Oh, So This Is Where You Use The Microsoft Surface

The Microsoft Surface is a great kitchen computer, and sadly, that’s about it. You can tell a lot about a new product by how well you integrate it into your life, and for the Surface, the product has been largely sitting on my kitchen countertop for the past couple of weeks, except for that one time my daughter’s iPad was charging and she wanted to watch Netflix. Or that other time when I carried it to Startup Weekend, then ended up using it as a hard surface to press down on while writing with pen and paper.

Oh, Surface. You just don’t fit in. At least not for me.

This is not another Surface review, to be clear. I don’t review gadgets. We have people for that. Lots of them. Professionals. You should read those posts. This is an opinion. These thoughts have been itching inside my mind since my Surface arrived, and they’re dying to get out.

If anything, I’m biased to like the Surface. I wanted to like it, even.

I was a late switcher to Apple products. I didn’t care for the fervor that surrounded Apple, and having once worked in I.T., I was more comfortable in the Windows universe. I didn’t want to deal with the switching costs: productivity loss during the adjustment period, not ever really knowing the OS as well as I knew Windows, leaving behind software programs I had come to rely on, etc.

But the iPhone, as it turns out, was an ideal gateway drug. I switched. I learned. I adjusted. After the iPhone, came the MacBook Pro. Then an iPad. Now I’m a slave to the iPhone upgrade cycle. Today, to return to Windows feels like the same kind of struggle as leaving it ever was in the first place. But I’m predisposed to want to try on some level, if only to assuage the guilt and penalties associated with complete Apple ecosystem lock-in. (Well, complete except for that year and half using the Nexus S, and carrying an early Windows Phone 7 device for backup).

Overall, I don’t dislike Windows 8 as an operating system. Actually, there are parts of it I like very much. The Windows 8 “desktop,” for example, with its live-updating tiles is a welcome change from Apple’s incredibly boring interface involving app icons and folders. Even Google long ago out innovated Apple on this front, with Android’s customizable homescreens and widgets, live wallpapers and thumbnail-based application switcher. Apple’s iOS homescreen feels dated, and the upgrades we’re being fed (or those withheld!) are too often serving Apple’s own interests, not ours as users. Like everyone, I miss the native Google Maps app. I didn’t care for Apple’s delay on Facebook integration because the two companies couldn’t figure out how to work together. I don’t like pre-installed apps I can’t delete (like many of Apple’s native ones on iOS). I don’t like the inability to better customize the device to my own needs. (Why 12 icons in a folder? Why?!)

Windows 8 feels modern and different. The Metro design â€" or whatever you call it now â€" appeals to me. And the stripped down version known as Windows RT â€" the only version the Surface currently supports â€" is tolerable for light computing.

Now I know that a lot of ink has been shed over the ridiculousness of cramming the old-school “desktop” interface into the re-imagined Windows 8, but I can see where Microsoft felt like it had no choice in the matter in terms of supporting legacy software (and legacy users, resistant to change). Yes, it feels awkward to switch between the old and new. Jarring. But the ridiculous part to me is not legacy support â€" this is Microsoft! â€" but rather the decision to remove the “Start” menu from this old-fashioned interface. It’s like, “here’s your stupid old Windows. Now good luck using it!” [Insert evil laugh here]. Yeah, thanks a lot.

Still, while I’m attracted to the sheer “differentness” of the new Windows OS itself, one thought kept running through my head while using the Surface hardware: God, I wish I could use this OS on an iPad. And therein lies the problem. The Surface, well-built and sturdy as it may be, is a bizarre, bizarre machine.

It’s simply an awful tablet. If you remove the keyboard and try to use in portrait mode, the thing is too long and too narrow. It feels heavy because it’s too thick, despite being about on par with the iPad in weight. But if you attach the keyboard, you then have to be sitting at a desk or table where you can prop the thing up. It’s not a lap computer, which is nutty because tablet computers are for untethering you from a desk, and laptops have the word “lap” in them for a reason. Only Microsoft could come up with a way to make a tablet/laptop combo that forces you back to your desk no matter the configuration you select.

Only Microsoft could make a tablet that’s actually desktop PC.

And as a desktop PC, it’s too small for work day computing. It’s a secondary device at best. iPad users won’t buy this instead of a new iPad. Laptop users will still buy laptops. Price sensitive Android users won’t bite for the price ($499+, but unusable without a keyboard which is an extra $119 for the less expensive Touch Cover option). E-reader buyers will look for something lighter.

Who, then, is this tablet/laptop for? And where the heck are you supposed to use this thing?

As for me, the Surface sits in my kitchen. And it works pretty well there for quick web searches, email checks, recipe lookups, a little YouTube and the like. There’s no point getting into details about how well Office performs, or the lack of apps available for the Surface with Windows RT, or other details â€" this is an occasional use machine.

Anyway, the kitchen not the worst place for an oddball computer to end up â€" the PlayBook, after all, quickly became the bathroom tablet. (That thing is the perfect size for leaving on top of the toilet.) But if I were to invest in switching to Windows 8 from OS X or iOS, I go for a “real” laptop or a “real” tablet, not this odd halfling creation which is, in reality, neither.

CourseTalk Launches A Yelp For Open Online Courses And What This Means For Higher Education

One of the most popular topics in education technology these days is the subject of MOOCs, otherwise known as “Massive Open Online Courses.” Thanks to the buzz around MOOC platforms like Coursera, Udacity and edX, there are few universities and colleges that aren’t currently struggling with whether or not they should hop on the bandwagon.

Whether or not you’re long or short on MOOCs, it’s clear that, in the near term at least, they’re here to stay. However, as colleges, universities and more begin toying with open online courses and an increasing number of students and learners take to their virtual lecture halls, the signal-to-noise ratio has the potential to get pretty unfavorable. It’s for this very reason that Jesse Spaulding decided to launch CourseTalk.

The former trader and serial entrepreneur tells us that his interest in MOOCs was spurred after taking a couple of open classes: “Machine Learning” on Coursera and “Programming A Robotic Car” on Udacity. Spaulding said that he had a positive experience in both classes and, knowing that he wasn’t alone in this regard, began considering the cascading effects that MOOCs could have on higher ed. So he created CourseTalk as a way to help learners find signal in the noise of an ever-growing lineup of open online courses.

Today, CourseTalk is what you might expect â€" an early stage Yelp for MOOCs â€" a place for students to share their experiences with these courses and a way to discover new courses they’d enjoy. Given that it’s still nascent, the platform’s design is simple and its user experience is straightforward: Visitors can use the general search bar which is front and center, or peruse through “Top Rated,” “Popular” and “Upcoming” verticals, or search by category, like Business, Computer Science, etc.

The site has also begun to compile a (growing) list of the universities offering MOOCs and offers a vertical for the Top Reviewers, as well. As to which platforms it supports? Ultimately, Spaulding wants to list all of them, but for now the focus remains on publicly available courses that anyone can take from anywhere â€" free or paid.

The platform is currently in the process of adding courses from Canvas.net as well as a bevy of classes from Khan Academy. The usual suspects â€" Coursera, Udacity and edX â€" are all there. Down the road, the founder also plans to add vertical services, such as Codecademy and Duolingo.

Piggy-backing on the success of MOOCs seems like a no-brainer, but it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to imagine that MOOC platforms could simply add their own review systems and discovery tools as they grow, taking some of the wind out of CourseTalk’s sails. Of course, Spaulding wants the site to become a discovery platform that spans all MOOC providers and really any online learning resource, so there’s some safety in being a generalist.

Part of what’s disrupting education at present is that learning has been unbundled, such that there are now many services with a diversity of approaches competing (at an increasing scale) for student attention. That potentially makes a fully-independent review service like CourseTalk a valuable addition to the ecosystem, presumably enabling a meritocracy, so that if a MOOC has incredible content, it doesn’t matter how small it is or that it’s not an Ivy.

