly” of services, providing capsules of sorts that allow the developer to custom build apps and push them into different types of infrastructure. Cloudify and Cloudsoft are the primary players at this place in the spectrum.

DevOps tools don’t offer much compared to Cloudify or Cloudsoft but do allow for more abstraction than IaaS providers at the extreme right of the spectrum. Are they even PaaS at all? That’s up for debate. DevOps providers include: Rightscale, Puppet Labs, Opscode, Enstratius and Scalr can all be considered DevOps PaaS providers.

Evident is the deep, cross-use of these different services. They overlap but also have any imaginable use case. But where is the market for these different services? That’s the big question to discuss when in Santa Clara next week. Here’s a link to register for the event. Use the code DCCOMP16 to get in free.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google’s first trial to use the unused channels in the broadcast TV spectrum to provide wireless broadband access launched in 2010 in Logan, Ohio. Since then, Google has shown a lot of interest in this topic and today it is launching its second trial. This time it is in Cape Town, South Africa, where Google partnered with a number of local organizations to connect 10 schools to the new wireless broadband network. The idea behind the trial, Google says, is “to show that broadband can be offered over white spaces without interfering with licensed spectrum holders.”

To get this new network off the ground, Google partnered with the Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET), CSIR Meraka, e-Schools Network, the Wireless Access Provider’s Association of South Africa and Comsol Wireless Solutions. The partners, TENET writes in its announcement today, will “periodically update ICASA, Sentech, the Joint Spectrum Advisory Group, broadcasters and other constituents on trial outcomes, including spectrum measurements and reported interference.”

Using these unused TV channels, Google argues, “has the advantage that low frequency signals can travel longer distances. The technology is well-suited to provide low cost connectivity to rural communities with poor telecommunications infrastructure, and for expanding coverage of wireless broadband in densely populated urban areas.”

The network will use a local version of Google’s spectrum database. Google launched the public trial of the U.S. version with the FCC in the U.S. earlier this month.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The fallout from Ofcom’s March 2012 decision to allow the company now known as EE to refarm existing 2G spectrum to build a 4G network continues. That decision paved the way for the launch of the U.K.’s first 4G network, 4GEE, up and running at the end of October 2012. Now EE’s rivals, Vodafone and Three, have asked the U.K. telecoms regulator to liberalise their existing spectrum holdings to allow them to run 4G services too.

Ofcom has gone further — and is proposing to liberalise all mobile licences in the 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz and 2,100 MHz bands for 4G — kicking off a consultation today. Here’s what it’s proposing:

to liberalise all mobile licences in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands to permit the deployment of 4G services (where such licenses have not already been liberalised). This will align the permitted technologies across all mobile spectrum licences, including the existing licences at 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz and the licences to be awarded by auction in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands. This will meet a long standing objective to liberalise all mobile licences so that there are no regulatory barriers to the deployment of the latest available mobile technology;

The consultation document includes a table detailing the current breakdown of U.K. spectrum holdings — which shows that only EE and Three (H3G) currently have liberalised spectrum (in the 1,800Mhz band), and also underlines how EE, the joint network entity formed by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, was able to use existing spectrum holdings for 4G because it held such a large tranche of spectrum (2 x 45MHz). Other carriers aren’t so well furnished:

All the U.K.’s major carriers are currently bidding to acquire new spectrum — in the 800MHz and 2.6 GHz bands — which would enable EE’s rivals to launch their own 4G networks by late spring/summer. Despite Ofcom’s proposal to liberalise more existing spectrum licences for 4G use, it’s unlikely that EE’s rivals would be able to launch new 4G networks in their existing spectrum for a variety of reasons.

For one, Ofcom’s consultation on the liberalisation runs until March 29, after which the regulator would need time to consider the responses it has received before making and implementing its decision. Additionally, carriers would need to ensure they have cleared existing users of the liberalised spectrum before being able to deploy 4G services. Whereas the spectrum bands going under Ofcom’s hammer at present are being prepared for an imminent 4G launch — talks between the carriers, Ofcom and TV broadcasters last fall resulted in a speeding up of the clearance schedule for the 800MHz band, for instance.

