lundi 30 septembre 2013

L'Internet des objets vaut bien un accélérateur dédié !


bulle où est inscrit internet des objets

Envoyez à un ami




L'internet des objets continue de se constituer en industrie à part entière : Après le lancement par Cisco d'un pôle de 500 personnes dédié à cette technologie , l'équipementier estimant à 2,8 milliards le nombre d'objets connectés d'ici quatre ans, c'est au tour de l’incubateur Techstars et de l'agence digitale R G/A de lancer un accélérateur de start-up spécialisé dans les objets connectés. En mutualisant les compétences de R /GA en design et branding avec les méthodes de Techstars, cet accélérateur vise à lancer les prochaines grandes marques de l'internet des objets.

Un incubateur axé sur les objets connectés

Cet incubateur basé à New York accompagnera 10 start-ups en lien avec l'internet des objets, chacune recevra 120.000 dollars de dotation et disposera de 3 mois pour présenter un projet convaincant devant des business angels. L'accent est mis particulièrement sur des objets connectés ayant un impact grand public immédiat, ainsi les organisateurs ont annoncé être intéressés par des projets issus de l'impression 3D, des wearable technologies, capteurs intelligents ou encore de la maison connectée. Comme l'affirme l'un de ses fondateurs: " Si c'est une idée innovante qui se situe dans le champs des objets connectés, alors nous sommes interessés." Si Techstar poursuit ainsi sa stratégie de verticalisation après avoir collaboré avec Kaplan ou Nike, c'est la première fois qu'un accélérateur se concentre exclusivement sur un domaine aussi précis que celui des objets connectés.

Des applications directes en marketing

Cet incubateur en s'associant pour la première fois à une agence de communication et non à une marque ou une agence de développement vise à transformer une innovation en produit fini et anticipe d’éventuelles applications marketing . En retour l'agence R G/A a beaucoup à gagner du développement de start-ups d'objets connectés, elle envisage même de potentielles participations directes sous forme d'obligations convertibles pour les projets les plus prometteurs.  Comme le notait récemment la Harvard Business Review, les objets connectés sont appelés à perturber les méthodes traditionnelles de communication en permettant une personnalisation des messages et un flux continu d'interactions dans l'usage même du produit.Diageo par exemple a déjà expérimenté une campagne unique au Brésil proposant des bouteilles connectées interagissant avec le consommateur via un téléphone portable.

Source : L'Atelier

vendredi 27 septembre 2013

Des codes-barres comestibles pour réduire les risques liés à la contrefaçon

Cachets multicolores
Afin de lutter contre la contrefaçon une start-up intègre la traçabilité directement dans les médicaments.
Chaque année la contrefaçon de médicaments entraîne la mort de plus de 100.000 personnes dans le monde entier et représente une perte d'un trillion de dollars pour l'industrie pharmaceutique. L'absence de traçabilité rend plus compliquée la vérification immédiate de la qualité des produits, par ailleurs les code-barres placés sur les emballages sont falsifiables donc insuffisants. Pour palier ce manque de traçabilité, TruTag propose des code-barres comestibles directement placés sur les médicaments et autres produits agro-alimentaires et pouvant être scannés par n’importe quel smartphone. Basée à Hawaii, cette startup a reçu le Technology Pioneer Award au Forum Economique Mondial de 2014 , récompensant les entreprises ayant le plus de potentiel de changement social et économique, Google,Twitter ou DropBox figurent parmi les anciens lauréats.

Une traçabilité permanente

Ce code-barre minuscule est constitué de microparticules de silice, matériau jugé comestible par la FDA américaine, et est directement déposé sur la surface du médicament pour assurer une traçabilité en continu. L’utilisateur envoie une photo du médicament au serveur de TruTag qui scanne le code unique et renvoie ensuite une analyse détaillée (composition, fabricant, date d'expiration, conseils d'utilisation) au consommateur. A la manière d’une empreinte digitale, le code développé par TruTag est indélébile et unique pour chaque produit, il permet donc une transparence totale et une mise à jour de la nature et de la qualité du produit.

