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Le Web Decompression

Paul Fayngersh — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:27:58 +0000

We (Paul and Mark) just spent two days @ Le Web in Paris and had a fantastic time. The conference was incredibly well organized and kudos to both Geraldine and Loic Le Meur (founder of Seesmic and one of France’s most influential tech bloggers) for doing such a fantastic job.

We had the opportunity to meet interesting people, network with industry leaders, hear inspirational talks (and not so inspirational ones), and rekindle some of our energy/enthusiasm about the future of the web and 2010 in general. It was surely a nice antidote for entrepreneurial burnout. Off course, some truly great food and wine and simply enjoying the beautiful City of Light doesn’t hurt either.

A lot has been written about Le Web 09 already and we don’t want to simply recycle content, but rather offer a few highlights of our personal experience:

Twitter and Square
First off, we heard the term Twitter a bit too much, but that’s not surprising. Not only was it spoken about constantly (especially rumors about a Google purchase), but it seemed like everyone were on Twitter compulsively every spare second they had. The conference started out with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, presenting his newest venture: Square. Square is a small hardware attachment for the iPhone that allows users to accept credit card payments directly in person. It looks very promising and using the headphone jack plug is a creative solution. The application’s interface seems incredibly intuitive and quite beautiful, and will likely be a hit. We also had an opportunity to watch Jack demo Square close up at a reception thrown by the Mayor at the Paris City Hall:

Russia roundtable
With:
Sasha Galitsky (Almaz Capital Partners)
Bernard Lukey (CEO, OXON.ru)
Edward Shendorovich (Managing Director, Kite Ventures)
Arkady Volozh (CEO, Yandex)

The Russia roundtable was of course especially interesting for us. The discussion was both broad and in-depth, covering topics such as Russian innovation, startup culture, search (specifically Yandex), venture investment, ecommerce (why it is failing), and what is in store for the future. The single most salient question that permeated all discussion was the paradox of a high-tech, relatively wealthy country not really developing Internet technologies on par with the rest of Western Europe and Asia. Again, Russia falls into its strange neither-here-nor-there conundrum, an existential dilemma that has defined the country since the Slavophiles and Westernizers went at it in the beginning of the 19th century. Clearly, the largest problem is not talent, but a complete lack of a startup culture or any institutional support. Taking risks, experimentation, “doing your own thing” – these are not very highly regarded in Russia and especially not in the Russian business world. So even though so much raw talent is there, and even some true innovation (for example, Yandex was in search before Google), it will require a significant cultural shift for Russia to develop the sort of atmosphere that makes Western startup hubs so successful.

It was also agreed that there is LOTS of opportunity remaining in Russia and a lot of room for growth. Take one significant example: online shopping. Currently this is suffering because of a) the terrible, unreliable postal system b) the commonplace cash-on-delivery payment method and c) peoples’ general distrust of digital commerce. All three are inevitably going to evolve – probably quite soon – leaving a ton of possibilities for developing online retail solutions. We are excited and will be keeping our eyes on future developments in the Motherland!

Startup competition
The startup competition was one of our favorites aspects of the whole conference. In our limited experience these are often really hit-or-miss though this year it appeared that all 16 companies had something real to offer. When the dust settled, Paris-based company Stribe took home the Gold. Stribe aims to provide an instantaneous social network on any site, helping companies foster conversations around their product/brand/etc. directly on their site. What’s interesting is that just before the ceremony, at the Brand Roundtable moderated by Chris Brogan, one of the key conclusions that arose from the discussion was that brands must mediate conversations directly where customers are visiting them – aka, their websites. Providing an accessible channel for customers to converse will become a priority that will separate companies open to the future, who will thrive in the new economy, versus closed off companies that will become less relevant. Stribe solves this problem with seeming aplomb.

The Silver prize went to TigerLily, another local (French) startup also operating in a similar domain. TigerLily basically pimps Facebook fan pages. Controlling and modifying the page seams extremely simple and they really did a polished job with the entire interface. The value is obvious and the improvements upon Facebook’s own capabilities are inevitable, though it is a bit sad to see the site veer away from the clean, minimalist, egalitarian aesthetic towards the realm of MySpace cacophony.

