Apple Explores Bayonet Mounts For Swappable iPhone Camera Lenses

Apple has been granted a patent by the USPTO (spotted by AppleInsider) for interchangeable lenses for a mobile device, meaning it’s possible future iPhones will have the built-in ability to swap out one lens, say a macro for close-ups, for another, like a wide-angle for sweeping landscapes. The patent first turned up as an application a few weeks ago, but Apple has already been granted rights to the IP.

That could mean nothing, as Apple frequently patents tech it doesn’t necessarily use right away in products. But it could also mean a lot; recent supposed leaked photos from inside Foxconn show an iPhone with a raised camera protruding slightly from the back of the device, and the drawings from the patent also show such a design. Of course, the provenance of those images is still sketchy at best, and there are other reasons for a raised camera (devices thickness) so it’s far too early to read anything into that.

Apple building an interchangeable lens system native to iPhone would be in keeping with its dedication to having the best camera available in mobile devices. Systems already exist from third-parties, but most of these are clip-ons, and the bayonet system borrowed from DSLRs and mirrorless cameras would make for more convenience, more security and better image quality using the lenses you can swap in and out, all of which Apple cites as benefits in the patent itself.

As a huge fan of interchangeable lens cameras, I’m excited by the idea of seeing these built into mobile devices. So long as they can build it in such a way that it doesn’t impeded the design or function of the device without a lens attached, it would be a great way to amp up the photographic chops of our portable gadgets while keeping kit loads a lot lighter. If I could just carry a telephoto zoom and a small macro as well as my smartphone, instead of a massive bag with DSLR gear that weighs about 50 lbs, I’d consider that very much worth my while.

Larger Phone Screens Drive Mobile Video Consumption

No, it's not an hilarious analyst April Fools' Day joke. Although, the elementary logic may suggest otherwise: larger screen phones -- such as phablets -- are a key driver in increased mobile video consumption. Read More

Melodigram Is A Photo-Sharing App That Adds “Atmosphere” And An Audio Message To Your Snaps

Forget artificial intelligence, virtual reality, or drones. What the world really needs is another photo-sharing app (and Office for the iPad of course). Enter Melodigram, an app for iOS that lets you add background sound and an audio message to a photo, and share a link to that content on various social networks and via SMS and email. Today the Finnish startup is announcing that it’s closed €700K in funding from Finland’s Vauraus.

Founded in early 2012 by CEO and ex-Nokian Jonathan Massey, and CFO Samu Keränen (who incidentally is also CEO of karaoke startup SingOn), Melodigram shuns being a social network in itself and focuses purely on content creation and external sharing. In fact, you aren’t even required to register, which is refreshing and flies in the face of most consumer apps and services that are supported by advertising and rely on amassing as much personal data as possible. Instead, the startup hopes to make money with a B2B revenue model in which it will charge brands to run campaigns and competitions through the app as part of their marketing spend. Yes, it’s another attempt at engagement marketing via the backdoor of photo-sharing.

“While we have plenty of technology and social networks, our lives have become busier and our time shorter to focus on actual messages with feeling,” says co-founder and CEO Jonathan Massey. “A Happy Birthday on Facebook feels so sterile and worthless and there seems to be nothing that people currently use regularly to convey their feelings quickly and easily. This is what we are aiming to change.”

Whether or not adding a background soundtrack — “atmosphere” — and an audio message will resonate with users, is open to debate. The idea seems to sit in the gap between a photo and a video, if such a gap exists. That said, Melodigram isn’t the only photo-sharing app to be playing around with sound. I also recently came across Picment, which offers something very similar for Android.

Meanwhile, Melodigram name-checks others broadly playing in the multimedia messaging/sharing space as Wordeo, Flipagram and PicPlayPost, though these seem to focus on creating short videos not specifically adding a soundtrack/audio message to a photo.

