E-Cig Maker NJOY Raises $70 Million

Puff puff pass the $1 billion valuation because e-cigarette maker NJOY has raised $70 million from Brookside Capital and Morgan Stanley Investment Management, at least according to a NYT report. The company’s early investors included Sean Parker, Peter Thiel, and Douglas Teitelbaum.

Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, the company previously raised $75 million in June, 2013. NJOY’s products are now in over 90,000 retail locations.

The company offers the cigarettes, which are single-use, in packs of three. Users can return eight of the cigarettes (once they’re empty and uncharged) in exchange for one e-cig. According to PCMag they have a “chemical taste [and] aftertaste” but have the “highest nicotine content among eCigs tested.” The company also offers a rechargeable system but is pushing the single-use devices more actively.

Vaping has risen in popularity. Smokers are adopting e-cigarettes as a safe alternative to smoking (although the jury is still out on the safety of nicotine vapor) and companies like Blu, NJOY, and Thermovape are taking advantage of this perception. As the data rolls in we’ll see where well-funded companies like NJOY fall. Until then, e-light up.

Sailfish OS Maker, Jolla, On Questing For Scale In The Age Of Android

"It's not every day that a new mobile operating system is born," says Jolla's Marc Dillon preaching to a congregation of the curious from atop a stool at Jolla's booth at the 2014 Mobile World Congress. This is the world's largest mobile device-focused gathering. The show which annually transforms Barcelona into a city of suits and queues and shiny things. Read More

TSA Reportedly Demands To Inspect Man’s Luggage For Bitcoin

Davi Baker wasn't quite sure how to comply with the TSA's demands to inspect his bags for Bitcoin. Baker had found himself in a testy exchange with airport security personnel during an enhanced screening, and they wanted an additional search of his belongings. Read More

Google Sets Example For Trying To Offset Perils Of SF Gentrification

San Francisco's gentrification problem isn't all tech's fault, but the industry should still be helping communities impacted by the influx money and people its brought to the city. Today's donation by Google is a great example of looking out for one's neighbors. It's given $6.8 million to fund two years of the Free MUNI For Low-Income Youth program that gives kids free bus passes. Read More

These Tire Caps Change Color When Your Car’s Tire Pressure Gets Low

Quick! How's your car's tire pressure? Don't know? Better go check. Which, if you're like most people, means going out, kicking the tire, saying "seems good" and forgetting about it until something is clearly wrong. Here's a damned clever alternative: tire caps that change color when the pressure gets too low. Read More

If You’re Going To Watch One Video Of A 3D-Printed Clock That Writes The Time, Make It This One

The machines. They are learning. The Plotclock is a small, 3D-printed clock that forgoes the traditional gears and springs for servos and an Arduino microcontroller. It writes the time. And then erases it. Then writes the time again, continuing forever even though the white board will quickly descend into a smudgy mess of partially erased ink.

It’s a simple device: One servo lifts the pen from its dock while the other two controls the arm movement. The instructions are served from an Arduino single-board microcontroller. The rest is magic.

As 3ders points out, all the files for the Plotclock are available on Thingaverse and GitHub. You can make this small device yourself or parlay it into a larger display that uses massive arms and a classroom-sized white board and sell it to some startup for part of their seed money.

More projects like these will appear as the price of 3D printers and microcontrollers drop. The consumer electronic market is quickly becoming a maker’s paradise thanks to the rise of small-scale manufacturing. No longer do aspiring makers have to turn out shoddy prototypes handcut with a Dremel. Near-production-ready models can now be printed and assembled in basement workshops. The future is here.

Gillmor Gang Live 02.28.14 (TCTV)

Gillmor Gang - Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session today at 1pm Pacific. Chat found here http://ift.tt/1dK0Bu8 Read More

This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: All MWC Everything

Reporters are drunkenly finding their way home from a long week in Barcelona, where the Mobile World Congress conference yielded a number of exciting new phones and tablets.

Most notably, Samsung launched the Galaxy s5, Nokia launched a new Nokia X line of Android/Windows Phone hybrid devices, and we finally got up close and personal with the BlackPhone.

We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the TC Gadgets Podcast, featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Natasha Lomas and Darrell Etherington.

Enjoy!

We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here.

Click here to download an MP3 of this show.

You can subscribe to the show via RSS.

Subscribe in iTunes

Intro Music by Rick Barr.

With Mt.Gox In Flames, A Lesson: When Building A Company, First Do No Harm

The collapse of Mt.Gox this week has sent shockwaves through the early-adopting tech community. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins have been lost, and account holders are justifiably angry about their missing balances. It is easy to heap blame on Mt.Gox’s founders and call this a once-in-a-lifetime calamity, but the context behind the company’s demise is far more pernicious and occurs far more frequently than it should in the tech community.

Users today take incredible risks when starting to use a product, risks that they don’t appreciate when they click on a trial button or download an app. System reliability is often assumed when it is unwarranted, and data integrity and loss prevention is rarely guaranteed. Worse, we make little mention of the beta status of new services, misleading users to believe that the product they are using is far less risky than it appears in the glossy product pages. In no other industry would companies be able to get away with this, and if we don’t change things fast, our exceptional absence of regulation may become part of the past.

A Year From Launch, Skillshare Lands $6M From USV, Spark To Double Down On Project-Based, Online Classes

Skillshare launched one year ago to give those interested in continuing to learn outside the classroom a place to go for classes that took place both online, and in their local hoods. Since then, the New York-based startup has moved towards the massive, open online course approach, giving teachers and subject experts the opportunity to create courses and students the opportunity to take interactive classes online.

Skillshare’s growth has accelerated since, with over 100K paid enrollments in over 500 classes, while the platform’s most successful teacher in 2013 made over $100K from teaching on Skillshare — a number which Seth Godin broke in January. Thanks to this continued growth and monetization, the startup has officially closed a $6 million round of financing co-led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. The new funding brings Skillshare’s total to $10 million.

With its live, interactive classes, Skillshare is part of a growing set of companies focused on leveraging improved video and communications technology to make continuing education and learning affordable and available to anyone. Though unlike video-based education platforms like Lynda.com, CreativeLive, Khan Academy and Curious, for example, Skillshare’s classes are both live and interactive, enabling students to get face-to-face time with teachers via its online office hours and focus on learning through completing projects — not by earning a badge.

To capitalize on the growing demand for skills-based learning content, Skillshare operates as an open platform, allowing anyone to teach local, in-person classes — or to submit an application to bring their classes online. On Skillshare, teachers design classes and projects that their students will complete, offering an online syllabus, lectures and live, interactive office hours. Students can participate in discussions, submit projects and get feedback, all online, in classes that span from a week to a month.

But with its new capital under its belt, Skillshare is also expanding on the product side, as it recently launched an activity feed to give students the ability to track people, skills, teachers and projects across its platform. The idea is to turn Skillshare into a more active social community, where students get to know each other and build relationships, rather than just breeze through a week-long course and move on. With greater community interaction and engagement, the stickier the Skillshare experience becomes, or at least that’s what the team hopes.

Updating

Reddit To Give 10% Of Its 2014 Ad Revenue To Non-Profits Picked By Its Users

Do you block the ads on sites you love? Would you be less likely to do that if you knew a chunk of ad revenues were going to a good cause?

That’s (at least part of) the thinking behind a new idea that reddit — a site that’s so big at this point I honestly feel like explaining what it is on TechCrunch would be stupid — is playing with. At the end of 2014, they’ll be donating 10% of their yearly ad revenue to non-profit organizations picked by the community.

“But wait!” you say. “Is reddit even profitable yet?”

Nope — but they’re close. Close enough that they’re comfortable giving away 10% of the ad money they take in, even if that means it takes a bit longer before they’re breaking even. Says reddit CEO Yishan Wong in the comments of the announcement:

We’re getting closer to closing the gap. Yes, doing this will widen the gap again but people are right: we think this is good for non-profits AND we are working to increase ad revenue by more than 11.1% anyhow.

So it’s less about a numbers game as it is trying to align things even more between ads and the will of the community, because we want to have the right business model.

