Google's BufferBox Expands Its Shipping Kiosk Service For Parcel Pickups To San Francisco

Last year, Google acquired Waterloo-based startup BufferBox, which provides shipping locker service to make it easy to get things delivered reliably even when you’re not sure where you’ll be when they’re arriving. The startup built its service on the idea that people never want to see another missed delivery door tag ever again, and began rolling out availability in Toronto, a big consumer market near its HQ last year.

BufferBox is now venturing further afield (as teased earlier this year), with a program expansion in San Francisco that takes its kiosk service closer to Google’s home territory. The BufferBox model allows local businesses to essentially become a substitute post office, receiving packages on behalf of BufferBox users during business hours when they’re guaranteed to have someone on staff to accept delivery. Members then get an email notification as soon as the package as delivered so they know when to go to the local business and grab it.

In SF, BufferBox locations include Dogpatch Cafe, Coffee Bar, Noe Hill Market, 7-Eleven, Mission: Comics and Art and more. The service is also tied to Google’s recent Shopping Express service expansion, which allows people in the SF area to get their packages on the same day they place their order.

This marks the first sign of new market expansion since the acquisition of BufferBox last year, which cost the search giant a reported $17 million. At the time, Google said its motivation in acquiring the startup was to help “remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money.” Paired with its same-day service, the BufferBox experience definitely contributes to that ultimate goal, by making shopping online as easy as popping down to the coffee shop on the corner on your way home from work.

Google’s BufferBox business competes in many ways with Amazon’s Locker pick-up service, but the Google version now going live in SF tweaks the model by having humans handle package acceptance, and it has the added benefit of driving foot traffic to local stores. Google is taking its time with the rollout, however, which usually means there’s a lot to work out with the economics of the model before scaling it to any kind of wide coverage. BufferBox says to expect more integration, and more geographic expansion in the future, however.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/R65_jDrJbzw/

Anfacto Lets You Create Single-Purpose Android Devices For The Workplace, Restaurants And Events

While there are plenty of enterprise mobility and device management companies, they may not go deeply enough in controlling the end-user experience for an employee or a customer.

Many of these enterprise mobility startups use standalone apps that a tablet user can switch in and out of to the browser. That might be a security risk for restaurants that, for example, want to let their customers order from an iPad or a distraction for teachers that want to manage attention in the classroom.

Anfacto, a startup with talent from Google and an earlier company called 3LM that Motorola acquired, is building custom versions of the Android OS that let enterprises offer single-purpose devices for the workplace, conferences or the classroom.

“This is a level of control you can’t have with an application,” said CEO Hristo Bojinov.

Anfacto’s Android variant called FleetOS could let customers like UPS give their drivers Android tablets that they can use exclusively for tasks like scanning packages.

“The idea is that we can lock down the experience from a user standpoint,” Bojinov said. “The customer can go in and decide what applications and features can be run.”

He said a conference could give away tablets to attendees and push applications to them while they’re roaming around the event. Or a company like TaskRabbit or Uber could give their contractors phones specifically for managing errands or drives. Or they could partner with a hardware maker that wants to make tablets exclusively for kids with only specific, child-friendly apps.

The company is already profitable through a few early contracts, and took some strategic funding from DoCoMo Capital. They say FleetOS competes against expensive legacy solutions in the older Windows PC market.

Bojinov said he got the idea for the company because so many hardware makers were asking for it. Their solution has a policy server where an IT administrator can set the rules for what’s allowed or disallowed on their devices. They can also manage graphical resources like wall papers to offer a more customized or personal experience.

The company has 12 people on its team, with most of them in Palo Alto. They’re also opening an office in Bulgaria, where Bojinov grew up.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Uz9s35ftJu4/

Extreme Reality, Which Gives Any Webcam Kinect-Like Powers, Opens Its Developer SDK

Extreme Reality, an Israeli startup backed by SV Angel, has been at work for eight years on building motion capture technology.

Now they’re opening up the kimono with a platform that can turn any basic webcam or laptop cam into something like a Kinect, with the power to capture a three-dimensional range of movement.

