Category: News

Pebble has received $15 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Pebble makes an e-paper smart watch that connects to iPhone and Android smartphones.

PRESS RELEASE

PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwired – May 16, 2013) –  Pebble, maker of the e-paper smart watch that connects to iPhone and Android smartphones, today announced it has received $15M in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures. The funding will be used to grow the software engineering team, expand Pebble’s open development platform and scale to meet customer demand.
Pebble is a highly customizable device, enabling users to download watchapps ranging from creative watchfaces to activity tracker apps. Pebble’s open approach to development is core to supporting a vast selection of apps that meet the unique needs and interests of users — or even enabling users to create something themselves. Pebble’s record-breaking launch on crowd funding site, Kickstarter, confirmed interest in this concept with over 68,000 backers pledging over $10M to make Pebble a reality. 
“The tremendous response we received from Kickstarter backers validated our belief in the value of a smart watch as a wearable computer, but also in the value an open platform brings to truly personalizing the watch to their daily activities,” said Eric Migicovsky, Pebble’s founder. “This new investment will help us build out the Pebble development ecosystem and deliver on Pebble’s extraordinary potential.”
Pebble released the first stage of its open software development kit (SDK) in April by enabling third party developers to create watchfaces and games for Pebble. Pebble’s enthusiastic developer community immediately went to work and created hundreds of new watchfaces in just a few weeks. Pebbler supported sites like mypebblefaces.com, forums.getpebble.com and watchface-generator.de are focal points of the growing community. Over 8,000 developers have downloaded the Pebble SDK, resulting in more than 5,000 unique watchapps and 300,000 watchapp installs in just over a month.
Today Pebble released the next stage of the platform enabling two-way communication between Pebble and the smartphone at developer.getpebble.com. Known as PebbleKit, the update enables third parties to develop watchapps that send and receive information from a connected smartphone. Watchapps can now be built to receive weather or traffic information, act as remote controls for a phone or internet-connected device, or display bitcoin prices. The Pebble platform will continue improving over the course of this year and into the future.
Also launching today is the Pebble Sports API. RunKeeper, a GPS fitness-tracking app, announced support for Pebble two weeks ago and now that same functionality is available for integration into any sports or fitness tracker app. Other sports apps like FreeCaddie, a GPS golf rangefinder, have also released Pebble-enabled apps.
Pebble’s smart watches have begun shipping to Kickstarter backers and are now available for pre-order at getpebble.com.
About Pebble
Launched on Kickstarter in 2012 with one of the most successful fundraising campaigns to date, Pebble is the first watch designed for the 21st century. Built to be a minimalist yet fashionable product that seamlessly blends into everyday life, the Pebble smart watch is infinitely customizable, with beautiful downloadable watch faces and useful internet-connected apps. Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, and is available for preorder online at getpebble.com. Visit us on Facebook and on Twitter @pebble.
Our team is rapidly expanding. We’re hiring for a number of positions at our downtown Palo Alto headquarters including embedded developers, designers, iOS, Android, test engineers, developer evangelists and interns/co-ops for this summer and fall. If you love Pebble and wearable computing as much as we do, you should come join us! Apply at http://getpebble.com/pages/jobs.
About Charles River Ventures
Founded in 1970, Charles River Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund that takes a value-added, hands-on approach to support its portfolio companies. Charles River Ventures is one of the nation’s oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms with approximately $2.1 billion under management. CRV is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs turn their ideas into the next category leaders in high growth technology and media sectors. Since its founding in 1970, CRV funds have been ranked among the industry’s top performers. CRV has offices in Boston, MA and Menlo Park, CA. For more information, visit crv.com.

