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Layar Pulled From App Store, Bad News for Augmented Reality

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:27:15 +0000

The company behind the much-hyped Layar Augmented Reality browser has decided to withdraw its iPhone app from the iTunes App Store due to repeated crashes reported by users. Layar has been the most eagerly anticipated entrant yet into the field of AR, a class of technologies that place data from the web on top of a camera view of the physical world. AR has been big this year, from Layar's hyped launch to Yelp's sneaking the first AR app into the iTunes store to Lonely Planet and even McDonalds announcing their own AR apps this week. The field has been plagued with technical difficulties and disappointments so far, though. Layar wrote today on its blog that it doesn't know exactly where the problem with its app is but that it's a memory management issue that's been present since the app was built. Resolution will take weeks, not days, the company says. Sponsor Layar remains available and robust in its Android version. Its primary competitor is probably Wikitude . Of course there are countless AR apps that are available on the iPhone, Android, webcam and other platforms - but Layar has been the most publicly visible AR app yet. It symbolizes the popular vision for AR, which in reality often feels more clunky than demo videos suggest. People who believe the leading examples of AR apps are heavy on hype and light on engineering have another data point now. The current crop of Augmented Reality apps, high-profile map overlays for smartphones like the iPhone, are criticized as lightweight and overhyped by many AR pros that have been working on more heavy-duty applications intended for more technical use. Many of those critics haven't shipped products, though, and Layar has done more than any but a few other companies to extend public awareness of the Augmented Reality concept. Blake Callens, an AR software engineer at the company that created the Webcam Social Shopper , has been very critical of the crop of consumer smartphone AR apps popping up. He's called them "innacurate mobile browsers and web based eye candy". Callens comments aren't directly aimed at Layar, but Layar does symbolize the most visible part of the AR market for many people. "Seriously, hand me a 3D model and I can literally throw it in AR in 5 minutes. It's hardly a 'stunning' example at all," Callens writes "And yet, at least once a week, I see someone else pimping their new, 'totally awesome' AR app that's nothing more than a 3D model dancing around." We like Layar, but as the most high-profile AR app on the market, it doesn't reflect well on the state of the industry for the company to have to pull its app from iTunes. Discuss

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Layar Pulled From App Store, Bad News for Augmented Reality

VC Survey: We’ll Fund Fewer Small Startups Next Year

admin — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:57:57 +0000

The National Venture Capital Association released its annual survey of VC predicitons for next year this morning and it doesn't look good for small startup companies. Though most VCs said they expected more money to be invested next year, most predicted a contraction in the number of firms available to invest, a decrease in seed and early-stage funding and an emphasis on large sums invested in more established companies seeking further growth. That's not good for early-stage innovation, something the Association acknowledges in its published report. Sponsor The survey was based on responses from more than 325 venture capitalists across the United States. 45 percent of respondents predicting growth in Early and Seed stage investments. "Of all the predictions put forth this year, a collective lack of enthusiasm for seed and early stage investing is the most concerning," said Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA. "The weak exit market combined with proposed tax policy which would discourage long term investment puts tremendous pressure on our industry to move towards later stage investing. Yet, seed and early stage companies represent a pipeline that must be supported if our country is to continue building new and innovative companies. We need the environment to improve for these early stage investors." If you're one of those cynics that thinks the VC industry funds too many crazy pointless ideas, then perhaps this reads like good news. If you're a small startup hoping to break into the Silicon Valley insider's club that is VC funding, then this probably isn't good news for you. And if you're an early adopter of new technologies, hungry to see all kinds of innovation change the world and indifferent to the fortunes of investors - then this risk aversion probably isn't good news for you either. Discuss

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VC Survey: We'll Fund Fewer Small Startups Next Year

