VentureBeat |
- Jobs in the Cloud: How online freelancing is changing the bootstrap atmosphere
- Google+ iPhone app gets Hangouts video chat and more
- Comcast’s new AnyPlay service streams live TV to your iPad
- Paul Carr’s next move? A new startup backed by former TechCrunch boss Michael Arrington
- Exempt vs non-exempt: How to avoid a Groupon-style class action lawsuit
- Get paid for your spare parking spots with Parking Panda
- Kindle Tablets coming? Amazon sets press event for Sept. 28
- The DeanBeat: The video game industry’s grudge matches
- Mintigo reads your customer code to find leads, gets $9M from Sequoia Capital
- Blockbuster’s new streaming service is lame, only for Dish subscribers
- Beyond Moneyball: How biosensors are already changing sports today
- Centzy crowdsources price info for local comparison shopping
- New York City subways to get cell service starting Tuesday
- Diablo 3 release date is in early 2012, more beta keys going out
- iPhone 5 may see shipment delays due to faulty touchscreens
- Xtium raises $11.5M to expand pay-as-you-grow virtual private cloud services
- Google dresses up its Product Search page
| Jobs in the Cloud: How online freelancing is changing the bootstrap atmosphere Posted: 24 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT
“Maverick26 helped me through the process,” says Kneer. “Maverick26 helped me get the test app and revisions onto my iPad and showed me some video updates so that I was assured the project was coming along. In the end I’m probably working 50 percent faster in the field and once my inspection is finished, I’m finished. Report generated. The app has paid for itself in one day.” Affordable help for small businessesThis is one of thousands of stories coming out of Freelancer.com, an Australian company that connects entrepreneurs and companies to engineers and developers who can tackle technical jobs ranging from app development to logo creation. Cloud-based employment providers are making it possible for small businesses to build a global team on a shoestring budget. The concept isn’t just realistic, it’s going mainstream. Freelancer.com reports $100 million in user earnings and says the service has saved businesses $1 billion in equivalent skilled labor costs in industrialized economies. “We empower entrepreneurs and small business owners to turn their ideas into reality,” says Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie during a phone interview with VentureBeat. “We also deliver technical jobs to emerging economies. Freelancers gain reputation, like a page rank in Google, and can make $1 million a year at the top of the list.” The largest outsourcing nations are the United States (40 percent) and United Kingdom (ten percent), according to Freelancer.com. The biggest freelancing nations are India (34 percent) followed by the United States (11 percent). The top five projects are PHP, website design, graphic design, data entry and copywriting. A good option in a bad economyThe opportunity for growth in the global freelance market is massive, as evidenced by the competition between freelance employment market providers like Freelancer.com and Elance, a similar company. One thing both companies agree on is even with global economic struggles, it has never been a better time to start a business. “Today, a lot of the things you need to build a business, the infrastructure, are free,” says Barrie. “The software that isn’t free is cheap. If you don’t know how to put this all together you can use freelancers to do so cheaply. You can fund a company for $20,000 or bootstrap with nothing.” “Lean startups love the cloud,” Elance CEO Fabio Rosati explains to VentureBeat. “Now you are able to build your team with a human cloud. You are able to find and engage talent online. It was a trend pioneered in Silicon Valley, but it’s taking off everywhere.” Six hundred thousand jobs are posted each year on Elance, which emphasizes cloud lingo more than Freelancer.com. This month Elance released a report indicating 83 percent of businesses plan to hire at least 50 percent of their workers online in the next 12 months, and nearly half of all businesses plan to make 90 percent of their hires online. The Elance survey also revealed that a degree from a top university is not a top hiring consideration for online professionals — only one percent of businesses indicated it as a top hiring consideration. None of the businesses cited age as the most important criteria for hiring and only two percent said location was important. Elance CEO Rosati says using the cloud to tap into freelance power does two significant things for companies and entrepreneurs: One, they have the flexibility to scale up and down quickly, and two, they have speed. “Suddenly, a recruiting process that has taken days and sometimes weeks to fulfill is happening in a few hours and sometimes within minutes,” says Rosati. The challenges facing online employment servicesThe first challenge Elance, Freelancer.com and other online employment companies face is transforming the way people think about freelancing. Specifically, why should you go global when there freelancers are available locally? Rosati says the transformation is similar to the way consumers have changed the way they shop: People love to visit their local bookstore, but they are now more likely to visit Amazon.com to buy a book. Once the hurdle of freelance adoption is removed, the issue of outsourcing to talent in developing countries is bound to raise new ones. Are these online employment services undercutting local talent who charge far higher rates? If U.S.