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Final Book Now Available

Review of the Research Program of the U.S. DRIVE Partnership: Fourth Report follows on three previous NRC reviews of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership, which was the predecessor of the U.S. DRIVE Partnership (NRC, 2005, 2008a, 2010). The U.S. DRIVE (Driving Research and Innovation for Vehicle Efficiency and Energy Sustainability) vision, according to the charter of the Partnership, is this: American consumers have a broad range of affordable personal transportation choices that reduce petroleum consumption and significantly reduce harmful emissions from the transportation sector. Its mission is as follows: accelerate the development of pre-competitive and innovative technologies to enable a full range of efficient and clean advanced light-duty vehicles (LDVs), as well as related energy infrastructure. The Partnership focuses on precompetitive research and development (R&D) that can help to accelerate the emergence of advanced technologies to be commercialization-feasible.

The guidance for the work of the U.S. DRIVE Partnership as well as the priority setting and targets for needed research are provided by joint industry/government technical teams. This structure has been demonstrated to be an effective means of identifying high-priority, long-term precompetitive research needs for each technology with which the Partnership is involved. Technical areas in which research and development as well as technology validation programs have been pursued include the following: internal combustion engines (ICEs) potentially operating on conventional and various alternative fuels, automotive fuel cell power systems, hydrogen storage systems (especially onboard vehicles), batteries and other forms of electrochemical energy storage, electric propulsion systems, hydrogen production and delivery, and materials leading to vehicle weight reductions.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Energy and Energy Conservation | Engineering and Technology

Blackstone Group LP is planning to create a hedge fund which will consist of the boldest trades from the third-party hedge funds it invests with, the Financial Times reported.

(Reuters) – Blackstone Group LP is planning to create a hedge fund which will consist of the boldest trades from the third-party hedge funds it invests with, the Financial Times reported.

The new fund will invite managers to sell their interesting trading ideas in exchange for a fee and it will be run by former Duquesne Capital partner, Greg Geiling, the daily said.

The business paper said that Blackstone was already running the fund quietly for several months, inviting investments from its biggest institutional clients.

Blackstone was not available for comment outside usual U.S. business hours.

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Budco said Friday that it acquired South Shore Venture Enterprises. Financial terms weren’t announced. Treasure Island, Fla.-based South Shore provides direct marketing to senior citizens and represents 38 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement plans. Budco is backed by Glencoe Capital.

PRESS RELEASE

HIGHLAND PARK, Mich.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Budco, a leading marketing solutions company, announced today that it has acquired South Shore Venture Enterprises LLC, a privately held company based in Treasure Island, Florida. South Shore specializes in direct marketing to senior citizens and represents 38 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Supplement plans. South Shore provides a turnkey system that includes end-to-end services, such as direct mail, customer care, data analysis and modeling and incentives. The company will continue to operate as South Shore under the Budco brand.