Top 10 Startup Products of 2009

admin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:00:00 +0000

There were a ton of great products launched in 2009 by big companies and startups alike, but in this post we focus on the best products released by startups. The easiest way to become a leading product in your industry is to meet a need better than anyone else. The following ten have proven themselves with great features, substantial marketplace momentum and, most importantly, a game-changing approach to solving a problem. Sponsor ReadWriteWeb's Best Products of 2009: Real-Time Reference - Aardvark : Reinventing Q&A, ReadWriteWeb covered Aardvark's launch in March 2009 . The service allows users to ask and answer questions through a network of friends via IM, iPhone application, Twitter, email or web interface. Because the system automatically routes questions to people with the right expertise, answers are fairly accurate and there is little need to use the service's flagging system. The company claims that 90% of questions get answered in five minutes or less. Location-based Apps - Foursquare : Launched at SXSW, Foursquare is a location-based social application where users check in on their iPhone at various businesses and compete against their friend network for points. ReadWriteWeb first covered the company's launch in March . Since then they've partnered with Bay Area Rapid Transit and a number of businesses to offer location-based deals to users. iPhone App Recommendation - Appsfire : In a world where iPhones seemed to saturate the earth, Appsfire offers a great way for users to share their favorites. Launched in August, ReadWriteWeb praised the convenience of the iPhone app . Four months after downloading it, many of our RWW teammates are still sharing their apps via the embeddable Appsfire widget and the iPhone application. Real-Time Search - Collecta : If you're interested in finding out the latest info on a particular product, Collecta offers real-time search with a variety of results including blog posts, photos and Twitter and Identi.ca posts. Launched in June, ReadWriteWeb covered the company's release . In September the company released its API to developers . Twitter App Discovery - OneForty : Dubbed the "unofficial Twitter app store" OneForty is a marketplace where Twitter developers add their applications for discovery. End-users can add their reviews and recommendation to be featured on the service's front page. Launched in September, Oneforty breaks down the applications into easy to understand categories and features the most popular apps and recently uploaded apps on the homepage. Next Page: Top 10 Startup Products of 2009 6-10 All-You-Can-Eat Music - MOG All Access : Although MOG has been around as a blogging network for a few years, earlier this month the company launched it's much-anticipated $5 dollar per month streaming music service. The product's unique features include a discovery bar slider where users can play streaming radio and tweak the flow of recommendations to their liking. Coupled with an iPhone app that is promised to encompass offline caching, MOG All Access is a great service rivaled only by close competitor Spotify . Web TV - Clicker : Launched in mid November Clicker is considered the TV Guide for internet television . The company indexes 400,000 full episodes from 7,000 shows and features a DVR-like playlist (including Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon VOD) and integration with Facebook connect. Clicker also has a Boxee app that pulls in metadata for shows, channels and actors. Semantic Search - Evri : Evri is a semantic search engine with a matching algorithm that creates connections between people, products and concepts. Launched in mid-June, ReadWriteWeb first reported the product's ability to distinguish between subjects, verbs and objects to make connections . Conversation Aggregation - JS-Kit's Echo : While JS-Kit has been around for three years, the company' latest product Echo is a better iteration of blog comments. ReadWriteWeb first wrote about the product launch in July . The service allows users to embed a simple line of javascript in their blogs in order to gather a real-time stream of Diggs, Tweets, comments and reactions. Augmented Reality - Layar : ReadWriteWeb readers first got a glimpse of Layar in June . Created by SPRXmobile , the service places images and data on the mobile browser for a new form of location-based augmented reality discovery. In July SPRX released the company's first developer keys for the API and by August it had celebrated an Android release with an iPhone app to follow. The company currently has a gallery with several cool 3rd party applications. Discuss

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Top 10 Startup Products of 2009

Jack Dorsey Talks Square at LeWeb: Wants Dongle to be Available for Free

cgseo — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:23:09 +0000

At the annual LeWeb conference today, Loic LeMeur interviewed Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey about about Square , the mobile payment system that launched as a limited beta in November. While the demo didn't quite work as expected - the Square dongle wasn't able to read Loic's credit card at first - we did learn a few more details about Square. Among other thing, Dorsey plans to launch an API in the future that will allow Square to connect to other financial systems and bookkeeping software. In addition, Dorsey announced that he plans to make the payment dongle available for free. Sponsor According to Dorsey, finance is one of two industries that is ready for a disruption. The other industry is healthcare, though Dorsey doesn't expect that we will see any major technological disruptions in this businesses within the next two years. One of the original ideas for Square was to use the iPhone camera to take a picture of a credit card and then use OCR software to read the data. As Square wants to be able to offer its service on multiple platform, however, the team decided to use a dongle that plugs into and audio jack. The team is currently working on the private beta and also working on building up its security team. As we noted last week, there are still some questions about the viability of this business, though Dorsey is obviously quite upbeat about the future of its new venture. Discuss

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Jack Dorsey Talks Square at LeWeb: Wants Dongle to be Available for Free