The Bronze prize went to CloudSplit, a Dublin-based startup that provides analytics to cloud computing customers. They’ve already received €100,000 of seed funding and are looking for $2M more. We don’t really know much about this industry, so all we can say is that CEO(?) Joe Drumgoole probably had the most confident, well-rehearsed, down-to-business pitch.

A few other promising startups we would like to note and encourage readers to check out: Taskly, Hyperwords, Shutl, Mendeley, Runkeeper.

Finally, we’d like to thank Gary V for the inspirational talk and reminding us how much we miss New York! Hope to be back in Paris in 2010.

Layar Opens Augmented Reality Platform To Developers

Mark Kizelshteyn — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:14:10 +0000

TechCrunch points us to SPRXmobile, the startup behind Layar, the mobile augmented reality browser for Android. The company is opening up its API by handing out keys to a number of developers. Developers can fill out a request here to gain access to the API.

As Tech Crunch notes ” Without a decent amount of usable layers, none of these AR browsers are going to see mainstream adoption any time soon, and Layar is the first to attempt luring third-party developers into creating layers on top of their system by means of an extensive API.”

This is a great step for AR — as the race to develop the best platform with maximum content while also supporting an array of devices. We are going to see some create stuff come out of this API opening.

New York Tech MeetUp – July Round Up

Mark Kizelshteyn — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:48:05 +0000

TurtleThink attended this evenings New York Tech Meet Up, where a few startups presented some interesting products and services. None of the applications were particularly ground breaking, but a few are worth noting.

The first interesting one was a collaborative polling company called urtak, which offers different categories of user generated polling topics. From their website: “The goal of the Urtak project is to find an answer to the question “What do men and women live by?” Since no single person has the knowledge to answer this question, we propose that we must work together, pooling our knowledge and insight to learn what we all care about, what unites us, and what makes us different from each other.” It seems like an interesting company, however, what compels those people to answer the polls. This is a good idea that is lacking a sticky component.

Vocab Sushi was another interesting concept. The free service offers “bite size” vocabulary words and sources them from thousands of news and media outlets daily. The vocab words are offered in contextual examples and one can play “never ending” games with those words. The company was founded by Jeff Novich and the website notes: “VocabSushi provides thousands of sentences that demonstrate any vocab word’s contemporary usage in news articles. Compared to the brute force method of flashcard definitions, a deeper understanding of the word can be attained simply by reading several interesting sentences that contain that word.” It is an interesting replacement for flashcards, and I believe this will catch on. I would have loved to use this years ago when I was studying for the SATs. Although I subscribe to Anu Garg’s Word.A.Day, I can nonetheless see myself using this service once in a while.

Sponge Cell presented a new form of flash based interactive banner advertising. The company is using social networking tools built into ad banners to help push content directly from banners as opposed to relying on clicking through the banner and arriving at a new website. The company writes: “The best advertising gives its audience information that they want to hold onto and share. Sponge Cell lets people do just that, by pushing advertising onto calendars, social profiles, mobile devices, home pages and other permanent places, without disrupting their browsing experience.” The company is attempting to mitigate a persons aversion to clicking a banner and being steered away from their chosen website. Sponge Cell’s banner’s allow for brand interaction directly on the banner. Another interesting idea, but once again, what compels me to interact with a banner which has an added social media component? Sponge Cell did discuss their advertising algorithm (patent pending) which bases the ad not on the search key word but on the aggregated data that the search terms yields. I thought this was already built into Google’s algorithm, but go figure.

The most interesting application was Zagat’s Augmented Reality Application called NRU.

The application allows you to find restaurants, nightspots, and shops “near you.” As you rotate your mobile device (360 degrees), the location of the restaurants appear relative to you. It also syncs with Zagat’s detailed reports on the restaurants. Although Zagat reviews are not user generated and have a top-down approach, the service is still fairly compelling as a closed source offering of reviews opposed to Urban Spoon. Check out a video demo of the product here:

The product is only offered on the Android as of now, but with the release of the magnetometer on the iPhone — we should see this application at the app store shortly (as long as Apple opens up the channels for AR production on the iPhone). This is a cool app and just the beginning of compelling AR apps to reach the market.