“The addition of South Shore expands our footprint in the healthcare and insurance vertical markets while adding additional thought leadership to our company,” stated Budco Chief Operating Officer Rob Hyman. “South Shore’s President, Bob Ditwiler, has been involved in Medicare marketing for many years and is a sought after speaker for national conferences on the best ways to connect and build lasting relations with the senior market. This acquisition will integrate well with future Budco healthcare offerings we currently have in development.”
“This is a great strategic partnership for South Shore because we now have expanded direct marketing solutions and data analytics services from Budco, along with six premiere customer experience centers across the country with NOVO 1. Collectively, we now offer unparalleled expertise and reach to the senior sub-market, and the healthcare market in general, that no one else can throughout the United States,” said Ditwiler.
Ditwiler will continue in his role as President of South Shore. Financial terms of the transaction were not released.
Budco and NOVO 1 merged at the end of last year into one business model and are owned by Glencoe Capital through the Michigan Opportunities Fund.
About Budco
Budco is a leading provider of end-to-end marketing solutions to Fortune 100 companies and is headquartered in Highland Park, Michigan. As The Dialogue Company, Budco helps clients build strong relationships with business and consumer audiences by facilitating ongoing, two-way communication through leading-edge technology. Founded in 1982, Budco applies a suite of in-house resources to develop and execute innovative, end-to-end business solutions, delivering results that drive client success. Primary industry segments include automotive, pharmaceutical, healthcare, financial services, travel and leisure and consumer packaged goods. For more about Budco, visit www.budco.com.
About NOVO 1
Since 1987, NOVO 1 has been dedicated to tailoring contact experience solutions to support clients’ business goals in building customer relationships and growing their brands. NOVO 1′s Customer Obsession Program™ and Smart Desktop Solutions™ incorporate game-changing technology and top 1% industry best-practices to design customized solutions to provide ideal customer experiences. Find out more online at: www.NOVO1.com.
About Glencoe Capital
Founded in 1993, Glencoe Capital is a private equity firm focused on lead-sponsored acquisitions and growth equity investments in lower middle-market companies. The firm has completed more than 35 acquisitions, representing several billion dollars in annual sales. Glencoe Capital currently manages two funds: the Glencoe Capital Michigan Opportunities Fund, L.P. and Glencoe Capital Partners III, L.P.
The Glencoe Capital Michigan Opportunities Fund, the firm’s fourth fund, was established in June of 2008 and represents a groundbreaking partnership of public and private interests in the deployment of private equity capital. The Fund makes lead-sponsored acquisitions and growth equity investments in companies that conduct a material portion of their business operations in Michigan. The Fund may also invest in companies located outside of Michigan that demonstrate a viable strategy for expanding business operations into the state. For more about Glencoe Capital, visit www.glencap.com.2 qqqq

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I am not a die-hard Instagrammer, but every once in a while I feel a sudden need to upload a filtered view of the world on the popular photo-sharing social network. That’s easy to do with Android handsets and iPhones, but in the Windows Phone realm things are not that simple as there is no official app waiting in the Store. That’s not to say there is low demand for one, far from it.

Admittedly, Windows Phone is a smaller market for Instagram than Android and iOS but even so there are likely tens of millions of potential users waiting to grab that official app which never seems to come. Developer Daniel Gray, who is behind a third-party Pinterest app (no official offering available for this one either) called Pinsation, decided to cater to the Windows Phone users’ needs for a fully-featured Instagram app and, yesterday, released Itsdagram. The names are quite similar indeed.

Itsdagram touts itself as “the only fully featured Instagram client on the market” (other than the official Instagram app, I presume). The app can be used to create a new account (and log in with an existing one, of course), upload filtered photos, like and comment on posts, follow Instagrammers and discover Facebook friends who use the photo-sharing social network.

Straight after opening Itsdagram, users are greeted with a nicely-designed interface which, through horizontal scrolling, allows folks to view the main feed, popular photos and activity. And, as with the large majority of Windows Phone 8 apps, Itsdagram works flawlessly without any lag whatsoever.

Pictures can easily be uploaded to Instagram either by snapping a new one (makes use of the full array of camera settings) or by choosing a photo from the gallery. Only a cropped part of the picture can be uploaded, due to the size limitations imposed by the format of the social network. Filters, according to the developer, can be automatically updated independent of the app itself. But there are some caveats with Itsdagram.

The free trial, which is supposed to give users access to all features bar unlimited uploads, doesn’t allow you to add filters to photos (even though there is no indication that this should be the case) and can only be used to upload one picture. Yeah, just one. Also, Itsdagram only works on Windows Phone 8, so tough luck users of lesser iterations. There is also a fully-featured version of Itsdagram available which runs for $1.49.

Itsdagram is available to download from the Windows Phone Store.

A dying man who had been paralyzed by a gunshot wound used eye-blinks to identify the shooter, but defense attorneys argue that the testimony shouldn’t hold up in an Ohio court.

David Chandler was shown a photo of a man police believed had wielded the gun, was asked if he was indeed the shooter, and was told to blink twice for no and three times for yes. He died a short time later from his wounds. Authorities videotaped the questioning an submitted it as evidence against Ricardo Woods, who has now been charged with murder, felony assault, and at least one weapons charge.