Un changement d’échelle déterminant

TruTag s’insère dans un marché déjà mûr, de nombreuses compagnies ont déjà mis au point des moyens de lutte contre la contrefaçon alimentaire et médicamenteuse. L’Atelier avait éjà évoqué il y a quelques mois le cas de LabDoor offrant aux utilisateurs une notation de médicaments, compléments alimentaires et cosmétiques. Cette application permet d’acéder à des notations basées sur des tests complémentaires en laboratoire et accessible depuis une plateforme mobile. De même le Pentagone a élaboré un système de traçacibilité de ses microcircuits grâce à un marqueur ADN unique. Cependant cette application couteuse n’a pour l’instant pas vocation à protéger également les médicaments et aliments grand public. TruTag opère donc un véritable changement d’échelle en intégrant directement le marqueur aux médicaments et aliments, limitant la rupture dans la châine de traçabilité. La compagnie a déjà lancé quels projets pilotes en association avec des groupes pharmaceutiques et alimentaires avant de passer  à une commercialisation globlale.

Source : L'atelier

mercredi 25 septembre 2013

Vers des moteurs de recherche plus personnalisés et moins lourds ?


search engine

Un groupe de chercheurs américains a mis en place un nouvel algorithme pour les moteurs de recherche, capable de contextualiser les requêtes.
Les moteurs de recherche actuels, basés sur le système des mots clés, vont-ils progressivement laisser la place à de nouvelles approches, capables de mieux interpréter les requêtes ? Si l’on s’en tient aux avancées technologiques en cours, alors les moteurs de recherche de prochaine génération devront offrir une expérience personalisée. Après l’équipe de Taguage, les chercheurs à l’Université de la Caroline du Nord s’y sont attelés, en imaginant un nouvel algorithme.  Ce-dernier permet de prendre en compte les requêtes antécédentes d’un utilisateur afin de  lui fournir des résultats les plus optimisés, et ce sans avoir à consommer massivement des ressources informatiques.

La personnalisation au-delà du profiling

En effet, lorsqu’un mot clé comporte une interprétation multiple possible, les moteurs de recherche traditionnels fournissent des réponses identiques, indépendamment du profil de la personne en face. Et même, « le fait de constituer le profil d’un utilisateur ne résout rien au problème » commente Anyanwu, un des chercheurs à l’origine de ce projet. Car, en tapant le même mot clé, une même personne peut vouloir des informations différentes à des moments différents. A titre d’exemple, si un utilisateur entre le terme « vitesse Jaguar », veut-il dire la puissante calculatrice, le félin dans la jungle ou la voiture ? Pour cela, les chercheurs ont mis en place la technique dite « ambient query context », qui consiste à consulter les requêtes les plus récentes d’un utilisateur pour aider à interpréter sa recherche en cours. Ainsi, si parmi ses recherches antécédentes figure un terme comme « l’animal » ou « sauvage », les résultats liés au félin seront mis en avant.

Une nouvelle architecture pour une meilleure efficacité

Le revers de la médaille de ce système est qu’il nécessite une puissance de calcul phénoménale pour chaque utilisateur. A ce stade, l’équipe de recherche d’Anyanwu a réussi à mettre en place une technique qui comprend de nouvelles façons de représenter des données, de les indexer, ainsi qu’une nouvelle architecture de calcul afin que ces données puissent être consultées de manière efficace. La nouvelle indexation et architecture informatique permet à environ 2900 utilisateurs  d’effectuer simultanément une recherche personnalisée à l’aide d’une machine de 8 GB, soit 100 fois plus efficace que leur première réalisation. « Cela rend notre concept plus pratique et nous sommes désormais près pour réaliser le moteur de recherche de prochaine génération » conclut-il.

Source : L'Atelier

jeudi 19 septembre 2013

US Military Scientists Solve the Fundamental Problem of Viral Marketing

 Network theorists working for the US military have worked out how to identify the small “seed” group of people who can spread a message across an entire network.

Viral messages begin life by infecting a few individuals and then start to spread across a network. The most infectious end up contaminating more or less everybody.

Just how and why this happens is the subject of much study and debate. Network scientists know that key factors are the rate at which people become infected, the “connectedness” of the network and how the seed group of individuals, who first become infected, are linked to the rest.

It is this seed group that fascinates everybody from marketers wanting to sell Viagra to epidemiologists wanting to study the spread of HIV.

So a way of finding seed groups in a given social network would surely be a useful trick, not to mention a valuable one. Step forward Paulo Shakarian, Sean Eyre and Damon Paulo from the West Point Network Science Center at the US Military Academy in West Point.