On the one hand, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. To be sure, the number of MOOC platforms are growing â€" Coursera seems to be having to bat its university suitors away with a stick. It feels like there’s real demand among universities, and there’s no doubt that nearly every higher-ed administration has “MOOC” in big red letters on their whiteboards. But there’s the question of whether this demand is just peer pressure or digital FOMO. In other words, colleges have long been accused of being slow to adopt technology, so if they miss this one, ho boy. The shame.

When a space gets its own Yelp, it’s generally an indicator of the fact that a bunch of content or businesses came online at once (or at least it seems that way when viewed from five miles up) and end users have no way to make sense of that noise. Sure, there are a lot of schools and programs rushing to take advantage of MOOCs because it’s perceived as a novel technology (even though the MOOC concept has been developing for more than a few months) and because of the scale MOOCs afford.

Reaching thousands beyond the classroom walls is good for the brand and visibility of both the school and the teacher. Especially considering how important personal branding has become for content producers in the digital age. (Especially this guy.)

Many of the most famous journalists, musicians, artists and even teachers â€" you know them for their blogs, Twitter streams, and bylines, not their agencies, record labels or institutions. So, one way to look at it is: For professors, MOOCs can be another distribution channel, whereas a platform like CourseTalk can be an amplifier and a regulator.

But at this point the value of MOOCs for teachers is still somewhat nebulous. Distance learning and virtual, video and streaming video-based teaching probably isn’t going anywhere. So there’s a benefit to teachers in learning to familiarize themselves with the different platforms available, with how teaching on a massive, asynchronous virtual platform is different from a synchronous, direct virtual teaching experience and is different from teaching in the classroom.

However, professors have to rely on this latent or implied value, because generally speaking, MOOCs are free, so it’s a community service project for them. And that brings up a salient implication for MOOCs and CourseTalk in turn: MOOCs really don’t have a business model yet. Tons of money invested but little revenue generation. (Great discussion at Inside Higher Ed here.)

A lot of edtech pundits complain when people focus too much on the monetization (the business) side of education technology. But without revenue generation, it’s not unreasonable to think that a number of the current MOOC players won’t be able to survive. What’s more, as of right now, MOOCs have no discernible credentialing standard. Startups like Degreed want to help solve this problem, but that’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.

Drop-out rates are also a problem for MOOCs and online courses. Their content isn’t engaging enough. A massive asynchronous virtual lecture is still basically a virtual lecture. If MOOCs are going to survive, they have to learn how to leverage the underlying technology to increase engagement. Simply adding in-video questions and quizzes probably isn’t enough. At the end of the day, MOOCs still afford universities the ability to reach new audiences, new candidates and their own students. They just have to figure out how to engage them and turn that into something that has real staying power.

If they don’t, CourseTalk’s reviews don’t really amount to much. But for now, a reviews site like CourseTalk has exciting potential because it can start to shine the light on platforms or courses that fail the engagement test and perhaps bring a whole new level of traffic, engagement and relationships to those who do.

For more, find CourseTalk at home here.

Going For “Pretty First” Is Wrong: A Designer’s Take On App Development

Editor’s note: Chloë Bregman is a product designer working on a new communications startup. Most recently, Chloë designed DrawChat, a drawing based messaging iphone app which is currently being auctioned off, and helped ignite Changemakrs, an inspirational quote site meant to help people inspire and be inspired to change themselves and the world. Follow her on Twitter.

Startup founders often ask me to take their app ideas and make them pretty. They feel that they need a beautiful product in order to get funding. I call this “pretty first,” and it’s when a startup focuses on creating a visually beautiful design for an app before determining whether the product has purpose and is useful.

This newfound emphasis on pretty first is, in part, a response to the increased importance being placed on visual design within tech products. It has provided great recognition for the design community. But “pretty first” is the wrong approach. If your product is not useful and engaging, it doesn’t matter how pretty it is.

First, let’s look at products that have been successful:

• Uber is hardly a revolution in visual styles, but it makes a black car appear within minutes that you can track on a map and reduces transaction friction in the payment system. The core value proposition works.
• Instagram was different and functional and engaging, and the look has improved throughout the app. But it certainly didn’t break the mold design-wise. It had the right social mechanisms to start a bonfire around the concept of the app, rather than outstanding visuals in the app itself.
• Airbnb solves a problem that people have â€" finding a place to stay. It’s also pretty, but it didn’t succeed on design alone. A lot of the early listings on Airbnb looked really terrible.

Not all startups, however, are realizing this kind of success. Many today are chasing a visually beautiful style without necessarily hammering out the problem that their product solves. The attention they pay to design has led to a newfound enthusiasm for white space, grid patterns, and typographically led designs. This design-heavy influence is translating into a lot of minimalist sites. The look of Web 2.0 is dead. It’s quickly being replaced by “clean design,” which is reminiscent of the Swiss style of graphic designs from the 1950s, embodies many of the principles of the Bauhaus movement, and has almost no drop shadows or gradients.

Some people think this design style, popular in apps such as Flipboard and Letterpress, started in mobile and is moving to the web. But really it is happening everywhere at once. Great examples of this phenomenon online are Svbtle and Qz.com. And Pinterest looks like it was designed with Wim Crouwel’s modernist grid designs from the 1950s.

With all this attention on the visual aspects of products, are we ending up with products that function better? In the chase for perfect pixels, white space and copycat Pinterest interfaces, we are seeing long-standing products undergo redesigns that don’t make them function better and, at times, even makes them less functional. The great Gmail redesign of 2012 has led to user outrage and confusion, partly because it more strongly focuses on “clean design” principles over user benefit and behavior.

How To Design A Product

Steve Jobs put it best: “Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”

Focus on the benefit to the user. What’s the user problem and how do you solve it? In the beginning, use off-the-shelf icons. Use Balsamiq. Come up with a basic design, build a basic app, and hand it off to users. Spend minimal time on what it looks like.

Before you’ve resolved the core issues in your app, don’t waste cycles on visual design. If you need help from a designer, reach out to an interaction designer or a product designer. You don’t need a visual designer pumping out pretty pixels. You may need someone to help you clarify how to make your product work and accomplish it in a simple and engaging way.

On iOS, you have to deviate pretty far from what comes in the box in order to mess things up. With Twitter Bootstrap, even the most design-averse engineers can create a basic, beautiful website. It has become drastically harder to make a completely ugly product.

Test with real people as soon as possible. We made a mistake on a previous project I was involved with when we spent six months building a newsreader app without extensive user testing. We had amazing interest graph algorithms, but when we launched the app, we found out that no one was interested, no matter how pretty it looked. Everyone thought the app was gorgeous, but no one used it.

When we built DrawChat initially in five weeks, we iterated on the product quickly based on user feedback. Instead of wasting early cycles to beautify features that we later cut, we focused on getting a plain-looking version of a feature into the app, found out if anyone used it or cared about it, and then prettified it later.

One thing we got right with DrawChat is that we made the app friendly and playful to use. Instead of an empty conversation list with a prompt to start chats, we added a draw monster pointing to the “New Chat” button. This type of playful detail will stick in the minds of users far more than the most perfectly fine-tuned gradient pattern.

Another example of playful design is the “Kudos” button on Svbtle, which lights up and pops out. The animation is designed to delight and reward users for giving positive feedback.

Focus on creating a useful product first. When you have a useful product, don’t fine-tune each pixel. Create moments of delight that are always playful and sometimes unexpected.

Investors aren’t stupid. If your value proposition is solid, you don’t need the most beautiful app screens. Their job is to separate the wheat from the chaff. If your product idea is great, they will be able to judge if you’ll be able to build it and make it pretty, too.

Thanks to Gabor Cselle for reviewing this post.

Facebook Users Will In Fact Vote On If They’ll Lose The Ability To Vote, Other Privacy Changes Denounced By EPIC

17,800 Facebook users have commented on proposed changes to Facebook’s governing documents, enough to trigger a vote on whether they’ll go into effect. Today the Electronic Privacy Information Center asked Mark Zuckerberg to withdraw the proposal to combine user data from Facebook and Instagram, and eliminate the same right to vote that users will assert in a 7-day period starting soon.