Also found in the comments? An overwhelming number of people complimenting Yishan on his historically correct use of the word “decimate” (as in, to kill off one in every 10 soldiers, a form of self-punishment used by the Roman Army) in the post’s title, “Decimating Our Ads Revenue”. Because this is reddit, and reddit loves it some grammar. Now that I’ve mentioned grammar, I’m sure I’ve made at least 200 grammar mistakes in this sentence alone.

At the end of the year, reddit will ask the community for their votes on which non-profits should get the cash. From there, it’ll be distributed (based on percentage of votes) to the top 10 suggestions. To keep trolls from poisoning the good will well, reddit is putting in a few sanity checks: they’ll only give money to verified non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations, and they’re reserving the right to nix any suggestions.

The Ring Input Device Puts Gesture Control And Home Automation On Your Finger

There was once a rumor that Apple would actually use a ring device for input to an Apple television. Neither of those gadgets exist yet, of course, but Ring is a Kickstarter project trying to fund a finger-based wearable that could enable the kind of controls envisioned in that Apple flight of fancy.

The Ring is a hardware device that resembles an ordinary (if slightly chunky) ring, filled with sensors and electronics to give it the ability to control devices and render input. It can enable gesture controls, of the kind you’d get with a Wii remote, for instance, as well as text input by drawing letters in the air, gesture-based authorization for finalizing payments, and transmit alerts from connected devices via a built-in vibration motor and onboard LED.

That may sound familiar, since the Fin wearable that made its debut at our TechCrunch Battlefield competition this year at CES in Las Vegas has similar aims. The Ring is much further along, however, and even demoed at our TechCrunch Tokyo 2013 Startup Battle last year, where it took top honors. The Ring is currently in its sixth iteration, and has moved from something you’d barely call wearable, to a ring available in six finger sizes that resembles the average class ring in terms of dimensions.

Sensors on board can detect even the smallest finger movements, according to Ring’s creators, and the gadget works with preset gestures for common controls (calling up messages, playing music or activating the camera), plus you can configure your own custom gestures using the companion app. There’s also a pre-set alphabet for text and number entry, and it can pair directly with other Bluetooth 4.0 devices that are compatible with its software, or to any Wi-Fi or IR capable device via a hub accessory that receives commands from the Ring itself and then passes those on.

For mobile payments, it enables direct payments using either GPS location data or iBeacon to restaurants, retail stores and others with compatible systems, and you can even enter the amount with your finger by drawing on air to complete the transaction. Plus, you can make a quick checkmark gesture to approve set amounts typed in by the merchant. Access to even more integration and other software will be made available via various developer tools, including an Open URL scheme that allows a gesture to call up a specific web address on a connected devices, javascript integration, and SDKs for both iOS and Android software.

Eventually, the plan is to house all Ring-enabled apps in a central software store, accessible via your mobile device or computer. The Ring is currently compatible with iOS and Android devices with Bluetooth 4.0 support, and Windows Phone software is also in the works.

The campaign raised over $200,000 of its $250,000 goal in its first day on Kickstarter, and offers single unit pre-orders starting at $165, with a projected delivery date of July, 2014. That means it’ll come just in time to serve as a wedding band for late summer unions, if you want something that’s functional as well as fashionable.

Apple Made Over $1B On The Sale Of Around 10M Apple TV Units In 2013

Apple’s TV business still consists only of an over-the-top streaming media box, and not a proper TV set despite longstanding rumors that kind of hardware was on the way – but it’s showing impressive growth nonetheless. The company sold approximately 10 million Apple TV units last year, according to estimates based on figures Apple CEO Tim Cook offered up at the annual Apple shareholder meeting today.

Apple made over $1 billion in revenue from sales of its Apple TV devices in 2013, Cook explained during the meeting with investors, which translates to sales at or around 10 million units, as noted by Asymco’s Horace Dediu. With just over 5 million units sold in 2012, that makes Apple TV the company’s fastest growing hardware product category, according to the analyst, with around 80 percent year-over-year growth.

http://ift.tt/1dJyhYB

The growth of Apple TV could be ascribed to any number of factors; there wasn’t a major hardware revision last year for the streaming box, but Apple did add a wealth of new content sources through new partnerships with media companies. 2013 also saw a significant increase in Netflix subscribers, which could have helped its fortunes as that’s a key part of the Apple TV’s consumer appeal.

Apple still hasn’t fielded any television set hardware, but another observer points out that the Apple TV business on its own is now around 1/4 of the entire U.S. flat-panel TV industry, which means there’s probably little incentive for it to join that relatively small race.

Rumors suggest we’ll see refreshed Apple TV hardware coming this spring from Cupertino, and a deal announced today where Apple adds a $25 gift card to every Apple TV purchase seems to indicate Apple is indeed clearing stock to make way for something new. With a refreshed streaming box and more services than ever, we could see 2014 growth for Apple TV beat even last year’s significant upward trend.

Uber Wants To Take Over The French Market By Using ‘Dumping Tactics’

Urban transportation company Uber is fighting very hard to conquer France. It doesn’t hesitate to redistribute bonuses of up to $1,100 a week to its drivers — these bonuses are higher than Uber’s revenue from these drivers. In other words, Uber is willing to operate at a loss to lure drivers. Under-funded French startups can’t compete financially with Uber’s offering with similar bonuses, but relay on a more relationship-building approach.

“Uber is a steam roller that wants to flatten everything,” Chauffeur-Privé co-Founder and CEO Yan Hascoet told me in a phone interview. “People need to know how Uber does business, in particular when it comes to anti-competitive practices. We are looking into possible legal actions regarding their strategy.”

“Uber does not like competition,” he said. “We have close to 1,000 drivers in Paris, and have seen 10 percent weekly growth”

There are many urban transportation startups in France, such as LeCab, Chauffeur-privé, SnapCar, Allocab and Drive. Some services (like LeCab) buy and operate their own cars. But for other services drivers have to bring their own cars. In the latter case, many of them have signed up to multiple urban transportation services. For example, they can switch between Uber and Chauffeur-Privé throughout the day, as Chauffeur-Privé has a mixed model.

Encouraging Driver Loyalty With Money

Uber has three different strategies right now in Paris to encourage driver loyalty.

The first one targets drivers who use multiple services. Uber wants to convince them to only use Uber. Drivers have a weekly bonus that depends on the number of rides they do every week. For fashion week, these bonuses will be augmented by €100. That’s why Uber recently sent out an email to drivers. “As always, you will have to have a rating above 4.5 stars and an acceptance rating above 80 percent during the week to qualify for the bonus,” says the email.

If you are an UberX driver and do more than 40 rides a week, you get $480. For 60 rides, you get $760. And finally, for more than 75 rides, you get $1,100 (respectively €350, €550 and €800). Let’s say that on average an UberX ride costs $25 in Paris (€18). Uber takes 20 percent, representing $370 per week for 75 rides (€270). Uber is willing to give away $1,100 every week when it generates $370 in revenue, or three times its revenue.

For black car drivers, you will get $345 for 40 rides, $620 for 60 rides and $970 for 70 rides (respectively €250, €450 and €700). In France, black car and UberX drivers are both professional drivers with a limo license. Only UberPOP accepts non-professional drivers.

“It’s a very attractive bonus as Uber pays us more than they take from us,” an Uber driver told me in a phone interview.

Second, Uber is launching a new referral strategy. Existing Uber drivers can convince other professional limo drivers who don’t already work for Uber. As a reminder, in France, urban transportation startups can’t recruit brand new drivers for the next two months due to an ongoing conflict with French cab drivers. To get more drivers, an important part is luring drivers on other services or convincing existing ones to drive more for Uber. But, according to competitors, Uber still receives many applications from existing professional license holders.

If you refer a new Uber driver and this person does more than 20 rides on Uber, you receive $690 (€500). On the other hand, the new driver will receive $345 (€250). It adds up with the other bonus described above. Uber is spending more than $1,000 dollars for 20 rides.

“It’s a scandal,” LeCab founder and CEO Benjamin Cardoso told me in an email. “We should name and shame these dumping tactics.”

It doesn’t end here. Many French companies allow you to say where you want to be dropped off directly within the app. For example, Chauffeur-Privé drivers can accept a ride before they drop someone off. This way, they don’t have any downtime between rides.