Why Balderton Capital’s New Early Stage Fund Is A Trend In Europe

Balderton Capital has raised a $305 million Series A fund focused on Europe. It’s a fascinating move and shows that European VCs are now finally convincing Limited Partners to invest in the sector, in a big way. Other VCs with older funds, built for a different era, will now look on with some interest. They will not be able to be as fleet of foot as this ‘smaller’ fund, and it answers a genuine need in Europe: Series A and follow-on funding.

Here is the reasoning.

Everyone knows there is a lack of capital available for Series A investments as it is much higher risk than coming in with a big cheque at series D stage. Balderton see a big opportunity here and now they have assembled a team that is very familiar with early stage investing. That’s not to say other European VCs don’t also have experienced teams, but in the past it has been unusual to see a fund of this size get stuck into early stage investing, outside of Index Ventures which has made a name for itself here.

The team tells us they are seeing more European companies than ever before – about 10,000 applications a year.

Balderton has done well out of its Series A investing with Bebo, Yoox, Natural Motion, MySQL, Lovefilm, so it clearly believes it can replicate its model and do it further down the food chain.

The fund was raised from existing limited partners such as university endowments and pension funds. A new entrant the European Investment Fund, the growth business financing division of the European Investment Bank, also joined. That means Limited Partners want to get on the band-wagon created by the US market.

Balderton has built on a strong portfolio including Housetrip, Kobalt, Scytl, Talend, Wonga and Wooga. Some recent investments include European companies such as GoCardless, Lyst, Top10.com, and Vivino.

The latter companies all grew from the early stage.

VCs no long want to be cut out of early stage deals by other investors, which is why they are now reaching further downwards into early stage, as Balderton now is.

Balderton Capital Raises $305M Series A Fund Focusing Exclusively On Europe

Balderton Capital, the European VC investor behind MySQL, NaturalMotion and Yoox, has raised $305 million for its fifth European fund. As has been hinted at previously, the focus of the new fund will be on Series A investments in European tech startups. Other investments in other regions such as the US or Rissia will be scaled back to focus exclusively on Europe. The total value of the companies backed by Balderton is worth over $10 billion. Its total funds under management will now be $2.2 billion.

The fund was raised principally from existing limited partners as well as including new investor, the European Investment Fund.

The announcement follows recent additions to the partnership of investors with strong operational and European backgrounds. Suranga Chandratillake, the founder of blinks (which IPO’d in 2012), and Daniel Waterhouse, formerly a partner at Wellington joined the team in late 2013. Waterhouse was previously with Yahoo! and is a board member of EyeEm, Hailo and YPlan.

Bernard Liautaud, General Partner at Balderton and founder of Business Objects, said the new fund has been raised to go after opportunities in the European tech sector.

“Over the last few years, we have refined our investment focus to double down on European early stage start-ups. Some of our earlier funds have been a mixture of series A and later stage investment. As with our last fund, this one is focused on Series A, where we currently see the greatest opportunities in Europe. Our goal is to be the first venture fund with an international outlook to invest in a company. The team’s strong operational experience gives us the expertise to back founders early and help build companies, which is why we are willing to take the risks and work with entrepreneurs at this earlier stage,” he said.

Previous investee companies include Betfair (IPO in London, today worth $1.9 billion), LoveFilm (acquired by Amazon), MySQL (acquired by Sun Microsystems), NaturalMotion (acquired by Zynga) and Yoox (IPO in Milan, today worth $2 billion).

Crimea Launches New ‘Sevastopol Tech City’ To Attract Startups

Despite recent upheavals, the new Crimea government has wasted no time in setting up an new inward investment programme to attract tech startups to the region.

In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, it’s newly appointed “startup evangelist” Vladimir Putinitov, said: “Crimea now intends to become the Delaware of Eurasia combined with Silicon Valley’s innovation. We hope to attract startups that would would normally look to San Francisco, London or perhaps Ireland, to instead consider the amazing new opportunities Crimea offers as the world’s newest startup hub.”