-based designers and developers don’t yet have an opinion of online employment companies, they soon will. Issues raised by local freelancers could put a microscope on laws regulating freelance pay scales. This is a new era of freelancing, and it may call for new regulation. But let’s not worry about that, yet. Currently the biggest challenge online employment companies face is pricing competition. Companies like Elance and Freelancer.com are going after the same talent pools and trying to attract the same entrepreneurs to use their services. The reputations of these companies, and the freelancers they provide, are critical to grow and maintain. “Reputation is the most valuable long-term investment for a freelancer, and most freelancers establish their reputation by going above and beyond to provide exactly what businesses need,” says Freelancer.com’s Barrie. He says the 1.2 million jobs posted on Freelancer.com to date are a testament to that reputation. “As a business owner for over 25 years, I have seen a massive change in how business is done, especially with the boom of the internet,” says Todd Kersey, CEO and President of Bass Online, a global fishing outfitter based in Florida. Kersey used Freelancer.com to contract a man named Amit for design work. “We did not know Amit from Adam or Eve on Freelancer,” says Kersey. “But while we are comfortably sleeping in the U.S. we are able to have great guys like Amit out-working our competition.” Filed under: cloud, VentureBeat        
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| Google+ iPhone app gets Hangouts video chat and more Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:21 PM PDT
Google announced the new features earlier this week, when it unveiled an updated version of its Google+ Android app. And with the iPhone app, Hangouts has instantly become the best way to perform group video chats across the desktop and mobile devices. (Add another notch to Hangouts’ collaboration prowess.) Just like the Android app, Google has renamed its Huddles group messaging feature on the Google+ iPhone app to Messenger. As we reported earlier this week, Google was forced to rename Huddles because a UK collaboration startup already had global rights to the name. Additionally, you can easily mention users in posts and comments in the iPhone app, as well as easily +1 comments. Google finally opened up its fledgling social network to public signups earlier this week. Surprisingly, the company hasn’t really marketed the fact that Google+ is open now, but I suspect we’ll see more of a push in coming weeks. Filed under: mobile, social, VentureBeat        
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| Comcast’s new AnyPlay service streams live TV to your iPad Posted: 23 Sep 2011 04:24 PM PDT
The service, called AnyPlay, will compete with similar offerings from rival companies Cablevision and Time Warner. Presumably, AnyPlay is a separate service that doesn’t replace Comcast’s Xfinity TV streaming service. AnyPlay lets Comcast subscribers view live TV from an iPad, provided that the device is connected to a Motorola wifi router supplied by the company. The Motorola router apparently just shifts the video watching experience you’d typically have on a TV and reroutes it to your iPad. AnyPlay won’t work on other wifi connections or wireless networks. According to the report, the AnyPlay service lets you register up to 10 different tablets, but you can’t watch live TV concurrently on two iPads at the same time — (a limitation that isn’t exactly implied by a service called Anyplay). Comcast hasn’t made an official announcement about AnyPlay, which means we don’t know when it will begin rolling out to subscribers. Mostly this feature seems like a dud and nothing to get excited about. I don’t quite understand why anyone would want to watch live television from a 10-inch screen with limited battery life when they are sitting comfortably at home with an available TV set at their command. Feel free to disagree with me in the comment section below. Image via MacRumors Filed under: media, mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Paul Carr’s next move? A new startup backed by former TechCrunch boss Michael Arrington Posted: 23 Sep 2011 03:50 PM PDT
Carr resigned from TechCrunch last week after a conflict with the publication’s parent company AOL over the firing of Arrington. At the time, Carr said he didn’t have any specific plans for the future, but the move to start a company is hardly surprising considering his experience and personal ties with his former boss (Arrington). “Having Michael's backing through CrunchFund is awesome for two reasons. First, I love working with him and am really happy to have the opportunity to do so again so soon after the whole TechCrunch/AOL debacle,” Carr wrote in the post. “And second, half of the money in the CrunchFund comes from AOL. I mean — ha! AOL!” While Carr didn’t disclose what the company would be doing, he did reveal that it deals with subject that he’s written about “passionately” in the past for both TechCrunch and U.K. newspaper The Guardian. According to a Business Insider report, the new company will focus on a specific problem at the intersection of technology and media. Carr said he plans to document the experience of creating a company in a weekly “startup diary” that will appear weekly in The Guardian. Financial information about the seed funding for Carr’s new startup was not disclosed. Arrington’s CrunchFund raised $20 million in September 2011 from AOL, Accel Partners, Austin Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, the founding partners of Andreessen Horowitz, each of the general partners of Benchmark Capital, Ron Conway, Yuri Milner & Kevin Rose. Filed under: deals, media, VentureBeat        