To counterbalance that, Uber is giving drivers $14 (€10) if they do three Uber rides in a row, or $28 (€20) for five rides in a row. “It’s an experiment that we are doing with a few drivers,” an Uber spokesperson told me in a phone interview.

Related Videos

Moov Fitness Tracker Passes Its $40K Crowdfunding Goal In 90 Minutes

Yesterday, ex-Apple engineer Nikola Hu and friends launched a crowdfunding campaign around Moov, the next generation in wearable fitness tracking. The device, which lets you accurately measure your form during different sporting activities like running, swimming, and cardio boxing, has already picked up some steam with backers.

According to the team, Moov reached its $40k crowdfunding goal in 90 minutes.

“As an entrepreneur it feels great because it proves there is a real consumer demand for digital coaching,” said cofounder Meng Li. “We are ecstatic and galvanized to keep learning and listening to feedback from our pre sales community.”

Of course, with unexpected demand comes the issue of ramping up production and keeping on schedule with the promised ship date. The Moov is scheduled to be available in Summer of 2014, and the team tells me that they still expect to meet that deadline.

However, they have not determined whether or not they will put a cap on pre-orders in the coming days.

The team also tells us that many users who pre-ordered the device are now changing their mind, and looking to buy two pairs instead of one. As part of the crowdfunding campaign, Moov offered the $59 device for a discount of $99 for two units.

Given that many users decided they wanted two instead of one, Moov has made it easier for those users to go back and order the second one under the same email address and still receive the discount.

Despite the fact that it’s joining an incredibly crowded space, Moov stands a chance at becoming a bigger player in this vertical. Rather than launching yet another sleek wrist band that tells you about your steps, Moov pairs with an application to give you real-time audio feedback on the way you’re running, your form when lifting weights, etc.

Not only do users get data about their workout and their progress, but they also become better at working out. This prevents injuries and also offers more bang for the proverbial buck.

If you’re interested in checking out Moov, head over here.

500 Startups Launches Rainbow Round, A Meetup For Members Of The LGBT Tech Community

500 Startups has always prided itself on backing a diverse set of founders and startups. That includes investing in female founders, startups from the international community, and members of the LGBT community. To further support that last group, the investment firm is introducing a new, monthly meetup series called Rainbow Round to bring together members of the LGBT tech community.

The idea for the gathering follows the investment firm’s first LGBT meetup, which it held last fall. During that event, 500 Startups invited some founders to share their stories with each other.

It was so successful that the firm has decided to create a monthly speaker series in which it will invite LGBT founders, employees, and investors to give talks about what they do in tech and some of the challenges they’ve faced.

To launch the series, 500 Startups has partnered with nonprofit StartOut, which is dedicated to fostering lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender entrepreneurs, and Galvanize, a tech entrepreneurial ecosystem that incorporates capital, curriculum, and community.

The first Rainbow Round event (RSVP here) will be held March 19 at the Galvanize headquarters (543 Howard Street) in San Francisco. The inaugural speaker will be Transh4ck founder Kortney Ryan Ziegler, who will be speaking about increasing transgender acceptance, education, and support in the tech community.

Future meetups will include other founders, venture capitalists, and leaders from the tech community. Those who are interested in suggesting future speakers can email Mark Saldana at mark@500.co.

GrubHub Publicly Files For $100M IPO, Saw $1.3B In Food Sales In 2013 From 3.4M Active Users

GrubHub, which has changed its name from the awkward ‘GrubHub Seamless’ it used since the two food delivery companies merged last year, has publicly filed for its IPO with the SEC today. The company had confidentially filed last week, according to the WSJ, but now it’s official that GrubHub will seek to list as GRUB on the NYSE following evaluation of its application.

The company is seeking to raise $100 million in its initial public offering, and states in its official filing that it made $1.3 billion in revenue from “combined gross food sales” on its platform in 2013. That’s across 28,800 U.S. restaurants in 600 cities, with 3.4 million “active diners” who place around 135,000 daily orders on the platform, on average.

The filing also states that GrubHub’s mobile business is growing rapidly, and increased from representing 20 percent of its overall orders in the last quarter of 2011, to over 43 percent of its orders during the quarter ending in December 2013. GrubHub says it monetizes customers at the same rate regardless of whether they’re on mobile or desktop, so that represents one of their competitive advantages compared to other businesses who have a hard time driving equivalent revenue from mobile.

Developing…

Parrot’s Flower Power Plant Sensor Gives You A Mobile Green Thumb

So I bought a plant. I named it Stan. I’ve never really been a plant guy. But maybe Parrot’s new wireless plant monitor can help. Stan’s life depends on it.

The Flower Power is a small Bluetooth-capable sensor. It runs on a AAA battery and simply sticks in the plant’s dirt. It’s cute and hardly noticeable. The device measures and tracks light intensity, air temperature, fertilizer level and soil moisture. These are things people with a green thumb understand, but the rest of us completely forget about. That’s why there’s an app for that.

Setup takes a few minutes. Select the type of plant in the smartphone app and stick the Flower Power in the dirt. After a couple of minutes, the Flower Power is connected to the app and sending live data. It needs to be partly exposed to track sunlight. The device is weatherproof.

The Flower Power app contains a database of 6,000 plants. Stan is a money tree and the app contained that listing. And yes, cannabis is in there, too.

This device takes a lot of the guesswork out of plants. Likewise it takes some of the magic out too. The Flower Power takes all the pseudoscience out of maintaining plants. That’s great! But it’s also a bit sad since it turns gardening into a chore dictated by push notifications.

Is it accurate? As far as I can tell, it works fine. The air temperature reading is dead-on and it knew when I forgot to water Stan, which was often.

Each Flower Power is only set to monitor a specific plant. For instance, if selected to monitor green beans, it will not provide appropriate readings for the tomatoes planted in the neighboring bed. A device is recommended for each type of plant. At $59.99 each, it can be a bit pricey to outfit an entire garden. But Parrot does brag that it brings professional-level monitoring to the home consumer.

Parrot is on the forefront of an open market. There are several competitors including the Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor and SoilIQ, a SF 2013 Startup Battlefield contestant that has yet to launch its product. Still, even with several other players, the Flower Power should flourish in the emerging Internet of Things market.

The Flower Power works. Stan is proof of that. So far, because of the push notifications, he’s lived longer than any of my previous plants and I don’t see him drying out anytime soon.

Apple Adds New “Designing Great Apps” Micro Site For iOS 7 Developers

Apple has offered up a central location that houses a number of resources around designing software for iOS 7. The collection of videos, documents and whitepapers seems aimed at making it easier for developers to not only accommodate their existing designs for the new, pared down graphical look of iOS 7, but also to help them start thinking about how to push the envelope with the UI of their app to make sure an iOS 7 redesign isn’t just about a visual refresh, but something brand new with the potential to delight users.

The microsite leads with a selection of tutorial and explanatory videos culled from the iOS 7 Tech Talks series that Apple posted in December for developers, as well as some from its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) annual event last June. There are also key documents from the developer resource pool offered up, including the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, UI Design Dos and Dont’s, and the iOS 7 Transition Guide. A sidebar presents the iOS 7 introductory design video, Apple’s “Designed by Apple in California” spot, also from WWDC, and the developer “Making a difference. One app at a time” spot from the same event.

There’s no new material on the site, but it does pull together a key collection of resources in one spot that will help devs refine their products and fully embrace the changed visual language of Apple’s latest mobile OS. Even if you’re not a developer, it’s an interesting look at how Apple views iOS 7 app design, and what kinds of things it chooses to highlight in promoting that view to its third-party software partners.

Save $224 With This 3D-Printed Adapter To Affix Google Glass To Standard Frames

Google is now selling its own Glass-compatible frames for prescription lenses, but they’ll set you back $225 a pair, lenses not included. That’s a bit steep, especially when you’ve already forked over $1,500 for Glass itself. A DIY project from design studio Pixil 3D can modify Glass to work with your existing prescription glasses for under $1 in material costs, provided you already have a 3D printer (or still way under even if you have to get someone else to print it on demand).