NYTM also invited two guest speakers: Iranian technologist, Ali Amami, who discussed the recent Iranian election, consequential revolt and the role of social media. This was the 10th election in Iran after the Islamic revolution and is the first election since then to see the levels of protest. Ali Amami stated that this was a new school revolution as a result of social media. He said that cell phones were used as capturing devices, where citizens became independent news outlets. Facebook was used as a community organization tool and YouTube was a video distribution channel that major media outlets, like CNN, turned towards. The question, however, was what went wrong? Well, first off, Nokia sold wiretapping equipment to Iran’s Telecom giant (source: Wall Street Journal). Also, Iran’s internet is state owned and they intercepted and filtered content with the ultimate suspension of internet service across the country.

Amami’s message to NYTM was that as technologists, we need to think about ways to work towards solving the issues of wiretapping/filtration, interception and suspension of the world wide web. He urged companies like Google and Yahoo to not bow to fascist government requests.

And the evening ended with Douglas Rushkoff discussing his new book, Life inc., about an open source economy.

It is always a pleasure to hear Rushkoff speak — he is intelligent, charismatic and extremely articulate. Speaking to the NYTM crowd, Rushkoff offered the analogy that our economic system is like a closed source operating system, though we behave as if our role in the economy was somehow organic. He argues that although there are natural elements and emergent properties of our system, our currency and economic affairs hold a bias to corporations (which are anti-competitive) and a centralized currency (which seeks to create value from top down) — the opposite of an open source economy, which was most closely realized in the late Middle Ages. During the late Middle Ages, there was tremendous spending and abundance, where with local currency people invested and reinvested from the bottom-up — wealth was distributed to people who created value. Those who did not create value, did not make money. The aristocracy, seeing the uprising of the middle class and that wealth was no longer controlled by the centralized authority — made local currency illegal. This type of approach extends to today’s times. Rushkoff offers the solution (to the NYTM crowd) of an open source economy which is being facilitated by the internet and low start-up capital. As our economy is at a downfall, he is urging us to take advantage of the situation and create value through the net.

It was an interesting evening at NYTM, and I look forward to the next meet up! NYTM also showcased the 3 finalists of their t-shirts competition (you can vote here.)

Open Letter to Apple: Let us Augment Reality with the iPhone!

Mark Kizelshteyn — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:39:23 +0000

Earlier today (yesterday at this point), I came across an interesting post on Ori Inbar’s blog (Games Alfresco), where he posted an open letter to Apple regarding Augmented Reality on the iPhone.

As TurtleThink has written about countless times now, augmented reality is the future, and we all want that future to be a little more tangible. Help us Apple! With the release of the compass on the iPhone 3G[S], we are at the brink of some incredible consumer AR applications (as seen in the videos below). So, let’s spread the word. I am reposting the letter and some neat AR videos from Games Alfresco below.

A letter sent to Apple Developer Relations.

Dear Apple,

We are a collection of augmented reality (AR) enthusiasts and professionals (from business and academia), who have been working on a multitude of AR apps for the iPhone. These apps are poised to change the way people interact with the real world.

But here is the rub: we are currently unable to publish these apps on the app store because the iPhone SDK lacks public APIs for manipulating live video.

We are asking Apple to provide a public API to access live video in real time, on the iPhone.
We will be happy to offer additional technical details.

The impact of augmented reality (AR) on our lives could be as significant as the introduction of the PC.
In 10 years, we believe augmented reality will change the way everyone experiences travel, design, training, personal productivity, health care, entertainment, games, art, and advertising (videos).

Looking back just a few years, AR pioneers had to hack a slew of components into ridiculously large backpacks and HUDs, and be confined to rigged environments. Nowadays, it comes in friendly, affordable packages and the iPhone is one of the first devices to have it all – except for a public API.

The battle to determine the winning device has already begun; a public API to access live video will give the iPhone a lucrative ticket to compete.
We believe Apple has a window of opportunity of about 3 months before developers start looking elsewhere. If Apple decides to publish the API in that time frame – in the next 10 years, everyone might be using the iPhone as the preferred device to interact with the real world.

