The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘tools’

In its relentless push to turn YouTube into a profit center, Google is trying anything it can to pump more advertising into the billions of videos people watch on the site. Now it is automating the way that Flash overlay ads can be created and displayed on YouTube videos. Through the self-serve Display Ad Builder in Google AdWords, mom-and-pop businesses can now create Flash overlay ads as easily as they can create display banner ads and place them in YouTube videos.

Overlay ads have been around for a long time on YouTube and other video networks. YouTube constantly refines the types of overlay ads it shows, but many of the small businesses which typically advertise on Google AdWords don’t have the tools to create Flash overlay ads. Now Google is providing them with templates, much like it does already for banner ads.

As of last October, YouTube was showing ads on more than one billion videos a week, which was roughly one in seven videos. YouTube wants to open up all of its video inventory to advertisers large and small. Today’s release is the latest move in that direction.

At what point will there be too many ads and will consumers ever backlash? Already I find those persistent pop-ups and overlays to get in the way of the videos I am trying to watch, and I don’t find them particularly relevant. Flooding YouTube with even more of these ads may be good for its bottom line, but viewers are not going to like them.

Before livestreaming video networks like Justin.TV can become attractive to advertisers, they need to deal with their piracy issues. It’s the same thing YouTube had to go through, except with live video streams. Like YouTube, Justin.tv complies with DMCA takedown notices and is developing digital fingerprinting technology to identify copyrighted video on its network automatically. It also invites copyright owners to police the site directly.

Despite these measures, a casual perusal of the most popular streams on Justin.tv is filled with pirated streams of professional sports, TV shows, and movies. Right now, for instance, you can watch King of Queens or CNN International, taken straight from TV. The company finds itself increasingly under fire for copyright issues. To help it deal with these issues, Justin.tv now has a new adviser, Eric Goldman, the director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clare University and a highly-respected Internet law blogger. Unlike Justin.TV’s very-expensive lawyers at Wilson Sonsini, Goldman will be less constrained in speaking publicly on behalf of the company about these issues.

Goldman is an expert on how copyright law is applied to user-generated content. But in many ways live video on the Web is a new beast. It is hard for even a vigilant copyright holder to deliver a takedown notice if the video is only live on the Web for an hour. Competitor Livestream takes a “Zero Tolerance Policy” on piracy and challenges its competitors to do the same. Livestream does pretty much the same things Justin.tv does to fight piracy, with one major exception: it limits new channels to 50 concurrent viewers until the channel is authorized manually as a legitimate channel. Should Justin.tv do the same thing? Goldman dismisses Livestream’s zero tolerance policy as somewhat of a marketing pitch, but he thinks the concept of limiting a user’s “ability to put up content until they are proven trustworthy” is worth exploring.

CEO Michael Seibel notes that Livestream can do that because it is pursuing more of an enterprise strategy than a consumer-driven one. He also notes: “We work with the copyright owners. If copyright owners were not happy with us, they would be suing our pants off.” So far, Justin.TV has not been sued in the U.S., while competitor Ustream cannot say the same. Seibel sounds sincere when he tells me, “I don’t want that content on my site.” He really believes he can make money off the pure user-generated video, which costs him one third of a penny for every hour streamed, versus the half-a-penny per hour he can make just on remnant ads.

But if Justin.tv is really serious about cleaning up the pirated streams on it network, why not simply police itself and strip the most questionable content from at least the most popular channels to start? In the bizarro world of created by the DMCA, legally it can’t. Under the DMCA, the responsibility for finding copyright violations lies with the copyright holders. The second that a site starts to take on that responsibility itself, it risks losing the protection of the DMCA’s “safe harbor” provision. So Justin.TV can give copyright holders the tools to remove content from the site, but can’t do it themselves.

CauseWorld, a mobile app that lets users check in to retail shops for credits that can be donated to charity, is clearly on a roll. The app first launched in December as “the first mobile application that let’s you do good deeds simply for walking into a store.”

CauseWorld app users earn “karma points” when they walk into stores and check in with their cell phone. No purchase is required at any store, and karma points can be redeemed nine predefined good causes. Big brands like Kraft Foods and Citi (both are on board) then turn the karmas into real dollar donations to those causes. Food for poor families, water in Sudan, trees in the Amazon, etc. are examples of the causes.