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| Exempt vs non-exempt: How to avoid a Groupon-style class action lawsuit Posted: 23 Sep 2011 02:45 PM PDT
It is not surprising that Groupon is being tagged for not complying with the wage and hour laws — these types of "wage and hour" class action disputes are some of the most common labor and employment lawsuits out there. Groupon itself correctly notes that the lawsuit is "similar to the class-action lawsuits filed against Cisco, Salesforce, Nortel and countless others.” The fact that these troubles are so common is why entrepreneurs and small businesses should educate themselves on how to classify employees. It could prevent legal issues down the road. The difference between exempt and non-exemptMany companies don't understand when to properly classify employees as exempt versus non-exempt, and consequently whether to pay overtime. Most think all you have to do to avoid paying overtime is make an agreement with the employee to pay them on a salary basis. While a salary basis test is part of the requirement to make an employee exempt from overtime, that is just a small part of the analysis. Startups are particularly susceptible to this, as staffing is constantly in flux, employees work long hours, and entrepreneurs are still learning the ropes as they go. “Exempt” is shorthand for "exempt from the obligation to pay overtime." The most common mistake companies make is to jump on the all-employees-are-exempt bandwagon. Not only do companies do this to avoid paying overtime, but they can also avoid certain recordkeeping requirements and minimize the administrative burden associated with tracking overtime. It's no wonder that employers want an all-exempt workforce. The reality is that employees can't be randomly designated as exempt; they have to satisfy certain challenging criteria. Professional, executive and administrative workers, as well as outside salespeople on commission, may be exempt from earning overtime. However, there are numerous factors and complex nuances involved. For example, tech companies may be surprised to learn that software engineers don't typically fit into the professional, executive and administrative exemption, and they are almost always hourly workers entitled to overtime pay. Can't we all just get along?Although some companies deliberately misclassify employees, many find themselves out of compliance simply because they're unclear on the rules — an easy and extremely common mistake (though not always to the degree claimed). The federal government tacitly acknowledges this confusion; U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is currently working on new regulations to make the exemptions clearer. At startups, entrepreneurs and their employees often see themselves as part of a tight-knit group of friends, where relationships are so collegial that no one can conceive of something as unpleasant as a lawsuit. That is, until it actually happens. If you believe that your employees are like family and would never sue you, recall that families sue each other all the time. Remember Kramer vs. Kramer? Many fast-growing tech companies will eventually face a wage and hour lawsuit (although hopefully, not a class action suit), depending on how early they catch any employee misclassifications. And the bigger the company, the more employees are potentially misclassified — one reason why most wage and hour lawsuits are class-actions. So sue meOnce a company has been hit by a Groupon-style lawsuit, it could be on the hook for back overtime, failure to provide proper rest breaks, meal periods and paystubs, and other damages. However, one of the sleeper issues is that the company has almost certainly failed to properly accrue the correct wage liability. In other words, a wage and hour lawsuit casts doubt on its accounting and disclosure practices, a major mess for any company looking for investors, trying to close a funding round, or preparing to go public. To make matters worse, as an evidentiary matter, employers usually have neither created nor kept records of employee hours, and therefore have no basis for rebutting evidence put forth by plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Wage and hour lawsuits are popular in part for this very reason. In contrast, it's easy for employees to recreate or even manufacture claims of days and hours worked, since employers were likely not keeping track. If the company didn't understand overtime regulations before, it will soon learn the lesson in a painful and expensive way. Where do we go from here?Companies that suspect that they may be non-compliant with wage and hour laws sometimes do an internal audit to identify the issues and correct the violations. However, if they've already been served with a lawsuit, the typical response is to attempt to defeat class certification, or to winnow down the class to the smallest possible number of people and then quickly resolve the claim by paying off the liability. This strategy is commonly employed because wage and hour lawsuits subject the company to the risk of paying the plaintiffs' attorneys' fees if the plaintiffs prevail on the matter, a substantial expense if the case drags on.