Here is how augmented reality could open up new opportunities for the iPhone this year:

Arf (Georgia Tech)

a virtual pet you take anywhere

ARghhhh (Georgia Tech)

first person table-top action game

Sekai Camera (Tonchidot)

AirTag the real world

Kweekies (int13)

a portal to creatures in a parallel world

Layar (SPRXmobile)

Browse the world with an AR browser – Details

Artoolkit for the iPhone (Artoolworks)

the most popular AR kit now on the iPhone

StudierStube ES (Imagination, Graz TU)

the only AR engine designed for mobile devices, now on iPhone – Details

PTAM on the iPhone (Oxford University)

next generation AR tracking with no markers or images

Wikitude (Mobilizy)

a travel guide that “tells you what you see”

Virtual Santa (Metaio)

interactive Christmas application using the augmented reality

Augmented Reality Sightseeing (Fraunhofer IGD)

Historic photographs overlaid on your field of view while strolling in a street

These are apps that are practically ready to go. There is a whole bunch of apps and games that are just waiting for the API to be available.

…And Apple, we know you can’t share your plans…so please surprise us soon!

Many many thanks for your consideration -
Sincerely,

Signed:
Michael Gervautz – Managing Director Imagination GesmbH
Robert Rice – CEO Neogence
Georg Klein – PhD PTAM creator from Oxford University
Stephane Cocquereaumont – President & Lead Developer Int13 (Kweekies)
Maarten Lens-FitzGerald – Founder & Partner SPRXmobile, developer of Layar
Ori Inbar – Author of GamesAlfresco.com and CEO and founder Pookatak Games
Philippe Breuss – Lead developer, Mobilizy
Philip R. Lamb – CTO, Artoolworks
Noora Guldemond – Metaio
Takahito Iguchi – CEO, Tonchidot
Blair MacIntyre – Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology
Bruno Uzzan – CEO, Total Immersion
Michael Zoellner – Fraunhofer IGD
Andrea Carignano – CEO, Seac02

[via Games Alfresco]

OpenSim in Web Browser with Touch Screen Support

Mark Kizelshteyn — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:55:55 +0000

This news is a few weeks old, but just in case you missed it I wanted to share.

3Di, Inc., a Tokyo-based company has released the first commercially available OpenSim viewer which allows users to engage with 3D virtual worlds using a web browser. Furthermore, you can use it with a touch screen. Check out the demo:

No more client downloads? Hopefully! This is a pretty big step with virtual world technology because more and more people don’t want to bother with downloading a viewer. We are living in a time of cloud computing, and we want everything to be (securely) in the cloud. Web browser support is a small step in continuing to propel this industry forward.

Firefox, Google and The 3D Web

Mark Kizelshteyn — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:01:26 +0000

This past week the Khronos Group, working with Mozilla (creators of Firefox) and Google, announced an initiative to create an open standard for accelerated 3D Web browsers. The group is leading a 12 month initiative aiming for release as part of the Canvas3D extension for Firefox 3.5.

As Virtual World News points out, “there are plenty of other developers and organizations trying to bring 3D to the Web, but most rely on plug-ins to do so, whether that’s the near ubiquitous Flash, a quickly growing Unity3D, or their own proprietary technologies. The benefit of the new standard, if it’s successful, would be that designers could include hardware-accelearated 3D graphics in their websites without forcing users to download a plugin. With OpenGL, JavaScript, and hardware acceleration available on pretty much all platforms, it could also make it easier to develop apps and environments across multiple contexts.”

People are expecting more and more of their online experience as we witness the shift from static desktop applications to dynamic web applications. The addition of 3D will add an array of new user experiences to the web app platform. Paul Jackson, an analyst with research firm Forrester, states: “…If you think about the traditional browsing experience of flat pages and links this is not a natural way to interact. People are much more used to walking around and picking things up so a 3D browser could lead eventually to a more naturalistic way of interaction…”

This standard could offer a significant shift in the 3D web by breaking down the end user barriers of entry. With the increase in web applications, people are reluctant to download bulky plug ins or software, but if the 3D environment is native to one’s browser, the potential is incredible. This team of developers and thinkers are industry leaders — allowing them to trail head this initiative will undoubtedly yield industry shifting results. I look forward to the release.