The adapter is just a simple plastic clip, but it seems to work well based on the demo video, and again there’s the $224 in savings you’ll net from not buying Google’s official option. In case you’re worried about how hard it is to modify Glass, it really just involves the removal of a single screw. As for the 3D printing portion, that might require visiting a local shop with a 3D printer, but the costs associated with that usually don’t exceed a few bucks.

Project creators Noé and Pedro Ruiz started Pixil 3D in South Florida to design and prototype innovative gadgets with 3D printers. They’ve made some pretty cool stuff, including this 3D animated BMO from Adventure Time with a programmable LED face.

Glass is still a device with a very limited user base, but if it does make its way to the consumer market later this year as is apparently planned, then this handy little gadget could be a useful cost-saver for a much larger group of people.

Microsoft Said To Be Considering A Free Version Of Windows 8.1

Microsoft is looking at a cost conscious crisis, relative to both mobile and desktop hardware, and on the heels of the news that it might be reducing its Windows Phone software license fee, there’s new evidence that it’s looking at pursuing the same strategy for the desktop. The Verge reports that Microsoft has an experimental free version of Windows 8.1 called “Windows 8.1 with Bing.”

Windows 8.1 with Bing sounds like it’ll be a lightweight version of the full OS that focuses on bundling Microsoft apps and services in order to drive monetization through use of those, rather than through up-front software costs. This version of software would be positioned as a free (or low-cost) upgrade option for users still on Windows 7. It could also help PC makers with devices priced at under $250, which is a category that Microsoft is apparently targeting in order to help it compete with Google’s Chrome OS devices, including Chromebooks.

The nomenclature makes it sound like Windows 8.1 with Bing might be pretty heavily focused on the browser and its role as a potential platform play, so what we could end up with might look a lot like Chromebooks, in fact. This is all said to still be experimental, however, so it’s not guaranteed that it’ll ever hit the market.

Microsoft moving into platform distribution that doesn’t involve charging OEM partners licensing fees would represent a significant shift in its business, but the business models of its primary competitors pretty much necessitate the change. Google doesn’t charge anything for Android, for instance (though various license holders for tech in its use, including Microsoft, do charge OEMs to use it) and Apple has begun offering its desktop OS X software to end users for free as of the last major update.

For now, it looks like Microsoft will retain a paid tier for OS software and just offer low-cost or free options to capture more of the bottom end of the market, but if the focus shifts to software and services, we could be on the brink of a sea change that sees a larger shift to free when it comes to platform technologies.

Sony To Sell Former Tokyo Headquarters

The sell-off continues. The WSJ is reporting today that Sony is looking to sell its former headquarters in central Tokyo. This comes just weeks after the struggling consumer electronic maker sold its PC division and watched its credit rating cut to junk status by bond credit rating agency Moody’s.

This is the birthplace of the Trintron TV and Sony Walkman. Clearly nothing is save from being sold.

In 2013 Sony sold its Madison Avenue U.S. headquarters for $1.1 billion and one of its main Tokyo buildings for another $1.1 billion. The sale of this iconic building will only net the company $146.5 million, though.

Sony moved to this building in 1947, a year after launching the company. While it’s generally viewed as the building where the company developed the Trinitron, Walkman and more, Sony officials state that this is not where they came up with the idea. That other building is now a museum and not on the chopping block — yet.

How Capitaine Train Is Disrupting Train Ticket Booking Through Engineering

French startup Capitaine Train wants to improve the cumbersome process of booking train tickets online and on your phone. It’s not yet another travel agency, it’s an alternative to popular ticket booking services with an emphasis on efficiency.

“We want our clients to leave the site as soon as possible,” co-founder and CEO Jean-Daniel Guyot told me in an interview. The company bets everything on customer experience. Booking a train ticket should be faster, simpler and more delightful — you don’t want to see any ad if you’re already paying for a ticket. But developing this kind of services is not as easy as it sounds. Capitaine Train had to negotiate with very large companies who are not used to talking with young and fearless startups.

From 2002 to 2009, there was an ongoing anticompetitive practice in France. France’s main railway company SNCF was found guilty of disadvantaging online travel agencies in favor of its own solutions, Voyages-SNCF and Expedia. Three days after the sentence, Capitaine Train was born.

But Capitaine Train didn’t want to become a new travel agency, and the SNCF didn’t get that. At first, the startup got a travel agency license. It wanted the same direct access to the ticket reservation system as the SNCF.

Eventually, the SNCF had to grant access to the reservation system — it was a legal obligation. But it dragged on. Guyot told me that the company was calling the SNCF every week to get a meeting. Every time, the railway company found a new excuse to postpone.

In June 2010, Capitaine Train had no choice but to talk to the press about the difficult negotiations. Many media outlets picked up the news. Oddly enough, the SNCF agreed to meet two days after the public outcry. Six weeks after the meeting, Capitaine Train had a deal in place. But it took more than a year to get there.

Slowly but surely, the startup continued its expansion plans. It signed a deal with Deutsche Bahn and other European railway companies. The startup raised $3.2 million (€2.5 million). It released an iPhone app with the same well-designed user experience. Capitaine Train’s key advantage is not its sales team (it doesn’t have one), it’s its engineers.

“We nearly hit all our growth goals so far,” Guyot said. He didn’t want to share exact numbers just yet. Things are doing well, but train ticket booking is a very big market. Before communicating on revenue, the startup wants to own a significant chunk of this market, like The Train Line in the U.K.

Capitaine Train now has 170,000 users. More importantly, 70 percent of people who make a purchase will book another ticker in the next twelve months. Around 50 percent of train tickets in Europe are still not sold online. Capitaine Train has the opportunity to capture this untapped user base. They will want to use the best website to order tickets. All the startup needs now is to go mainstream.

Photo credit: Folkert Gorter under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license

Prezi And Adobe Join Obama’s ConnectED Tech Initiative For US Classrooms

Prezi, the cloud-based startup which competes with Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote, and Adobe are the latest technology companies to join President Obama’s ConnectED Initiative to help the US education system move forward into a more technology-centred world.

Prezi’s commitment will provide $100 million in Edu Pro licenses to hundreds of thousands of high schools and educators. Adobe is making available over $300 million worth of free software to teachers and students, including Photoshop and Premiere Elements for creative projects; Presenter and Captivate to amplify e-Learning; EchoSign for school workflow; and a range of teacher training resources.

The new commitments bring the total ConnectED investment to more than $1 billion. ConnectED hopes to transform American education by connecting 99% of students to next-generation broadband and wireless technology within five years.

The White House previously announced $750 million in commitments from Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Autodesk, and O’Reilly Media.

Prezi is the only partner with a significant European presence.

Mt.Gox Files For Bankruptcy Protection

Mt.Gox has filed for bankruptcy protection and has outstanding debt of about $63.6 million, a lawyer for the bitcoin exchange said today during a press conference at the Tokyo District Court, reports the WSJ.

Mt.Gox paused bitcoin withdrawals in early February. At that time, it said the suspension was due to technical issues and only temporary. News quickly emerged, however, that Mt.Gox is facing much more serious problems.

The collapse of the world’s largest bitcoin exchange caused investor confidence to waver and the digital currency’s value quickly plummeted, though it has started to recover. Many Mt.Gox investors are still having trouble recovering their money, however, and the longterm impact of its downfall on the bitcoin industry remains to be seen.

Crowdonomics And Earth Hour Team Up To Support Tech-Based Environmental Projects

Crowdonomic, a Singapore-based crowdfunding platform, has partnered with non-profit Earth Hour to help fund tech-based environmental projects.

Called Earth Hour Blue, the new platform allows users to contribute funds to projects supported by the World Wildlife Fund. Projects seeking money currently include Bancas for the Philippines, which will introduce fiberglass boats to communities that lost fishing equipment in Super Typhoon Haiyan; Stop the Killing!, an effort to combat wildlife smuggling in Southeast Asia; and Restore The Roodeberg, which is raising funds to conserve South Africa’s Table Mountain National Park.

Crowdonomic was launched about a year ago and offers reward- or equity-based crowdfunding for projects based in Asia. The company hopes its partnership with Earth Hour will help boost its profile beyond Singapore and lead the way to working with more startups and businesses around the world.