Assuming Ofcom does go ahead with the proposed liberalisation, Matthew Howett, telecoms regulation analyst at Ovum, reckons it could be years before these existing spectrum holdings could be put to use for 4G.

“Despite operators being able to deploy 4G services in these bands previously restricted to 2G and 3G technologies, most are unlikely to do so in the short term,” he said in a statement reacting to Ofcom’s consultation. “They would first need to be cleared of their existing use through a process of refarming that would probably takes years rather than months, and so the spectrum that is currently being auctioned by Ofcom will most likely be used for Vodafone, O2 and Three’s initial deployment of 4G services.”

Howett added that Ofcom is moving away from a “command and control” approach to spectrum policy towards a “market-based management mechanism that lets the users of radio spectrum decide its real economic value and the best way to use it”. So, while the near-term impact on U.K. carriers’ 4G deployment plans might not be that great — the longer term move to free up spectrum licences to support speedier deployment of future technologies could have a much more significant impact.

“As mobile technologies advance and demand for mobile data traffic increases, regulators have acted to liberalize certain spectrum bands from previous technological restrictions,” Howett added. “Many regulators have updated the conditions of the licenses to accommodate the principle of technological neutrality, which removes restrictions on spectrum use and allows operators to deploy other technologies in these bands. This is a positive move.”

Discussing the medium term consumer benefits of liberalising spectrum licences for 4G, Ofcom’s consultation document refers to the increased “flexibility” it will offer carriers to decide which technology to deploy in which band, and ultimately, therefore, to better tailor services to customers’ preferences:

In the medium term, liberalisation may give operators greater flexibility to decide which technology to deploy in which bands. This may allow them to supply services that better meet their customers’ preferences.

… we recognise that operators may not immediately deploy 4G services in the newly liberalised bands. If so, then the consumer benefits associated with liberalisation would not occur immediately. However, it is likely that the operators will take advantage of the increased flexibility, and that consumer benefits will flow from this, in due course.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

4GEE, the U.K.’s first and still it’s only 4G/LTE network just got a little larger. Carrier EE has switched on 4G services in nine more towns, bringing the total number of towns and cities connected to the service to 27 in the 90 days since it launched the network.

The network now reaches around 45 per cent of the U.K. population, according to EE — which says the rollout is ahead of schedule. The carrier is aiming to cover 98 per cent of the population by 2014.

The nine latest towns to get EE’s 4G services are situated around the U.K.. They are: Amersham, Bolton, Chelmsford, Hemel Hempstead, Southend-on-Sea, Stockport, Sunderland, Sutton Coldfield and Wolverhampton.

In addition to bringing new locations on stream, EE said it is continuing to beef up the network density of 4G in areas where it has already switched the service on. ”As a result, users will find they have increasingly consistent, superfast access to 4G wherever they travel, and during their commutes to work,” it said in a release announcing the latest stage of the rollout.

It’s unclear how many customers EE has signed up to the U.K.’s first 4G network so far — the carrier has repeatedly declined to break this figure out. A company spokeswoman told TechCrunch: “We don’t have specific figures to share at the moment.” Earlier this month EE announced a promotional discount in a bid to sign up new users — perhaps indicating that signs ups have not been as plentiful as it would like. It also launched a new 20GB monthly data tariff for ‘super users’.

Rival U.K. carriers O2, Vodafone and Three are currently in the midst of bidding for the spectrum they need to build their own 4G networks. Bidding on the spectrum got underway on January 23 and is expected to take “weeks” before winners are determined. U.K. telecoms regulator Ofcom expects services using the new spectrum will be launched by a range of providers from late spring/summer 2013.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The government wants to help ensure that conference Internet wifi actually works. Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, announced a new plan to open up a portion of the wireless spectrum for faster and more reliable wifi devices. Specifically, the FCC will work to open up the unlicensed slice of 5 Mhz spectrum to make way for gigabit Internet devices, “to relieve wifi congestion at conferences, at airports, and in people’s homes,” said Genachowski on stage at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

This solution could not come quick enough. At one the premier tech gatherings on the planet, CES, the Internet is barely usable. All three ways I connect to the internet–iPhone tethering, a wifi hotspot, and hotel wifi–have slowed to a crawl.