8tracks to Launch Playback API and Developer Program

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:00:00 +0000

It appears that the time for freemium music services in the US has passed. Earlier this week streaming music site Imeem sold to MySpace for under $10 million dollars while laying off a large number of staff. For a company with all four major record labels signed, more than 15 million uniques a month and well over 5 million tracks in its catalogue, it came as a sobering blow to the industry. While many companies move to a subscription model, 8tracks continues to forge along in what some describe as a convenient loophole. As of this weekend the company is publicly launching its API for Boston's Music Hack Day . Sponsor Similar to the original concept for Muxtape , 8tracks allows users to trade 30 min (8 track) playlists. But unlike Muxtape, because 8tracks songs are not identified prior to play, the company is treated as an internet radio station. This status as a radio station means that it avoids the high licensing fees plaguing the streaming music sites. While Muxtape was forced to close in 2008, 8tracks continues to thrive. This weekend 8tracks is publicly launching its music playback API in the hopes of leveraging the collective brain power of Music Hack Day attendees. Some of the tools already built using the API that will be demoed include an iPhone player, a player widget for Facebook and a weekly Hype Machine mix . For those interested in getting involved with 8tracks on Music Hack Day, the developer API is available tomorrow at developer.8tracks.com . Discuss

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8tracks to Launch Playback API and Developer Program