“This project is a showcase of our new enterprise crowd-powered solutions which allows large institutions to harness the power of crowdfunding at a global scale using Crowdonomic’s expertise and infrastructure,” co-founders Leo Shimada and Nicola Castelnuovo said in an email.

For Earth Hour, which is also based in Singapore, Earth Hour Blue gives the non-profit a chance to support more initiatives around the world. Earth Hour says that its projects have already reached 7,000 cities in 154 countries.

Looking To Make Fantasy Sports More Accessible, IAC’s Skyllzone Launches Fantasy App That Lets You Play The Computer On The Go

Spurred on by its entry into the digital and mobile age, the fantasy sports world is booming. From the fact that a hilarious and increasingly popular show based on fantasy sports is about to enter its sixth season to Yahoo’s increasing investment in fantasy sports products as part of a new mobile strategy that comes all the way from the top, the signs are everywhere that fantasy sports is turning into big business.

Yet, perhaps even more telling (and impactful) is the increasing interest in fantasy sports coming from Barry Diller-led media giant, IAC. Last year, the company which owns sites like About.com and College Humor and has acquired or incubated its way into owning a sizable footprint in online and mobile dating with Match.com, OkCupid and Tinder, stepped into fantasy sports.

It did so with the creation of Skyllzone, a team of experienced web and mobile developers within IAC, dedicated to revolutionizing the fantasy world. Now led by Match.com CTO and GM Mike Presz, Skyllzone has been on a mission to remove many of the traditional requirements (or barriers) that are traditionally native to the fantasy experience — like private leagues limited to competition among friends or co-workers, the potential for injuries to ruin a season, or having to collect money from the league yourself should you win, for example.

The team’s first production aimed at addressing fantasy’s UX friction was DraftStreet, a website and mobile app that allows gamers to play against a single opponent or hundreds, competing in free leagues or for money — in daily or weekly matches. Since launching in 2010, DraftStreet has become one of the most popular daily fantasy sports platforms on the Web, due in part to its being one of the first sites to offer the ability for players to earn points.

By playing in either free or for-money games, DraftStreet allows players to accumulate points or credits based on their performance, and to later exchange those credits for contents or prizes at their leisure. The site also gained traction based on both its reputation for paying out prizes and winnings quickly and reliably, and for offering user-friendly interfaces.

While these “qualities” may be expected parts of the user experience in other industries, in 2010, the fantasy industry was still experiencing digital growing pains and relied on simple ports of the offline fantasy model into an online interface.

Fast forward three years and Skyllzone is back with its second production, a mobile-focused continuation of its mission to create multi-platform, user-friendly products that allow players to participate in a slew of games and seasons of any duration and seek to bring daily and weekly gratification and quick pay-outs to fantasy sports leagues. While these traits have been key to expanding and improving the fantasy sports user experience on the Web and mobile devices both in general and for DraftStreet, its second product wants revolutionize the market with some new technology.

With the launch of “Fan vs. Machine” today, Skyllzone’s new fantasy sports app joins a surprisingly short list of mobile-first fantasy products. The app uses the company’s patented technology to enable users to play on their own schedule and without committing to an entire season. Initially available for iOS, and slated to arrive on Android in the coming months, Fan vs. Machine’s core innovation, according to Skyllzone, is that it is one of the first apps to allow users to instantly to compete against the computers in day-long contests.

While the company plans to apply its technology to each of the major sports, Fan vs. Machine is exclusively focused on fantasy basketball. The free-to-play gameplay enables users to instantly snake draft, compete against the computer and earn cash prizes for beating Skyllzone’s Watson. For those unfamiliar, a snake draft is a type of draft in which positions within the draft reverse after each round and is considered one of the “fairest” drafting models. In other words, if you draft first in the opening round, you’ll draft last in the next round, and first again in the third round, and so on.

The app uses Skyllzone’s proprietary, patented game technology that enables users to play against computer teams, which are controlled by its algorithms for draft strategy and pick selections. Competing against the computer allows speedy draft pick selections and aims to take the friction and time usually involved in your regular old human snake drafts.

Meaning: Drafts can usually be completed within 5 minutes, which is refreshing. And, naturally, playing in a fantasy league against a computer means that you get to take your time, playing on your own schedule without having to commit to a full season, while your opponent’s picks (i.e. the computer’s) happen instantly.

Skyllzone Chairman Mike Presz believes that the company has created a “new way to play” fantasy sports with Fan vs. Machine, and no other mobile product offers a computer-automated fantasy experience. The team is hoping that the app can appeal to both casual and hardcore fantasy gamers alike, and that the experience makes for an easy transition into the world of daily and weekly games that have become popular through DraftStreet, FanDuel, DraftKings and others.

That being said, Skyllzone co-founder and product lead Michael Vu admitted that there’s plenty of room for improvement as far as the app’s algorithm is concerned. Beta users have found the computer to be pretty competitive, he said, and most find it a workable balance, though, nevertheless the team is still “going to make it more competitive,” he said.

Admittedly, even for someone like me who is far from being a fantasy basketball veteran, the app and gameplay experience are pretty easy to navigate. Users compete in a league with nine other teams, each of which are auto-drafted by computers and compete with you in one-day contests. Naturally, as part of the game, each team drafts one center, three guards, three forwards and two utility players.

What makes it interesting is that each of the nine teams being drafted by computers has a different strategy in the draft, which, based on your past experiences, may make Fan vs. Machine’s style way more compelling. However, the one potential void: You don’t make any transactions or moves. Instead, you just kick back and watch the games.

The app uses a simple scoring grid consisting of positive points with a three-pointer equating to one point, a made free throw being a 0.5 point and so on. If you accumulate the highest points, you win your league, and if you win your league, the app pays out $20 and if you beat everyone, you win an additional $200.

For fantasy fanatics who believe that the best or most fun part of playing is the draft, then getting to experience that multiple times a week will be a welcome change and make Fan vs. Machine’s appeal pretty straightforward. That and not having a time limit, needing to coordinate drafts with friends, reach consensus or be judged for picks. Then, every week, the app offers contents in which you can win cash and you don’t have to pay money to enter.

If any of that sounds appealing, then Fan vs. Machine is worth the free download — and, uh, free entry. Going forward, the Skyllzone co-founders said that their top priorities are going to be improving the app’s algorithm to make the computers more competitive, expanding the Fan vs. Machine model to other professional sports and boosting its social layer and leaderboards. With the first and last of those being at the top of the list.

All in all, if Tinder revolutionized dating by creating an addicting mobile user experience and by eliminating awkwardness, then you might say Fan vs. Machine is attempting to do the same for fantasy sports. With just two products, whether or not you fall in love with them, the team gets credit for pushing to expand the gameplay experience in fantasy and for reducing some of what many would consider the traditional barriers to entry. Just as with Tinder, if you’re a purist and not under 40, then it may seem superficial, and for fantasy purists, Fan vs. Machine could feel the same.

But who doesn’t love drafting multiple times a week, right?

For more, find Fan vs. Machine on the App Store here.

Hulu Says Sayonara, Sells Off Japanese Unit To Nippon TV

Video streaming site Hulu is doing away with its Japanese subsidiary, the company announced today, selling the unit to Nippon TV. The sale might mark the end of the company’s international ambitions, as Hulu focuses more on its catchup TV service in the U.S.

Hulu has been operating in Japan since 2011, when it launched its subscription streaming service there. Over the years, the company had amassed a huge content library, which include more than 13,000 video assets from 50 different content partners.

When it first became clear that Hulu was looking to launch in Japan, it seemed like that market might be the first in many new international markets that the company looked to expand into.

It was, after all, around the same time that Netflix began its own international expansion. And such a move would give content owners new revenue streams from licensing their content in foreign markets.

But after that first international launch, Hulu more or less stayed put.

Over time, Hulu apparently found that the Japanese unit wasn’t core to its long-term plan to offer up streaming, ad-supported video from U.S.-based content partners. And that maybe the business was more valuable to someone else — in this case, Nippon TV.

In a blog post, new Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins wrote:

“We have now reached a point in the growth of the business in Japan where we feel the best path forward is to sell the company to a strategic buyer. I’m announcing today that Hulu’s Japan business is to be acquired by Nippon Television Network Corporation (Nippon TV), who will assume the day-to-day operations and management of the business at the closing of the transaction.”