The company has now donated about half of the original $500,000 donated by Kraft and Citi for the test period. And these brands seem to be happy. CauseWorld has been downloaded more than 300,000 times, probably putting it on par with location based check in networks like FourSquare. Last week Proctor and Gamble said it will give users karma points for scanning the bar codes of 27 products, like toothpaste or face cream. And now Citi will announce that it is expanding it’s support of CauseWorld. It’s total contribution is now at $700,000.

The charity angle on CauseWorld is brilliant and gives users an added incentive to check in at retail stores. But ultimately what Shopkick, the company behind CauseWorld, is aiming for is a bridge between the mobile world and the physical retail space. CauseWorld. Shopkick has much bigger plans, they say, that’s all very hush-hush. Sometime later this year we’ll see their new product.

The company, founded by Cyriac Roeding, has attracted some of the most high profile investors in Silicon Valley: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Reid Hoffman.

The press release is below:

CITI INCREASES CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEW ‘CAUSEWORLD’ APP FROM SHOPKICK, INC.

CauseWorld adds two leading microfinance organizations to its cadre of consumer-supported causes

New York, NY – March 9, 2010 – Citi announced today that it will expand its support of shopkick, Inc.’s successful CauseWorld application by providing an additional $350,000 in financial support for CauseWorld causes. Citi’s total contribution now stands at $700,000. About half has already been given to the causes by Citi on behalf of CauseWorld shoppers.

Citi also announced that the CauseWorld application would add two microfinance organizations – BRAC and ACCION USA – to its cadre of causes to which shoppers with the app may now donate.

“Already, the CauseWorld app is having a strong impact. It speaks volumes about the potential power of location-based mobile services. Citi continues to explore ways to bring new value, including convenience and smarter ways to use money, to customers and potential customers by working with leading companies, VCs, and startups like shopkick,” said Jeff Semenchuk, head of Citi’s Growth Ventures unit. “Citi is committed to meeting our customers’ emerging mobile, retail and payment needs,” he said.

“The CauseWorld app is proving to be a very effective way for Citi to support leading social impact-focused nonprofit institutions. The fact that shoppers are making the decisions makes it all the more interesting. We’re pleased that the CauseWorld app will also now include two of the leading microfinance organizations, BRAC and ACCION USA,” said Robert Annibale, Global Director of Citi Microfinance and Community Relations.

ACCION USA brings affordable microfinance solutions to small business owners. It funds microcredit loans and financial education programs that help American small business owners grow and thrive.

BRAC is a development organization dedicated to alleviating poverty by empowering the poor to bring about changes in their own lives. Shopper-generated “karma” will help provide microcredit loans to give poor women in Africa the tools they need to generate income for themselves and their families.

CauseWorld users will be able to donate to BRAC and ACCION USA immediately.

Since its December 23 launch, Citi has helped support a number of important causes through CauseWorld, including providing clean water for people in developing countries such as Sudan, providing meals to families in the US, planting trees as well as donating books. CauseWorld users are also benefiting Haitian and Chilean earthquake relief efforts.

“Citi saw the potential in CauseWorld before the app was even built,” said shopkick CEO Cyriac Roeding. “It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to work with people who ‘get’ the idea, even before it becomes reality. Citi’s new microfinance causes and additional financial contribution underscore their focus on creating sustainable impact.” shopkick is backed by Kleiner Perkins and Reid Hoffman.

The CauseWorld application, available for Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, was released in December. The CauseWorld app works by allowing iPhone and Android users to collect “karmas” by opening the app and “checking-in” when they come close to, or enter, retail stores. Karmas are then funded by Citi and Kraft Foods so that the user can spend collected karmas on real world charitable actions like planting trees, feeding families in America or providing clean water to people in Sudan.