[Image via RAGMA IMAGES/Shutterstock] Filed under: Entrepreneur Corner, VentureBeat        
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| Get paid for your spare parking spots with Parking Panda Posted: 23 Sep 2011 02:05 PM PDT
Think of it like Airbnb, the service that lets you rent out spare rooms to travelers in your home, for parking. Parking Panda is a win-win for both parking spot owners, who can earn extra cash with very little effort, and those looking for parking, who will likely end up spending far less than they would in a big lot. The company was a part of NYC's Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator's first class, which presented on stage during ERA's demo day today. Parking Panda was originally founded in Baltimore, but it has since moved to ERA’s Times Square office. Using the service is simple: Parking spot owners need only sign up for an account, take a photo and create a description of their available spot, then mark down the dates and price. Those looking for a spot can find and pay for one via the Parking Panda website, which also sports a mobile optimized interface. Once a spot is rented, the owner will eventually get a check (minus Parking Panda’s 20 percent commission) in the mail. The company says that last year, $20 billion was spent on parking in the US alone (plus $10 billion internationally). Clearly there’s plenty of potential for a parking marketplace. Parking Panda launched two weeks ago in Baltimore, where it facilitated parking for 117 cars. The company plans to expand to Washington D.C., Boston and Philadelphia soon. Parking Panda was founded by Nick Miller (CEO), who previously worked in product management at LivingSocial, and Adam Zilberbaum (CTO), formerly lead engineer at GAAP software. The company is seeking a $750,000 seed investment. Image via Parking Fail Filed under: social        
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| Kindle Tablets coming? Amazon sets press event for Sept. 28 Posted: 23 Sep 2011 12:54 PM PDT
Amazon has long been rumored to create a tablet computer as a follow-up to its Kindle e-reader device that could compete against Apple’s iPad and various Android tablets. As we reported earlier this month, Amazon’s Kindle Tablet will likely retail for $250 and come with a free subscription to the company’s Amazon Prime service, which costs $79 a year and offers perks like free two-day shipping and access to a library of Instant Video. Unlike an iPad, the Amazon tablet will feature a 7-inch screen and runs a heavily customized version of Android 2.2. The company has made several moves recently that suggest that the Kindle tablet will make its debut in late October or November. In August, the company started rolling out a new design for its website that was optimized for tablet viewing. Also, the company launched its 14-day e-book sharing library lending feature, which will be available at over 11,000 local libraries across the US. Let us know in the comments what you think Amazon will announce at the event. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| The DeanBeat: The video game industry’s grudge matches Posted: 23 Sep 2011 11:00 AM PDT
The blockbuster video game season has begun, and so has the trash talk. Gamers love to set up “us versus them” grudge matches between fans of different games and game systems. While these grudge matches are artificial, and gamers often play both games, they do tell us a lot about what we really love or hate about video games. That’s why we love to build top-ten favorite lists and shoot others down. If we play along for the sake of argument, we can learn a thing or two. So if anything seems unusual about this year, it’s the fact that there are so many grudge matches happening. The latest is between Resistance 3 from Sony/Insomniac Games and Gears of War 3 from Microsoft/Epic Games. These titles have traveled the same competitive rail for five years now. Resistance Fall of Man debuted in the fall of 2006 on the PlayStation 3 as did the original Gears of War for the Xbox 360. Resistance 2 came out at the same time as Gears of War 2 in the fall of 2008. And Resistance 3 debuted on Sept. 6, while Gears of War 3 came out on the 20th. That’s an epic grudge match with some real history to it, since it is very rare to have game launch schedules line up so close to each other over three generations of games.
Grudge matches among hardcore gamers are often about graphics quality, game play, settings and story. The quality of multiplayer play, unlockable rewards and downloadable content is increasingly becoming part of the banter too. For the longest time, the grudge matches were also about the consoles: In short, whether the PlayStation 3 was better than the Xbox 360. The Gears versus Resistance debates stir up a lot of passion, in part because a lot of this is subjective. I played both games all the way through. It turned out that the game with the best graphics wasn’t the winner. I gave a high rating of 90 to Resistance 3. But I felt like the Gears of War story trumped the Resistance story for the third time in a row. Gears was just more emotional and it had a story arc that circled back to the beginning, while Resistance 3 followed a fairly new character’s story to its conclusion. Both stories had female characters for the first time, with those females taking lead roles in the fighting in Gears. It’s no surprise then that the interaction among the Gears characters was more emotional. Gears is all about brotherhood, and it introduced sisterhood as well. To me, when you put a good book or finish a movie or complete a game — and the story stays with you — then that is the definition of a piece of content that is just better than anything else. Gears is simply more memorable for me than Resistance, so I rated it 92 out of 100. What companies can do about this