But defense attorneys say the video shouldn’t be admitted as a testimony because Chandler’s blinks were erratic, and because he was only shown one photo rather than given a choice when it came time to identify his shooter.

“They planted the idea in his mind, and then asked him to respond,” attorney Kory Jackson said. “It is improperly suggestive. That causes false identifications more often than not.”

But a doctor who examined Chandler said that he was perfectly capable of communicating with blinks before he died. And though his testimony wasn’t the sole evidence entered–an informant testified that Woods said he’d shot Chandler because Chandler caught him buying drugs from someone while he owed Chandler money–Jackson says he believes the charges are unfair.

“We’re disappointed in the verdict,” he said. “We have said since the beginning that the video should not have been allowed into evidence.”

Scarosso raised a Series A funding round led by DN Capital. Scarosso said other investors include IBB Venture Capital Co. managed ‘Kreativwirtschaft Berlin’, Perikles Ventures and other local angel investors. Scarosso has previously attracted angel funding from Berlin Ventures, Martin Sinner and Michael Brehm. Berlin-based Scarosso is an online luxury shoe brand.

PRESS RELEASE

Scarosso, the online luxury shoe brand, announced today that it has raised Series A funding from a syndicate of leading investors led by DN Capital. DN Capital was joined in the round by IBB Venture Capital Company managed ‘Kreativwirtschaft Berlin’, Perikles Ventures and other local angel investors.
The financing will support the launch of new collections, in particular a new women’s collection designed by Marco Censi and Guillaume Hinfray. It will also allow Scarosso to accelerate the development of its retail operations. After the successful launch of Scarosso’s first store in Hamburg, the company is planning a further opening in Berlin in coming months.
Scarosso was founded in 2010 by Moritz Offeney and Marco Reiter. The business attracted angel funding from Berlin Ventures, Martin Sinner (Idealo GmbH) and Michael Brehm (studiVZ). Scarosso uses its unique relationships with top Italian manufacturers to deliver on its brand promise: offering customers unparalleled design, materials and craftsmanship at honest prices.
CEO Moritz Offeney commented: “The capital we raised gives us a great base to grow our business. It will allow us to expand our product portfolio to include new lines and a new women’s collection. It will allow us to expand our retail operations and international distribution and introduce many more customers to the Scarosso brand. We are delighted to be working with such a strong international partner as DN Capital and are already benefitting from their deep ecommerce experience and network.”
Marco Reiter, Co-Founder and COO added: “This investment will boost our operations and help to ensure that Scarosso can continue to make its customers happy while building a sustainable business”.
Tom Bradley, Partner at DN Capital, commented: “I am delighted to be working with the Scarosso team. They have a great product, a great opportunity and a fantastic instinct for the detail required to succeed in their markets. DN Capital has made several successful investments in Germany in recent years and Scarosso shares the same DNA as some of our other success stories. We hope they will come to dominate their market like our other companies such as MisterSpex and Windeln have done.”

About Scarosso: Exquisite Italian craftsmanship. Shoes and Accessories 100% handmade in Italy. Pure elegance. Understated chic. A unique combination of contemporary and traditional styles to create sleek modern classics. Premium quality leather, elegant shapes and superb workmanship. The vision: To enthuse those only satisfied with the best. Genuine. Honest. Founded in 2010 at the renowned Milan Univeristy Commerciale Luigi Bocconi. Developed from the original business project – Passion for Italian shoes. The exclusive production in established traditional workshops in Montegranaro, a small, picturesque town in the Le Marche region of Italy guarantees the finest quality products. Discerning customers have the unique opportunity to customise their shoes via the online platform Scarosso Studio. Since the launch of the first women’s collection in spring 2012 women can also enjoy the privilege of exclusive, premium quality Italian shoe manufacturing. The company, based in Berlin, now employs more than 30 people and opened its first shop in Hamburg in winter 2012.About DN Capital: DN Capital is a global early stage and growth capital investor in software, mobile applications, digital media and e-commerce companies with offices in London and Palo Alto. DN Capital’s objective is to identify, invest in and actively support its portfolio companies to become global leaders. Portfolio companies include Shazam Entertainment, Apsmart (sold to Thomson Reuters), Endeca Technologies (sold to Oracle), Datanomic (sold to Oracle), Eyeka, Performance Horizon, JacobsRimell (sold to Amdocs), Mister Spex, OLX (sold to Naspers), Airsense Wireless, MPME, Apsalar, Tbricks and windeln.de. The professionals at DN Capital bring over 50 years of private equity experience to their investments, and actively work with portfolio companies to steward their growth through the various stages of development. Additional information about the firm and its portfolio companies can be found at www.dncapital.com.
About IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft: IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft (www.ibb-bet.de) provides venture capital to innovative Berlin enterprises and has established itself as a market leader in the field of early stage financing in the location Berlin. The funds are used primarily for the development and market launch of innovative products or services, as well as for business concepts of creative industries. Currently two of the funds managed by IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft are in the investment phase, the “VC Fonds Technologie Berlin” with a fund size of € 52 million and the “VC Fonds Kreativwirtschaft Berlin” (VC Fund Creative Industries Berlin) with a fund size of € 30 million. Both VC funds are financed by means of the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB) and the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRD) administered by the State Berlin. Since 1997, IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft, in consortia with partners, has made 850 million € available to creative and technology-orientated companies; thereof, the portion invested by IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft itself as lead, co-lead or co-investor was approximately € 116 million.

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Soap actor Dylan Patton was arrested this week in his L.A. home after authorities conducted a raid. The 20-year old had allegedly been selling cocaine from his home; after an undercover cop made a buy, the police swooped in and put him in handcuffs.

Patton is best known for his role as Will Horton on “Days Of Our Lives” and has had a promising acting career, with roles on various television shows such as “Cold Case”. However, that could all be in jeopardy if he gets the book thrown at him. The young star faces up to nine years in prison and is currently being held on $30,000 bond.

“@huffingtonpost: Former ‘Days Of Our Lives’ actor busted for selling cocainehuff.to/17rq2Sb” Sands through the hourglass, ey?

— Sin Gwamanda (@thegwamsta) May 17, 2013

A Soap Star Arrested for allegedly trying to sell $1,500 worth of cocaine. bit.ly/18INeKI

— Rumor Fix (@RumorFix) May 14, 2013

#days #dool Former actor who played Will busted for selling cocaine OMG he was such a nice kid! tmz.com/2013/05/14/dyl…

— DaysCafe(@DaysCafe) May 14, 2013

I blame Taylor Spreitler… RT @tmz: ‘Days of Our Lives’ Actor Dylan Patton BUSTED For Cocaine Sale tmz.me/19owWE6 #Breaking

— Pope Mary Frances (@Asymetricalhomo) May 14, 2013

Computer giant Dell has seen its net profits fall by 79 percent to $130 million in the first quarter of this fiscal year. This highlights the shift in consumer demand away from traditional PCs towards tablets. The company reports a decline of 9 percent in PC sales although revenue from software, services and new technologies was up by 12 percent.

Commenting on the results chief financial officer Brian Gladden says, “We made progress in building our enterprise solutions capabilities in the first quarter and are confident in our strategy to be the leading provider of end-to-end scalable solutions. In addition, we have taken actions to improve our competitive position in key areas of the business, especially in end-user computing, and it has affected profitability”.

Uncertainty surrounds the company thanks to a dispute between founder Michael Dell and two of the biggest shareholders. Michael Dell along with private equity group Silver Lake has offered to buy the company for $24.4 billion and take it private. At the same time promising to shift the business away from PCs towards mobile devices.

However, the biggest shareholders argue that this valuation is too low. They have made a counter proposal to offer new shares to existing shareholders and install new management to run the business.

The company, which Mr Dell started from his college dorm room, was held up as a model of innovation as recently as ten years ago but has since lost ground to cheaper far eastern manufacturers and to makers of mobile hardware. The drop in PC sales should strengthen the case to move the company away from its traditional PC focus.

Photo Credit: Mopic/Shutterstock

Yesterday, French consumer electronics company Archos unveiled a new 8-inch Android tablet called Xenon 80. The fondleslab runs the first Jelly Bean iteration and will cost $199.99 — which is in line with Google’s Nexus 7 pricing — once it arrives in stores next month.

The Xenon 80 features support for 3G cellular connectivity and is SIM-unlocked, meaning that it can be used with any mobile operator in the world (as long as the network runs on the 2100 MHz band). The hardware specifications reflect the budget-oriented approach of the tablet.

Archos packs the Xenon 80 with an 8-inch IPS display with a resolution of 768 by 1024 (4:3 aspect ratio, similar to Apple’s iPads). Inside, there is a 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor backed by an Adreno 203 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and 1 GB of RAM.

The tablet comes with 4 GB of internal storage alongside a microSD card slot which allows to expand the storage capacity by a further 64 GB (for a total of 68 GB). This should suffice for most users’ needs.

There is a 2 MP back-facing camera onboard as well as a “front webcam”, the latter of which suggests that Archos employs a low-end shooter for video conferencing or snapping portraits.

The Xenon 80 features the usual connectivity options such as Wi-Fi; GPS; Bluetooth; 3.5 mm headphone jack; USB 2.0 and an accelerometer. Archos keeps quiet concerning the size of the internal battery, but says that the fondleslab comes in at 213 x 155 x 11.3 mm and 440 grams.

Over the past four years as Jason Aramburu sold kilns, which turn plant waste into bio charcoal, to Kenyan farmers, he became something of an expert on one of the key things that Kenyan farmers lack: data. “There’s very little data anywhere,” says Aramburu, founder and CEO of startup Re:char, over a breakfast interview on Thursday, as Re:char chief technology and resident Maker Luke Iseman nods in agreement.

For example, rural Kenyan farmers can easily spend 30 percent of their income on fertilizer, but 80 percent of that fertilizer can be wasted because there is little data collected about the best places and times to use it. The lack of info isn’t just from the farmer’s perspective. Aramburu says when he met the CEO of a major fertilizer company recently, he asked him what he knew about his customers — his response: “very little.”

A soil data cloud in the sky

The two young entrepreneurs latest project emerged from this black hole of information. Working within French telco giant Orange’s first accelerator program, called Orange Fab, Re:char plans to build a $5 plug-in device, called SoilIQ, for an Android phone that can read the moisture levels in soil. During our interview, Iseman takes a very early prototype of the device out of a pouch and shows me how it plugs into the Android phone and taps into the phone’s computing power to detect moisture levels between two screws.

Down the road such a gadget could be developed to pick up other soil data, like fertilizer-level readings. Iseman, an avid gardener, schools me on NPK — nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium — which he says are the holy grail of fertilizer readings. When SoilIQ is a commercial product, farmers could buy the gadget to take these types of readings, and enhance their farming productivity and the efficiency of their fertilizer use.

But the real value of such a system will likely be in the data collection, and the data analytics and services. The hourly and daily micro readings, which are coded with GPS data, could be used to create a cloud-based location data map of the quality and details of the land. This information could be used to launch data-focused services for both farmers, fertilizers companies, government groups, and others.

Re:char envisions using the data to launch a subscription service for farmers that can alert the farmers to the most fertile land, or even if there’s the danger of crop disease anywhere in the region (maize rot is a huge problem in rural Kenya). Fertilizer companies could use such data to offer better products to farmers, and potentially learn more about the end farmer customer (fertilizer can change hands ten times in Kenya until it reaches the person who will use it, says Aramburu).

Such land data could even be valuable outside of the farming communities. A massive data soil map in the cloud could help determine things like land values, or land ownership issues.

SoilIQ is part internet of things, part sustainability, and part data analytics. The entrepreneurs are actually very focused on developing tools that encourage the more efficient use of resources, which could (and should in my opinion) be the next-generation of cleantech focus.

The core concept also reminds me of what Safecast has been trying to do with its grass roots nuclear radiation sensors and data mapping in Japan. Safecast is bringing that concept to air pollution in L.A., too.

Orange interest

For telco Orange, which has a substantial presence in Kenya, such a system could help them increase mobile data use among customers. The Android devices obviously send the data to the cloud over the cellular networks. And Android phones — as Google announced this week at Google.io — are being used by 900 million people globally.

But potentially even more important is the branding involved. As Orange’s Executive Director of Business Services, Vivek Badrinath, told me in an interview at the Orange Fab event on Monday night, the mobile phone is often times the first branded product that a customer in a developing country has. That brand in turn has a unique ability to transition into offering core services, like mobile banking, and credit.

Orange has a mobile payment system, Orange Money, that is growing nicely and Re:char could plug into it for its planned services. And if SoilIQ becomes a killer app for the bottom of the pyramid, Orange would have a key position in it. Orange is interested enough in Re:char’s new idea that it not only brought the company into its accelerator program, but is investing in its angel round.

Re:char hopes to close an angel round by the end of the program, and later this year raise a series A round. By the end of the three months, Re:char also plans to have its soil moisture-reading gadget developed enough to move it into production.

If you’re a backyard composter or gardener — like Re:charge CTO Iseman — you’re probably wondering if you can get your hands on SoilIQ one day. Aramburu and Iseman tell me that they’d like to make it available in the U.S., too, so the gardening hobbyist could collect their own data.

Clearly, the team is in the very early stages of making SoilIQ, so a lot of their plans will hinge on these next few months. They plan to keep running the kiln bio charcoal business, and think SoilIQ could even help grow that business, too. They also might split the businesses in two down the road.

Ultimately if they can deliver a simple, easy to use, and cheap device, and convince Kenyan farmers to start using it, they could be on their way to unleashing data from Kenya’s rural landscape.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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IObit has announced the public availability of IObit Malware Fighter 2.0, the next generation of its popular anti-malware tool.

The most obvious change this time is the move to a Windows 8-style interface: large tiles, stark black background, and everything happening in a single window, rather than separate dialogs. It looks good, and is easy to use.

Beneath the surface, IObit say the program now includes a “groundbreaking ‘Dual-Core’ anti-malware engine”, which provides “deeper scanning, detection and comprehensive real-time protection”.

If you’re more interested in improvements you can actually see, then there’s a new Cloud Security option, which makes it very easy to run a check on suspicious files. In a click or two you can have Malware Fighter 2.0 uploading a file to the IObit Cloud, an “advanced automated threat analysis system”. A browser window then opens to display its verdict.

The program has a greater focus on ease of use, too. A quick install option helps to accelerate the setup process; the revamped interface is a real improvement; and even if a scan reveals plenty of problems, the new “Fix All” button will resolve them all in a single click.

And IObit Malware Fighter 2.0 apparently now offers “full support for Windows 8”. If you’re running a previous version on Windows 8 already then you might wonder what you’ve been missing, but still, this has to be good news.

Is there a radical change here? The interface looks good and worked well, at least for us, but the key here will be the new engine, and whether it can deliver the benefits IObit claims. We’ll have to see how that works out.

IObit Malware Fighter 2.0 remains compact and relatively lightweight, though, and happily ran alongside other security tools on our test PC, without the slightest conflict. If you’re an IObit fan then it’s worth a look.

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