A spokesman for the FCC did not give a timeline for the implementation of the new rule, but says that it must coordinate with other federal and military agencies that use overlapping portions of the spectrum. “We are convinced that the spectrum can be shared,” concluded the Chairman.

Wifi has also been hailed as an important solution to general smartphone Internet speed problems, since it allows users to offload data downloads to their home wifi, rather than congested cellphone networks.

I’m about to pull my hair out waiting for webpages to load here at CES, so let’s all pray we can find a solution soon. Otherwise, my posts may contain a lot more expletives.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s been a very long time coming but the U.K.’s 4G auction process has kicked off, with bidders having until 16:00 GMT today to submit their bids, along with a £100,000 deposit. The window for bidders to submit opened at 10:00 GMT.

The spectrum going under the hammer sits in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands — and has been deemed suitable for 4G/LTE services. The 800MHz band was freed up when the U.K. completed its switch from analogue to digital TV earlier this year.

Telecoms regulator Ofcom will be reviewing the applications, including conducting vetting of bidders and checks on the information they submit. Ofcom said it plans to announce the names of all successful applicants before the end of the year or early in the New Year. Bidding will then begin in January 2013 — with the regulator anticipating it will be “a number of weeks” before the final result of the auction is known.

The U.K. government has already put a figure on how much it expects the auction to raise, the Chancellor George Osborne factored in £3.5 billion – to be raised from the spectrum sale — in his autumn budget statement last week.

As for bidders, U.K. carriers O2 and Vodafone are expected to be among those submitting applications to bid on the spectrum. EE, which owns the Orange and T-Mobile carrier brands, has already launched its 4G network in refarmed 2G spectrum so does not need to acquire new spectrum to run 4G. EE sold a portion of this 4G-suitable spectrum to smaller U.K. carrier, Three — meaning Three also does not necessarily need to acquire more spectrum to launch a 4G network.

Ofcom notes that the two bands being auctioned are being packaged into “smaller lots” so that they can be acquired by “multiple operators”.

According to the regulator, the lower frequency 800MHz band is “ideal for widespread mobile coverage”, while the higher frequency 2.6 GHz band is “ideal for delivering the capacity needed to deliver faster speeds to large numbers of consumers in towns and cities across the UK”.

Taken together the two bands add up to 250 MHz of additional mobile spectrum — compared to 333 MHz in use in the U.K. today.

While there may not be much drama in the announcement of a bidding window opening, it’s been a long hard road for Ofcom and the U.K.’s mobile industry to get to this point — and, crucially, to move beyond the threats of legal action that have dogged the process for years.

A recent pressure point was Ofcom’s decision to allow EE to refarm its 2G spectrum for 4G — a move which initially angered the other carriers but ultimately led to an agreement being hammered out between all the carriers, in discussions with Ofcom and the U.K. government. That agreement has resulted in an accelerated auction timetable — with up to five months shaved off the rollout schedule next year — and the U.K.’s first 4G network now live, launched at the end of October.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The U.K. government has already put a price on the sale of 4G spectrum frequencies — due to kick off in January next year. Chancellor George Osborne, who was giving his autumn budget statement today, is factoring into his policy decisions the sum of £3.5 billion which he expects to be raised by next year’s 4G spectrum sale.

The Treasury notes

The commercial auction for 4G spectrum, being overseen by Ofcom, is due to be completed by March 2013. Following formal assessment, based on independent analysis of the likely valuation of spectrum receipts by the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility], the spectrum receipts will be reflected in this Autumn Statement at £3.5 billion.

The figure is a far cry from the £22.5 billion raised when 3G spectrum frequencies went under the hammer, back in the millennium — but the 4G windfall has long been expected to raise considerably less then 3G as carriers complained they over-paid for 3G frequencies, and have had a tougher time making money from mobile data than the heady days of 2G voice-plus-text.

The structure of the auction is also different, with caps and coverage obligations making the 4G sale a more grounded affair, as Ovum analyst Matthew Howett noted back in July: “Despite 80% more spectrum being available in this auction than during the 3G licencing of 2000 which famously raised £22.5bn, this time it’s likely to generate a mere fraction of that amount given both the use of spectrum caps (which limit how much each spectrum one operator can obtain), and a realisation from the industry that revenues aren’t there to support such large outlays.”

