It seems like compact fluorescent bulbs just came on the scene, and already there's a new sheriff in town. LEDs are proving they can do a better job at illuminating while using even less energy. Check out the picture at left: on top is a parking lot for Sarasota Memorial, the second-largest public hospital in Florida, as lit by 250-watt metal halide cobra head lights. Below that is the same lot lit by 75-watt EvoLucia-brand LED cobra head lights. The new lights will use 67 percent less electricity and do a much better job of illumination."The new LED lamps are more cost-efficient, but more than that, they will improve the security of our campus by providing longer-lasting coverage and cleaner, whiter lighting for improved visibility at night," said Sarasota Memorial Public Safety Director Mickey Watson. "Our older lights required considerably more maintenance and subsequent costs for replacement parts." The new LEDs should run for 12 years before needing replacement.
Will LEDs Light the Future? Sarasota Hospital Thinks So
App Analytics Startups Flurry & Pinch Media Merge
Mobile application analytics startups Flurry of San Francisco and Pinch Media of New York are in the process of merging their operations, according to Flurry CEO Simon Khalef. The new combined entity will be called Flurry Media and will maintain offices in both locations. Here is a breakdown of the deal and what it means.
Deal Details
Khalef explained that both companies were of roughly equal size and as such, this is a merger of equals. As part of the deal, Greg Yardley, founder of Pinch Media, will be the VP of products at the new company, which will have 20 employees in New York and San Francisco. Khalef is going to be the CEO. Pinch Media’s stockholders including FirstRound Capital and Union Square Ventures will own Flurry Media stock going forward.
Flurry started out focusing on providing mobile email on feature phones but changed its business to mobile analytics over a year ago. It’s backed by venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Draper Richards. The combined entity, the new Flurry, will seek fresh capital in the new year, Khalef said. “Both of us are small companies and both were seeing similar growth,” said Khalef. “We were always fighting it out amongst each other; this makes is easier.”
“They had expertise in audience and ad-optimization while we are good at e-commerce optimization,” he added. It makes perfect sense that the two companies throw in their lot together. As a combined company, Flurry and Pinch Media analytics software will be running on more than 80 percent of all iPhone, iPod touch and Android handsets and will track some 1 billion mobile application user sessions per month. These two companies’ code is integrated into more than 8,000 live applications in Apple’s App Store
Going forward, the company will leverage consumer insight gained by tracking usage on four out of every five iPhone OS devices and two out of every three Android OS devices to accelerate revenue generation for application developers, Khalef said. The new Flurry is going to be ramping up its operations and boost hiring as it tries and develop its business model.
What do I think?
I’ve been a big believer in the mobile app marketplace and always thought the big winners of this shift to mobile apps would be the guys who would either own the platform or those who would develop tools for this emerging ecosystem. Analytics were part of that “toolset.” That was precisely our logic behind including Greg’s Pinch Media in our Mobilize 08 Startup LaunchPad. It’s good to see the company grow and merge with Flurry.
It’s smart for the two to combine at this moment, rather than wait. Instead of fighting with each other, they can quickly bulk up and become big players in this marketplace. As Khalef pointed out in a chat yesterday, “We are going to build services on top of the free analytics services and that is a clear value proposition.” Agreed.
If they continue at their current pace, the new company can easily become a 800-lb gorilla in the app analytics space. That would make it even more attractive, both as an investment and as an acquisition target. Anyone from Microsoft to Nielsen to comScore can be a ultimate buyer for these guys. However, if the company continues to develop e-commerce and advertising products that leverage all the data it collects, then it can become a much bigger player –- like the Omniture of the mobile world.
Chorus App Gives Voice to iPhone Users
Chorus from envIO NetworksThere is no shortage of “best of” lists when it comes to iPhone apps. In addition to the storefront’s own popularity ratings, persistent surfers can find the 35 best apps of 2009 (through August), the best apps for Christmas and many, many more. But enVIO Networks is hoping to use social recommendations to separate the wheat from the chaff in Apple’s 100,000-plus-deep storefront. And in trying to solve the growing problem of discoverability in mobile app stores, it’s blazing a trail that other developers are sure to follow.
The Andover, Mass.-based startup surfaced last month with Chorus, an app that enables consumers to see what apps their friends are using and to make and share recommendations. While enVIO has yet to say how many users have downloaded Chorus, the company claims it saw “thousands of user interactions” in its first month with more than 25,000 purchase and download attempts.
enVIO trotted out November’s most-recommended apps today, unveiling a list that generally consists of familiar titles like Shazam, Gowalla, Loopt and Google Earth. At the top of the list, though, is Eliminate Pro, a slick-looking first-person shooter that takes advantage of Apple’s recent addition of in-app purchase functionality to allow users to spend real money and increase energy levels. Those recommendations haven’t been enough to boost Eliminate Pro into the top 10 list of Chorus-inspired app purchases — not yet, anyway — but they’re a refreshing alternative to the “most popular” standard by which App Store offerings are generally measured. And they’re a solid indication that developers themselves may solve the problem of discoverability that is already plaguing the app store space.