Live Blog: The Google Chrome OS Press Event

cgseo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:39:50 +0000

Google has scheduled a press event for 10am PST this morning where the company plans to announce more details about its Linux-based Google Chrome OS . According to the information we received from Google, the company plans to launch Chrome OS next year. We don't expect Google to release an early build of Chrome OS today, but we would be more than happy to be wrong. We do, however, expect to hear more details about the OS and to see a demo of Chrome OS's functionality. Read on for our live updates from the event, which will start at 10am PST. Sponsor 9:55am: Ahead of the event, Google has already made the Chrome OS source code available . 10:00am : Still waiting for the event to begin. "Some of our attendees are unavoidably delayed in traffic." 10:05am: Event gets started. No beta, no devices today. But they will give a demo and focus on technical demo. 10:06am: Google Chrome has been open-sourced. 10:07am: Why did we do Chrome? We wanted to push the web forward. Over 40 million users. Focus on speed. Mostly on the JavaScript engine, but also on other parts of the browser. Updated Chrome over 20 times in the last year, but users don't notice this because it happens in the background. User experience should be seamless. Coming soon for Chrome: Chrome for Mac will be ready this year. Chrome for Linux is coming along "very well." Extensions are coming soon as well (with automatic updates). 10:10am: HTML5: we want web application to get more access to the hardware. Example: graphics; multiple threads; real-time communication 10:12am: 3 trends in the industry: netbooks, cloud (everything is a web application today), phones getting computing capabilities Phones are becoming more like laptops and laptops are becoming more like phones. Chrome OS 10:15am: Chrome OS will be focused on speed, simplicity, security. Every application on Chrome OS will be a web application. Simplicity: Chrome OS is just a browser - all your data is in the cloud. Users should be able to log into any Chrome OS machine and be up and running with their apps and data in seconds. Security: users don't install binaries on the OS. Keeps the system safe. Everything runs in the browser. 10:18am: Demo time. Booting up on laptop takes seconds. "Everybody knows how to use a browser and we want Chrome OS to feel that way. UI will still change until release. Application Tabs : just like tabs in Chrome, you will be able to set persistent tabs for apps (Gmail etc.). App menu on the top left to access apps as well (see first screenshot above). These apps will be little widgets that appear in a panel just like Google Chat in Gmail. 10:23am: As netbooks get better, we expect them to become entertainment devices. Shows chess game. Shows Google Books in full-screen mode. Chrome OS will feature multiple windows. You can drag and drop tabs from one window to another. Even the file browser is a Chrome tab. Shows what happens when you click on an excel file. Actually launches Windows Live Office apps to show them. "Every app you write for the web is a Google Chrome OS app." 10:29am: Every file opens up in the browser: PDF, Micorsoft Office, etc. Under the Hood 10:30am: Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS on stage now. "We want Chrome OS to feel more like a Television." Instant on - all flash memeory. How to make the boot-up faster? Right now, operating systems still spend a lot of time on unnecessary boot steps (looking for floppy drives etc.) 10:34am: Verified Boot: makes sure all the components are working and haven't been modified by malware. System automatically fixes itself and reimages the computer with the last working version - saves all system settings and cache data. Security : all apps are web apps. The OS does not trust any app. Other security steps: files system is licked down, every tab runs in a secure sandbox. There is only a small list of known programs (verified and signed). User data on a Chrome OS machine is ALWAYS encrytped. All the data is synced to the cloud (on the Google Drive?) - user partition on the machine is basically just a local cache. 10:41am: Back to Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management. Going to market: Chrome OS - but also working with hardware manufacturers. Will only support flash drives - not traditional hard drives! Google will specify reference hardware (specific wifi cards etc.). Google wants netbooks with a full-size keyboard, larger resolution, better trackpad. Launch: wants devices to be out by next holiday season. Chrome OS Open Sourced Google wants to work with open source community. Will give all of its contributions back to the community. 10:45am: Showing marketing video. Q&A Question : What is the target group for a Chrome OS device? Will there be Chrome server solutions? Chrome as a server? Answer: First we want to get netbooks out - no servers - but this is a paradigm shift in computer. Other questions: time will tell. Question : Cost of Chrome OS netbooks?> Answer: We will see larger netbooks - no price point - no price target.Demo ran on Asus EEE PC. Question : How can manufacturers join the program? Answer: Documentation on website. Reaching out aggressively to hardware partners. For software developers: there will be a page that shows which devices are compatible already. Question : Will there be an app store? Will Google certify drivers from OEMs? What about applications to edit photos? Answer: App store: the web is our app store and we will work hard on making those discoverable. Drivers: working with hardware partners. Want devices to be build on reference devices and with open source drivers. Editing: some apps are not available on the web. Most people who will buy this machine will have another machine in their home. This is not meant to be a primary OS - just a "delightful experience to be on the Web." This is a companion device Question : What about video codecs? Answer: working on that. Trying to use hardware acceleration where possible. Everything that's available in Chrome will be available in Chrome OS - including the http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/ technology. Sidenote : a lot of what you will see in Chrome OS will also flow back into the Chrome browser. Question : Silverlight support? Answer: No comment. Question : Plugins? Other browsers? Answer: code is available, but we won't support other browsers to run on Chrome OS. Question : Do you expect to see this just running on netbooks or other devices as well? Answer: more info about devices will come next year. Google is currently focused on delivering compelling devices: netbook-like form factors. Question : How big is the OS? Answer: nothing specific. Question : Offline access? Google Gears support? Answer: you can play media - but device mainly meant to run online but will make use of HTML5 local storage. Question : can you run it in a virtual machine? Answer: yes. Question : are you working with partners? Can Android apps run on Chrome OS? Answer: we focus on making web apps better - mission of Chrome is to push web apps forward. About Android apps: no. Question : will there be third-party apps? Answer: no - on phones you need native apps, but not on laptops. Question : Native Client needs Intel - will you still support ARM? Answer: we will support X86 and ARM - working on Native Client for ARM. Question : What's the business model? Advertising in the browser? Answer: Right now, we are focused on getting the OS and devices out. Chrome OS is free and open source. As people use the web more, it benefits Google. No specific real-estate in Chrome OS will be devoted to ads. Question : What does Chrome do that I couldn't do in Firefox with plugins? Answer: most of what we do is available in other browser. But not the application tabs etc. We are offering a fundamentally different model of computing (fast, simple, secure). In Chrome OS, Google can offer things others can't: fast boot, security. Question : How do you get people to trust the cloud? How do you assure people that their data is secure? Answer: most of what you are doing is already in the cloud - so problem is not specific to Chrome OS. Google thinks the cloud is just as secure as local storage. Users have a choice - always in control. Question : data syncing - will this be open or data just controlled by Google? Answer: none Sergey Brin drops in and joins the Q&A. Question : Support for Java? Answer: nothing to announce right now - hopefully we can do something interesting with this in the future. Question : What about instant-on OSes on Dell etc.? Does Google want to do this? Answer: No - we want to just be able to start super fast. A lean and mean netbook. Question : Will a Chrome OS machine be able to run printers? Other devices? Answer: we will support storage devices. Printers: we are taking an innovative approach and share more about that next year. Question : Open Source. Answer: we want to upstream what we do and help the community. Want to collaborate with Question: Real-time notifications. Answer (Sergey Brin): We need better real-time notifications in the browser. Chrome will use the W3C Notifications API. Question (for Sergey): How does Chrome OS fit into Google's strategy. Answer: we want users to be able to use netbooks easily. Make it easy to manage software on these devices. The web is the right platform for this. Trying to fulfull this need. Discuss

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Live Blog: The Google Chrome OS Press Event