Last month the Guardian quoted Brian Potterill, director in PwC’s telecoms strategy team, suggesting that the total raised for the U.K. government’s coffers from the 4G sale would amount to between £2bn and £4bn. Osborne’s estimate sits within that bracket.

Although the U.K.’s 4G spectrum is still to go under the hammer, the first 4G network is already up and running. Carrier EE was able to refarm existing 2G spectrum holdings for 4G services after getting the go-ahead from telecoms regulator Ofcom — launching a 4G network at the end of October.

Rival U.K. carriers O2 and Vodafone will be among the bidders for the 4G spectrum frequencies next year.

Osborne’s eagerness to factor an extra £3.5 billion into his autumn budget goes some way to explaining why government ministers got involved in cracking carrier heads together in September — to ensure the spectrum auction was not delayed by further legal action. Then comms minister, Jeremy Hunt, helped to broker an agreement between the carriers and Ofcom that enabled EE to launch its 4G network this year, and the spectrum auction and clearance timetable to be speeded up so other carriers will be able to launch 4G networks up to five months sooner than the original schedule allowed.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The U.K.’s first 4G network has only just got up and running, but telecoms regulator Ofcom is already looking beyond 4G to form a plan for the next generation of mobile network technology — potentially 5G — looking at where the spectrum will come from to support future mobile network capacity needs.

Ofcom has also published new data showing 20 million Gigabytes of data is now being consumed in a year over the U.K.’s mobile networks – more than twice as much as last year (9 million Gigabytes). Ofcom reckons that by 2030, demand for mobile data could be 80 times higher than today.

“Within the coming months we will hold the UK’s largest-ever auction of mobile spectrum for 4G. However, that may not be enough to meet consumers’ future data demands, which is why we are already making significant efforts to prepare to go beyond 4G,” said Ed Richards, Ofcom Chief Executive, in a statement.

“Our plans are designed to avoid a ‘capacity crunch’, ensuring that the UK’s mobile infrastructure can continue to support the inescapable growth in consumer demand and economic growth more generally.”

The plan for future mobile networks is to utilize the 700MHz band, a band currently used for digital terrestrial television. Ofcom believes spectrum can be drawn from this band to support ’5G’ services without requiring another mass TV switchover, as has been the case with 4G. The release of spectrum to run 4G services in the U.K. has been delayed by the need to wait for TV services to vacate the intended frequencies. Ofcom is clearly keen to avoid a repeat of such delays.

In the 5G over 700MHz scenario, Ofcom notes that although alternative frequencies will need to be provided for digital terrestrial TV (likely in the 600MHz band), in most cases it says this will only require a retune of existing TV equipment, rather than the replacement of roof-top aerials (although it says a minority of consumers will need to switch aerials). Ofcom does not believe any retuning will be necessary before 2018, and anticipates the next generation of mobile tech will be introduced towards the end of the decade.

Using the 700MHz band is in line with international plans to harmonize future mobile networks in different countries on the same spectrum frequencies in order to create economies of scale and ensure a wide availability of handsets. Ofcom notes that work to agree on an international spectrum plan for future mobile services is also unlikely to be completed before 2018.

The variety of bands being used for 4G services is less than ideal — bringing added complexity for consumers, as well as potential barriers to switching between networks as 4G handsets aren’t necessarily compatible with other 4G networks. Harmonizing the frequencies used for the next generation of mobile technology would provide a more level playing field for consumers.

Ofcom is also looking at the role played by Wi-Fi in offloading data from mobile networks — noting that future Internet bandwidth will need to come from a variety of sources, including public Wi-Fi hotspots. For the first time it has mapped the distribution of U.K. hotspots, and lists a total of 16,000.

Ofcom sees an “untapped opportunity” around Wi-Fi hotspots — noting that around 25 times more data is currently downloaded over mobile networks than Wi-Fi hotspots, indicating that Wi-Fi could play a crucial role in meeting future data demands and avoiding a mobile network capacity crunch.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch