Category: News

If you’ve been enjoying Google’s augmented reality game, Ingress, you’ll soon have the chance to invite some buddies to join the fun. The Ingress profile on Google+ has announced that all players over level 2 will be getting some invites to hand out to friends, which is great news for everyone. So if you’re already playing, get some friends on board. If you haven’t gotten an invite yet, now’s your chance to start bugging your buddies for one.

source: Google Plus

Come comment on this article: Ingress players level 2 and up begin receiving extra invitation codes

Ed tech entrepreneurs are getting yet another startup accelerator to choose from, but this one has a very specific focus: gaming.

At the NewSchools Summit on Wednesday, social gaming giant Zynga and NewSchools Venture Fund said they are partnering up for an entrepreneurship program to support startups developing learning games and apps.

Zynga will host the startups at its San Francisco office, where they’ll be able to interact with game designers and product managers, and Zynga.org, the company’s nonprofit arm, has committed $1 million for the first year.

“Through the efforts of Zynga.org, we’ve shown that social games can impact peoples’ lives for the better,” said Ken Weber, executive director of Zynga.org. “[With NewSchools], we want to help entrepreneurs create high quality, scalable learning games that will enhance learning experiences for all 21st century students.”

The announcement comes during something of a boom time in ed tech. Since the start of the year, a handful of other accelerators have also launched targeting education startups. And, according to CB Insights, education technology companies raised $1.1 billion in 2012.

The first cohort of the Zynga- and NewSchools-backed program will start this summer and include learning gaming apps Kidaptive, LocoMotiveLabs and Motion Math. Education social network Edmodo will join the cohort as a charter partner.

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IDC has released their numbers for tablet market share in the first quarter of 2013, and it looks great for Android tablets. In the first three months of the year, 27.8 million Android tablets were shipped, up 247% from Q1 last year. The 27.8 million tablets also happen to make up 56.5% of all tablets shipped during the quarter, snagging the top spot from Apple. Apple’s share dipped to 39.6%, which is almost a 20% decline in market share from the previous year. While Apple didn’t ship less tablets, (they actually shipped almost 8 million more than they did in Q1 2012) there was a significant boon in the tablet market compared to last year, and a ton of those tablets ran Android.

Obviously, this just represents one quarter of this year, which a small slice of the pie. Android tablets have a ways to go, especially in popularity and app selection, before they can really penetrate the tablet market the way Android has done with phones. Still, though, grabbing up over half of an entire market in a quarter is a huge step in the right direction.

source: IDC

Come comment on this article: Android tablets pull ahead in Q1 2013, running on 56.5% of all tablets shipped

In what is definitely a huge oversight on Google’s part, the Glass software has no built-in lockscreen function. Obviously it can be assumed that there will be many changes before the rumored Spring 2014 release date since it’s a Beta product, but the problem remains for now.

Developer Mike DiGiovanni didn’t want to risk having his contacts and personal information easily swiped so he set about doing Google’s job for them, and Bulletproof was born. In a post on Google+ DiGiovanni explains its function saying, “Use combinations of swipes and taps on the side touchpad to unlock your device. The app knows when Google Glass is off your head and locks the device only at that point.” Pretty handy, and very useful. Click past the break to see it in action.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As Google Glass has no way of installing apps natively, you’ll have to push the app to the device over adb. DiGiovanni’s source is open source under the Apache 2.0 license and can be downloaded from Github.

Source: Google+
Via: Phandroid

Come comment on this article: Bulletproof is a 3rd Party Application That Brings A Much-Needed Lockscreen to Google Glass

T-Mobile’s version of the Sony Xperia Z seems to have passed through the FCC according to multiple documents and pictures.  Internal and external pictures are included, as well as a detailed user manual which gives away the model, carrier association, and also points out that the phone will feature WiFi calling.  The documents show that there will be an inclusion of AWS LTE (band 4) and pentaband HSPA+.

It won’t be long before T-Mobile officially announces the phone’s release to the public.

Check the pictures and documents out for yourself at the source link below.

Source: FCC
Via: Engadget

Come comment on this article: T-Mobile Sony Xperia Z with LTE passes through FCC

Continue reading…

Back on January 8th at T-Mobile’s CES press event, the company announced a new partnership with Major League Baseball.  Until now, the two companies were relatively quiet about what this deal would come to mean for customers.  Today, T-Mobile proudly announced that it will be offering MLB.com At Bat 2013 for free in the Google Play Store through June 30th.

The well-known app features all-season access to a free MLB.TV streaming Game of the Day, access to live home and away radio broadcasts of games, highlights, scores, and other updates.

Unfortunately, there is no refund available for users who purchased the app before May 1, and the app isn’t available to Windows Phone and Blackberry (who?) customers.  Die-hard and casual fans alike should dive in a take the opportunity— the total value of the promotion is a whopping $19.99.

Check out the link to the app in the Play Store after the break.

Play Store Download Link

Here’s the full press release from T-Mobile:

MLB.com At Bat App Free Beginning May 1

To celebrate T-Mobile as the Official Wireless Sponsor of Major League Baseball, we are offering FREE access to the official app of Major League Baseball, MLB.com At Bat® 13 ($19.99 value). Beginning May 1 to June 30 T-Mobile customers can download the MLB.com At Bat 13 application from Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. This season-long access will provide customers with:

Free live MLB.TV streaming Game of the Day
Access to live home and away radio broadcasts from around the league
Highlights, scores, and more from the day’s games around the league

Offer Requirements

Offer only available May 1 – June 30.
Offer is available to new and existing customers.
Must be on the T-Mobile network to initially download the app to meet validation requirements.
Offer is available for download from Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Compatible devices include:
Android phones and tablets (OS 2.2 or later).
iPhones and iPads 3GS/4/4S/5, (iOS 5.0 or later).
MLB.com At Bat is released every year for the new baseball season. This offer provides full access to the 2013 MLB season only.

Restrictions

App is not available for Windows Phone devices; Offer is not available for Blackberry devices.
Offer not available to customers who previously purchased the MLB.com At Bat app prior to May 1.
Not available for download on Wi-Fi or while roaming.
After download and registration, you may access the app over Wi-Fi.
MLB.TV and/or additional in-app purchases are not included in this offer

Come comment on this article: T-Mobile offers MLB.com At Bat 2013 for free through June 30th

People are now watching more than 6 billion hours of video a month on YouTube, the Google-owned video service announced on its blog Wednesday afternoon. That’s  twice as much as just a year ago: In May 2012, YouTube announced that its viewers were watching three billion hours of videos a month. In August, that number had grown to four billion hours.

From the announcement blog post:

“We recently announced that YouTube hit an incredible milestone of 1 billion unique monthly visitors, connecting 15 percent of the planet to the videos they love. And those global fan communities are watching more than 6 billion hours of video each month on YouTube; almost an hour a month for every person on Earth and 50 percent more this year than last.”

Less than two months ago, YouTube announced that its site now gets frequented by more than one billion unique visitors a month.

YouTube announced the new milestone in conjunction with the Newfronts in New York, where various online video services are showing new shows to advertisers.

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Earlier today, AT&T and LG announced the Optimus G Pro smartphone, the next great flagship device to battle for true supremacy. So it’s only fitting that LG showcases its newest toy at its Share The Genius event here in New York City, where it is giving an opportunity for a handful of folks to test drive the newest device before it arrives in stores next week. With an incredibly thin profile, stunning 5.5-inch HD display, Snapdragon quad-core processor clocked at a whopping 1.7GHz and a customized version of Android 4.1.2— the Optimus G Pro certainly looks the part of a topnotch device. But alas, as we all know— it’s not about how the device looks— it’s all about how the device operates and feels during real-time usage. So hit the break to check out or hands-on and get a feel of the Optimus G Pro in action.

This is LG’s second attempt at a phablet-type device. The first one which was Verizon’s Intuition, had a fairly bulky profile, uninspired corners and was not comfortable to hold in the hand. LG realizes that the 5-inch+ device market is certainly growing at a rapid pace, so it had its designers and engineers go back to the drawing board in order to conjure up a more aesthetically appealing design for a new and improved device. Despite the Optimus G Pro being an evolved version of the original Optimus G smartphone, there are some noteworthy improvements to mention. The Optimus G Pro features a plastic-type of material that is not only smooth, but has a nice shiny finish throughout the device, while the front of the device allows the gorgeous IPS HD display to steal the show as it takes over much of the bezel real estate and all. The front of the device features the standard back and multitasking buttons, while there is a also large home button crammed in between the soft buttons, taking a cue from Samsung’s Galaxy line of devices. Around the device, there are the usual assortment of ports and outputs like the headphone-out and microSD-out.

