Posts Tagged ‘photos’
AirStash: Wireless portable storage
If you’re like me, you thought the AirStash was a mustache that floats in the air, like those seed things in Avatar , only not glowy.
LoKast’s Proximity Based Mobile App Takes Content Sharing To A New Level
Between the geolocation wars of Facebook and Twitter and the flux of geolocation-based social networks and mobile apps that have been hitting the market recently, the competition is tough. Today, mobile networking startup NearVerse, is launching a free iPhone app, called LoKast, which allows people to share media between iPhones at super-fast speeds. The kicker: the app connects people in its network based on proximity.
LoKast, which is actually short for “local-casting,” allows you to set up a profile that will list all of your photos, selected contacts, videos, web links and music on your mobile phone. You can select which content you’d like to include to the public and which content you’d like to keep private. When a LoKast user is in proximity (300 feet) of other LoKast users, the app will automatically discover other users nearby and allow the user to view and download their content. For example, you can see the iTunes library of any user who is in close proximity to you. You can choose to download a 30-second clip of any song to your own profile and can also follow the link to the iTunes store to purchase the music (LoKast collects an affiliate fee for this, of course). Similarly, you can download photos, videos and even contacts from other users into your profile. You’ll also soon be able to share apps on your phone with other users.
The beauty of Lokast is that it has its own internal network; eliminating the need for 3G connectivity to run the app, as LoKast works in subways, underground and heavily congested areas such as stadiums, where 3G connectivity is unreliable. The startup’s app is effectively all network based and currently has five patents for its proprietary technology.
LoKast is also partnering with bands to help market their content to users. LoKast has struck deals with music distribution companies including The Orchard, IODA and Monalis 360 to provide users with exclusive content within the LoKast app. And production companies, such as Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures, are also using the service to promote their new films.
LoKast will soon be launching an Android app, and plans to launch integration with Facebook Connect. The app itself is incredibly simple to use and seems like it has potential to be a great way to share content on your mobile phone. Of course, some people may not feel comfortable sharing their personal content to complete strangers, so that may be a barrier for certain users.
Quick hands on with the Vizit cellular connected touchscreen photo frame
The Vizit photo frame is an interesting twist on conventional photo frames.
Go here to see the original:
Quick hands on with the Vizit cellular connected touchscreen photo frame
TweetPhoto Gets More Social With Facebook, Twitter, And Foursquare; Launches Better iPhone App
First launched back in April 2009, TweetPhoto has been steadily building out its service with multiple useful features, including Foursquare integration and a partnership with Kodak. Today, the site is getting a huge overhaul with more social features and a new iPhone app.
TweetPhoto has now added the ability to sign in with Twitter OAuth, Facebook Connect, MySpace OAuth and Foursquare OAuth so that a user of any one of these social networks can use TweetPhoto as a stand alone photo sharing service. The site will also be rolling out LinkedIn support in the next few weeks. In addition to login capabilities across all four of these services, TweetPhoto users can also link these social networking accounts together. Once you link your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace , or Foursquare accounts on the site, your photos uploaded to TweetPhoto can be simultaneously broadcast to all of the networks. Third party applications that use TweetPhoto as the default photo uploader such as TweetDeck and Seesmic’s BlackBerry app, will also include this functionality.
TweetPhoto’s new, free iPhone app, called TweetPhoto Pro, is a suped-up version of its sister iPhone apps. The app allows users to upload photos, see their friends photos, the public photo stream, popular photos (usually celebrities or breaking news), and can link their social network accounts. The startup has also submitted similar apps for Android and Blackberry platforms.
In connection with the new social broadcast features, TweetPhoto is rolling out a new API to include over 35 new API calls. And as we wrote last year, TweetPhoto got into a bit of a pickle over its logo. That combined with Twitter’s trademark of the word “Tweet,” is resulting in TweetPhoto completely rebranding its service. The first step of this effort is a new logo, which we’ve attached above. A new name is forthcoming, says TweetPhoto, and its focus will be much more on the mobile side of things.