Facebook gave users one week to review the proposal to change its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy, and that period ends tomorrow morning around 10am PST. Since more than 7,o00 users have left commented on the changes, exceeding the threshold required to cause a vote, Facebook will set up a one-week voting period in the near future. Last May when Facebook made its last proposal that also received enough comments, Facebook set up a voting period starting two weeks after the comment period ended, meaning this vote could begin around December 11th.

At that point, Facebook users will be able to cast their ballot for or against the changes. If under 30% of the total user base votes, the majority decision will only be taken under advisory, and Facebook can decide whether or not to implement the changes. If over 30%, or 300 million users do vote, the majority decision is binding and Facebook must abide by it.

That’s highly unlikely to happen though, considering last time only 380,000 ballots were cast and Facebook went ahead with the changes. Considering Facebook has 1 billion monthly users and the voting period only lasts a week, getting a third of them to vote against the change in the allotted time is far-fetched. So unless Facebook retracts the proposal, it’s almost sure to become policy. 

You can read my breakdown of the proposed changes here. The key points are that Facebook seeks to:

1. Replace the ability to vote on future site governance change proposals with enhanced ways of gathering feedback on user opinions
2. Share data to and from its affiliates such as Instagram, Facebook Ireland, and Facebook Payments, including user and ad targeting data
3. Alter the way users control who can send them messages
4. Explain to users that co-owned content and photos of them uploaded by others can’t be unilaterally deleted or entirely hidden

The presidents of EPIC and the Center For Digital Democracy co-authored a letter to Zuckerberg decrying the changes one by one. Some of their feedback is reasonable, though other elements seem to misunderstand that fighting spam is critical to Facebook’s long-term success. Also, both of these organizations run on donations and benefit from raising awareness by picking fights with big-name companies. With those caveats in mind, their responses to each of the first three changes outlined above are that:

1. “Scrapping the mechanism altogether raises questions about Facebook’s willingness to take seriously the participation of Facebook users.”
2. “When Facebook first announced its acquisition of Instagram, it also announced its commitment ‘to building and growing Instagram independently,’ rather than integrating the two sites. Facebook’s proposed changes implicate the user privacy and the terms of a recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission…[that says] prior to any sharing of users’ personal information with a third party, Facebook must make a clear and prominent disclosure and obtain the affirmative express consent of its users.”
3. “By removing users ability to prevent strangers from sending unwanted messages, the proposed changes are likely to increase the amount of spam that users receive.”

The messaging change is vague, but has the potential to help Facebook users avoid missing Messages from non-friends that right now might be getting shuttled into the “Other Inbox” that few check or even know about. The new language about content visibility isn’t a change as much as reminder of existing functionality works.

Combining data with affiliates could anger some Instagram users who purposefully avoid Facebook. It has greater implications for those who use both. Facebook could employ its biographical and social graph data to target an as-yet-unlaunched ad unit within Instagram, or use Instagram geo-location data to improve accuracy of local business ads on Facebook. Still, even though Facebook said Instagram would operate independently, I certainly didn’t expect there to be no commingling of data and staff resources. This is critical to Facebook monetizing Instagram, and it’s going to happen.

But Facebook could actually decide to revise its change to the voting structure. I discuss at length here why the existing system is broken. It’s easy for a vocal minority like privacy activist group Europe Vs Facebook to trigger a vote, but almost impossible for that vote to be binding. The comment threshold encourages low-quality feedback instead of true discussion of what would be best for users.

In my opinion, though, it’s better than no voting system. There’s the off-chance it could be useful in a global emergency, but at the very least it gives users the sense that they have a hand in the future of the social network.

It would take some serious political science genius to turn Facebook’s site governance system into a functional, representative democracy. It would need to be simple enough for any user to participate without prohibitive time or effort, powerful enough to enact or block change when necessary, secure enough not to be gamed or hacked, yet not a major distraction to the service’s core value of Facebook. Maybe such a system doesn’t exist.

In speaking to Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer of policy Erin Egan, I know the company didn’t take lightly the decision to propose removing the vote. It truly wants users to have a voice in its decision making. It just doesn’t want to give privacy obstructionists a disproportionately loud voice as it does now, and it seeks to get a more comprehensive, qualitative look at how users feel about changes.

But I don’t think it’s time for Facebook to throw up its hands and end its admirably progressive experiment in social networking as a republic. Put out the call to the world’s greatest political tinkerers, many of whom are probably users, and ask them to design a better system. Review the submissions, select the best ones, make the whole thing transparent. If no better site governance system can be found, go forward with this proposal. But it should not remove the vote until all the opportunities for democracy have been exhausted.

[Image Credit: IconFinder]

Deezer Takes Aim At Spotify With New App Studio, APIs, Echonest And Songkick Deals And App Updates

Deezer, which earlier this year announced a $130 million round of funding to ramp up its music streaming business internationally. But to make sure that its service can compete against Spotify and others on the product level, today Deezer is also adding a bunch of new bells and whistles: it is launching a new app store called the App Studio and a set of APIs for others to embed the Deezer experience elsewhere; it’s partnering with (Spotify’s partner) Echonest for music discovery and Songkick for event listings; and it’s upgrading its iOS and Android apps.

The goal is for Deezer both to drive more users overall to its platform â€" it says that currently it has 26 million across across 160 countries â€" and to get more of them paying for the service. There are currently 2 million paying for Deezer’s service, compared to Spotify’s 4 million paying users on a subscriber base of 15 million overall.

Part of the approach is to find “green” users new to the business of paying for streaming music services, but it is also to poach those that are already committed elsewhere. Deezer is doing that by making sure that its service matches Spotify on a feature-by-feature level, but also by making it easy for people to switch. Among the eight apps currently in the App Studio is one called Spotizr, specifically created to let people import their Spotify playlist into Deezer. Other apps like PIAS, for discovering independent artists shows, that Deezer will also be looking to propagate its app store with the same apps as Spotify’s.

Some of that is also aiming to take the functionality deeper. While Spotify features an app for Songkick in its App Center, Deezer has integrated the functionality directly into its API. This means that the service of discovering concerts and other events for a particular artist listened to on Deezer is something that developers can call up when using Deezer’s APIs, and that it will be present as default information as part of Deezer’s own service.

The news comes at the same time as Spotify is gearing up to announce news of its own in December. Sources have told us that this will offer users the ability to discover music by following influential users on the platform. Spotify also now has a beta of browser-based version of its service for people to use the service without needing to download a separate client.

Along with Deezer’s new App Studio and enhanced functionality on its own service, it is also improving its social profile and how Deezer content can be shared elsewhere. Among these, songs listened to on Deezer are now appearing in Facebook’s notification center, where non-Deezer users can listen to them as well. On the new iOS and Android apps, users can also now see what songs their friends are tagging and marking as favorites. And similarly, it’s easier now for you to send your own playlists out to others.

Full release below.

DEEZER GOES TO WORK DRIVING MUSIC DISCOVERY WITH APP STUDIO AND NEW PARTNERSHIPS

28^th November 2012

Global music subscription service Deezer is forging ahead with its aim of driving music discovery worldwide. Deezer is pleased to announce the next stage of ‘Open Deezer’ â€" the easiest and broadest music API open to developers â€" as well as new strategic partnerships and a series of innovative technological updates.

This week Deezer unveils:

·       A new Deezer App Studio that will enable the discovery of rich new app experiences built around music

·       Partnerships with Echonest and Songkick to aid musical discovery and the integration of music into applications

·       Updates to Deezer’s iOS and Android apps that enable the seamless discovery of music through friends

Daniel Marhely, Deezer Founder said, “Deezer’s music service is built around discovery so we need it to be continuously fresh and engaging for music fans. That is why we developed our Open Deezer programme as an invitation to the boldest and most innovative developers to take music discovery to the next level. Similarly we’re building smart partnerships to better integrate music into apps and the web â€" with an eye to making it easy to share music with friends when you’re on the go, wherever you may be.”

