Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive.
Connectify, a Philadelphia-based software company obsessed with making the Internet faster and using Kickstarter to do so, this week pulled the plug on Switchboard, its most recent connectivity campaign. Alex Gizis, Connectify’s CEO, said his backers wanted it that way. Connectify is no stranger to Kickstarter. When the company launched its Dispatch software that aggregates multiple broadband connections to boost speed, it raised over $100,000 and delivered its rewards on time.
Editor's note: Matt Turck is a managing director of FirstMark Capital.
The emerging Internet of Things is experiencing a burst of activity and creativity that is getting entrepreneurs, VCs and the press equally excited. The space looks like a boisterous hodgepodge of smart hobbyists, new startups and large corporations that are eager to be a part of what could be a huge market, and all sorts of enabling products and technologies.
It’s that time of the week for CrunchWeek, the show where a few of us writers chat up the most interesting stories from the past seven days.
Ryan Lawler, Greg Kumparak, and I chatted about Yahoo's $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr (and the reports that the company is eyeing a purchase of Hulu); Lyft's $60 million raise from Andreessen Horowitz and the debut of Microsoft's next generation gaming console, the Xbox 1.
Heads up, Android fans. If you took the plunge and backed the rather sleek Shine wearable activity tracker from Misfit Wearables, you may want to get your money back. According to a recent update posted to the project's Indiegogo listing, the Founders Fund-backed company has decided to drop Android support from the final version in a bid to better focus on polishing the experience for iOS users.
Price and ship date are always the biggest concerns when new gadgets or hardware hits the market, but in the case of the Xbox One, it's likely to help determine whether the "home entertainment system," as Microsoft is characterizing it, becomes the category-busting, revolutionary multi-purpose living room command center it's being billed as, or ends up just another console with niche appeal that makes it a target of lust for core gamers, but few outside that circle.
Microsoft's Xbox One presents a big and complicated machine whose primary purpose is a menu layer for watching television. This in an age where living room television is irrelevant. Having bet the farm on this vision, the company looks so out of step as to almost be laughable and has built the digital equivalent of the Spruce Goose.
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — neatly sidestepped the Yahoo Tumblr acquisition and segued into the wonderful world of messaging. As Facebook Home settles into a cot at the homeless shelter, Google is revving up for an all-out assault on the service suite. Google Glass is just the tip of the iceberg; below the waterline, the search giant is sucking image, location, traffic, and advertising data in realtime.
Google Buzz, the social service that Google launched way back in 2010 and then killed in 2011, reminded former users that their data still lives in and will be moved over to your Google Drive accounts in July. That's lovely.
Although 3D printing technology has existed for some time, it's only now beginning to cross over into mainstream awareness, thanks to increasingly affordable access to the printers themselves as well as attention-grabbing headlines about 3D printed guns and life-saving medical applications. While less eye-catching, perhaps, the innovation is also powering a new class of creatives, who are using 3D printers to produce art instead. Their "handmade" goods, including jewelry, home decor, gifts and more, appear on sites like the marketplace for crafters, Etsy, and the 3D printing resource center and online shop, Shapeways.
Your government is worried. The world is "going dark." Once upon a time, telephones were the only way to talk to someone far away, and the authorities could wiretap any phone they wanted. Nowadays, though, suspects might be communicating via Facebook, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Skype, Viber. And so, inevitably: “Today, if you’re a tech company that’s created a new and popular way to communicate, it’s only a matter of time before the FBI shows up with a court order to read or hear some conversation.”
But some of those providers have no interest in spying on their users. The FBI is not amused. "A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur," according to the Washington Post, by fining them increasing sums until they build government-accessible back doors into their systems.
Which invites the titular question of this post.