According to the blog post, Hulu will continue licensing its brand and content to the Nippon TV, and it appears that the company will also provide some infrastructure services to the new owner as well. But with the change in ownership, Japanese users will also get access to more content, as the broadcaster will bring on a wide range of its own TV shows onto the Hulu Japan site.

(Developing…)

California Court Rules In Favor Of Using Cellphone Maps While Driving

Good news, Californians. You can now, once again, use Google Maps on your phone while driving. That is, legally. Until this court ruling, map use was in a shady legal gray area.

This comes two years after a Fresno, Calif., man was ticketed for looking at a map on his iPhone while stuck in construction. He was looking for an alternative route. As you do. The cop issued the $165 ticket under a law that prohibits listening and talking on cellphones while driving.

The man thankfully challenged the law and won.

The 5th District Court of Appeal reversed the ticket on the ground that the law specifically limits the use of “listening and talking” without the use of a hands-free device, but does not apply to other uses of the phone.

Next up, Californian man challenges traffic ticket issued for playing Threes while driving.

Awesome Netflix/Fitbit Hack Detects When You’ve Fallen Asleep, Auto-Pauses Your Movie

At an internal Netflix hackathon last week, a Netflix employee built an awesome hack: by using data from a Fitbit, it's able to detect when you've fallen asleep while watching a movie... and automatically pause your movie right at that spot. I want this. Now. Seriously. Read More

After Being Acquired By Yahoo, Personal Assistant App Donna Shuts Down

We knew the day was coming, but it’s probably worth pointing out all the same: Mobile personal assistant app Donna will cease working tomorrow, about one month after the company behind it — Incredible Labs — was acqui-hired by Yahoo.

In an email to users, the anthropomorphic app said she was “retiring as an assistant,” and “mov[ing] on to new adventures.” As a result, the app will no longer be sending push notifications to users reminding them to leave anymore.

So if you’re a Donna user, it’s time to start looking for a new mobile assistant or smart calendaring app. May I suggest Magneto Calendar?

Here’s the text of the Donna email:

Hello [XXXX]!

As you may have heard, my team is soon headed off to Yahoo to start a new chapter. I’ve decided it’s time for me to move on to new adventures as well. Tomorrow, Friday February 28th, I’ll be retiring as an assistant, so I won’t be sending you notifications to remind you when to leave anymore.

I will be permanently deleting your account information, as well as all calendar data you shared with me.

For more information, please read our Jan. 30 announcement: http://ift.tt/1iPStz0

It’s been a pleasure working with you!

Donna

Mojang In Talks With Warner Brothers To Make A Minecraft Movie

Mojang game studio founder Markus Persson, who was the main creative force behind worldwide indie game hit Minecraft, revealed via his Twitter account today that his company has been in discussions with Warner Brothers Studios to make a movie based on the popular world-building sim.

Someone is trying leak the fact that we're working with Warner Brothers on a potential Minecraft Movie. I wanted to be the leak!—

Markus Persson (@notch) February 27, 2014

Persson says he “leaked” the info to beat another leaker to the punch, which is a pretty hilarious way to announce something. A Minecraft movie makes a lot of sense, especially in light of the success of the recent Lego movie, and in light of the fact that there are now 100 million registered users playing the original PC-based Minecraft (it now appears on virtually every platform, including mobile and home gaming consoles), and that the game had sold over 14 million copies as of the beginning of this month.

In short, people like Minecraft, and people will also probably like a Minecraft movie. So, dollar signs in studio executive eyes, etc etc. People are already vying for casting, but obviously we need the venerable Nicholas Cage as a Creeper.

Apple Explains Exactly How Secure iMessage Really Is

Millions and millions of people use iMessage every day. But how many people know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes, or what happens to a message once you send it?

Maybe a handful. Up until now, the vast majority of what we knew about iMessage’s inner workings came from reverse engineering and best guesses. This week, however, Apple quietly released a document that breaks it all down.

If you know your stuff when it comes to cryptography, you can find the document here. The iMessage bit starts at page 20, but there’s all sorts of crazy interesting stuff regarding cloud keychain and hardware security packed in there too.

If you don’t know much about crypto, I’ll try to break it down a bit below. I admittedly have plenty of gaps in my crypto knowledge, but I’ve triple-checked this with people who know considerably more about this topic than I.

Before we dive in to the deeper stuff, you’ve got to understand one overarching concept at play here. It’s a fairly standard concept in the tech world, but it’s not something that most people ever have to think about. It’s called public-key cryptography.

To over simplify it: imagine you have a mail box. This box has two keys. One key lets you drop mail into the mail slot, and one key lets you take mail out. The input key and the pickup key are entirely different; one can never be used to replace the other. You can give away a million copies of your input key, and no one could use it to do anything but put mail in. Unless they find a copy of your pickup key or find a weakness in the way your mailbox was designed, your message is safe.

This is the thinking behind public-key cryptography. Your “public key” is like the mail slot key. You can share it with the world, and anyone can encrypt messages to send to you. But the public key only works in one direction. Once a message is encrypted, that public key can’t be used to decrypt it, or reverse the encryption. Once encrypted, your private key (the mail pickup key, in the analogy above) is the only way (barring exploits/brute force with a supercomputer) to restore the message to its original readable form.

With that, here’s how iMessage works:

• When a user first enables iMessage, your device creates two sets of private and public keys: one set for encrypting data, and one set for signing data (read: signing data is a secondary blurp of data that helps to verify that the encrypted text hasn’t been modified after it was sent to the server. If these two things ever don’t match up, red flags start going off.)


• Your public keys are sent to Apple’s servers. Your private keys are stored on your device. Apple never sees your private keys.


• When someone starts an iMessage conversation with you, they fetch your public key(s) from Apple’s servers. Before that message leaves their device, it’s encrypted into something that only your device knows how to decrypt.


• So if Apple never has your private key, how do messages arrive at all of your devices in a readable form? How do your private key(s) get from one device to the other?
  

  Simple answer: they don’t. You’ve actually got one set of keys for each device you add to iCloud, and each iMessage is encrypted independently for each device. So if you have two devices — say, an iPad and an iPhone — each message sent to you is actually encrypted (AES-128) and stored on Apple’s servers twice. Once for each device. When you pull down a message, it’s specifically encrypted for the device you’re on.

  
  


• Some data (“such as the timestamp and APN routing data”, says Apple) is not encrypted.


• All of this independently encrypted/non-encrypted data is then encrypted as a whole package, on the trips between your device and Apple’s servers. This makes it considerably tougher for attackers sitting between you and Apple’s server to figure out what data is what, and what they should actually try to decrypt.


• Things change around a bit for long messages and pictures, allowing Apple to hold photos and other media on the iCloud servers without being able to view them. In those case, your device generates a new, random key and a URI (read: address for something on a server) which catalogs where on the iCloud servers the image/media is stored. Apple sends your device the key and URI (which again, only your private key can decrypt), and your device pulls that image down from Apple’s servers and turns it into something readable.


• Once your device has retrieved a message, that encrypted copy of the message is deleted from Apple’s servers. If you have multiple devices, another encrypted copy meant for another device might sit on their servers until it expires. Messages are stored for up to seven days.

Too long, didnt read? Basically: Unless Apple is omitting something or there’s some backdoor tucked into their many-layers-deep encryption (which, while unlikely, isn’t inconceivable) they really can’t read your iMessages without a fairly insane amount of effort. Sure, they could theoretically brute force their way past your private key. Or they could scrap the entire system and replace it with something with glaring security holes, and hope no one notices.

But the same could be said for any service where someone else is even temporarily storing your messages — when you’re putting things into a black box, even if you think you know exactly how that black box works, you’re trusting that the black box hasn’t changed. And if Apple intends on ever lurking through your iMessages, they’ve made it pretty damned hard for themselves.

Groupon’s Stock Rises Following Positive Analyst Comments About Future Growth

Surf Air Founder Wade Eyerly Steps Down, Replaced By Former Frontier Airlines CEO Jeff Potter

The Surf Air management team has hit a bit of turbulence, with founder and CEO Wade Eyerly officially stepping down, according to an email sent out to members. He’s being replaced by someone who has had experience both in the membership and airline industries — former Exclusive Resorts and Frontier Airlines CEO Jeff Potter.