These guys have found a way to identify a seed group that, when infected, can spread a message across an entire network. And they say it can be done quickly and easily, even on relatively large networks.

Their method is relatively straightforward. It is based on the idea that an individual will eventually receive a message if a certain proportion of his or her friends already have that message. This proportion is a critical threshold and is crucial in their approach.

Having determined the threshold, these guys examine the network and look for all those individuals who have more friends than this critical number. They then remove those who exceed the threshold by the largest amount.

In the next, step, they repeat this process, looking for all those with more friends than the critical threshold and pruning those with the greatest excess. And so on.

This process finishes when there is nobody left in the network who has more friends than the threshold. When this happens, whoever is left is the seed group. A message sent to each member of this group can and should spread to the entire network.

That’s a slick approach to a well-known problem. What’s got network scientists bogged down in the past is that they’ve always couched this conundrum in terms of finding the smallest seed group. Proving that the group you’ve found is the smallest really is a tricky problem.

But Shakarian and co make no such claim.  “We present a method guaranteed to find a set of nodes that causes the entire population to activate - but is not necessarily of minimal size,” they say.

That suddenly makes the problem much easier. Indeed, these guys have tested it on a large number of networks to see how well it works. Their test networks include Flickr, FourSquare, Frienster, Last.FM, Digg (from Dec 2010), Yelp, YouTube and so on.

And the algorithm works well. “On a Friendster social network consisting of 5.6 million nodes and 28 million edges we found a seed set in under 3.6 hours,” say Shakarian and co. For this they used an Intel X5677 Xeon processor operating at 3.46 GHz with a 12 MB Cache running Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6.1 and equipped with 70 GB of physical memory.

That’s a promising outcome and one that many people will find valuable. Shakarian and co say that using their approach to find a seed group on the FourSquare online social network, a viral marketeer could expect a 297-fold return on investment. Not bad!

For this reason, Shakarian and co could, and probably will, find themselves and their algorithm in demand from the legion of marketers wanting to make their product viral. Not least of these could be big internet companies such as Amazon and Apple who both have huge networks of customers and plenty of products to sell.

Source : MIT Technology Review, September 17, 2013
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519361/us-military-scientists-solve-the-fundamental-problem-of-viral-marketing/Réf/paper :http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.2963v1.pdf

mercredi 18 septembre 2013

Why is Samsung throwing money at startups?

Samsung accelerator
In a swank office building, waiters handed out fried pickles and caviar-covered sushi. Shiny new LCD screens covered several walls. It was opening night for Samsung’s new startup accelerator in midtown Manhattan, and the company had spared no expense. "The future for us is about the thoughtful integration of hardware and software," said David Eun, the head of Samsung’s Open Innovation Center. "And that means startups."

The smartphone market is increasingly made up of vertically integrated companies that create both the hardware and software for their devices. Apple was the pioneer of this model in its modern form. Google got in the game when it purchased Motorola. And Microsoft completed the trifecta when it acquired Nokia. Samsung, which has risen to become the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturer, wants to follow suit.

Meet hot companies. Incubate. Acquire. 
"The market has shifted from one where you make phones to one where you control or piggyback off an ecosystem. Samsung controls the supply chain to a greater degree than anyone else, but it has realized that it lags the leaders in software, integration, and services," says Avi Greengart, a research director at Current Analysis. "Its thought process is simple: go where the innovation is happening, Silicon Valley and New York, and cozy up to these folks to get a better look at what it takes to build beautifully integrated apps."

Samsung recently announced a new $1 billion venture fund that it will use to back early-stage startups. But the purpose of the new accelerator space was clearly as much about buying talent as making investments. "We’re looking to meet the hottest companies, incubate, and acquire," said Eun. "It’s a different model from our VC arm." Apps that hang at the accelerator, in other words, may become "Sapps" in short order. Samsung has done this before: it acquired the streaming media service mSpot and made it into a featured app that came preloaded on Samsung devices. At the accelerator launch party a number of employees from Boxee, which was recently acquired and folded into the smart TV division, mingled with the crowd.

"The refrigirator is really well stocked"
"The accelerator space in New York features a series of well-appointed offices and conference rooms where a young startup can ply its trade. Samsung has opened a similar space in San Francisco. "I could definitely get used to working here," said Nate Gosselin, a senior manager at the mobile advertising startup Sharethrough. "The refrigerator is really well stocked."