When you’re the underdog in the grudge match, it pays to launch your title ahead of the other one. Sony timed its Resistance 3 game well in that respect, getting a two-week advantage when gamers only had one choice. By contrast, id Software’s Rage, which is another rival in this market, is coming out at the relatively late date of Oct. 4. The thing about grudge matches is that they oversimplify a very complex world of competitors. These days, traditional game companies can find rivals on many different fronts. They can look for grudge matches in mobile games, social games, console games, PC online games, cloud games, and even in gamer social networks. Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts are about to engage in one of the biggest grudge matches in all gaming history. EA’s Battlefield 3 launches on Oct. 25, while Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 debuts on Nov. 8. Call of Duty has been selling about 20 million units a year, making EA the big underdog in this battle. But it has positioned itself ahead of MW 3 and it says it is seeing record preorders for a Battlefield game. Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan, believes that Modern Warfare 3 will sell the most games this season based on its series momentum, as most of your friends are now playing this game. But he also thinks that Battlefield 3 will do better than ever. Eric Hirshberg, president of Activision Publishing, has been trying to stay out of trash talk. That makes sense, as the dominant player should not acknowledge the existence of its paltry rivals, according to the usual playbook. Meanwhile, EA CEO John Riccitiello and spokesman Jeff Brown have been throwing out as much trash talk as they can at Call of Duty. Brown told the publication Industry Gamers, (addressing his comments to Hirshberg) “You’ve got every reason to be nervous. Last year Activision had a 90 (percent) share in the shooter category. This year, Battlefield 3 is going to take you down to 60 or 70. At that rate, you'll be out of the category in two to three years. If you don’t believe me, go to the store and try to buy a copy of Guitar Hero or Tony Hawk.” Since Activision had to shut down the latter two game franchises, those are some real low blows. Hirshberg has indirectly fired back, saying that Call of Duty fans want 60-frame-per-second games. That means they’re fast and responsive with nonstop action. Battlefield 3 will run at 30 frames per second on the consoles, in favor of prettier graphics and more realistic physics, rather than speed. Maybe the EA trash talk is working. So far, Battlefield 3 is trending pretty good against Modern Warfare 3 in Google Trends reports. But Activision scored some mighty public relations points with its Call of Duty XP event, which brought 8,500 hardcore gamers to Los Angeles for a big budget fan appreciation event. This grudge match may be decided by something beyond the games. Both Activision and EA are creating their own gamer social networks, which are aimed at feeding the passions of obsessed fans. If one of these social networks turns out to be better than the other, then that may be a deciding factor for gamers looking to purchase a game. Both sides are likely to spend $100 million each on marketing before this is over. The side with the most overwhelming firepower will win. Getting back to reality
Zynga is poised to raise a billion dollars or two in an initial public offering. The possibility of that fact prompted EA to buy PopCap Games for $750 million plus. Now EA has learned how to make social games and it is bringing its brands to bear on the Facebook market, while Zynga is using its pre-IPO glamour to acquire and attract some of the best talent in the industry, including EA’s No. 2 executive, John Schappert, and a number of former EA executives. Bing Gordon, a partner at Kleiner Perkins and a board member at Zynga and EA’s former chief creative officer, clearly had a hand in recruiting these EA execs. These guys are fighting a real grudge match because they personally want to beat their former buddies. The only problem with a grudge match is that you can take it too seriously, to the point that it distracts you from other things. EA might be going to war against Zynga, but it should also worry about the hardcore gamers that Kabam and Kixeye are grabbing on Facebook. Kabam has a small number of users, but it gets a lot of money from those users, since they are big spenders, or whales. And Kabam recently picked up the Godfather license, a brand that used to be part of EA’s game portfolio. Zynga, likewise, may be worried about the momentum of some of the mobile game makers and so it is pouring a lot of resources into that market. Meanwhile, it is now getting attacked in its core social market. The problem is that there are a lot of different rivals to worry about now. The biggest companies have so many games that they wind up in lots of grudge matches. In the past, that has been a formula for disaster. You have to pick your battles, or you lose the war, even if you are a huge company. EA has learned that lesson and it has whittled down the number of titles it produces over the past few years. Ubisoft, THQ, and Activision Blizzard have all followed suit. But the horde of startups that are capitalizing on new business models, new emerging markets, and new platforms continues to grow. That sense of reinvigorated competition is refreshing. If you are in a grudge match, for good or bad, your strategy should be to win. You shouldn’t find 10 grudge matches and hope that you’ll win one of them. It’s an important lesson. But we should also remember that grudge matches are all about competition and competition is good. When two companies fight each other to the death, the consumer always wins. [Top illustration by Tom Cheredar] Filed under: games        
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| Mintigo reads your customer code to find leads, gets $9M from Sequoia Capital Posted: 23 Sep 2011 10:50 AM PDT
Mintigo describes finding sales leads not as a needle in a hay stack, but rather a needle in a needle stack. There are so many potential customers out there and many of them seem as worthy of a pitch as any. Enter Mintigo’s Customer Code makeup. Each company has what Mintigo calls a “customer code,” or a make up of traits that form a company’s customer type. Once Mintigo “cracks the code,” the company targets a specific demographic based on your business model, product or service, and industry for potential leads. In essence, it combs through this subset of potential leads and tries to match your code with their codes. Once it has found a match, it sends it to you. Lead generation has been around since people have exchanged of goods. There are a multitude of companies analyzing sales data, all attempting to make the best formula for saving time wasted cold calling. Companies such as Eloqua all have recipes for using existing contacts to find new ones. But Mintigo is seeing some traction and has been nominated for Microsoft’s BizSpark One project. Mintigo was founded in 2009 and is located in the US, Spain and Israel. Other investors in this round included Giza Venture Capital and private investors. The company has over 25 employees and plans to use the funding toward expanding its US product. Filed under: deals        
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| Blockbuster’s new streaming service is lame, only for Dish subscribers Posted: 23 Sep 2011 10:47 AM PDT