Founded in 2011, Surf Air provides a membership-based private jet service between Palo Alto, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. The idea was that members would pay a monthly fee for an all-you-can-fly service between any of those points.

In 2012, the company raised $7 million in funding from investors like Anthem Venture Partners, and saw participation from NEA, TriplePoint Capital, Siemer Ventures, Baroda Ventures, Gilad and Eytan Elbaz, Rick Caruso, Jeffrey Stibel Mike Walsh, Paige Craig, Aviv Grill, and Bill Woodward.

We had heard rumors that the management shakeup was taking place a few weeks ago, but the membership-only airline officially acknowledged the change to its members in an email earlier this week.

Despite having 430 paying members, the company was having trouble raising a new round of funding, according to a source. That might have been due to problems in the company’s operations — one member we talked to said that some of the airline’s scheduled flights were regularly overbooked, while other legs ended up running empty.

The management change is apparently being made to improve that, with the help of Potter and some folks who better understand the logistics of air travel.

In addition to the new CEO, the airline announced that Anthem Ventures EIR Sudhin Shahani is taking over the role of Executive Chairman. Jim Sullivan, who had previously served as VP of Flight Operations for Frontier, has joined Surf Air as SVP of Operations.

The shift also comes as Surf Air is adding new stops for its flights, including Las Vegas and Truckee, Calif.

For what it’s worth, Surf Air isn’t the only startup in the airline industry to have run into hard times. BlackJet, the so-called Uber for private jets, has also had problems raising more funding.

We’re reaching out to Surf Air to learn more. The email sent to Surf Air members is below:

Dear Surf Air Members,

Surf Air began the journey to revolutionize air travel in 2011, just three short years ago. Since that time, not only has Surf Air exceeded all expectations in disrupting the travel experience, it has resonated with you as members, which is reflective of the high renewal rate we’ve seen since inception.

Wade Eyerly created a vision that, along with his leadership and passion, has evolved into the innovative company that now serves over 430 members. We want to personally thank Wade for his tireless efforts to bring us to this point. With a solid foundation now created, as is the case with many companies during the early chapters of their inception and growth, the time has come for us to take the next step in the evolution of Surf Air. We are pleased to announce that along with upcoming funding, there are some key management additions with deep experience that will drive the next stage of our development.

To help lead this transition, Sudhin Shahani is taking the role of Executive Chairman. Sudhin will initially be focused on the investor and funding aspects of the company but he will also play an integral role in the long-term strategic direction of Surf Air.

In addition, we are pleased to announce that Jeff Potter has become our CEO. Jeff’s experience both in the membership club sector as well as the aviation sector fits the characteristics we need to scale Surf Air profitably and continue to improve the member experience. Jeff was CEO of Exclusive Resorts, the world’s largest luxury membership vacation club, and also served as CEO of Frontier Airlines, a major airline.

Finally, Jim Sullivan has joined the company as SVP of Operations. Jim has a long, storied history in aviation and at one point was VP of Flight Operations for Frontier Airlines. Prior to that, he held management positions as Director of Flight Training and Director of Process and Procedures. During his career as a pilot, he has achieved more than 18,000 flight hours.

We want to again thank Wade for all he has done to make Surf Air what it is today. We are extremely excited for the future and welcome the new leadership team as we begin the next step to grow Surf Air into the company we all know it can become.

We thank you for your ongoing support to our services – we commit ourselves every day to ensure that we are delivering you the best air travel experience possible. We look forward to continuing to lead the evolution of air travel and enhancing our services to continually meet your needs.

Along those lines, tomorrow, we are thrilled to be announcing some great news that we are confident will create a lot of energy and excitement! Please look for the news early in the morning and we hope you’ll be as excited as we are at the beginning of this next chapter!

Regards,

–

Surf Air Member Care

Cool People Play Their Music With An Electric Plasma Spark, Not A Normal Speaker

How do you listen to your music? Headphones you say? Sometimes on an Airplay or Bluetooth speaker? Oh. That’s pretty cool. I just listen to mine on plasma. Dancing electrical sparks that leap between two electrodes and produce a small amount of ozone. No big deal. Just, you know, how cool people do.

Actually that’s not how I listen to music, but it could be if I back the ARC Plasma Speaker on Kickstarter. The project hasn’t been live for 24 hours, and yet it managed to raise more than its $10,000 goal, and the amount keeps climbing. What it offers clearly has an appeal with a particular crowd, and that’s probably the group of people who like amazing science projects and DIY physics experiments, which should be everybody.

The ARC takes advantage of a property of an electrical arc, which can “ionize and compress the air around it to play music,” without any drums or vibrations like those you’d get from a standard speaker, which uses electromagnets to produce sound waves. The whole array is housed in a wood case, and the entire build-it-yourself kit is available to backers for only $89. A clear acrylic case that displays the inner workings costs $119, and an assembled version is $225. All kits are expected to ship in July.

If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, it’s probably because a previous Kickstarter project also promised a plasma speaker kit to backers. That one was funded, but created by a different group, and it was prone to early burn out. The new ARC project is the product of two of the members of the team behind the original, but they’ve refined the design considerably to make sure it can withstand the test of time.

Seattle-based ExcelPhysics (consisting of Matt Chapman and David Stoyanov) are the brains behind the ARC, and they’ve created other projects including a DIY radiation detector. Their goal is essentially to bring affordable, cool physics projects to market in a way that’s accessible to everyone.

As for the ARC, it works with input from basically anything that can output to mini stereo, so your computer, phone or media player should work fine. Plus it’s got a handle, so it’s relatively portable. For general use, a Jambox or something might be more practical, but impressing your physics geek friends while also entertaining them with smooth jams will probably require an ARC.

Keen On… Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers In The Age Of (Nearly) Perfect Information

How do we decide what to buy? According to Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen, the authors of Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information , we used to make buying choices based on brand. It was guesswork, they say. And often we were duped by sexy advertising campaigns that presented bad products in a good way.

And then the Internet came along. Simonson and Rosen say that the Internet age is one of (nearly) perfect information in which we can research the quality of anything – from hotels to cameras to cars to apps – online. Quality wins, in our Internet age, they say. Rather than basing our purchasing decisions on brand, we can read 50 reviews online and then make a much more educated decision on what we should buy.

This is great news for entrepreneurs, Simonson and Rosen say. There are much lower barriers to entry, particularly for start-ups without large marketing budgets. So a company like Asus, they say, can successful get into the notebook and tablet business without a massive marketing budget.

But what about Apple, I asked. What happens to a company with both really great products and great advertising in an age of (nearly) perfect information?

8tracks Reaches 8 Million Monthly Active Users, Launches Xbox 360 App

Music startup 8tracks just released a new app for the Xbox 360. Live Gold subscribers will be able to play 8tracks playlists for free on their consoles. In other news, the service just reached 8 million monthly active users, representing 30 million hours of music streamed per month.

As a reminder, its competitor Pandora announced during its earnings that Pandora users now stream 4.54 billion hours of audio per quarter. It represents 1.51 billion hours per month.

Overall, 8tracks remains a very small music service compared to heavyweight Pandora. But, according to comScore, 8tracks has a younger audience. 48 percent of its American users are aged 18-24. Advertisers always want to find new ways to reach this young demographic, and 8tracks could be a good platform for this purpose. SoundCloud, Bandcamp and Songza are other popular services for young people in the U.S.

The new app on the Xbox 360 will allow you to do everything that you would do in the app or on the website. You can browse human-created playlists by genre, activity and mood. You can like a mix to find it later, follow other users and more. 8tracks is also available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Windows 8 and more.

8tracks has been around for more than five years now. It has raised $1.5 million so far and has kept a small team. The key differentiating element is its human-generated playlists. Using the service is like digging through countless of mixtapes. You can browse by genre and mood to find the right mixtape for you. And of course, you can create your own mixtape. Many competitors have come and gone, but 8tracks is still here and growing.