“We’re aiming to give people a console-like experience without the user having to buy additional hardware,” said Asaf Barzilay, who is Extreme Realty’s vice president of products and research and development.

They’ve launched a new developer zone and an SDK for developers to play and test out Extreme Reality’s motion control software. They say it will let developers easily add Kinect-like experiences to web-based games. Without asking consumers to buy hardware, they believe the market for motion-centric games could be orders of magnitude larger.

Their platform lets based laptop and mobile cams capture motion and gestures that are up to 5 meters or 17 feet away from the camera.

The Herzelia, Israel-based company says that other game makers like SEGA have already incorporated their SDK into games like GO DANCE for iOS. Then there are more indie titles like Side-Kick’s Top Smash Tennis for Windows 8, Indie Hero’s BeatBoxer+TM for Windows 7 and VTree Entertainment’s Pro Riders Snowboard for Windows 7 and 8.

The SDK is free at first, but then there’s a revenue sharing arrangement that the company works out on a case-by-case basis. The SDK supports Unity, C++ and C# and operating systems like iOS and Windows 7. But no Android yet.

The company has raised about $19 million in venture funding from SV Angel, Marker LLC, Texas Instruments and Crescent Point Lantern.

Extreme Reality was actually founded eight years ago, but didn’t really start putting out consumer or developer-oriented products into the market until about three years ago. During that time, they picked up about 14 patents.

“We were in a laboratory mode,” Barzilay says.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hULIkEznzzs/

Defense.net Ensures All Your Base Are Not Belong To Them

If you’ve ever been on the business end of a denial of service attack, you know the sinking feeling you get when your servers fall to the enemy. Defense.net, a new project by cybersecurity expert Barrett Lyon is out to keep that from happening to their clients. Lyon also founded BitGravity and Prolexic and was featured in a book about his attempts to take down a Russian hacking group tied to the mafiya, Fatal System Error by Joseph Menn. So he’s legit.

Their first product is called DDoS SWAT and acts as a secondary DDoS mitigation service if your first one falls to the enemy. Because most financial and business organizations have their own servers in place, DDoS SWAT will pick up when those fail. The service provides “10 times as much bandwidth capacity” as most primary servers and they add in redundant data centers as well as a real anti-DDoS SWAT team that will handle things when they go pear-shaped.

The new company got $9.5 million in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

“Every week, at least one major bank has an outage to all or some of their users even though every major bank is protected by traditional DDoS mitigation companies,” said Defense.net CEO Chris Risley. “As an overflow service, Defense.Net DDoS SWAT has to do a lot more than match the capabilities and capacities of the primary provider. We’re only asked to step in when the primary provider is not succeeding. By definition, we’re stepping into a bad situation.”

The whole thing is obviously pretty nerdy but it does have a few cool features that everyone can appreciate. For example, Defense.net offers something called AttackView that shows you how and where you are being attacked and includes traffic diagnostics, attack origins, and how the attack is progressing based on the countermeasures applied. It also uses something called IP Reflection to route “clean” traffic around the junk and reduces latency to and from the attacked server.

As a fan of Neuromancer Defense.net looks pretty darn cool. Because it’s aimed at big businesses, however, don’t expect to plunk down a twenty dollar bill and get some SWAT team action on your personal blog. Until you’re Fortune 500 you have to depend on the old “buckle up and pray” model of DDoS mitigation.

via TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/cdETXGTrT8w/

Not so fast Twitter, Facebook is also after those TV ad dollars

Facebook is preparing to start pitching major TV networks on the benefits of integrating their advertising strategy through conversations on its social network.

The move comes just as rival social network Twitter is attempting to do the same, and even signing major advertising deals with media companies like the NFL and CBS. Facebook, however, has started sending audience reports to a handful of major networks like ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS as well as a few other smaller partners, according to a Wall Street Journal report published today.

Facebook is contending that it can provide much better data about audiences who engage in conversation about a particular television show while it’s currently airing. The reports, which won’t be shared publicly, apparently consists of what a particular audience is doing on Facebook during the show, such as how often they comment, like, or share something with others in their network.