Once the chosen action has been carried out by the charity partner, users can publish their good deeds to their Facebook feed, so all of their friends can see their pride and join in supporting good causes. A list of participating retail stores is included in the CauseWorld app and no purchase is necessary at the stores to earn karmas. With the addition of BRAC and ACCION USA, eleven charities have partnered with the CauseWorld App including: American Red Cross, Feeding America, American Forests, GlobalGiving, DonorsChoose.org, Prevent Child Abuse America, Carbonfund.org, American Humane Association and Room to Read.

How it works:
· Users download the free app on their iPhone.
· Collect karmas, the currency created from sponsorship money from Kraft Foods and Citi, by visiting participating retail locations.
· Spend karmas on real world charitable actions like planting trees, feeding the hungry and providing clean drinking water.
· Charities carry out the actions.
· Publish on Facebook to show friends and family.
· Build up a profile with icons showing all your karma expenditure.
· Earn badges and level up by earning more karma.

The CauseWorld App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone or at www.causeworld.com/iphone.

About Citi
Citi, the leading global financial services company, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 140 countries. Through Citicorp and Citi Holdings, Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management. Additional information may be found at www.Citigroup.com or www.Citi.com.

About shopkick
shopkick is a new Menlo Park-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins’s iFund and Reid Hoffman, founder and Chairman of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook. shopkick Inc. was founded based on the belief that the intersection of mobile and physical retail is the next big opportunity in mobile to create consumer value. The Silicon Valley-based company’s goal is to drastically improve the shopping experience of consumers by utilizing cell phones’ location awareness, unprecedented personalization capabilities, and social/viral features. shopkick launched its mobile application CauseWorld in the United States in December 2009, supported by Citi and Kraft Foods. The shopkick team consists of mobile and web experts who previously built the mobile division of CBS in Los Angeles, and successful mobile and online ventures in Europe and the U.S. (12snap, GoldPocket Wireless, Loopt, CommerceFlow, Rojo), and from Google, TellMe/Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble.

About ACCION USA
ACCION USA is a leading U.S. microfinance organization that provides access to capital and financial education to low- and moderate-income individuals, primarily minorities and women. A pioneer and recognized leader in U.S. microfinance, ACCION USA empowers individuals to create sustainable businesses, increase family incomes, and contribute to the economic development of cities across the U.S. Since inception in 1991, ACCION USA has provided over $119 million in small business loans ranging from $500 to $50,000, offered nationwide via the ACCION USA online lending platform. For more information about small business loans, visit www.accionusa.org.

BRAC
BRAC, an international development organization, was founded in Bangladesh in 1972 by Fazle Hasan Abed. Today, BRAC has grown to become the world’s largest NGO employing more than 120,000 people, the majority of which are women, and reaching more than 110 million people with development interventions in Asia and Africa. Since 2002, BRAC has been using its experiences of innovating and scaling up multifaceted anti-poverty programs to energize and accelerate poverty alleviation efforts in other countries. Currently BRAC has country programs in Afghanistan, Liberia, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Southern Sudan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, and is beginning programs in Haiti. BRAC also provides support to other NGOs in Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Peru. BRAC USA is an affiliate office of BRAC that engages volunteers, supporters and other resources to further BRAC’s vision of a world free from all forms of exploitation and discrimination where everyone has the opportunity to realise their potential.

It’s a little surprising to see a Twitter application coming out of Fuze Box (formerly CallWave), which creates visual collaboration product. The company has clearly caught the Twitter bug (albeit a little late) and today is launching Tweetshare, an third party Twitter app that allows anyone to immediately publish any type of content to the web, including HD video, presentations, images and more and automatically start Twitter conversation threads around their content. It’s kind of like FriendFeed meets Twitpic or Twitvid. Tweetshare has also rolled out a companion iPhone app that allows mobile users to upload content, tweet and create discussions on the Tweetshare platform.

A social alternative to static landing pages, Tweetshare aims to be a Twitterfied-Facebook Fan Page. Twitter users can post relevant content, such as presentations, images, videos and PDFs, and can also Tweet from the platform. Any comments made on a Tweetshare page or similarly, made on Twitter in response to posted content is also threaded on the page. A free application, Tweetshare also provides measurement and analytics tools, including polling functionality and the ability for users to become a fan of a brand’s Tweetshare Fan Page. And similar to YouTube channels and Facebook pages, Tweetshare Fan Pages can be branded and customized.