Dish could have used this opportunity to introduce its own streaming service to compete with Netflix, which has had troubles in the last few months. Netflix has angered its customers by instituting a 60 percent price hike on combined streaming and physical DVD rental plans and then following that by spinning off its physical DVD rental service into a new company called Qwikster. A Dish executive at least said the company plans to offer a full streaming service eventually, but he said the company has no time frame for when it will happen. Dish’s new offering will simply be called Blockbuster Movie Pass and will be available to Dish’s 14 million customers beginning Oct. 1. The new plan is essentially a bundle of Blockbuster's online movie download program and DVD-by-mail service combined with Dish Network TV subscriptions. It will cost $10 extra per month and cannot be purchased separately from a Dish package. Back in April, Dish acquired Blockbuster in a bankruptcy auction for $320 million, and Dish CEO Joe Clayton (pictured) said he wanted to "take a small piece of the pie from Netflix.” Dish is also one of the companies said to be bidding for streaming service Hulu, alongside the likes of Amazon, Yahoo and Google. If the company were to control Hulu and launch a widely available Blockbuster streaming service, it could become a much more formidable entertainment presence. Here’s what Dish Network customers will have access to with the Blockbuster Movie Pass: Filed under: media        
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| Beyond Moneyball: How biosensors are already changing sports today Posted: 23 Sep 2011 10:35 AM PDT
When I watched the film trailer, it made me think about how far sports analytics have come in the last decade. It seemed old-fashioned to me, because at the University of Southern California Center for Body Computing (CBC), we are studying, testing and developing many of the new technologies that athletes will use in the very near future. New sensors, many as easy to apply as a small bandage or stick-on tattoo, can wirelessly track body heat, heart rate, perspiration and other vital signs and send the information wirelessly to a mobile phone, tablet or computer. This technology will change sports. We will soon enter a new era that will make the playing field safer, fans will have even more player information, and athletes will be able to play longer and be able to more easily avoid injury. In a word, we believe bio sports stats will go beyond Moneyball and become the next new trend in sports. Late last year, we received an NFL Charities grant to study the dynamic heart rate of athletes in a real game situation. At the Body Computing Conference today, we are showing some of our early results. I am the chief of cardiology at USC, and I am, to be quite frank, blown away by our initial data. Most medical testing isn't realistic. It’s like using a 40-yard dash time at the NFL Combine (the annual testing ground for NFL hopefuls) to gage a player's speed on the field. How many track stars have we seen flame out in the NFL? Instead, we are using technology to study real-life athletic situations. We placed heart rate patches on USC football players and studied them while they were playing in a significant scrimmage game, accelerating in real time, getting hit. No one has ever been monitored in this way. We are trying to establish what happens to someone's heart in this situation and we are looking at different positions. We're determining if a defensive lineman has a different heart rate in most game situations than a defensive back. We are creating a baseline for what is normal and abnormal. So we can help athletes be safer. The number of athletes who die of cardiovascular causes each year in the U.S. is probably less than 300 compared with the large number of athletes participating in a broad spectrum of organized sports (about 10 to 15 million) of all ages in the Unites States. However, sudden death in athletes is an important medical indicator because athletes represent the healthiest and most dynamic members of society. Understanding sudden death in athletes will help us develop recommendations for everyone. Not only do we think biosensors could bring a safer playing field; we also believe the vital statistics emerging from our "body computers" will create ways for athletes to perform better and avoid injury. Professional athletes are multi-million dollar investments, but they have a very high injury rate, which is usually the result of fatigue. We are developing technology that can track vital signs and allow trainers to make changes in training regime. Simply asking an athlete, "How are you feeling?" doesn't yield any actionable results. Biosensors can bring a true information flow. So, in theory, we could put a wireless band-aid on Lionel Messi, the greatest soccer player in the world, and continually track him. Messi makes $27 million a year and is a once-in-a-generation player, so what if we found that every twelfth day he had a blended heart rate and needed rest and a doubling of his hydration? That information is valuable to a lot of people: his team, fans, sponsors, and Mr. Messi himself. What if we could use biosignals to eliminate incidents of hamstring strains in American football players? The possibilities are nearly endless. Fans will benefit, too. In their current state, most stadiums and arenas are data vacuums where fans are in information purgatory. This is completely counter to what modern sports fans expect when they are watching a sporting event. At home, people watch a game, laptop in hand, to look up statistics as well as biographical information on different players, coaches, announcers and even sideline reporters. They adjust their fantasy teams and take to Twitter or fan sites to express their opinions. Meanwhile, fans in most stadiums can't even get a decent cell phone connection. This will change soon enough as new stadiums are built and others retrofitted to satisfy the needs of modern fanatics. We are talking with many companies and sports leagues about bio sports stats, and they are tremendously interested. LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, a new stadium that opened June 9, represents a new kind of Information Age stadium. It features high-density Wi-Fi, high-definition video, digital content and interactive fan services. It's a model for the future, but it's just a start. The Center for Body Computing is studying how biosensors on athletes can send fans interesting and compelling information to enhance the game experience even more. Even the information flow for home-bound sports fans is limited, but that will change