Both Facebook and Twitter realize that there’s a huge opportunity to grab a piece of the $66.4 billion in TV advertising budget spending that occurs every year. Yet, for Twitter, this is very much a big part of its overall business model — especially as it heads into an IPO. Not only has Twitter purchased tweet analytics startup Bluefin Labs for its new Amplify TV ad service, but it’s also partnered up with Nielsen to provide a new standard of accurate TV ratings.

But I doubt Facebook’s main motivation is purely based on eating Twitter’s lunch. Facebook’s push to grab attention from media companies is just good business, and something that it should be doing since many people discuss TV shows on Facebook.

via VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/30/not-so-fast-twitter-facebook-is-also-after-those-tv-ad-dollars/

Adobe Creative Cloud: expert tips for beginners (exclusive video)

Adobe offers some of the world’s most powerful design and web tools, but jumping in the deep end can be a daunting task for newcomers. With over 12 years of experience as a certified Adobe instructor, Paul Trani specializes in helping turn amateurs into experts. Now a Creative Cloud Evangelist for Adobe, Trani focuses on spreading the word about the company’s ambitious and controversial Creative Cloud initiative.

VentureBeat reached out to Adobe in hopes of putting together some how-to content for anyone intrigued by the well-known suite of creative apps but was perhaps intimidated by the likes of Photoshop and Illustrator. As Trani explains in the video below, it’s not so scary, and there are many simple ways to start creating amazing photobooks, fixing imperfections in images, or launching that online store you’ve always wanted for your small business.

For slightly more advanced techniques, we’ll be posting another exclusive video later this week so you can get an even better idea of what’s possible with Creative Cloud.

via VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/30/adobe-creative-cloud-expert-tips-for-beginners-exclusive-video/

Is the doctor in? MedWhat’s ‘personal medical assistant’ is always on call

Dec. 4 - 5, 2013

Redwood City, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

On a cold and wintery evening several years ago, I poured warm garlic oil into my ear because the Internet said it would make me feel better.

MedWhat wants to prevent this from happening. The startup has built a smarter solution to searching for medical information online.

Founder Arturo Devesa said it has been called “Siri for Health” or “Dr. Google”

“MedWhat is a personal medical assistant,” founder Arturo Devesa said in an interview. “The machine behaves like a doctor. It answers health and medical questions, without being a static search engine where you have to pick through hundreds of articles and web links.”

MedWhat generates personalized answers to your medical questions using a combination of natural language processing, information retrieval, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence technology.

People seeking information answer questions about their age, gender, medical history, and what they would tell a human doctor about their health. MedWhat takes these variables and automatically generates an answer, using information culled from legitimate medical databases like NIH and the CDC.

“One of the main problems in the U.S. is healthcare costs,” Devesa said. “The government is spending more than $1T trillion on social security, medicare, and medicaid, and MedWhat helps people to use technology to save time and money.”

Going to the doctor is expensive and time-consuming, which (partially explains) why I rubbed garlic into my ear. It was 4 am and I was in college. I had a searing earache with no ability to drive to a health clinic, and a midterm exam the next day, so I turned to the Internet for help.

The Internet is chock-full of medical advice and a significant number of doctors and patients use the Internet to search for health information. However this information is often not easy to navigate or reliable, and most of the search is based around keywords and/or crowdsourced information.

Devesa said MedWhat’s technology is more sophisticated than sites like WebMD because it interacts with the users. It does not, however, give diagnoses or treatment recommendations.

The company plans to work with healthcare payers and providers who will license the technology to cut down on costs. It is also exploring target advertising opportunities.

MedWhat participated in the StartX program and Stanford is its first investor. MedWhat has also partnered with Stanford Hospital as a customer. It is based in Palo Alto.

Postscript: the garlic treatment didn’t work and I ended up smelling of garlic for days. All things considered, I don’t recommend this course of action.

via VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/30/is-the-doctor-in-medwhats-personal-medical-assistant-is-always-on-call/