Open Deezer steps up a gear with new App Studio

Today Deezer launched the second phase of its Open API Programme. Launched in May, Open Deezer enabled developers to seamlessly integrate the 20 million tracks in Deezer’s library into their products across all platforms, worldwide. Now, Deezer is taking the next step towards enabling musical discovery everywhere through the launch of its App Studio. In addition to featuring Deezer functionality and content within their own products, ‘Deezer Devs’ can now place feature-rich apps inside Deezer.com, affording them greater visibility and helping make Deezer a more engaging destination for music fans.

Marhely commented, ““In the last six months we have seen some excellent app ideas take shape, enabled by our open API.  We particularly love the ones developed by bright sparks or young startups which are helping to enrich the music ecosystem. Take edjing as an example â€" it turns mobile phones into DJ decks powered by Deezer music â€" it’s inspired.”

Deezer’s App Centre will not only feature desktop apps, but will also enable the discovery of web, iOS and Android apps built with the Open Deezer API.

Jean-Marc Plueger, the CEO of YaSound, an app which enables people to discover internet radio stations, said:

“YaSound is thrilled to participate to this great revolution: for the first time on the web, people from 160 countries worldwide will be able to great new services with music at their heart through the Deezer App Store. With Deezer’s YaSound app, music fans everywhere will be able to discover music through the largest database of internet radio stations, covering every genre.” 

Deezer integrates Songkick to drive offline musical discovery, adds new partnerships

Deezer wants to enable musical discovery in the real world, not just the online one. Deezer has built Songkick’s concert recommendation API into the heart of Deezer’s new personalised music libraries. Music fans can now access local concert listings based on their listening habits.

Deezer is working hard to build smart partnerships with cutting edge music and technology businesses. By partnering with music intelligence provider Echonest, Deezer is making it easier for developers to embed Deezer music into their apps.

But that’s not all. Deezer has also been busy working on:

·       Extended Facebook integration: Brings Deezer directly into Facebook’s Notification Centre.  Deezer subscribers can share their favourite songs as they listen with any of their Facebook friends â€" including people who don’t have Deezer.

·       Mobile social discovery: Updates to Deezer’s iPhone iOS and Android apps include new social discovery features and a ‘Friends’ feature that allows music fans to tap into their best friends’ music collections and latest artist discoveries.

·       Easier mobile sharing: New mobile features include a navigation bar to make it easier for mobile users to build and share their music library. In one swipe, music fans can add tracks to playlists, access album or artist pages, and share their music with friends.

 

- Ends -

 

 

Notes to editors:

Global App Centre: Apps available at launch:

 

·       PIAS â€" Discover independent artists and labels

 

·       Twusic â€" Social radio powered by Twitter sharing

 

·       Shuffler -  Curated music blog aggregator

 

·       eDJing â€" Puts you in the DJ booth, letting you mix two Deezer tracks of your choice

 

·       What’s That Track? â€" Social music quiz game that tests your musical knowledge

 

·       Wallzr â€" Create desktop wallpaper based on your favourite Deezer playlists

 

·       Spotizr â€" Imports any Spotify playlist into Deezer

 

·       Lalilala â€" The social singing game â€" ‘Draw Something for music’

 

The process for developers is simple: submit your app through Deezer’s developer website and wait for the Deezer team’s prompt approval. The App Centre will continue to expand over the next few months, culminating in a showcase revealing newly-added apps.

Churn: The Problem Of The New Tech Journalism

A decade ago, the news cycle for a CE product worked like this: a PR person contacted a major title â€" Laptop, say, or PC Magazine â€" and offered an exclusive for a cover story. “Hey,” they’d say. “Hot new laptop coming out! It’s got that new Wi-Fi!” An early version of the laptop would arrive at the title’s office and someone would write a detailed review of it because, let’s face it, there was little else to do at the office before the Internet was pervasive. Then, two months later the story would go to press and then maybe end up on some nascent Internet CMS hacked together by a designer after hours. The circle of life, then, for a tech product was about half a year. Plenty of time for back and forth, hand-holding, and handsome product shots.

The same thing usually happened for business news, but it was even less flashy. Some writer would receive a call from a local PR person who would explain that company X bought company Y. A few days later the piece appeared after the Sports section in a local paper with very little in the way of national distribution. A reader in Kalamazoo knew nothing about what happened in, say, Scranton unless a major paper had bureaus or writers in both cities. It was the ultimate in content curation and aggregation. The Wall Street Journal, in short, has always been a blog with resources and paper.

But, to hear the Cassandras wail it, that’s all over now and news gathering is in the toilet. That may be true for some, especially benighted corners of the news cycle where PR and access are still worth more than independence. But it’s important to understand why and how the speed with which we now work has improved the process. While I can’t defend the “reposting” of any press release without proper vetting (and to be clear plenty of people fell for the ICOA pump and dump scam), I think the value we’ve added to the process itself far outweighs some of the risks. We wield a weird sword these days and that’s both frightening and emboldening.

I’ve lived through the massive changes that wracked the news industry and I think our problems â€" the quick hits on unimportant deals, the intense desire to match obscure metrics â€" are the problems of the world at large. But by our very existence I think we do you, the reader, far more of a service than the business page of the Daily Bugle ever did. We post a lot of things for two reasons. First, lots of posts is the low-hanging fruit in the orchard of traffic. If the page is constantly updated, people come back. It’s that simple. Reddit isn’t popular because there’s one cat GIF at the top of the page for most of the day. It’s popular because that cat GIF goes away in less than 15 minutes and is replaced by another. If that sounds mercenary, then you, the readers, are the hiring generals in this French Foreign Legion of content churn. If we didn’t have to shovel this stuff into your constantly grinding maw we’d have a lot more time to write 4,000-word reviews of Atheros chipsets.

The second reason we post so much and so quickly is because we’re constantly involved in a conversation. It’s a conversation with tipsters, with readers, with creators, with makers, and, sadly, PR people. We post so much because that conversation is important to us and to you. A bored cubicle drone in Helsinki can discover that the world is changing in Stockholm and take the boat over to check it out. Your big game idea, the idea you made everyone sign an NDA over, has been copied by Rovio and all of your work went down the drain. One entrepreneur’s solution can be just the thing you need to make your students learn English gooder, to make your parents happier in their old age, or make playing console games a bit more fun.

Call it process journalism or call it “just talking” but what we do at TechCrunch and what they do at AllThingsD and what they do at TNW and GigaOm is approximately the same thing: we spread the word on important deals, inventions, and improvements in the tech industry. If that’s wrong then I don’t want to be right.

The problem comes when that churn, that endless wave of news, crests over our abilities to manage and vet. There is a call, for example, to slow down when it comes to coverage. You don’t care that Angry Birds Star Wars is out the moment it’s released. Why not just sit on that news for a few days, really give it a good dry rub? Why not give old Mighty Eagle a call, get him on camera. Really make an event out of it. We don’t do that because that’s even worse than pasting in a press release. There is a very large percentage of people for whom the words “Hey, Angry Birds Star Wars is out. You can get it here” is far superior to a 1,000-word article on how they got birds to look like Han Solo. We’re not any company’s marketing organ, no matter how many times we post about Apple. Those who want more can always find more. Always. So slowing down isn’t the answer.

Could we post less? Sure. I’d love it if we did. But we have a team of people who want to write. They want to get stuff up. They revel in breaking news even if that news doesn’t seem important to you, specifically. It’s like asking a gazelle to take the bus. So that’s out.

The answer, as far as I see it, is simple: avoid PR and PR newswires and keep the conversation going naturally. If you’re a founder, either hire a marketing manager internally or do it yourself. If you made something cool, tell us directly. At this point in the game gathering a list of friendly journalists is as easy as visiting 100 or so websites. It didn’t used to be that way. To get access to a newspaper you had to send a letter to an editor that would, inevitably, end up in the trash. Now you can spam a bunch of writers who are hungry to feed that maw.