Magneto Launches Web And Mobile Apps To Fix Your Calendar

If you're like me, you hate having to deal with your schedule. You're really bad at making sure that you've entered all the information you need in your calendar to show up to meetings in the right place and on time. Magneto Calendar is launching today in an attempt to fix all of the usual problems that pop up when trying to wrangle meetings. Read More

In Wake Of TestFlight’s Acquisition By Apple, Twitter’s Crashlytics Launches Beta Beta App Distribution Tool

Crashlytics, the testing and analytics company that was acquired by Twitter last year, is firing up a new beta distribution tool. The timing is pretty on-point as one of the major two players in the business — TestFlight — was just acquired by Apple along with its parent analytics company Burstly.

The new distribution tool is cross-platform — meaning that it works on both Android and iOS. That puts it on rough parity with Hockey, the other major player in the beta distribution space, though Hockey also supports Windows Phone.

The new tool comes out of Crashlytics Labs, the experimental arm of the crash reporting and analytics firm. It’s been in private beta for a bit but is now expanding into public beta, and you can sign up here if you’re interested.

Of the developers I communicate with and those I polled after TestFlight was acquired, many had switched to Hockey in recent months. The ease of integration and better analytics tools were often cited as reasons that they liked Hockey over Testflight, though the latter had been more popular for some time. Crashlytics also has a good rep among developers for how easy it is to integrate into their apps, and for the quality and detail of its analytics.

If this gets off the ground in a big way, it could become a big player in the space very quickly, especially given the void that Testflight will leave if Apple shuts down the iOS portions eventually. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Apple will integrate the improvements to the beta distribution system that Testflight made into its own developer offerings — which would provide a significant incentive to utilize its in-house platform.

Either way, Crashlytics has the resources and the know-how to put out an interesting product here, so let’s see how this goes.

Zero-Commission Stock Trading App RobinHood Kicks Off Private Beta

Soon, RobinHood will let anyone buy and sell stocks for free instead of having to pay E*Trade or Scottrade $7 per transaction. Today RobinHood begins inviting its 160,000 waitlisters to download its glossy new app where you can efficiently track and trade stocks in style. "It's by far the most bueatufil brokerage app, though that’s not saying much" co-founder Vlad Tenev jokes. Read More

Rumor: Brainwave-Sensing Startup InteraXon Was Approached By Google Regarding Acquisition Interest

Toronto-based startup InteraXon, maker of the Muse brainwave-sensing headband, had a very interesting potential suitor, according to a source close to the startup speaking to TechCrunch. Specifically, Google came calling, but InteraXon isn’t necessarily interested in being acquired by the search giant, our source reports.

A recent profile of InteraXon from the Financial Post provides a potential reason the startup is shy when it comes to a Google exit: co-founder and CEO Ariel Garten told the paper that she was in it for the long haul, with the aim of building a $500 million business over a span of five years. The startup has $7.2 million in funding already, with a $6 million Series A round from Horizon, OMERS Ventures, A-Grade (yep, Ashton’s investment vehicle) and more, plus $1.2 million in earlier funds raised from ff Venture Capital and others. The startup also raised nearly $300,000 in a crowdfunding campaign for its Muse headband which ended in December last year.

Garten was approached by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, longtime champion of the Google Glass wearable headset, according to our source, with an offer to discuss Google’s interest in the company. InteraXon’s Muse headband is a six-sensor headset that monitors brainwaves, for use with brain exercise training software, as well as a development platform for building apps to control virtually anything, including remotely pouring the user their own beer, or turning on TVs/controlling connected devices simply with the power of thought. Below, you can see the InteraXon Muse in action, as demonstrated by our own Colleen Taylor.

Google Gets Up Close And Personal With Polar Bears Using Street View Cameras

In the past Google has take Street map into the inside of an Amsterdam Barge (which just happens to be the HQ of the startup MobyPicture) and the inside of Doctor Who’s Tardis.

Now it’s going there again with stunning Street View pictures of polar bears in their natural habitat, just in time for International Polar Bear Day today. Shot in Churchill, Manitoba – apparently ‘the Polar Bear Capital of the World’ – and collaborating with Polar Bears International, Google mounted the Street View Trekker camera on a ‘Tundra Buggy’ and took Google Maps onto Canada’s tundra to collect 360 degree Street View imagery of polar bears on the tundra – their natural habitat.

But there’s also a serious side. Bringing Street View to Canada’s tundra establishes what they say is a “baseline record of imagery” associated with specific geospatial data. That’s the kind of data that can later protect this amazing creature.

Pretty cool stuff if we do say so ourselves.

Y Combinator Backs Its Next Nonprofit, Coding Education Program CodeNow

CodeNow is announcing that it has joined incubator Y Combinator — move that founder and CEO Ryan Seashore said will help with the programming education nonprofit’s ambitious plans for growth.

CodeNow aims to teach programming basics to high schoolers, particularly girls, ethnic minorities, and other underrepresented groups. It launched in Washington, D.C. in 2011 before expanding to New York City and San Francisco last year.

The program’s approach combines weekend sessions, online coursework, and an intensive boot camp conducted over longer school breaks. Seashore said the question he’s been asking himself, and one that’s been amplified by joining YC, is, “How do you make in-person training scale?”

The answer, or at least the one that Seashore plans to pursue, is not abandoning the in-person aspect of the program. However, he noted that CodeNow has been limiting its class size to 30 students at most. A new approach, which the classes have already begun to adopt, is bringing more students in but dividing them into groups of six to eight. Each of those groups will work with their own volunteer trainer, and they’ll move at their own pace.

In addition, Seashore said he’s developing the curriculum for “CodeNow in a Box,” which would basically allow companies and other organizations to partner with CodeNow, offering classes with their own staff but using the CodeNow curriculum. He said he hasn’t made any agreement yet, but companies have expressed interest.

“This is how we start scaling,” Seashore said, and he credited YC for “pushing me out of my comfort zone and making me think bigger.” He added, “We’re really looking to go from hundreds of kids to hundreds of thousands of kids.”

You may recall that YC announced that it had backed its first nonprofit, Watsi, a little more than a year ago. Then in the fall, the incubator said that it was ready to accept more nonprofits. (The money it puts in is supposed to be a donation, giving it no financial stake in these organizations.)

There are several other nonprofits in the current batch of YC startups, Seashore said. He also noted that even though he’s in Mountain View for YC, and even though he sees the San Francisco Bay Area as an important market for CodeNow, the nonprofit will still be headquartered in New York. That makes it YC’s first New York-based nonprofit.

Ex-Apple Engineer Launches Moov, The Next Generation Of Wearable Fitness Tracking

Welcome to the next generation of wearable fitness tracking! The first round of fitness trackers focused on introducing the idea of data to your daily activity and workout, but a new company called Moov wants to go beyond basic “step” data to tell you how to improve your form and get the most out of your workout.

The band uses a combination of hardware (9-axis sensors) and software algorithms to pinpoint your body’s exact movements in space without the help of a camera, letting the device give you tips on how to run without putting strain on your knees, or how to lift weights with the proper form.

It’s pretty clever. When you’re running, the Moov will give real-time audio tips right through your headphones about how to shorten or lengthen your stride or speed up. And even better, the app can run while your music plays, only interrupting to hit you with a helpful tip.

The Moov band can be worn on different parts of your body, like your ankle or wrist, depending on the information you’re looking to get out of it.

“I see it as my AI coach who not only tracks my moves, but works out with me in real-time: watches out for me on how to avoid injuries; whispers to me the secrets of losing weight while I do cardio; yells at me when I cheat; and encourages me to beat the pros,” said Meng Li, cofounder.

The Moov can also help with more random workout activities like cardio boxing, cycling, or swimming (Hello, waterproof!) In the coming months, the team plans to offer other kinds of sports to track.

The app allows users to share and compare their workouts to encourage motivation among the community.

Moov was built by Nikola Hu, a former Apple and HALO game engineer, and Meng Li and Tony Yuan. They both struggled with working out and were not getting results because they weren’t conducting there workouts properly.

Moov is running its own crowdfunding campaign, opting out of the usual Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign to “be closer to early supporters/users.”

The team is looking to raise $40K, which will allow for an initial shipment of about 650 Moov units at $59 a pop. If you’re interested in improving your form (in more ways than one), head on over to the Moov crowdfunding page and get to pledgin’.