November 2009: State of Location Apps
So perhaps that’s why I found this new report jointly produced by location-based services company Skyhook Wireless and Distimo, an app analytics company, mildly interesting. Here are some of the highlights for the month of November:
- Apple’s iTunes App Store has the largest proportion of paid location-based applications (57 percent) vs. BlackBerry, which has 49 percent and Google’s Android Market, which has 21 percent.
- The average price of maps and navigation applications remained steady in both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market, despite the introduction of the free Google Maps Navigation app. BlackBerry App World, on the other, had saw a decline of 15 percent to an average of TeX Embedding failed!14.37 in BlackBerry’s App World vs. $7.34 for such apps in Apple’s App Store.
And now little something about the actual location apps:
- Google Earth is the highest-ranked “free navigation and travel app” on the Apple platform, followed by MapQuest. Urbanspoon is ranked No. 4, trumping Yelp, which comes in at No. 5. I am especially excited to see Trapster at No. 7. Most of my friends who drive and have iPhone love this speed trap alert service.
- Poynt is the highest-ranked BlackBerry app in the “free navigation and travel app” category, followed by Where.
- Google Maps is the highest-ranked Android “free navigation and travel app” followed by NYC Subway Maps. Where is at No. 5 and Trapster comes in at No. 10.
- When it comes to paid travel applications, CoPilot Live GPS is a winner on Android. MotionX GPS takes the top spot on Apple platforms and GeoCache Navigator is tops in the BlackBerry world.
International Kindle: Hacked for Web Browsing, Full Catalog
Think the International Kindle was crippled? It was until we got our paws on it. Our own Charlie Sorrel describes how to gain web browsing and the full catalog on non-U.S. versions of the Kindle 2.
Best of the Geek Decade: Let the Kids Decide
Kids weigh in on what they think are the best movies, games, books, toys, TV shows and computer sites of the last decade. We know some of them haven't been alive long enough to know, but hey, they have opinions!
Who's the Best Batman of All Time?
William Baldwin will be the new voice of Batman in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, an animated film due out next year. We rank historic Caped Crusaders from best to worst.
Dec. 22, 1882: Looking at Christmas in a New Light
The Christmas tree gets a high-tech addition: electric light. It's the beginning of a long, tangled story, or rather a story about long tangles.
Facebook Users Give Up Cursing, Use Shorthand Instead
Facebook’s data team said its last big peak of “f***” came after the Patriots lost the Super Bowl in Feb. 2008. “With a slightly more mature crowd, we expect that there will be less cursing per capita,” says the blog post, which explains Facebook’s method of counting phrases as ratio of status updates and condensing them into subject areas. “And not only that, but if your mom is reading your FB status, you’d better watch your mouth.”
But that doesn’t mean Facebook users aren’t expressing their frustration using obscenity — they’re just doing it in abbreviated fashion. Facebook’s No. 2 gaining term or topic of the year, according to the post, was “FML” (No. 1 was anything related to farming, due to the popularity of FarmVille). The trendy acronym, popularized by the tragic stories on FMyLife.com and of an appropriate length for texting, tweeting and IMing, gave complainers a witty way to express their angst, however quotidian.
“FML” was most popular in May 2009, which Facebook hypothesizes had to do with rainy weather and students taking finals, and over the course of the year peaked each week on Tuesdays. Facebook doesn’t specify what countries it took the data from.
Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my bio.
Vaporware 2009: Inhale the Fail
Take a deep breath and savor the sweet stench of disappointment. It’s time for another installment of Wired.com’s Vaporware Awards.
This is the 12th year we’ve offered our annual roundup of the tech industry’s biggest, brashest and most baffling unfulfilled promises. As in years past, we turned to you, our readers, to offer suggestions on what we should include. A few weeks ago, we posted the rules: No rumors, it had to have been promised for this year, and anything that ended up delayed, derailed or otherwise absent was fair game. You e-mailed, you commented, you tweeted.
There’s one particular gaping hole this year. We decided to give a pass to our long-reigning champ, Duke Nukem Forever. We know, it just isn’t the same without Sir Duke, but it wouldn’t have been fair to include him, either. Game company 3-D Realms imploded this summer, and we’re waiting for an official announcement from rights-holder Take-Two Interactive, before we declare this fish flesh or flush. You can read the whole story now in the January issue of Wired magazine.
Two other big jobs got plenty of votes but weren’t included. Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner was popular, but the big bird actually flew, and the ship date has been 2010 for some time. We’re relying on those pesky union workers to earn it a slot on next year’s list.
Same with the Large Hadron Collider. The thing (eventually) turned on and did what it was supposed to do this year without exploding or causing total particle inversion on a universal scale. So, no Vaporware Award.