I may sound a little cynical but I’m honestly not. In actuality, I feel our mission is as simple as the real motto of all journalism: “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” While I can’t say we’re reporting on the cure for cancer or sending in dispatches from the Eastern Front, we are creating a conversation to which many, many people are contributing. If what we write inspires a 19-year-old college student to open a dorm room business or a 60-year-old programmer to build a cool app, then we’ve done our job. If we’re pushing the conversation forward when it comes to Facebook privacy, UI improvements, and the globalization of infotech, then we’re doing what we need to be doing. If we jump, once in a blue moon, at something that looks like it might be the little guy finally catching a break (and it’s actually a pump and dump scam or a stupid product or a lie), forgive us or at least understand: We’re getting up every morning and not going to bed in order to keep you informed. If you don’t like that, there are plenty of other ways to get your news, but I feel few are as fresh or as fascinating as this new form of tech journalism that we are all now building.

The Gameplay Is The Gameplay. Always.

Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly is a game designer with 20 years experience. He is the creator of leading blog What Games Are, and consults for many companies on game design and development. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Most of the talk around games tends to focus on climate. It’s about finding the right customers, funding, platform, business model, partnerships, metric and discovery solutions, technology, route to market and so on. How we play the Game of Games, as it were.

In this context, we often think of the product as something that needs to fit into a mold. We think of them as television executives think of shows: They need to fill certain slots, address certain markets, encourage specific behaviours, and so on. To borrow a TV term, we think of them in terms of format first and content second.

By format I mean that the game has to conform to some conventions. Perhaps it needs to be free-to-play and support dual currencies because that works in many other games. Perhaps a session needs to be playable in two minutes because research has shown that many mobile games work better when they can be played in this way. Perhaps it needs to be filled with friendly graphics because the target market of yummy mummies (has that phrase gone stateside yet?) is generally believed to find realism, violence, and gore turnoffs.

There are two sides to this format argument. The nays say that these kinds of restriction prevent innovation and creativity. In part this might explain why indie game developers have mostly not engaged with new platforms like the iPad and Facebook, preferring the more awkward but liberal canvas of the PC. The yays, on the other hand, say that innovation and creativity are important, but at the end of the day games is a business. And metrics show that the market behaves in semi-predictable patterns, so the job of game development is to match those patterns.

Of course, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If you reject format thinking entirely, you may make something fantastically creative (such as Proteus) but which may not be viable in the long term. On the other hand if format is entirely your master then you’ll become trapped in that commoditised space where your games look and act the same as everyone else’s (such as the bulk of casual, social, and casino games). Then scale will be your master.

What’s interesting is that those from both sides of the aisle will almost always say that the first rule of making games is to make sure that the game is fun. Without a fun game there’s no rule two. What neither side will do, however, is elaborate on that statement.

This is because “fun” is traditionally thought to be difficult to define. It is a very general term that can mean enjoyment, excitement, delight, learning, amusement, adventure, the thrill of the new, the mastery of things or just simply laughter. It is also easily co-opted, such as when studios “prove” that the energy mechanic in their game is “fun” because it drives a lot of repeat visits (which is a bit like saying that because people watch television shows with breaks, this must mean they love commercials).

Some game designers have attempted to square this circle by sub-dividing fun. Nicole Lazarro developed a popular model which separates fun into four “keys” (hard, soft, people and serious fun) as a way of explaining different ways to approach game design. Others (such as one by Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek) break fun down into eight or more types, such as fantasy, discovery, expression, etc.

The problem with such systems is that they become justification tools. If fun is breakable into various sub-types, then it follows that you could mix-and-match those types with equal success. This is just not true. Games that do this often show large drops in users, generate reviews where players will say the story was enjoyable, but the game wasn’t fun, and so on. Successful game design always eventually comes back to realising that one of the kinds of fun is more important than the others. In Lazarro’s system it would be “hard fun.” In Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek’s, it would be “challenge.” The others are joys which emerge when the fun factor is sound.

So, fun is: the joy of winning while mastering fair game dynamics. And if we accept that the first rule is that a game must be fun, then it’s a hard limit. For many innovative game developers who want to push boundaries, this is very difficult to admit or accept. Nonetheless, it’s a universal law (a “creative constant“), which applies to all games. Whether you are in social, casino, gamification, casual, console or indie the gameplay is the gameplay, and it’s always driven by fun. It has been so ever since the first sports and Senet (the oldest known board game) were invented.

But the good news is that understanding that fun is a constant frees us up from thinking that format is, too. In fact the rules of format change all the time. We are all very busy trying to understand what shape the games business will have in any given year, what devices people will play on, and where the money can be made. Many games conferences are filled with talks and panels that are all about market opportunities, distribution and all those other climatological concerns. And yet none of that matters as much as it appears to.

Format wisdom has a short shelf life and is often over-interpreted. The recent success of Supercell is one example. Right now that studio is in the same blessed space that Rovio occupied a couple of years ago, where analysts are whirring around them trying to decode the magic of their success. Many other studios are picking Clash of Clans apart as we speak and trying to figure out the magic of its business model or distribution. There will be some  valuable insights derived from so doing, but in the main it’s just a fixed data point in a dynamic system. Clash of Clans is fun, and its release is well timed. Its success is not likely to be any more mystical to understand than that.

Just because players wilfully engaged in a format one year does not mean that pattern will repeat for all time (as Zynga has discovered to its cost). Just because it seems as though they will buy Christmas trees in games does not mean that every game needs them. As with interpreting the movements of the real-world climate, the pro-format types are over inclined to over-interpret the significance of runes and draw too-narrow conclusions. This inevitably leads them to making clones of successful games and be unable to think creatively.

Those indies who understand that fun is more important than format invent successful new games every year. Those iPad developers who are willing to experiment with format to create fun are the ones who catch Apple’s attention and become successful. The guy who invented Minecraft (Markus “Notch” Persson) didn’t just create a giant virtual world in which you could make stuff, he made it challenging. When Will Wright created the Sims, he didn’t just make a game about living in a virtual house. He made it difficult to live successfully. That’s why both of those franchises have sold millions of copies.

The fun factor is about more than making a game is amusing or full of pretty rewards. If your game is a dynamic system to be mastered and won, then you can go nuts. If you can give the player real fun then you can afford to break some of those format rules, and that’s how you get to lead rather than follow the market. If not then be prepared to pay through the nose to acquire and retain players. Your format strategy won’t matter as your game will lose users regardless of what you do.

And the climate is only going to get hotter.

CodeHS Is On A Mission To Bring Computer Science Education To Every High School In The U.S.

In the Silicon Valley Distortion Field, it can seem like everyone is learning to code â€" that coding has become cool. Either way you slice it, talented programmers are in demand. This, in combination with the fact that software (and the Web) are eating the world, has given rise to a number of platforms and tutorials that propose to help anyone and everyone learn to code, often from the comfort of their favorite sofa (and browser). Klint highlighted five of these companies in August, but the list goes on: Treehouse, Lynda.com, CodeNow and LearnStreet and more are all in some way bringing computer science knowledge to the masses.

The problem, however, begins with our educational system. If we really want to take STEM education seriously, learning the basics has to begin earlier and it has to start in the classroom. However, today, computer science is absent in 95 percent of high schools in the U.S. Why? If it were easy, CS would be more pervasive. But developing curriculum and finding qualified candidates to teach these subjects requires the money to lure talented programmers away from high-paying jobs in the private sector, it requires time and expertise.

That’s where CodeHS comes in. Founded by Stanford students Zach Galant and Jeremy Keeshin and incubated at StartX and Imagine K12, CodeHS is an online program build for high school students (and teachers) with no previous coding experience that intends to provide an easy and fun way to learn computer science.

Of course, with the growing popularity of MOOCs and learn-to-code sites, it might seem like the easiest solution would be to offer a browser and project-based online resource tailored toward students. But, again, most high school students go to class every day, and co-founder Jeremy Keeshin says that they key is building a site that focuses on schools first â€" not an automated, one-size-fits-all website.