"As we look to the future, our biggest opportunities to innovate are outside of hardware," said BK Yoon, CEO of Samsung's Consumer Electronics Business, who was in New York for the opening of the accelerator space. As for why young startups would choose this venue over the half dozen other accelerators and incubators in New York, Yoon said that "the companies who work here will get access to Samsung’s roadmap, distribution, and marketing support."

"We are in the unique position of being number one in both television and mobile," said Eun, gesturing around the space to the panoply of LCD screens hung on the walls. "Our goal is to have all these screens communicate with one another, so that we can create the largest platform for distributing apps and, potentially, advertising."

"Our biggest opportunities to innovate are outside of hardware."
 This ambitious plan is another catalyst for Samsung’s push into software. "Samsung envisions an internet of things where your phone talks to your tablet, which talks to your TV, which talks to your refrigerator," says Ross Rubin, a principal analyst at Reticle Research. "In that scenario, where customers are using devices that don’t have intuitive, native interfaces, software becomes increasingly crucial."

There has been a steady stream of speculation that Samsung will be tempted to pull away from Google and fork Android, much as Amazon has done, giving it the ability to sell devices preloaded with its own services and store, and more importantly, without Google’s. For the time being, the pair are still too closely tied, but it’s clear Samsung is hedging for this eventuality by trying to bolster its own software game. Whether acquiring startups is the smart way to accomplish that, though, remains to be seen.

Source : The Verge

mardi 17 septembre 2013

Les Google Glass déjà utilisées par des chirurgiens

Google glass chirurgienTélécharger
Fonctionnant à la manière d'un kit mains-libres, les Google Glass optimisent la gestion de données médicales et désenclavent le bloc opératoire.
A peine 5 mois après sa sortie en version beta, les Google Glass font déjà leur entrée dans le bloc opératoire. Sous ses apparences de gadget futuriste, ce produit controversé permet pourtant d’entrevoir des applications innovantes notamment dans le domaine de la santé. Plusieurs opérations ont déjà été menées aux Etats-Unis et en Espagne et se sont avérées positives. Les patients eux-mêmes sont déjà prêts à adopter cette technologie dans un cadre médical, comme le souligne l’étude d'Augmedix: 98% des patients interrogés ne s'opposent pas à l'utilisation de Google glass par leur médecin. L'utilisation de ces lunettes connectées en milieu hospitalier permet à la fois une plus grande collaboration entre médecins lors d'opérations risquées et de transmettre ce savoir pratique aux étudiants en connectant directement les salles de cours au bloc opératoire.

Ouverture du bloc opératoire

Plusieurs opérations utilisant les Google Glass ont déjà eu lieu aux Etats-Unis et en Espagne, dernièrement l'université d'Etat de l'Ohio a conduit une opération chirurgicale ouverte, reliant le bloc opératoire à un groupe d'étudiants ainsi qu'à plusieurs conseillers médicaux grâce aux lunettes connectées portées par le chirurgien à l'oeuvre. Le chirurgien offrant une vue subjective de l'opération, il peut bénéficier de l'assistance d'un médecin consultant délivrant des conseils plus avisés et communiquant avec lui en continu. De même l'intégralité de l'opération est filmée et diffusée en direct sur internet, rendu ainsi accessible à des étudiants en médecine du monde entier. Ainsi lors d'une opération conduite et filmée en Espagne, des étudiants de Stanford ont pu suivre l'intervention complète puis interagir avec le chirurgien afin de mieux comprendre les techniques utilisées. Comme l'affirme le docteur Pedro Guillen auteur de cette procédure, les Google Glass représentent potentiellement " Une université commune à toutes les écoles de médecine du monde entier."

Vers une chirurgie en réalité augmentée?

Au delà des simples applications de communication avec d'autres médecins et étudiants, l'utilisation des lunettes connectées permettrait d'accéder au dossier médical des patients et gérer un certain nombre de données (radios,rythme cardiaque,IRM etc). Cette prise en main enrichie permet de limiter les interruptions durant l'opération tout en enrichissant le savoir à la disposition du praticien. L'application MedRef for Glass par exemple permet aux docteurs et au personnel hospitalier de créer, mettre à jour et consulter des dossiers médicaux tout en gardant les mains libres. Dans un environnement où des données déterminantes et personnelles sont brassées en permanence mais ne bénéficiant pas d'un système d'archivage et de partage élaboré, les Google Glass internalisent le traitement continu de l'information. En dehors de la salle d'opération, ces lunettes connectées optimiseraient également toutes les tâches administratives qui occupent en moyenne plus de 25% du temps des médecins en milieu hospitalier.