The site is missing Facebook connect, but Fuze Box says this will be rolled out soon. Of course, Mixx offers branded Twitter channels through TweetMixx, which offer some of the functionality of Tweetshare. And Tweetmeme also offers a similar product. Its unclear if there is any monetization that can be made from the Tweetshare, but the application seems that it could be useful.

Fuze Box has a pretty unique history as far as startups go. CallWave was founded in 1998 and went public in 2004, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CALL. After reaching a peak soon thereafter of over $15 per share, the stock dropped steadily, dipping as low as 50 cents early this year. Deciding to cut its losses, the company delisted itself from NASDAQ on Monday after buying back shares from public shareholders at a 44% premium over the current market value and paying out a total of $10 million. Last summer, the company rebranded itself as Fuze Box and launched Fuze Meeting, which it’s pitting as a sleeker, lighter, and cheaper alternative to services like WebEx.

Although the company has experienced some tough times over the past few years, it appears to be in a better place now. And the startup is obviously broadening its product base. However, while a little late to the Twitter frenzy, Fuze Box is moving in the right direction.

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In the wake of Apple’s sudden decision to remove nearly all “sexy” applications from the App Store, we’ve been hearing that the company is also clamping down on so-called “cookie-cutter” applications — iPhone apps that are built from templates using one of the many app-building services available. This would be yet another major change for the App Store, as it already features thousands of such applications. And, perhaps more important, quite a few companies have sprung up to facilitate building iPhone applications. I’ve reached out to Apple to ask if they’d like to clarify their stance, but given their lack of transparency in the past, I’m not betting on getting anything definitive. To try to get to the bottom of the current situation, I spoke with multiple developers (some of whom wished to remain anonymous) to find out what Apple was telling them.

Between the developers I spoke to, the consensus was this: Apple doesn’t appear to be opposed to ‘app generators’ and templates per se, but in the last month or so it has started cracking down on basic applications that are little more than RSS feeds or glorified business cards. In short, Apple doesn’t want people using native applications for things that a basic web app could accomplish. For some of these services that’s bad news, because that’s exactly the sort of application they produce; any new applications they submit are going to get rejected. But all hope isn’t lost for them, provided they can make their apps more useful.

Unlike the ’sexy’ app ban that took place a few weeks ago, when Apple gave developers no options to keep their apps on the store, over the last month the company has been reaching out to at least a few app building services to suggest what they should be doing.

The founders of Appmakr, which has been used by publications like The Atlantic to build iPhone applications, say that the process has been quite positive (though they are quick to clarify that applications built with their tools are more full-featured than the basic RSS apps described above). After some suggestions from Apple, the service is integrating new features like in-app purchases, instant notifications, offline access, and landscape viewing modes to their app templates. Another developer mentioned that they might include a tip calculator for restaurant apps. Appmakr’s hope (and one that I’m sure is shared by other developers) is that applications generated using their tools will eventually be given an accelerated path through the App Store’s approval process, because Apple is familiar and happy with the kind of apps they produce.

However, from what I’ve gathered not everyone is having as much luck as the Appmakr team. Multiple developers mentioned that they’d heard of some app vendors that Apple wasn’t being nearly as accommodating towards — I suspect services offering the most basic templates are getting hit hardest. That said, the developers I spoke to said that they’d only heard about Apple blocking newly submitted applications, and that there wasn’t an indication that Apple is going back and removing all of the overly-basic apps they can find.

So why is Apple doing this? Here’s what Medialets CEO Eric Litman had to say, which I think perfectly summarizes the situation.

This is the ongoing balance point between encouraging innovation and growth on one side and wanting to tightly control user experience on the other. Apple wants iPhone apps to be superior to Web experiences because they are extremely sticky and drive people specifically to buy the iPhone over competing smartphone platforms. Apps that are too simple or largely indistinguishable from the Web, other apps or particularly other apps on other platforms send the message to end users that the iPhone app ecosystem might not be particularly special.