Panel discussion on approaching internet trends

Paul Fayngersh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:19:45 +0000

I dug up this is discussion from Fortune Brainstorm titled “2018: Life on the Net,” featuring Lawrence Lessig (professor of Law at Stanford Law School), Joichi Ito (CEO of Creative Commons and Chairman of Six Apart Japan), and Philip Rosedale (founder and chairman of Linden Lab, who operate Second Life). It’s from July ‘08, which in internet age can make it almost irrelevant. In this case, however, the conversation remains fresh and interesting. The funniest moment: an attendee with a Southern accent calling Joi Ito, who has 24(!) current positions on LinkedIn, a ‘venture communist.’

Topics covered include: law stifling media technology, open source, venture capital trends and ethics, the internet requiring ‘environmental protection’, 2D/3D interface hybrids, producer-driven culture, and an “internet 9/11.”

[Google Video - 2018: Life on the Net]

Popcha! @ the 3D Training, Learning and Collaboration Conference in DC April 20th. Discount code available for readers of this blog!

Boris Kizelshteyn — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:56:12 +0000

I am honored to be on the DESIGN: The Do’s And Don’ts Of Designing 3D Training And Learning Experiences panel at the 3DTLC conference in Washington DC on April 20th. I’ll be discussing our landmark work in virtual diversity training simulations for The FutureWork Institute, plus the conference as a whole has many accomplished presenters. So if you can: GO!

Show Initiative LLC, the organizers, were nice enough to give me a VIP code worth $100: popchavip

Just put that code in “promo code box” during registration and you will get $100 bucks knocked off your pass price. If you register by Friday, you’ll get the earlybird price and save even more.

If you are planning on attending let me know and we’ll catch up!

Sirikata: New Open Source Virtual World

Mark Kizelshteyn — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:17:37 +0000

Grace McDunnough blogged today about Sirikata, an open source Virtual World that is being developed at Stanford University. There is not much information availbile at the moment, but we do have a neat teaser video to share.

Sirikata Teaser from Sirikata on Vimeo.

The projects wiki states: “Sirikata is an BSD licensed open source platform for virtual worlds. We aim to provide a set of libraries and protocols which can be used to deploy a virtual world, as well as fully featured sample implementations of services for hosting and deploying these worlds.”

Kaneva + 1.5 Million Users + New Branding Strategy = ?

Mark Kizelshteyn — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:04:15 +0000

Last week, Virtual World News reported that Kaneva passed the 1.5 million users mark and was now pushing for mainstream brands to introduce branded products and builds in their world.

The Chief Revenue Officer of Kaneva Jeffrey Longoria explains, “Kaneva is a social entertainment world that is really focused on the fusion of traditional social networking and 3D virtual worlds. There are plenty of people out there that love the 2D world, but there’s this emerging 3D place and companies are trying to figure out the magic formula….The focus is now to provide that fused environment for brands looking to find a unique engagement model for their fans. Virtual worlds have been emerging onto the scene for a few years now, but most people don’t understand them yet. That’s really what we’ve been working on.”

Kaneva has not commented on the 2D vs. 3D use breakdown of its 1.5 million users, so it is unclear how well their virtual world is doing. In the greater context of virtual worlds, we have seen a slow down of large brands entering and perusing marketing endeavors. In times passed, brands failed where they were solely presenting their product in the same ways they do in the real world and expecting users to engage. That was moderately successful two years ago, but obviously that model no longer works. Brands that are seeing success today in virtual environments are ones that are offering unique opportunities for brand engagement.

Kaneva is pursuing an interesting strategy for brands and advertisers, where they are offering a range of sponsorship options. As Virtual World News reports, “At the low end, roughly $5,000, brands can introduce branded goods into Kaneva. At the next higher level, they can get a branded hangout with the look and feel of the brand, but no significant customization. The high end includes completely custom-built destinations, which could range into hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

It will be interesting to see the response of brands, especially given that advertising and marketing budgets have been slashed in recent months. At the same time, the range of options and sliding scale may be appealing to advertisers.