Software-wise, LG is certainly taking some steps to show that it is out to ensure a better and more personalized smartphone experience by implementing an improved UI. Slightly disappointing is the inclusion of Android 4.1.2, but LG does does in the latest version of its UI software, which operates in a buttery-smooth manner. While the device includes standard Jelly Bean goodies like Google Now— the real kicker is the inclusion of custom LG software like QSlide, which allows you to watch a video while operating another app and VuTalk, which allows for a collaboration of notetaking between multiple Optimus G Pro users. All-in-all, this looks to be the start of a major turnaround from a seemingly underwhelming brand and who knows, maybe the Optimus G Pro will give the upcoming Galaxy Note III a run for its money.

The device is available for pre-order from this Friday, May 3rd and will be available for $199.99. Additionally, it will be available in all stores on May 10th.

Come comment on this article: Hands on with the AT&T Optimus G Pro smartphone

When illustrator/storyteller Oliver Jeffers and animator/woodworker Mac Premo get together, sketchbooks travel 60,000 miles, suitcases wander the streets of Brooklyn and sandwiches are skewered with bows and arrows.

Jeffers and Premo created the opening video for TED2013 — and its star,  the TED Machine. The TED Machine works like a schedule board in an old train station — with panels that reveal, with each new flip, the names of the 72 speakers and performers at TED2013 in squiggly handwriting. In the video above, the machine comes to life in stop-motion animation, revealing a magical world filled with ukelele strumming and changing backdrops. At TED2013, the video — which has a homespun charm a bit different from TED’s regular polished punch — elicited the kind of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ normally reserved for fireworks displays.

On Monday, New York creative types crowded the workshop space of Manhattan’s 14th Street Apple Store for an evening with Jeffers, Premo, and TED’s  Design Director Mike Femia, for a conversation about building the machine and where to find the best trash in the city. During the event, Jeffers and Premo revealed how they met (at summer camp); what they do when they’re not making art (they make hot dogs text); and how they pitched their idea for the TED machine.

Being asked to create the TED2013 opening sequence was nerve-wracking, Premo told the crowd, but he and Jeffers knew it would be a great opportunity to stretch their creative muscles. “TED is the most intellectually-stimulating blitzkrieg in the world,” he said. “And we had to make a film that encapsulates it.”

So they set out to build the TED Machine by doing what they do best: Premo taking on the woodwork and Jeffers creating a collage — something they had to physically attach to the 72 rotating “name bumpers” on the machine, because as Premo said, “We needed the things to turn.”

In the end, filming took five days (note: this is a 72-second long video!) and even included a trip to Coney Island in 7 degree weather.

Femia explained what drew the design team at TED to Premo and Jeffers in the first place — they were impressed by the hand-painted wooden map that the two had created for TED Prize winner JR to track his Inside Out project. The piece eventually became a landmark of the design for the 14-city TED Worldwide Talent Search.

“The moment before talks start at a TED conference is very dramatic,” Femia explained. “People are settling into their chairs; the lights are getting dim. We asked ourselves, ‘How could we make it special?’”

Femia said he knew Premo and Jeffers were right for the job because of their ability to tell a story with their art. “What I like about their work,” Femia said, “is that it’s explanatory — it celebrates the process, the messiness, the dirtiness.”

I don’t want to awaken the ire of any committed pet owners — because I think you can do whatever you want with your pets (and your money) — but I would be lying if I said I didn’t cringe a little bit when I hear about extreme pet products and services like doggie treadmills, pet psychiatrists or pet fitness centers and the like.

In a quick conversation behind the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, an unofficial, unscientific, non-statistically sound poll indicated that “if you don’t have time to walk your dog and need to outsource that to a health club…maybe you just shouldn’t have a dog.”

I concur with those results.

Still, I came across FitBark on the floor of the Hardware Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 and while it could, at first, seem “extreme” I found that after talking to these guys and hearing their explanation, their little device actually seems pretty reasonable.

What is the FitBark? From a technological standpoint, it is a wearable accelerometer that you put on your dog’s collar to monitor their activity. In most ways the product is very similar to products like the Nike Fuel + Band or the FitBit, however the strategy behind it — and this is the reasonable part — is quite different.

FitBark is not designed to be a performance indicator or weight loss utility or competitive device for animals. Instead, it’s just an activity monitor so loving pet owners can make sure their dogs are getting enough activity.

How it works is that, as the dog moves about, their activity is captured and stored on the device (up to three weeks of data can be stored).

Whenever the FitBark comes into the proximity of the owners iPhone’s or optional homebase unit — via Bluetooth 4 or Wi-Fi — the data is transferred off of the FitBark, passed through the FitBark app on the iPhone and transferred up to the cloud where that data is stored.

The historical data can then be visualized on any of the iOS devices that are allowed to view the data. In this way, dog owners can have real-time info about the pet’s activity.