CodeHS operates on the premise that most online education websites offer content and tests but are missing that important, interactive human element as part of their learning processes. In other words, they lack teachers. So, CodeHS wants to connect students with a real person to help them learn, offering debugging help and feedback on programming style, etc. as part of each exercise.

Galant and Keeshin both taught Introduction to Computer Science at Stanford for three years, where they helped teach over 2,000 students the basics of programming. Their biggest takeaway? The most important element of teaching beginning coders is giving them a reliable support system. Getting stuck is part of learning, but the frustration of not knowing how to fix a problem or knowing what questions to ask is part of why online learn to code programs suffer from high dropout rates.

But, the answer is not just throwing up forums, Keeshin says, it’s giving students the right bump, or the right explanation at the right time. So, when students begin learning through CodeHs, the first program is simple â€" it’s about getting “Karel” (a dog) to move around the screen. It grounds learning in basic problem solving, not jargon and syntax and, right off the bat, if they get stuck, they can turn to the platform’s instructional videos, and if that doesn’t answer their questions, they can ask questions of real, live tutors.

Focusing, instead, on getting a job â€" the professional end goal of many learn to code sites â€" causes them to lose sight of the fundamentals. They focus on job training rather than problem solving, what it means to write a good program, programming style, program readability and taking big problems and breaking them down into smaller ones, Keeshin says.

That being said, learn to code sites have succeeded in pushing the ball forward in terms of accessibility. Taking advantage of that, CodeHS doesn’t require teachers to install a development environment or use a terminal, all they have to do is open their browser. While students will likely get the most out of CodeHS if it’s being offered in a computer science class taught by someone familiar with CS, the platform allows teachers to learn right along with their students.

The co-founders say that they’ve had a number of english teachers who understand the importance of teaching their students computer science, pick up the program and begin learning themselves and helping their classes or work groups along the way. In terms of cost, at this point CodeHS is priced on a case-by-case basis. While the business model is still a work in progress, the co-founders have begun toying with the idea of using standard enterprise software pricing, like, say, offering CodeHS at $100/seat.

To help support the early development and pilots, CodeHS has launched an Indiegogo campaign, in which the startup is attempting to raise $100K before December 21st. So far, they’ve raised just over $11K. The goal, if met, is to teach “basic programming to 1,000 high school students over the next six months” and will allow it to offer its initial program to schools for free. The money raised, the founders tell us, will be put towards covering the cost of tutors that will help students troubleshoot code and offer feedback, website and curriculum development costs and integrate the platform into participating schools.

And that’s really the goal: CodeHS wants to integrate its computer science education program into districts and schools across the country. Traditionally, that’s been a tough sell for edtech entrepreneurs, turning many away thanks to the slow nature of the sales process and cycle. The CodeHS founders are aware of that, they say, and are in it for the long haul. They’re also looking to “teach as many low-income students as possible” and said that at least 300 of the first 1,000 students taught will qualify as low-income.

For all the noise in the U.S. about world class higher education and cutting edge technological innovation, teaching computer science in the lower echelons of the educational system hasn’t been a priority. Instead, other countries are leading the way, like Estonia, for example, which has begun the march toward implementing universal computer science education beginning in first grade.

Galant and Keeshin believe that the U.S. has to follow suit, so they’re starting where there’s the biggest need: High school. Though Galant says that several middle school classes in California have already begun testing the platform. The earlier students can begin learning computer science, the more prepared they will be to enter the work force down the road.

By promoting STEM and making computer science accessible to young people, essentially for free, the CodeHS founders hope that they can play a role in helping to make technical education a bigger part of the educational system. In 41 states, computer science doesn’t count towards graduation and that’s not going to change on its own.

We believe technology is transforming K-12 education. The infrastructure, hardware, software, and platforms are either available or being developed that will change the nature of how we teach our children in profound and far-reaching ways. This high-tech wave will sweep through the educational world, but its speed and impact depend on the quality of ideas and entrepreneurs and their ability to execute. This is where we intend to act. Imagine K12 is looking to invest time, experience,...

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StartX is a non-profit organization whose mission is to accelerate the development of Stanford’s top entrepreneurs through experiential education.

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The Facebook Button Is Back On Phones: Nokia Puts Social Networking Knobs On ~$62 Series 40 Asha 205, 205 Dual-SIM Qwerty Handsets

Amid all the Windows Phone, luridly coloured Lumia hype, it’s easy to forget Nokia sells a far more successful line of mobile phones, based on its Series 40 OS. While it sold just 2.9 million Microsoft-powered Lumias in its fiscal Q3, sales of Nokia mobile phones totalled 76.6 million during the quarter â€" of which 6.5 million were its Asha full touch phones.

For a little more context, Nokia says there are 675 million “current users” of Nokia Series 40-based phones globally.

Full-touch Ashas are only a portion of the Asha range â€" which runs to 12 phones in total. Or it did until today as Nokia has just added another two new models to the range, due to launch in Q4: namely, the Asha 205, and a dual-SIM variant (called, obviously enough, the Asha 205 dual-SIM) which has two SIM slots to support multiple SIMs. These latest Ashas are Qwerty devices, not touchscreen handsets. But unlike previous Qwerty Ashas, such as the 201 and 302, they feature a dedicated Facebook button on the front â€" for jumping straight to your social network profile.

These are the first Facebook buttons Nokia has added to any of its phones.

Asked whose idea the Facebook button was â€" Nokia’s or Facebook’s â€" Neil Broadley, Director, Technology Marketing, of Nokia’s Mobile Phones division, told TechCrunch the button was developed in “joint collaboration” with Facebook. “It’s very much something we’ve developed in partnership with Facebook. It’s been a joint collaboration throughout,” he said, adding: “We talk very closely with Facebook in terms of looking at the opportunities we have.”

Of course, this is not the first Facebook button to appear on a phone. Back in 2011, HTC unboxed two phones with dedicated Facebook buttons, the HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa â€" and that launch was accompanied by a video message from Zuckerberg talking up “deep social integration” as his mobile strategy of choice, rather than the fabled ‘Facebook phone’. Last year Orange and Vodafone also fired forth some own-brand handsets with Facebook buttons on board, including the Orange Alcatel One Touch 908F, Orange One Touch 813F, Orange One Touch 585F and Vodafone 555 Blue. (And most recently Orange has partnered with Facebook on a social calling service called ‘Party Call‘.)

This year, phones with Facebook buttons have been as rare as hen’s teeth â€" or they were until Nokia decided Facebook-branded knobs were exactly what its latest Asha phones needed. It describes the pair as the “most social” Ashas it’s made, noting they also come preloaded with a Twitter client â€" developed by Nokia in “partnership” with Twitter â€" and the eBuddy chat app.

As with other Ashas, the phones target mobile users on a budget, or who have other constraints to consider (such as limited access to high-speed data connections), and include technology such as Nokia’s Xpress Browser, which compresses webpages by up to 90 percent before delivering them to speed load times and shrink data downloads, and support for web apps such as Nokia Nearby (which taps up Nokia’s mapping assets and cell-tower positioning to offer location-based services to phones that lack GPS).

Both 205 handsets cost around $62 each, before taxes and subsidies, which Nokia said is around $10 cheaper than its previous “most affordable” Asha, the 201.

When Nokia introduced the Asha range, at Nokia World 2011, the launch focus was on developing countries, rather than mature mobile markets like Western Europe. But the rollout of Asha has been a far more global affair â€" the range is available in 132 markets globally, including markets in Europe such as the U.K. (Nokia claims existing Asha models feature in the top 20 handsets “in terms of volume” in the U.K. market.) Similarly, these latest Ashas will get the same 132 global markets rollout, although Nokia said the markets where it will hold launch events for the pair are India, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Slam

A new feature, developed by Nokia, which is included on the Asha 205 devices is called Slam. This is designed to make it easier for phone owners to share content from one handset to another â€" again, with the constrained scenario of not necessarily having high-speed cellular networks on tap, or even Wi-Fi on board (the Asha 205 handsets don’t have 3G or Wi-Fi).