too. Golfing analyst Johnny Miller might look at a player and tell millions at home that he has a "confident look in his eye," but it would be even more accurate if he could say that a player "has a confident look in his eye and he has been able to control his heart rate when standing over putts less than 10 feet, and that why he's winning this tournament." (Interestingly, data that we have studied from the PGA tells us that pro golfers heart rates shoot significantly when they stand over putts; if a golfer can train himself to slow that heart rate down, he can shoot a better score, make more money and have a better chance at winning a tournament.) While the concepts behind Moneyball were revolutionary in sports, another revolution will alter sports even more profoundly. We're sure the Oakland A's Billy Beane, the protagonist in Moneyball, could have a field day with using bio sports stats to pick players. Considering that the A's are more than 18 games back in the American League West, perhaps the brilliantly innovative Mr. Beane should give us a call. Leslie Saxon, M.D., is the Executive Director of the University of Southern California Center for Body Computing and the Chief of the Division of Cardiology at the USC Keck School of Medicine. Today marks the start of the Center’s annual Body Computing Conference. The CBC is a wireless health research center. Its staff works with other USC schools, including the School of Cinematic Arts, as well as innovators to think about, study and create the future of healthcare. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| Centzy crowdsources price info for local comparison shopping Posted: 23 Sep 2011 10:29 AM PDT New York City-based Centzy makes it easy for you to find the best place to get that haircut you’ve been putting off. And unlike Yelp, it has accurate pricing about local companies to let you make a fully informed decision. The company was a part of NYC's Entrepreneur Roundtable Accelerator's first class, which presented on stage during ERA's demo day today. Centzy says less than 25 percent of local service businesses put their prices online, which can be frustrating when you’re trying to find the best deal. The company solves that problem with its proprietary crowdsourcing system, where it pays people to collect pricing information and store hours. Centzy says that its data is 97 percent accurate, far higher than the likes of Yelp, which focuses more on reviews and menus rather than accurate pricing. The total market for local services is $350 billion, the company says, and at the moment there aren’t any competing price comparison services. Centzy says it can launch in new cities for only $15,000 and a couple of weeks of remote work. And when it launches in new cities, the company boasts, it will have more pricing data for that location than Yelp has reviews. At the moment, the company’s service can integrate into existing local advertising platforms, as well as lead-generation and online appointment services. It has already formed a partnership with CityGrid Media’s local ad network. “We can achieve $.40 per click, $4 per lead, and $10-$25 per booking generated,” the company said in a release today. Centzy was founded by Jay Shek (CEO) and Jeremy Clemenson (CTO). It’s currently seeking $500,000 in seed funding. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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| New York City subways to get cell service starting Tuesday Posted: 23 Sep 2011 10:10 AM PDT
The rollout will begin in six stations starting Tuesday, Sept. 27, with cell service coming to more stations soon. The program will launch at stations on the 14th Street corridor and the 23rd Street line. Cell service will be available in mezzanines and on platforms, as well as other station areas, but passengers won’t be able to make calls on trains between stations. The new coverage areas are being enabled by Transit Wireless, a company that was specifically created to design, install and maintain infrastructure for underground cell service. The company completed the infrastructure for the first six stations more than a year in advance of the MTA’s original deadline. By 2016, Transit Wireless hopes to give the system’s 135 million subway riders cell service at all of the city’s 277 underground stations. Transit Wireless will own and operate the underground network. AT&T and T-Mobile have each contracted with Transit Wireless for 10 years with four five-year renewal options, and the carriers will also be paying occupancy fees to the MTA. “We’re looking forward to delivering wireless voice and data services at these six stations,” said AT&T vice president and regional general manager Tom DeVito in a statement. “This is one more way we’re helping New Yorkers get the most out of their wireless devices as they mobilize everything in their lives.” Image courtesy of yourdon. Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat        
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| Diablo 3 release date is in early 2012, more beta keys going out Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:53 AM PDT
Blizzard Entertainment is known for taking its time before releasing a game. So far, the strategy has worked — while some of its games face delays, it has yet to deliver a game that has not been a smash hit. Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty is expected to generate around $350 million and World of Warcraft has more than 11 million subscribers paying $15 each month to play the game. Diablo 3 was originally slated for a late 2011 release, but Morhaime said on the company’s most recent earnings call that the company wouldn’t commit to that release date. “We commonly use the term "soon" when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we're working to reach a target, we're not going to compromise and launch a game before it's ready,” Morhaime said. “While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year. We were too.” Diablo 2, the last game in the series, was immensely popular when it came out more than a decade ago in 2000. Blizzard Entertainment only released one expansion pack for the game, but it came to define a lot of tropes that now commonly appear in online games — such as reliance on loot-seeking behavior and frictionless communication between friends and players. Diablo's hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be popular for more than a decade. It even inspired a number of dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight. Today’s announcement could put Diablo 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, Electronic Arts’ Hail Mary pass in the online gaming space, in a similar release window. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a subscription-based online role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe that is more like World of Warcraft than Diablo 3. But it might have to compete with Diablo 3 because it’s still a free-to-play online game that has an equally large fan base. Blizzard Entertainment started the beta for the game, which takes place in the first level of the game, on Tuesday. Morhaime said the company would expand the beta and issue additional beta keys after it decided to delay the release of the game. The Diablo games allow anywhere from two to eight players to jump into discrete games in randomly generated dungeons. The goal is to prevent the forces of hell from taking over the world by defeating Diablo, the lord of terror, and his cohorts. Players chase after powerful items and weapons to use against other enemies and players or for trade. Filed under: games        
