Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Salesforce Invests In Video Messaging Startup (And Skype Rival) VSee
VSee, a video collaboration service provider, has received a capital injection from Salesforce, TechCrunch has learned. The amount was not disclosed, but we’ve been informed that the investment amounted to ‘multiple millions of dollars’.
Coinciding with the investment announcement, the company today announced the upcoming release of ‘One-Click Collaboration’, which it calls a ‘no install experience’ that instantly starts a rich video collaboration session between distributed users.
VSee offers a service that supports multiparty video calling, application/desktop sharing and file transfers over the Web. See video below for a demo.
The startup’s CEO, Milton Chen, says this concept of ‘One-click Collaboration’ combines the scalability and performance of p2p approaches such as Skype with the no-install simplicity of web technologies like Flash, overcoming the limitations of both.
The service will be released for general availability in July 2011.
The company says it already provides services to more than 6,000 enterprises worldwide, including Shell, Intel, Primerica, U.S. Navy SEALs and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
It currently only runs on Windows XP, Vista, and 7.
VSee was founded in 2008 following Chen’s human-computer interaction PhD research at Stanford University. Aside from Salesforce, In-Q-Tel has invested in the business.
Also worth noting: Chen is one of the authors of the XMPP video standard.
Earlier this year, Salesforce announced that it had acquired DimDim, a web conferencing service, for $31 million in cash.
NASA | Aquarius Climate
Sea surface salinity has a massive influence on Earth's climate. With Aquarius, scientists will have a new way to measure that influence in a consistent way. With its unprecedented accurate and consistent salinity measurements, Aquarius will help climate modelers to better understand the ocean-atmosphere processes that are changing Earth's climate.
NASA | Aquarius Water Cycle
Scientists need a breadth of information to understand the ocean's processes. That's where Aquarius comes in: the sensor will use advanced technologies to give NASA its first space-based measurements of sea surface salinity, helping scientists to improve predictions of future climate trends and events.
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Apple - Introducing iOS 5
Get a closer look at a few of the over 200 features that make iOS 5 the best update yet for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
Monday, June 06, 2011
Is This iOS 5? Dunno, But It’s Likely The Right Idea
Could it be? Is this it? iOS 5?! I honestly have absolutely no clue. But it certainly seems like it at least could have the right idea.
Tomorrow morning, Apple is set to preview iOS 5 for the first time during the WWDC keynote. It’s likely that developers will get access to the initial build as well, so they can start working on updating their apps to take advantage of all the new features/functionality. But some select developers are believed to have already seen iOS 5 (notably those who are likely to present on stage tomorrow). And while not a lot has leaked out, we have heard a few things supposedly coming: widgets, Twitter integration, and revamped notifications.
The last two are particularly interesting given the image above. Again, no clue if it’s actually real or not, but the idea might be right. Notifications that come down from the top bar could be how Apple ends up doing things in iOS 5. After all, this would mimic already existing functionality — when tethering, a blue strip appears along the top; when on the phone, it’s a green strip. Might notifications (or at least Twitter notifications) produce a gray strip?
If so, when clicked on, what happens? Does it launch the Twitter app? Or are you taken to a notifications page to show you all the notifications you’ve missed? Or does it actually copy the Android idea, where you pull down this menu to display all your notifications?
This concept isn’t quite as slick as some of the mock-ups we’ve seen over the past couple of years. Nor is it as slick as some of the jailbroken ones — which actually led to a new Apple hire. But again, it does fit in with the current iOS workflow. That may or may not matter at all. Regardless, this way of doing things would be much better than the current pop-up method for Push Notifications.
Before you go yelling “fake” on the obvious things, a couple notes. First of all, yes, 11:54 PM is in the future — in the United States. But if the Weather app is to be believed, this is clearly a European version of iOS (note the 23 degrees Celsius in the icon instead of 72 degree Fahrenheit as you would see in the U.S.). Second, the Camera app icon is totally different, and looks a little odd being all-black, but who knows, maybe it’s changing. The icons are in the “correct” default order. Finally, if the talk of deep Twitter integration into iOS 5 is to be believed (we heard a bit, others have heard a bit more), it’s entirely possible that these new-style Twitter notifications could be working in iOS 5 right out of the box.
But again, who knows — no one outside of a handful of people before tomorrow morning. Well, and the guy below.
Sunday, June 05, 2011
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Outside Aperture: fan made epilogue to Portal
"Outside Aperture," an eight-minute fan-made epilogue to the wonderful game Portal, created by EisenFeuer. It's pretty adorable, and there's cake.
Friday, June 03, 2011
Adam Bosworth Unveils Keas, The Game That Keeps You Healthy
After two years in stealth, Adam Bosworth is finally ready to start talking about his health startup Keas. Keas is not a Mint for health, although it began that way. Bosworth, who previously launched Google Health at Google and before that was known as the father of XML at Microsoft, founded Keas two years ago with $10 million from Ignition Partners and Atlas Venture. He thought he would build a Mint for health, but discovered that people don’t want to measure their health. So instead, he turned it into a game.
Keas is a game that keeps you healthy. You pick three goals a week, which can range from exercise to eating more fruits and vegetables to reducing stress. You get points for accomplishing your goals and for taking health quizes. If your company signs up for it, you can get rewards as well, including cash (HR departments are willing to pay for programs that will keep employees healthy and productive).
Bosworth came by the TCTV studios in New York City earlier this week for an interview, which you can watch above. He already has 10 companies including Quest Diagnostics and Novartis with about 1,000 employees each testing out the system in a private beta. But it is now public, and you can play here.
One of the key differences between Keas and something like Virgin Health is that Keas is inherently social. You join a team of your co-workers and everyone has to achieve goals together in order to level up in the game, so that encourages players to support each other.
Keas also takes a completely different approach than Google Health, which Bosworth helped to start. I asked Bosworth why Google Health never really took off. His answer in the video clip below is that Google Health never asked, “What could they do that people would want?” Instead. “they basically offerd a placeto store data.” People don’t want to store data, they want to have fun.
Guy Creates Smaller Version of Real Life Android-Powered Labyrinth in Under a Day [Video]
Google came to I/O this year with a life-sized Labyrinth game controlled with nothing but a Motorola XOOM. We were pretty awed by it and excited to see what else would be done with the Android Open Accessory ADK. The first, outside of the official demos we saw at Google I/O, seems to be a clone of that Labyrinth game, except it’s a million times smaller and uses a phone ( Nexus One instead of a tablet.
The engineer said he started the project – hardware, software and all – at 7pm and was finished at 5am. That’s exactly the type of turn-around developers like to hear when it comes to creating prototypes ahead of a deadline. We’re not sure how long it’d take to develop a more robust and advanced system, but hobbyist and beginners should rest easy knowing that it’s easy to get started with. (The engineer stated that his only prior experience with Android was a “Hello World” application using the demokit and accelerometer samples from the web.) Check the video out above. [Thanks Tipster!]
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