Slam is effectively a simplified Bluetooth transfer, dispensing with the need to pair handsets before you can share content. The system just detects the closest compatible device and pairs automatically, before prompting the user to accept whatever content is being shared. So to send content via Slam you put your handset next to your buddy’s phone before hitting the ‘Send via Slam’ option.

Nokia said Slam works over devices with Bluetooth 2.1+EDR â€" so sending content isn’t just limited to the new devices announced today. Content can also be sent to Android devices, according to Nokia. It said you don’t need to have Slam on your handset to receive files; you just need Bluetooth.

Nokia 206, 206 dual-SIM

In addition to the Asha 205, and Asha 205 dual-SIM, Nokia is also beefing up its line of non-Asha Series 40 devices, with two new models: the 206 and 206 dual-SIM also announced today. These are in a range it brands simply ‘Nokia’ (plus the model number). The candy bar style 206 handsets come in a range of bright, Lumia-inspired colours (as well as black and white), and have a slightly larger screen (~10%) than existing Nokia phones of this type, such as the X2-02.

Nokia says these phones are designed for people who want a simpler mobile device mostly for talk and text. There’s no fancy Facebook button, but the 206 devices do include a Twitter client, plus the Nokia Xpress browser (and support for web apps). They also support Slam sharing.

As well as a low price-tag â€" also pegged at $62 before taxes and subsidies â€" battery life is a key feature for these devices, says Nokia. The 206 devices offer 47 days of standby time, and 20 hours of talk time â€" an important feature for markets (or scenarios) where electricity is not a commodity. So that could be rural regions of Africa, or a three-day music festival in Somerset.

Asked whether it has big plans for further expanding its S40 portfolio, Nokia said to expect “a lot of things” over the next year based on Series 40.

Nokia’s release follows below

ESPOO, FINLANDâ€"(Marketwire â€" Nov 26, 2012) â€" The new Nokia Asha 205 is the first Nokia device to feature a dedicated Facebook button

Facebook and Nokia have today announced an innovation with the introduction of a built-in Facebook button available on the new Nokia Asha 205.

Introduced today, the Nokia Asha 205 is the first Nokia phone that includes a dedicated Facebook button, designed for people who want the fastest, one- click access to popular Facebook features.

“People around the world use Facebook Mobile to connect and share with their friends,” said Javier Olivan, head of growth, engagement and mobile for Facebook. “We are focused on delivering the best Facebook experience to as many people as possible and our partnership with Nokia perfectly complements our strategy of giving people around the world a rich Facebook experience for keeping in touch with their friends.”

“Globally, young consumers have increasingly started using Facebook for socializing, keeping in touch and striking new friendships. The launch of the Nokia Asha 205 responds to this growing demand and gives them a unique option for accessing Facebook while on-the-go,” said Timo Toikkanen, executive vice president, Mobile Phones, Nokia. “We have seen that many people who use Nokia Asha devices are hyper-social and we are proud to partner with Facebook to improve the user experience of those consumers further with the introduction of the Facebook button.”

The new Nokia Asha 205 enables people to easily access the Facebook for Every Phone app and use messaging, one of its most popular features. People using the messaging features in Facebook for Every Phone can now:

* See which of their friends are online to start chatting with them right away

* Start messages and group chats fast

* Reach more of the people they know, wherever they are, no matter what device they are using

People using the Nokia Asha 205 can also easily access other Facebook features, such as sharing photos and status updates with their friends, so they can stay close to the people around them with the touch of a button.

Nokia is a Finnish multinational communications corporation. It is primarily engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries. They make a wide range of mobile devices with services and software that enable people to experience music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games, business mobility and more. Nokia is the owner of Symbian operation system and partially owns MeeGo operating system.

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Four Perspectives On Augmented Reality And Its Future

Augmented reality (AR) â€" the term does not exactly jump off the tongue. But the concepts behind the technology are beginning to change what we think of ourselves, objects and the people in the world that surrounds us.

I am no expert on AR but over the past few months I have seen enough examples of the way mobile devices change our reality to start wondering if what I am looking at is really what I think it is.  With Google Glass people will see a data layer that is not visible to the human eye. Through an iOS or Android device, a person can now use apps provide a different context for playing games, monitoring environments or tracking one’s brain activity.

I asked people developing technology for the AR world what they emerging. Here’s what they said:

Vikas Reddy, Co-Founder of Occipital wrote in an email interview that AR has not quite lived up to its potential due to the lacking capability to track and map the real world. But as computer vision algorithms and hardware improve, the camera will become the most important sensor and input mechanism not just for AR but for all computing:

Think about how much visual information each person processes on a daily basis while going about their lives. Almost none of this information is accessible for computation … yet.

Today, your smartphone’s computational reach into its surroundings end at its touchscreen surface. To your device, the real world isn’t a canvas of interactivity. Soon, however, computer vision will be used to make real world environments computationally interactive and fun, thereby extending the computational reach of your device into the visual space around you.

At the Blur Conference, Sphero CEO Paul Berberian gave me a demo of a new game called “Sharky the Beaver,” that TechCrunch’s Romain Dillet wrote about earlier this month. Sharky is essentially a robotic ball that serves as a rolling marker. The user controls the ball through a bluetooth enabled device. As the ball rolls across the floor, the user sees Sharky bounce around eating cupcakes. By creating two streams of data, the experience goes between the real world and the virtual one fairly seamlessly.

Sharky is available to developers as an SDK. A likely outcome is a library of avatars that people control via the little, flashing robotic balls. For instance, a furniture company may create a network of avatars that people can use to see how tables and chairs look by rolling the ball around the living room.

I also had the chance to talk at Blur with InteraXon Co-Founder Ariel Gartern about the company’s brain sensing headband that allows your brainwaves to serve as a way for monitoring concentration levels or as a means for controlling window shades or the lights in a house. Its first in-house app helps with brain fitness for “better attention skills, improving your memory, reducing anxiety, building a more positive attitude and staying motivated.”

Chris Aimone, InteraXon’s CTO said in an email about how this form of technology intersects with AR.

There are a number of excellent ways that brainwaves and AR fit together. There are predominantly two kinds of AR that people refer to: glass style AR, where one wears a pair of glasses and the world is augmented or mediated on the screen; and iphone-camera type AR, where one holds up an iphone and new layers are added to a scene.

Google glass-style AR provides the opportunity for collecting brainwave data because you have a continuous-wear device that can continuously record brainwave signal. Adding brainwaves to this environment allows you to show real-time activity about you, presented all the time. An example being it could continuously register and stream your level of stress throughout the workday. It also allows the computer system to do a better job of presenting contextually-aware overlays. It can provide content and augmentations that take into consideration not just information informed by place or visual input, but also takes into account the context of the user. Many of these systems are “context aware”, adding the context and state of the user, thus informing what kind of information is presented and in what way it will be presented, for instance, are you sleepy and therefore want information about hotels in the area? Are you cognitively mazed, so only pertinent info should be presented?.

Brainwaves in an AR system also allow for real-time neurofeedback. So you can know your brainstate and have the opportunity to optimize it- being able to choose and be guided into the desired state as you go about your day.

But what is the future of augmented reality? Cyborg Anthropologist Amber Case and Co-Founder of Geoloqi, said augmented reality will become interesting when the barriers to creating custom objects, animations, apps and experiences is drastically lowered. Similar to Flash or the App store, AR becomes interesting when these experiences become very personal or shared between friends.

She added:

Games and tacky 3D animations will only go so far in AR. The real measure of AR is when it solves real-world problems that may seem boring and everyday with realistic and minimal interface. When designing for AR, think of the minimum viable interface instead of the shiny one and work from there. Most AR has had the exciting “wow” factor which lasts for about 15 seconds. It is a big jump from there to useful everyday applications. Think of the interface of Google. There’s practically nothing there. It doesn’t get in the way of interaction â€" it causes the data to be exposed in such a way that it can be interacted with.