Now the challenge for Apple is that the app building platforms are extremely attractive to a wide swath of the market that would otherwise be reluctant to bear the cost and complexity of developing an app from scratch. We have already seen apps from personal bloggers up to major media brands using some of these platforms, and many of the folks in that spectrum have content Apple would certainly want in the App Store. Interestingly, some of those same developers also have fully custom-built apps in the App Store, too.

So what are the platforms to do about the recent crackdown from Apple? There’s really only one choice if they want to continue to exist on the iPhone: invest in building out considerably more flexibility into their platforms to allow each app to differ from the others they build. Integrate more features and take the time to nail the design and UI elements to be representative of what Apple wants to see in every app.

For better or worse, Apple will be looking more closely at apps from the platforms than from individual developers. AppLoop, the first startup to announce and iPhone-specific app builder, is already gone. Others will almost certainly follow.

Overall, this will almost certainly result in a better experience for users as they have to deal with fewer spammy apps. But, as I wrote when Apple launched its war on sex apps last month, the policy change may also scare developers. After effectively sending a message to developers that basic applications were okay, Apple is again changing its mind.  Some developers may be hesitant to build their businesses around the iPhone, knowing that at any moment Apple could change its mind and cut off their only mode of distribution.

Thanks to Robert Strojan for the tip
Photo by Goosmurf

Running on just sugar and caffeine, 32 teams of students worked non-stop for 18 hours to develop applications that they hoped would blow the judges’ socks off. This was at the UC-Berkeley Hackathon, last weekend. Indeed, many teams succeeded in their mission. They built some amazing software: to provide server-side rendering of games, convert website mockups to HTML/CSS, create sophisticated playlists for Youtube videos, and to analyze Twitter streams. One team even built a gaming interface for a neural headset.

There were so many cool tools that the seven judges, who included representatives from Zynga, Facebook, Y-Combinator (and me), had a hard time picking a winner in each category. The exception was the “social good” category. There was only one team worthy of receiving this prize. The team built a system to enable villagers in developing countries to send SMSs to volunteers across the globe who provide emergency medical advice. But the Silicon Valley judges couldn’t see the value of this technology. One commented, “If the villager has a cell-phone, why doesn’t he just call 911? This is really dumb”. (Most of the judges didn’t understand that 911 services don’t exist in most places in the world, and that SMSs have become the internet of the developing world). Instead, the panel awarded the prize to a team that developed a polling technology for university classrooms and for conferences. The rationale for this decision? “Helping universities is a social good.”

This brings me to the point of this post. What if we challenged these students and Silicon Valley to build businesses that do good for the planet and make a healthy profit doing so? Today, the world faces more problems than perhaps at any point in recent history. The economy is on the brink. Greenhouse gases threaten to turn Earth into a giant steam room. Scarce resources such as food, water, and oil have already become international flashpoints as the developing and developed worlds jockey for position to sustain or improve their standards of living. Drug-resistant bacteria threaten us with doomsday plagues. Yet we have the greatest minds and the deepest pool of investment capital in the world focused on building Facebook and Twitter apps.

Yes, I know that some in Silicon Valley are solving important problems. But these are the tiny minority.  Out of 32 teams at UC-Berkeley, only one was focused on a social cause. That’s probably the same proportion of do-gooders as in the Valley. I’ll bet that most Berkeley students would do anything to better the world if they knew how.  But like the Hackathon judges, they don’t know what problems need to be solved and what they can do to solve them.

There is a way. In 2008, Charles Vest, the president of the National Academy of Engineering brought together a group of prominent deans of engineering schools from around the country to create a list of Grand Challenges that can be solved by engineers, in our lifetime. These were in several broad realms of human concern — sustainability, health, vulnerability, and joy of living. Dr. Vest believed that “the world’s cadre of engineers will seek ways to put knowledge into practice to meet these grand challenges. Applying the rules of reason, the findings of science, the aesthetics of art, and the spark of creative imagination, engineers will continue the tradition of forging a better future”.