The following 10, however, were not so lucky. Prepare to taste the waste.
10. Spotify in the U.S.
The streaming-music service with the vast library, instant-play technology and the slick user experience launched in Britain in February 2009. Listeners went crazy for it, and Spotify now has millions of users across Europe.
The service was supposed to arrive stateside late this year, complete with streaming apps for the iPhone and for Android.But so far, there’s only been deafening silence.
Record labels still force partners into separate distribution deals for North America and the rest of the world, so Spotify has had to start over, signing a whole new set of contracts before opening up shop across the pond. Complicating things is the fact that the cost of licensing on-demand music for the United States is excessive and unfriendly to Spotify’s cheap-subscription model.
Meanwhile, savvy U.S. listeners are routing their streams through European proxy servers — or just going to LaLa or MOG — to get their fix.
Screenshot: Spotify’s iPhone app
9. Pixel Qi’s display
Hardware start-up Pixel Qi has been promising a low-power, color, multimode display all year. The company was founded by Mary Lou Jepsen, the brain behind the OLPC XO’s innovative display, so you know they’re good for it.
The Pixel Qi website still says its displays will be available in “high-volume mass production” by late 2009. And yet, you can’t get one. No one we know of has seen one. According to Jepsen’s most recent blog post, they’re now on schedule for Q1 2010.
If the claims the company has been making during development bear out, this hot new display tech could upend the netbook and e-book markets. But for now, it’s still vapor.
Photo: Pixel Qi’s Screen/Mary Lou Jepsen
8. Mitsubishi 73-inch LaserVue HDTV
Gadget lust hit new heights among the home entertainment crowd when Mistubishi first debuted its LaserVue line of 3-D-ready, laser-powered, cinema-sized powerhouses. These rear-projections TVs have twice the color range of an LCD HDTV with lower power consumption. And freakin’ lasers.
But sales of the “small” 65-inch model, priced at TeX Embedding failed!3,000 little brother to the all-pro TeX Embedding failed!200 and slated for delivery by the end of 2009.
However, Fusion Garage had different ideas. The Singapore-based start up decided to bring the slim touchscreen device to market by itself without TechCrunch’s involvement. Both parties have made different claims about what the terms of the original agreement were, as well as who owns the intellectual property contained within the Linux-powered tablet. Fusion Garage and TechCrunch are now involved in litigation, and the launch schedule is out the window.
The tablet has been renamed the JooJoo, the price tag is now $500, and it’s not arriving until next year.
Our readers, it seems, just want to get their hands on the thing.
“I don’t care if it was he said/she said,” says Wayne Hartman. “Real artists ship!”
“La tablette CrunchPad est morte,” says Merkapt. “Vive le JooJoo.”
Photo: Wired.com
1. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Another year, another “almost done” video game taking top prize.
This time, it goes to StarCraft II, Blizzard’s long-anticipated sequel to the real-time strategy blockbuster StarCraft: Brood War. The game picks up the story where the first game left off, continuing the battle between the Protoss, Terran and Zerg. But the alien super-races must have signed some sort of armistice, because 12 years have lapsed since StarCraft’s release, and there’s still no StarCraft II.
We were supposed to see a StarCraft II beta during 2009, but it’s been pushed back to first half of 2010. And the latest official announcements from Blizzard have pegged the game for a final-code release later in 2010. The company says the upcoming launch of its Battle.net online gaming service is to blame.
So, we realize we’re bending our own rules a little to include StarCraft II on this year’s list. But we reserve every right to do so based on several factors.
First, a playable version of StarCraft II debuted over two years ago at BlizzCon 2007. There’s been no action since then, just an agonizingly long wait. Furthermore, we’ve seen first-hand reports, videos, demos and written reviews of the game all along, and the whole experience has been built up into an epic tease.
Finally, the public is downright irate. We received more votes for StarCraft II from Wired.com readers than every other item on this list combined. Here’s a sample of some of your comments:
“I don’t care what Blizzard says. It will never, ever be released.” –FireyFate
“The waiting sucks. It has been what, 12 years, since Brood War came out? Come on, Blizzard.” –Aaron James Tangoan
“I’ve gone from ‘I need this’ to ‘I could not care less.’” –Luis Frost
“Perhaps it’s taking them extra time to figure out how to take the LAN networking code out.” –Andrew Lett
“StarCraft: Brood War = Best RTS ever. StarCraft II = Best RTS never.” –Bill Cameron
“I remembering pre-ordering it for my brother’s birthday back in August of 2008 when Circuit City was still in business.” –whoisdarr
“So without Duke Nukem Forever, how am I supposed to get my name in the Vaporware survey? Guess I bet on the wrong horse. Should’ve picked StarCraft II.” –Dennis Murphy
Image: Blizzard Software
The whole of Wired.com’s editorial staff contributed to this article, but a special thank you goes to Senior Editor Dylan Tweney for his help.
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