While TweetPhoto is still not getting the same amount of traffic as the leaders in the space, TwitPic, the site is edging out fellow competitor yFrog, according to January’s Compete numbers. But as TweetPhoto, which met with a little bit of scandal last fall, makes its offerings more social and interactive, the site could even give TwitPic a run for its money.
Mochi Media Launches $10 Million Investment Fund, Rolls Out Social Gaming Platform
Fresh off an $80 million acquisition by Shanda Games, Flash game advertising network and payments platform Mochi Media is launching a social gaming platform and a $10 million fund to invest in game developers.
Mochi Social allow developers to build social features into their games such as inviting friends, sending gifts, or posting to an activity stream. Mochi Social allows for the ability to broadcast in-game notifications to deliver news about game updates, friend activity or challenges.The aim of incorporating these features, allows for a game to transcend one social network by plugging into users social graph across all of their social media identities. The platform currently integrates with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter with more sites to be added in the near future. Currently in private beta, Mochi Social will be rolling out its first enabled game “Kingdoms at War” by A Thinking Ape next week.
A joint effort between Mochi Media and parent company Shanda Games, Mochi GAME Developer Fund is a $10 million fund that will help promising Flash and social game developers support their games through sponsorship, licensing and publishing deals. The fund will be used to assist indie Flash game development studios and game developers. Participating developers will gain access to technical, design and testing resources from Shanda Games, as well as development tools and distribution to nearly 40,000 websites from Mochi Media. Initial investments will be as much as $100,000 per game title.
It’s nice to see Mochi using its backing from Shanda to good use. And the addition of social features to Mochi’s development platform will no doubt be useful to game developers. As of June 2009 100 million people were playing games that included Mochi Media. The company also launched a payments platform for game developers last year.
Forrester Forecast: Online Retail Sales Will Grow To $250 Billion By 2014
Online retail sales aren’t growing at the torrid pace they once were, but they continue to grow steadily. Forrester Research put out a new five-year forecast today predicting that e-commerce sales in the U.S. will keep growing at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate through 2014. It forecasts online retail sales in the U.S. will be nearly $250 billion, up from $155 billion in 2009. Last year, online retail sales were up 11 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for all retail sales.
In Western Europe, Forrester expects a slightly faster 11 percent growth rate for online retail sales, going from $93 million (68 million Euros) in 2009 to $156 million (114.5 million Euros) in 2014. Forrester’s estimates exclude online sales of autos, travel, and prescription drugs.
Some other stats from the U.S. forecast:
- e-commerce sales will represent 8 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. by 2014, up from 6 percent in 2009
- In 2009, 154 million people in the U.S. bought something online, or 67 percent of the online population (4 percent more than in 2008)
- Three product categories (computers, apparel, and consumer electronics) represented more than 44 percent of online sales($67.6 billion) in 2009
While $155 billion worth of consumer goods were bought online last year, a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research. Forrester estimates that $917 billion worth of retail sales last year were “Web-influenced.” It also estimates that online and Web-influenced offline sales combined accounted for 42 percent of total retail sales and that percentage will grow to 53 percent by 2014, when the Web will be influencing $1.4 billion worth of in-store sales.
Yet there is a lot of room for improvement in helping consumers go from doing online research to in-store purchases. Only 61 percent of consumers who cross over from one to the other are satisfied with their buying experience, compared to 82 percent for those who end up buying online. Forrester draws the lesson that retailers need to do a better job appealing to online consumers in their physical stores. I come to a different conclusion: avoid going to real stores and buy online whenever you can. You will be happier.
Tilera Grabs $25 Million From Chip Investors
Tilera, a company that develops multicore processors, has raised $25 million in series C funding from Broadcom Corporation, Quanta Computers and NTT Financing. This brings Tilera’s total funding to $64 million
Tilera says the funding will be used to expand sales operations and for product development. Founded in 2004, Tilera designs multicore embedded processors for networking, digital multimedia, and wireless infrastructure markets. The company offers multicore processors for processing and power requirements, multicore software development tools, and boards. Its products include TILEPro, a multicore processor, which delivers the performance computing for embedded applications.
Tilera investor and semiconductor giant Broadcom just closed the acquisition of chip developer Teknovus for $123 million.