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| iPhone 5 may see shipment delays due to faulty touchscreens Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:50 AM PDT
Digitimes, the Taiwanese blog with a history of often accurate Apple leak reporting, said today that Apple’s touchscreen manufacturer, Wintek, is having some trouble with the components for the upcoming iPhone 5. If there are delays, this might postpone the October 4 iPhone 5 launch event with new CEO Tim Cook reported by All Things D. A leaked document from iPhone 5 carrier Sprint also showed an early October launch date. Wintek responded that all its components are being delivered on time; however, other parties in the iPhone 5 supply chain maintained that the defect, called a delayed bubble, was not something that Wintek could detect. In fact, the fault only became evident once the components were assembled, these sources told Digitimes. Wintek has facilities in Taiwan, India and China. In addition to the delay report, sources said that Wintek’s touchscreens make up between one fifth and one quarter of the touchscreens used in iPhone 5 production. Other touchscreens are said to be coming from Taiwan-based TPK Holding and Chimei Innolux. They also stated that Apple is preparing to ship around 25 million iPhone 5 units before the end of the year. Previously, Digitimes had reported that the iPhone 5 would feature a larger screen than seen on previous models — a point recently validated by images of iPhone 5 cases. The devices are also thought to feature tapered edges and a thinner design Image courtesy of Stovak. Filed under: mobile        
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| Xtium raises $11.5M to expand pay-as-you-grow virtual private cloud services Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:23 AM PDT Major cloud computing services provider Xtium has raised $11.5 million to expand its reach in helping mid-size companies with private cloud computing, virtual hosting and virtual disaster recovery. Xtium is one of the leading infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers in the U.S., but it has to compete with major players like Amazon and IBM. The company offers as pay-as-you-grow model to businesses that allows for more flexibility when companies need back-end solutions like virtualization, servers and storage. Xtium said it often attracts customers with its “cloud disaster recovery service” and then eases them into further services after they like what they see. The company plans to use its new capital for expansion, hiring more employees and further investing in its cloud technologies. “Xtium is having another strong growth year and we are excited to continue building for aggressive execution,” said Peter Ritz, president of Xtium, in a statement. “Scores of mid-market enterprise customers have chosen Xtium to migrate and manage their cloud and network, as we provide everything they need to plan, migrate, and manage their systems and network at a significantly lower cost and higher service level than their current model." Valley Forge, Penn.-based Xtium was founded in 2004 and started managing cloud customers in 2007. Its first round of funding was led by OpenView Venture Partners, a Boston-based firm that has backed startups such as Mashery, Monetate, nextdocs, Skytap, Balihoo and Instructure. Filed under: cloud, deals        
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| Google dresses up its Product Search page Posted: 23 Sep 2011 09:13 AM PDT
With the new Product Search site, it seems like Google has finally realized that retail store windows displays are an effective means of selling products. The visuals came from Boutiques.com, a site focused on shopping for women that was created by the team behind Google-acquired site Like.com. Google plans to shut down its Boutiques site October 14 and will instead concentrate on improving its new Product Search page, the company said. The new design is the first in a series of new changes “leveraging the computer vision and machine learning technology developed by the team we affectionately call our fashion and computer nerds,” said Like.com co-founder and Google Commerce team member Burak Gokturk in a blog post. The top of the page is dominated with a slideshow widget that scrolls through five large images. While there are noticeably fewer words on the page, Google does include short text descriptions for each product to the left of the images. Just below that are a few rows of featured products — just as you’d expect to see on a retail store’s homepage. Users aren’t restricted to text-based search queries either. The new Product Search page lets you shop for visually similar items. For instance, shopping for a dress using this method would show you collections that match the color, silhouette and style. I’m not sure how this would translate to all product searches (consumer electronics, for instance), but certainly anything that’s based on style rather than function could benefit. Filed under: VentureBeat        
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Cable TV and internet service provider Comcast is working on a new streaming video service for Apple’s iPad, reports 
Former TechCrunch staff member 
Online retail giant 
Today is the premiere of Moneyball, a Brad Pitt movie about using computer modeling to creatively analyze baseball players' statistics to get an edge.
Early next week, Manhattanites will start seeing more reception bars on their smartphones while underground, thanks to a pilot program from AT&T and T-Mobile.
Apple may have to slightly delay the anticipated October launch of the 
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