Heading up a new internal investment fund “Sevastopol Tech City” or (STCiti for short), he has been charged with attracting tech startups both from within nearby Russia and continental Europe (however, no countries directly to the north are eligible to apply for their programme).

A new, government-backed STCiti Fund will draw on a 60 Billion Rouble pot, which will make investments from 100,000 Roubles up to small series A rounds of 2 billion. However, startups will have to have Swiss bank accounts to qualify for the investment.

Putinitov outlined how both the SEIS (Sevastopol Enterprise Investment Scheme) incentives and new immigration rules, mainly encouraging Russian immigration, will help supercharge the entrepreneurial economy.

“Our Angel networks have been recently boosted by a new influx of oil oligarchs eager to diversify beyond oil and gas, and many new institutional investors and VCs are currently raising funds to boost Crimea’s startup ecosystem. Only the other day, we had a number of government ministers backing the creation of these new funds. Quite quickly actually.”

Putinitov outlined how office space in Sevastopol and other major cities in the Crimea are now at rock-bottom rates, beating even “cheap but sexy” Berlin on capital outlay costs. “We have a number of recently vacated military bases which would make incredibly funky spaces. And a lot of ping pong tables have been left behind by the previous tenants, alongside heavy armaments.

“Many of the buildings have double-height ceilings, and the in the case of the former aircraft hangers, quadruple height,” he said. “In fact we have made representations to Facebook to put in a new Hacker Way campus in one facility. We’re just waiting for them to call back.”

While it’s still early days Crimea is hoping to become the kind of region mentioned in the same breath as Paolo Alto, Putinitov went on. “We really think we can be the next Silicon Valley,” he said.

Although San Francisco has some of the latest mobile app startups, Crimea, boasted Putinitov, has some of the worlds most innovative new mobile artillery startups. “Just recently SniperChat raised funding for its ‘fire and forget’ platform,” he said.

Lingvist Raises €1 Million To Reduce The Time It Takes To Learn A New Language

Estonian startup Lingvist, which is developing “adaptive” language learning software that it claims significantly reduces the time it takes to learn a new language, has raised a €1 million round of funding. The investment comes from SmartCap (the investment arm of the taxpayer-funded Estonian Development Fund), Nordic VC Inventure, and several angel investors from Estonia and elsewhere.

Founded just over a year ago by Mait Müntel, Ott Jalakas and Andres Koern, the company’s inception came about after Müntel, who has a background in physics and had been working at CERN for several years, became interested in learning French. As he began researching what online/digital language learning solutions already existed, none of which he found were up to scratch, he reasoned that by subjecting languages to statistical analysis in order to establish frequencies and correlations and by optimising the “memorisation process” it would be possible to drastically reduce the time needed to learn a new language.

Müntel then set about building a prototype — which he himself used to learn French to a high enough level to pass the Estonian State Exam in 200 hours, apparently — and showed the software to early Skype engineer (and since serial investor) Jaan Tallinn who encouraged him to pursue the project as a bona fide startup.

“Inefficiencies in language learning come from learning irrelevant content and suboptimal repetition intervals,” Müntel tells TechCrunch. “Most digital language learning tools are still using teaching methods that might as well be set in a physical textbook – i.e. they are not making use of the fact that the student is learning on a device that has computational power and the capability to record and analyse usage data.”

In contrast, Müntel says the languages taught with Lingvist are subjected to big data analysis. “We crunch through immense quantities of text to establish frequencies and correlations that enable us to prioritise what is most important in a language and teach the most relevant and contemporary vocabulary,” he adds. “The order is not [the] same for everyone, but depends on each and every student’s skills and knowledge.”

It’s this “adaptive learning” approach — in which the software tracks what you know and what you don’t, in order to determine what you should learn next to fill in gaps most efficiently — that the company claims sets Lingvist apart from competitors.

Part of accelerator TechStars London’s latest cohort, Lingvist is currently running as a private beta for its English and French learning modules, although you can request an invite here.