Bonus! If you want to think of the future of AR, think about how it can be abused or pranked with. People think about negative things, but it’s always focused on adults. Think of kids growing up with this tech with the ability to code. Think of a future in which AR bullying is a fun prank of kids that are just learning to hack and code. A bunch of kids can put an AR kick-me sign or augment some other kid and share that layer of reality with a small group of friends. Someone takes a picture and gets a bunch of upvotes from a bunch of friends. This is AR+social permissions. The person who is getting made fun of can’t see the augmentation, but they understand and have to retaliate.

Occipital is creating world-class computer vision products for mobile platforms.

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InteraXon is the maker of brainwave-controlled computing technology and applications. The Company is based in Toronto and the team is made up of a diverse set of individuals who posses backgrounds in; neuroscience, fashion, engineering, music, in addition to several PhD’s on staff. InteraXon has created a hardware and software platform technology which converts brainwaves into digital signals that are fed into a computer. InteraXon then provides consumers with applications that use these brainwaves to perform...

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Sphera Corporation, the leading global provider of Web hosting automation and management software, today announced that it has expanded its management team and moved its corporate headquarters to Denver, Colorado. In the coming months, Sphera will continue to leverage recent funding to support and build its infrastructure in high-potential markets, strengthen its technology portfolio, increase sales and marketing initiatives and increase support for its global customers.

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An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents: How To Determine Whether They Are Right For Your Company

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles by Brad Woodcox that explores the patent system for entrepreneurs. The first examined the basics of the system. Woodcox is a technical specialist focusing on startup development for Novak Druce + Quigg, an intellectual property super boutique law firm. Follow him on Google+ and Twitter.

Now that you have background knowledge of the patent system (at least within the U.S.), we can analyze probably the most difficult question: “Should you pursue patents for your company or invention?” Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy or direct way to answer this question. Each business is unique and requires an individual analysis. This article discusses some frequently asked questions and presents an analysis framework that may be useful for you to explore the applicability of patents for your business/invention.

Given the significant costs of obtaining a patent, should you spend any of your limited capital on them?

It depends. A patent will not directly make your company’s product or service more successful, but it can have a positive financial impact on the business. The best way to analyze your situation is to look at what a patent could do for your company and how it would fit into your company strategy. This self-analysis should include product, finance, and market/competition elements.

For many Internet startups, the timeline to make it or pivot and try something else is often 9-24 months. With a standard patent application taking three-plus years and 80 percent to 90 percent of startups failing in that timeframe, most startups will not be around long enough to enforce the patent.

Given the startup failure rate and patent timeframe, should most Internet startups skip patents?

Not necessarily. A patent (or portfolio of patents) may be useful for both successful and unsuccessful companies. For successful companies, the reason is clear in that patents can be used as an offensive or defensive tool against competitors. An example of this is the patents that are being asserted in the smartphone industry by companies such as Apple and Samsung. For unsuccessful companies, the patented innovations can still hold tremendous value.

An example is Internet search engines. There have been dozens or even hundreds of Internet search engines, but most failed, as Google became the dominant search engine, even though they weren’t the first to market. Some of these now-defunct search companies had patents on innovative elements for search engines that Google later licensed or acquired (see Google acquires Cuil patents). Other large-scale examples are companies, such as Nortel, Novell, and Kodak, that faced financial challenges and were able to sell or are in the process of selling their patent portfolios for billions of dollars. Hence, a company can use patents as a tradable asset, perhaps even earning a profitable return which otherwise wouldn’t have occurred.

How can you determine whether your patent will be valuable?

This is difficult to expound. At the highest level, the patent must be regarding a topic in which other people or companies are interested. You can design the most amazing product, but if no one wants, needs, or buys the product, then it isn’t worth very much. While this sounds trivial, innovation bias can affect intelligent inventors and entrepreneurs. Other factors to consider are:

• Is the patent in a subject area that is earning significant profits?
• Are there currently patent litigation cases in process in the subject area?
• Does the invention allow for reduced costs or increased performance?
• Are there any competitors that could directly benefit from your invention?

The deepest level of analysis requires a thorough review of the construction of the patent, including the exact wording and coverage of the claims. This requires extensive knowledge of patents and the industry, so it can’t be briefly summarized herein. It is further noted that multiple patents within a single subject area that are packaged together in a portfolio can return a higher per patent valuation than the patents valued separately.

Will a patent help me fundraise and what do angel investors and VCs think of patents?

In many instances, yes, a patent can help your company be more “investable.” Fundamentally, investors will analyze the risks and potential rewards of a single investment (in this case, simplified by not factoring in diversification and portfolio theory). Owning one or more patents can reduce the risk of the company by strengthening the competitive advantage and providing an additional saleable asset. Thus, many investors react positively to a company holding patents and other forms of intellectual property. However, some investors are apathetic to patents. These investors typically contend that patents and the enforcement of patents are too time consuming and expensive, so they prefer to have as little interaction with them as possible. Hence, patents may increase the chances that your company receives future investment, but a patent doesn’t guarantee that your company is valuable or an investable business.

What are the consequences if you don’t have patents?

They can be wide ranging. The following are a few scenarios:

• Nothing. Whether your company succeeds or fails, patents may never be an issue.
• A competitor steals your idea/duplicates your product. Without patent protection, there is little you can do other than try to outmaneuver the competition. You’ll be forced to compete on product, marketing, pricing, and/or strategy. If you have one or more patents, you could threaten to or file a lawsuit, in order to get the competition to stop sales or license your patents.
• You are sued for patent infringement. Without a patent, you’ll be forced to either fight in litigation or license/acquire the patent. These both assume you have enough funding. Otherwise, it could result in closure of the business. If you have one or more patents, then additional options become available, including settling through a cross-license or filing a patent infringement claim against the original plaintiff.

Analysis Framework: Should You Apply For A Patent Or Not?

The following list of questions that you can use as a guide to kick-start your analysis of your invention and business in order to determine whether you should pursue a patent for your invention. Many of these questions are the same as those used to evaluate the viability of a business idea. While some may not apply to every business/invention, the questions should help you develop a story and strategy that you can use to discuss with colleagues, advisors, investors, and/or patent attorneys to determine whether to pursue a patent.

Product

• Is the invention core to your business?
• Is the invention important enough that it could sway customers to your product versus competitors’ products? Could you charge a premium due to the invention?
• How similar is your product to other products currently available?
• Would your innovation be easy for competitors to copy?
• Could your idea be stolen or copied by your outsourced manufacturer?
• How easy or difficult would it be for a competitor to “design around” or find another method to replicate the function of your invention? What substitutes are available?
• Is it better to keep your invention secret rather than detailing a full disclosure in a patent?
• How long might the invention be viable or valuable?

Market

• Will a patent deter competitors from entering the market?
• How long would it take a competitor to copy the invention?
• What is the current market structure? Number of competitors? Pricing/margins?
• What additional percentage of the market could you capture with the invention?
• Does the industry highly value or have a history or utilizing patents?
• How are the interactions and rivalry between competitors in the market?
• Could the invention be useful in other markets/products?

Finance

• Is the potential profit from the invention greater than the cost to obtain a patent?
• Would your patent be of high demand/value to others?
• Would a patent help you fundraise or advertise?
• Do you have the desire and resources (time and money) to defend the patent if necessary?
• Would a patent make your company more valuable to a potential acquirer?

The decision about whether to pursue patents can be difficult. Each business requires an individual analysis to determine how patents fit into the overall strategy and circumstances of the company.

For some companies, patents can serve as a form of pseudo-insurance. If your company does well, the patents can protect you from imitators, patent trolls, and competitors. If your company doesn’t do well, then the patents may serve as valuable assets when the business is wrapped up. Some very successful companies have chosen to proceed without this “insurance of patents,” perhaps because they viewed the “make it or break it” risk greater than the risk of needing patents later. However, some of these companies later scrambled to gather patent protection (e.g. Google acquiring Motorola Mobility and Facebook acquiring AOL and IBM patents).

Now armed with your knowledge of patents, the details of your company/idea, and the framework presented in this article, you can hopefully make a more informed decision about whether or not to pursue patent protection for your invention and/or company.