The goal is to put physical shops on a similar playing field as e-commerce stores, which already have a wealth of data about customer buying habits. According to the website, Swarm treats smartphones like “offline cookies,” so stores can personalize the experience for new and repeat shoppers. Swarm does this through its cloud-based platform that integrates into a store’s public Wi-Fi network.
Tag Archives: startups
Startup Cuts Lithium-Ion Battery Costs
So far, SolidEnergy has made small, hand-built battery cells, similar to what you would find in a cell phone, using equipment and experts at an A123 Systems lab near Boston. (A123 Systems went bankrupt last year, and was acquired by the Chinese company Wanxiang.) These experimental cells store 30 percent more energy than conventional lithium-ion batteries, but the company calculates that the approach could eventually lead to a 40 percent improvement.
via Startup Cuts Lithium-Ion Battery Costs | MIT Technology Review.
Carbon-negative energy, a reality at last — and cheap, too
Since its founding five years ago, the company has been doubling its revenues every year and now does $5 million in sales. One reason for that growth is that dense biomass is everywhere. Think about America’s heartland, where corn grows as far as the eye can see. Or California’s Central Valley, where walnuts are a major crop. All those cobs and shells can now be used as the basis for cheap energy. Similarly, startups are generating electricity with the machines in Liberia, and Italian farmers are buying them because that country offers lucrative incentives to produce renewable power. To an Italian farmer, Price said, a PowerPallet is “an ATM machine.”
via Carbon-negative energy, a reality at last — and cheap, too | Cutting Edge – CNET News.
But the PowerPallets are still relatively simple, at least as far as their users are concerned. For one, thing Price explained, much of the machine is made with plumbing fixtures that are the same everywhere in the world. That means they’re easy to repair.
New York Just Subpoenaed Airbnb to Hand Over Its User Data
The city is fighting the startup for breaking local laws against operating an illegal hotel out of your home, worried that hustlers are abusing the online service to turn a profit. To that end, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman just slapped the company with a subpoena to hand over the user data of all New Yorkers who’ve listed their apartment on the site, the New York Daily News reported today. That’s about 225,000 users.
via New York Just Subpoenaed Airbnb to Hand Over Its User Data | Motherboard.
‘Patent trolls’ put brakes on S.F. transit app
As far as anyone on the outside can tell, this is their sole business model: leveraging patents not to build competitive products, but simply to strong-arm others into forking over money when they create something that stumbles into the broadly worded language of the intellectual property protections.
via ‘Patent trolls’ put brakes on S.F. transit app – SFGate.
He was confident the patents in question were bogus, loose legalese describing obvious ideas. Moreover, the service that he received his data from, NextBus, already had a license to use those patents.
Attack of the Kling-ons
There are plenty of chief executives and wealth creators at Burning Man too, in love with their own micro-celebrity, hosting (that’s tech-speak for picking up the check) dire imitations of excess. I’ve seen more genuine decadence in unknown Berlin clubs than in that entire face-painted, drug-soaked annual festival of self, but to hear these “Burners” rabbit on, you’d think they’ve reinvented the profligacy of Nero’s last days. Yet somehow it’s become unacceptable to criticize this celebration of mutual congratulation.
I didn’t know Burning Man turned into a geek trade show like SXSW.
Chicago startup Doggyloot raises $2.5M in funding
Doggyloot, which offers deals on pet products for members and sells other items on a subscription basis, grew out of Dashmob, a now-defunct Sandbox company focused on highlighting real-time, location-based deals at nearby merchants.
via Chicago startup Doggyloot raises $2.5M in funding – chicagotribune.com.
Interesting how this article hardly gets into specifics as to what Doggyloot actually does.
VCs Get Their Pick Of Hungry Start-ups
But there is a dark side because VC’s often only make safe bets, backing companies which can show they have enough valuable intellectual property (IP) to reassure the funders that they can salvage a large part of their money through IP asset-stripping, if the business doesn’t thrive.
Perhaps the slogan for the session should have been: “No IP, no VC”.
Connectify Launches Switchboard Kickstarter Project
Connectify Switchboard divides the user’s traffic between Wi-Fi, 3G/4G and Ethernet-based connections on a packet-by-packet basis. Even a single stream — such as a Netflix movie — can be split between two or three Internet connections for a higher resolution and faster buffering. This method promises 95 percent of the speed stemming from the combined Internet connection. Thus, users could see a single 19 Mbps stream when separate 10 Mbps and 10 Mbps connections are merged together.
Why Your Startup Should Be Open Source
Rather than staying limited to a small team perhaps even a single developer, fostering an open source community will open the doors to potentially unlimited contributions from other developers, especially ones who happen to use your software; this type of feedback is thus a great indicator of major pain points your users have with your product. Even among your users who aren’t programmers, the GitHub issues system is an incredibly useful tool for tracking bug reports and feature requests.
via Why Your Startup Should Be Open Source – by Peer.fm formerly Napster.fm | citizentekk.