Another hint that the FitBark is reasonable is their one-time pricing model. There are no ongoing monthly service fees or memberships required. You buy the hardware device upfront ($99 from their Kickstarter page), and you get the data it produces for free. I”’m guessing they have worked their data hosting costs into the hardware price.

In this way, it really seems like a tool for care and not a stingy racket for recurring fees.

I’m not sure this is a product I myself would ever use, as I tend to think dogs are evolutionarily equipped to survive living in what James Brown would call “a man’s world.” However I can see how loving, caring and yes, reasonable pet owners might like to see this data about their dogs. Because of that, the FitBark seems like a useful piece of hardware.

I/O starts two weeks from today, and Google wastes no time whetting developer interests. Yesterday, the search and information giant revealed new Google+ Sign-In benefits. Today there are changes regarding “packaged apps”. Surely the big stuff will wait for the keynote, which takes place on a single day this year, but expect more like last two days beforehand.

“Starting today Chrome packaged apps will be available in the Chrome Web Store for anyone on Chrome’s developer channel on Windows and Chrome OS”, Amanda Bishop, Google product manager, says. “You will notice that the App category now contains only the new Chrome packaged apps. A new category, called Websites, contains all existing hosted apps and legacy packaged apps“. She tempts me to change Chrome channels, but I’ll wait. And you?

Packaged apps are what make Chrome a viable platform alternative, whether usurping operating systems like Windows or running on Google’s browser-based Linux. Unlike other Web apps, packaged ones are capable of running just fine offline. Third-party packaged app 500px, designed with Chromebook Pixel in mind, is good example of what can be accomplished. Weather Bug is another.

In May 2011, I called Google’s browser and operating system the ghost of Netscape that haunts Microsoft: “Enter Chrome or Chrome OS as platform for web apps connected to Google cloud product/services like Apps, Calendar and Gmail”. Like Netscape, Google seeks to make the browser, running on whatever OS, its own development platform. Web apps are start. Packaged apps are better, running in Chrome on or offline.

Google still has a long way to go. For April, Net Applications puts Chrome global browser usage share at 16.35 percent — that’s four months of consecutive declines and down from 19.58 percent in May 2012. Internet Explorer: 55.81 percent. To clarify, contrary to NetApps statements, its numbers measure usage share, not market share. The difference is significant because people may use multiple browsers.

“If you’ve written a packaged app, or are working on one, now is a great time to get some early feedback and polish your app before Chrome packaged apps become more broadly available”, Bishop says.

They won’t stay in the developer channel forever. Chrome 26 is stable, 27 beta and 28 developer. Someone correct me if I’m mistaken, but if you move up channel you can’t easily go back until the next stable release. Conceptually then, packaged apps are just two versions from public release. Chrome 27 could drop any day, based on recent releases, unless Google holds back for its developer conference.

There are currently three packaged app sessions planned for Google I/O 2013, one the first day and two on the third.

MapR didn’t miss the memo about the key to success in the Hadoop space being the creation of a data platform that can do many things. And on Wednesday, the company released its take on HBase, called M7.

Last week, I explained how HBase is fast becoming the star of the Hadoop ecosystem because it allows users to build more real-time, almost transactional applications on top of Hadoop. True to its form with its other products, MapR has taken HBase even further with M7 by promising greater availability (99.999 percent), instant recovery, faster operations and the ability to handle 1 trillion tables in a single cluster. In open source versions of HBase, MapR VP of Marketing Jack Norris told me, the accepted table limit per cluster is several hundred.

Additionally, M7 shares a single data layer with the Hadoop file system, meaning less performance overhead and, presumably, easier management.

As we’re seeing with other Hadoop vendors, including Cloudera (which released its Impala SQL query engine on Tuesday), the Hadoop market is fast becoming one where each vendor is trying to set itself apart from the rest by building the best platform with the broadest set of capabilities. In furtherance of that mission, MapR also announced on Wednesday full-text search on its Hadoop distribution thanks to a partnership with Lucene specialist LucidWorks. It already has its own Hadoop distribution complete with proprietary code to bolster the file system and speed up MapReduce, as well as an open source SQL-on-Hadoop project called Drill in the works.

MapR employees are probably sleeping a lot easier these days as a result of this platform push. Others in the Hadoop market used to talk about the fear of fragmentation and then point at MapR as the example of a company helping foment that outcome with its proprietary software. Now, however, even if everyone else is building open source products, they’re all still backing their own and largely dismissing the others.