Adobe Offers Android Developers Free Photoshop.com Mobile Editor, “Unlike iPhone”
Adobe this morning announced that third-party developers now have access to the Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 editor, allowing them to make it a part of their applications.
The news comes four months after the company released Photoshop.com Mobile for Android, enabling users to easily edit and share their photos. That app got an upgrade, too.
Amusingly, Adobe also takes a bit of a swing at Apple for not being able to provide such tools to iPhone app developers.
Top Ten Ways To Fix Google Buzz
Google Buzz was pushed out the door too early and force-fed to users by placing it in Gmail. The launch has been marked by both privacy and usability issues. But the team at Google behind it, led by Bradley Horowitz, is working hard to fix problems and respond to user feedback. In fact, earlier today, Horowitz pointed people via Buzz and Twitter to an official Google product idea site for making suggestions to improve Google Buzz. The site is powered by Google Moderator, which lets people suggest ideas and then vote them up or down.
Below are the top ten ideas and feature requests on the site right now, which already has 13,607 votes on 338 ideas from 692 people. They range from making comments more manageable to fixing Twitter update imports so that they are more realtime to better filters and a ReBuzz button.
- “Collapsible comments.”
- “Allow me to “star” or “favorite” a buzz to read later just like Gmail, Google Reader, Google Groups and Twitter.”
- “Fix the Twitter feed so they update in realtime instead of hours later in giant batches.”
- “A “ReBuzz” button that forwards someone else’s buzz (including links, photo’s, etc. but not reactions) to your followers with a @reference to the original poster.”
- “Move “Mute this post” from the menu to the Buzz item itself (e.g.: next to ‘Like’ etc.).”
- “Buzz filter. Some people may not be interested in posts coming from certain sources (e.g. Twitter). It would be nice to have a simple way of filtering those out.”
- “Labels. Or any other way to group either people or buzzes (or both?) into categories. The ability to group information or people according to topics or personal preferences, etc.”
- “Allow multiple links in one buzz and let me add photos after adding a link. Currently only allows one link, and must add all photos before the link, or the photos option disappears.”
- “View the stream chronologically, without bumping buzzes back to the top every time a comment is added.”
- “More options for sharing posts from Buzz to other places”
Hmm, sounds like people want it to be even more like FriendFeed. What’s your top feature request for Buzz?
Pixable Lets You Make Mosaics From Your Facebook Photos
I’m a big fan of photo mosaics, which are basically designs and artwork made from actual photos. But it is undoubtedly an arduous task to arrange your photos so that it simulates a given design. Pixable, a startup that allows you to photo books and calendars from your pictures on the web, is launching a nifty new feature today that allows you to make mosaics from your picture easily. And the bonus: you can print the mosaics for a steal. The first 50 TechCrunch readers to order a mosaic poster will receive a free print by entering the code “50TC.”
On Pixable’s site, you can import your photos from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket into the mosaic creator. Via Facebook Connect, Pixable will pull in your photos spceifically from the social network. The image, photo or logo which is the template for the mosaic must be imported as a JPG files. So you can make a mocais from a logo, picture, landscape and more. You can share your photo books online and on Facebook. The actual photo mosaic prints are currently offered in 14” x 11” and 17” x 11” sizes, which are prices at $7.99 and $9.99, respectively. The poster is printed on acid free card stock and laminated with a UV coating.
Founded by 3 MIT graduate students, Pixable’s service allows people to use of all their Facebook and image sharing site photo content like captions, tagging information, comments, and birthdays to make albums, slidehows, calendars and nor artwork. Pixable’s browser-based simplifies the creation of albums, making it easy to use for anyone. The startup has raised over $500,000 from angel investors and has an advisory of notable entrepreneurrs including Ofoto founder and xMarks CEO James Joaquin.
Pixable is wise to leverage Facebook to showcase its technology, as Facebook is becoming the most popular site for doewnloading photos among consumers. As we learned recently, with 400 million users, Facebook is seeing 2.5 billion photos uploaded every month. With compelling features such as the mosaic tool, Pixable will continue to allow the social network’s users to do innovative things with it pictures. I guess it’s only a matter of time before Facebook begins to implement some of these technologies in-house.