The Top 10 Mobile Applications of 2012

cgseo — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:29:32 +0000

Research firm Gartner has just put out a list of the top ten mobile applications of the future. Well, not the distant future, but the far off year of 2012. Nothing on the list is all that surprising or, in many cases, even all that new. Instead, the list includes the sorts of technologies that are just now coming into their own and haven't yet seen widespread adoption as well as the already common technologies that are still experiencing growth. Sponsor For many of the categories on this list, there are a number of mobile apps that are already available today. But what Gartner makes clear is that we're just getting started when it comes to their use. For example, location-based services (LBS) - there still isn't one single app which everyone uses to find each their friends out in the real world via their mobile phones. Instead, we have a number of similar but competing applications all vying to be the Facebook of location-based apps. Another example is money payments - this type of service is having more of an impact in the developing world right now where access to banks is more difficult than here in the Western world where people just want the convenience of paying through their mobiles. When was the last time you paid someone or paid at checkout through your mobile phone? Never? That sounds about right. The List The full list is as follows: Money Transfer: This refers to people sending money via SMS messages. Like mobile payments, this service has more appeal in developing markets for now. However, there may come a time when even using your debit card seems passé, while paying for something with actual cash seems downright ancient. Location-Based Services: As mentioned above, there are still far too many services to choose from when it comes to location-based social networking, fragmenting the market. Your friends on Loopt are often different than those on Brightkite and that list is different than those on Foursquare . But LBS extends to more than social networks - it includes any application that taps into your phone's GPS capabilities to offer up location-based services of any kind, whether that's local business reviews or directions to the nearest Starbucks. Gartner says this will be one of the most disruptive technologies in the future, with a user base growing from 96 million in 2009 to 526 million in 2012. Mobile Search: No, mobile search isn't new, but on the mobile platform, it may get shaken up a bit. Gartner predicts that consumers won't necessarily be sticking with the search services they know and use on the Web (think Google, Bing, Yahoo) and instead experiment with using a few different search providers that have "unique technologies" for mobile search. While that statement is a little vague, it sounds like good news for services like Taptu who have entered this field with search offerings designed from the ground-up for mobile devices. Mobile Browsing: Saying that mobile browsing technologies will be heavily used in the future sounds a little bit like stating the obvious. But as Gartner notes, mobile browsing capabilities currently exist only on 60%+ of handsets today. By 2013, that number will climb to 80%, meaning that those who are still using the app-less,more basic feature phones will still be joining the mobile web in mass numbers over the coming years. That's also good news for web developers who can build mobile web applications to cater to this bunch as opposed to focusing all their efforts into building apps for the numerous mobile platforms like the iPhone, Android, RIM, and others. Mobile Health Monitoring: Another technology whose impact will be felt more heavily in developing markets, mobile health monitoring is still at an early stage of maturity and implementation says Gartner. Project rollouts have been limited to pilot projects for now, but in the coming years the industry will begin to monetize these efforts by offering mobile healthcare monitoring products, services, and solutions to various care delivery organizations. Mobile Payments: Like mobile transfers, mobile payments are more common in developing markets at the moment, but that is quickly changing. Yet even as this type of service grows, Gartner admits there will be challenges. Mobile payments will be a "highly fragmented market" where there will not be "standard practices of deployment," notes the report. That makes it sound like this is one technology that will still need some work, even when 2012 rolls around. Near Field Communications (NFC): More popular in some European and Asian markets than in the U.S., NFC still isn't a standard feature on many of today's phones. That may be about to change, too. In late 2010, Gartner says that NFC-enabled phones will begin to ship in volume, with Asia leading deployments, followed by Europe and North America. Mobile Advertising: Also not new but growing fast, mobile advertising is one of the most important ways to monetize mobile content. Total spending on mobile advertising in 2008 was $530.2 million and it will grow to $7.5 billion in 2012. And mobile advertising will also be used by companies alongside their other campaigns including TV, radio, print, and outdoors. Mobile Instant Messaging: Gartner says that latent user demand and market conditions are conductive to mobile IM's future adoption. It will appeal to developing markets where mobile phones are often the only connectivity device a user owns. But will it be a major app by 2012? It seems that SMS is still the service to beat, especially in the developing world. We'll have to wait and see on this one. Mobile Music: Sure, you have the iPhone, but what about your other options? What about mobile music services - especially those for non-iPhone devices? We're still waiting on Spotify in the U.S., for example, and their competition too. Gartner says that we're beginning to see new innovative models in this area that will include both device (think "Comes with Music") and service bundles. What's Missing? A glaring omission from this report is that of Augmented Reality. Gartner had even placed this technology on their " Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2009 " report earlier this year . Do they not think that AR will have a major impact by 2012? Considering that's only a little over a year away, it could just be too soon for AR to see the widespread adoption that we hoped it would have by then. Or it's possible that - as some have suspected - AR is simply a "cool" way to see and interact with the world around you, but hasn't produced any "must-have," highly useful applications just yet. For example, seeing AR views of local businesses and user recommendations is fun, but is it a markedly better experience than using a service like Yelp ? For many, that answer today is "no." AR needs to grow out of being an technology you use "because you can" to one you use "because you have to." Until it's the best option to perform a particular task, it may not make Gartner's next list, either.