Here is the list of the 14 Grand Challenges the deans created:
Make solar energy economical
Are you ready to go solar?
Provide energy from fusion
Develop carbon sequestration methods
Manage the nitrogen cycle
Provide access to clean water
Restore and improve urban infrastructure
Advance health informatics
Engineer better medicines
Reverse-engineer the brain
Prevent nuclear terror
Secure cyberspace
Enhance virtual reality
Advance personalized learning
Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

Some of these may sound far afield for typical Silicon Valley TechCrunch readers and Berkeley students, but they are not.  I asked Duke University’s dean of engineering, Tom Katsouleas, to help me translate some of these into tangible business ideas. Here are three examples:

1.  Engineer better medicines. You might think this is the purview of the medical researcher or biomedical engineer, and it is, but it is also an electrical-engineering (EE), computer-science and information-technology challenge.  For example, one of the big drivers here is the need to predict and prevent future pandemics of highly resistant diseases.  So a concrete grand challenge is to provide early detection of diseases from a saliva swab.  It turns out that the human body when exposed to diseases such as H1N1 responds with elevated gene expressions almost immediately.  Picking out the protein signal from such an event and distinguishing it from the noise of normal metabolism turns out to be amenable to the same techniques EE’s develop to pick out a weak cell-phone signal.  Duke Professor of EE, Larry Carin, has teamed up with genomicist Geoff Ginsburg and shown that this approach allows disease prediction up to 5 days in advance of symptoms.  Photonics researchers are busy trying to develop rapid on-chip diagnostics that are optical or based on electrical resistance rather than on lab chemistry and that work on saliva instead of blood.  This information can then be fed into dynamically steered computer models of disease propagation and guide both vaccine developers and public-health officials.

2.  Make solar energy economical.  It is that one extra word at the end of the sentence that changes everything.  Without the word economical, this is a physics challenge that we know how to meet: to convert energy from photons to a flow of electrons.   But with the extra word, the challenge cannot be solved without addressing business, policy, human behavior, and of course a spectrum of technologies far beyond the basic physics.  For example, nano-scale plasmonic structures could be critical to making solar cells as “cheap as paint” as well as coating roofs that are as reflective as white paint but still aesthetic.   Wireless technology could assist the adoption of electric vehicles.   Imagine using metamaterial lenses to make wireless chargers in the floor of garages highly efficient.  The leapfrog from EVs’ being less convenient vehicles that have to be plugged in to never having to stop to refuel turns one key obstacle to adoption into an incentive to make a better product.

3.  Reverse-engineer the brain. As brain researcher and Palm inventor, Jeff Hawkins, at Numenta pointed out, there was a time when computer scientists thought they could create artificial intelligence algorithmically.  That hubris is giving way to a recognition that understanding the structure and function of biological neural networks may be essential to achieving applications as mundane as navigating a car down the freeway to as grand as helping individuals optimize their own learning.

If you review the list of challenges, you may be able to develop some great business ideas of your own. Olin College and the Kauffman Foundation have created a competition for students who have completed science and engineering projects that tie directly to the 14 Grand Challenges. Several universities, including North Carolina State University and Duke University, are also holding a series of summits to bring thinkers together to solve problems. I encourage you to participate. My hope is that rather than run business-plan contests and hackathons, our universities will start competing to solve the Grand Challenges. Maybe the excitement and sense of purpose will seep through to my fellow judges and others in Silicon Valley… and maybe we’ll even help save the world.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

Sagem’s SIMFi is one of those ideas that you wish you had come up with yourself. The concept is pretty straightforward: they’ve created a SIM card with an embedded WiFi radio, so provided you have a suitable data plan, the card itself puts out a WiFi signal instead of relying on the phone

Go here to read the rest: 
Sagem Orga outs SIMFi, a SIM card/WiFi router hybrid

There’s an interesting and thought provoking essay at BetaNews by Joe Wilcox entitled “ Why former employees say Microsoft can’t innovate “. It’s a rather myopic examination of the middle-management woes and culture of job protectionism that is harming Microsoft’s ability to truly create.

Read the original:
Microsoft: Too big for its own good?

The AigoPad is just another example that 2010 will be the year of tablet computers.

The rest is here:
The AigoPad tablet computer runs Android and that’s all you need to know

If you just bought a Canon Rebel T1i , get thee to the camera store.

View post: 
Canon launches the Rebel T2i for $899