I suspect the result is feature lock-in even there’s no technological lock-in, kind of like using Amazon Web Services for cloud computing and then hoping to replicate its various servies elsewhere. It might be easy enough to move your data, but impossible or very difficult to replicate those additional capabilities elsewhere. If MapR can build a better version of HBase and companies are willing to pay for it, then so be it.

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Satyandra Gupta apparently loves birds so much he decided to build one. His skills as a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland probably didn’t hurt in his quest, and this week he announced the Robo Raven is now a reality. The robotic avian can dive and roll and looks so realistic that other birds have attacked it in flight.

Developing the robot bird was a decidedly start-and-stop affair. Over the course of eight years, design flaws caused incapacitating crashes in each iteration of the robot. 2007 saw the first successful flight by a prototype with simultaneously flapping wings. By 2012, Gupta and colleagues had succeeded in developing a model that could flap its wings independently. For the robot, at least, simultaneous wing-flapping was a drawback. Engineering independent wing-flapping behavior was time-consuming, and also made the robot heavier.

The Robo Raven has two motors that are coupled to coordinate the movements between the two wings. It can be programmed with arbitrary flight patterns, as can be seen in the video below. To compensate for the additional weight of a bigger onboard battery and microcontroller, the robotics team used lightweight 3D printed parts for the body. Aerodynamic optimization allowed the Robo Raven to reproduce observed flight behavior of real birds.

Like quadcopter drones, the future of flapping wing micro air vehicles may lie in surveillance, or in just looking really really cool.

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DW Healthcare Partners (DWHP), a healthcare-focused private equity firm with offices in Toronto, Ontario and Park City, Utah, has made an undisclosed investment in Med-Pharmex Inc.of Pomona, California. Med-Pharmex is focused on pharmaceutical research, formulation, and manufacturing in the animal health industry, and operates three manufacturing facilities. DWHP is currently investing its third fund, closed at $265 million in February 2013.

PRESS RELEASE:

DW Healthcare Partners (DWHP), a healthcare-focused private equity firm, is pleased to announce an investment in Med-Pharmex, Inc. of Pomona, California. Med-Pharmex offers pharmaceutical research, formulation, and manufacturing in the animal health industry. Med-Pharmex’s veterinary pharmaceuticals include products for companion animals, such as dogs, cats, and horses, and food-producing animals, such as cattle, swine and poultry. The company operates three manufacturing facilities and is committed to the continued development of newer products, and to serving the veterinary community with a complete line of quality generic products at a reasonable cost.

“Our partnership with DW Healthcare Partners will allow us to take advantage of some exciting growth opportunities,” said Gerald Macedo, CEO of Med-Pharmex. “The financial stability and flexibility now available to us through DWHP’s investment in our company, will enable us to move forward with our acquisition and product development plans.”

DWHP’s investment in Med-Pharmex, Inc. marks another partnership within the private equity firm’s recently-established third healthcare fund.

Andrew Carragher, Co-founder and Managing Director stated, “We are very pleased to have this opportunity to partner with Gerry and his talented team. Med-Pharmex is uniquely positioned within the animal health market. It will provide us with a stable platform that can be further leveraged as new products are added to the portfolio, via internal research and development, product acquisitions, and strategic manufacturing partnerships.”

Learn more about Med-Pharmex by visiting: www.med-pharmex.com

About DW Healthcare Partners

DW Healthcare Partners is a private equity firm focused exclusively on the healthcare industry. The firm manages over $500 million in committed capital and invests in profitable healthcare companies with proven management teams. DW Healthcare Partners is led by seasoned healthcare executives with more than 110 years of combined industry experience. The firm provides the capital, strategic guidance, and acquisition expertise to help mid-stage companies realize their potential for growth. For more information, please visit: www.dwhp.com.

DWHP is currently seeking investment opportunities for its third fund which represents $265 million of committed capital.

CONTACT: Andrew Carragher, DW Healthcare Partners, [email protected] ; (416) 583-2421

SOURCE: DW Healthcare Partners

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A former employee of electric car company Coda Automotive has filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the automaker conducted mass layoffs in December 2012 without giving workers 60 days notice. The lawsuit is the second alleged WARN Act violation filed against an electric car startup this year, following a lawsuit against Fisker Automotive last month, and is the third high profile alleged violation against a cleantech company, following Solyndra’s lawsuit in late 2011.

In the suit against Coda Automotive, former employee Tony Bulchack says that Coda laid off 125 employees around December 14, 2012. The complaint says that these workers weren’t given 60 days notice of the planned layoffs in writing. Now that Coda has filed for bankruptcy, the suit was filed in the bankruptcy court.

I’ve embedded the complain below:

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