Source : L'Atelier

lundi 16 septembre 2013

The 20 Hottest Startups in Israel

The Israeli startup scene needs little introduction. Tel Aviv is rapidly becoming one of the most innovative tech hubs on the planet, vying with London, New York and Berlin as Silicon Valley's second.
Big acquisitions, such as Waze to Google and Snaptu to Facebook, as well a upcoming IPO for Outbrain means Israeli startups are aspiring for big exits.
To find out more about the near 5,000 startups in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other emerging Israeli hubs, check out Mapped in Israel, a definitive, location-based guide. For now, here are our top 20 hottest Israeli startups.

1. GetTaxi

With the GetTaxi app, people can call taxis with one click. Make a payment, tip and even save a receipt via the app, which also tracks taxi proximity.
Launched in Tel Aviv, GetTaxi now operates in Moscow and London, and will launch later this year in New York. It also offers a VIP service, wherein frequent users can earn points for free rides and other contingent benefits.

2. Brow.si

Brow.si cares for a mobile site's engagement levels. For example, it makes sharing much easier with its a Toggle on/Toggle off button across the three major social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Or send push notifications to mobile web readers — Brow.si scans the site's RSS feed and converts it to a push notifications that the user can read on the Brow.si reader, directly from his or her device.

3. Tracx

Screenshot of Tracx, an Israeli startup company
Tracx is a New York City-based company with a SaaS platform for brand marketers who want to manage and monitor their social media presences. The Tracx platform indexes the entire social web and delivers the most relevant conversations by capturing a 360-degree view of brand activity and sifting through streams of social media data to monitor performance.

4. Fiverr

With the Fiverr market, people list a variety of services they provide for $5 each. These services range from writing a CV to buying Facebook followers to building websites.
In 2012 the company received $15 million in Series B funding, and now millions of vendors from more than 200 countries offer more than 1.5 million different services on Fiverr, adding thousands of new ones each day.

5. Viber

Viber is a free texting, photo messaging and video messaging service founded in 2010 to compete with Skype. It now has more than 200 million users in more than 193 countries and has expanded from its iPhone presence to Android and other platforms. Its younger demographic and proprietary "stickers" service have proved very popular, differentiating it from Skype.

6. ClearSkyApps

Based in Tel Aviv and founded in 2010, Clear Sky Apps has developed more than 15 iPhone apps based on fitness and health programs. Its apps have been downloaded 15 million times. They include training runs for beginners, run pace training for advanced runners as well as exercise apps for situps and squats. You'll even find apps to help people sleep.

7. TireCheck

Neomatix is a developer of automotive sensors and fleet management solutions. It recently introduced TireCheck, a new app based on a patented computer vision technology, which allows drivers to check their vehicles' tire pressure. Users click on and focus the iPhone camera to take a picture of a tire; the app then measures tire pressure and recommends pumping, if necessary.

8. Swayy

A content discovery tool aimed at the small enterprise market, Swayy launched its public beta September 2013.
Every day it crawls and monitors 50,000 pieces of content and operates a freemium model where premium packages cost between $5 and $19 per month.

9. EatWith

Screenshot of the site EatWith, an Israeli startup
EatWith is a travel site like Airbnb, only it revolves around dining clubs. Travelers can eat in strangers’ houses during their trips.
In its online directory, travelers pay a small fee to those offering meals in their homes. Initiated in Israeli homes, it now services every continent.

10. PrimeSense

With PrimeSense’s 3D sensing technology, digital devices can observe a scene in three dimensions. It translates these observations into synchronized image streams (depth and color). Then, it translates those synchronized images into information, identifying human gestures, classifying objects and locating walls and floors. This technology is made possible by "depth sensing," using sensors and middleware.

11.Tomodo

New web platform Tomodo allows developers, hackers, modders and designers to build new websites or services by modding, mixing or tweaking existing websites into new creations. Tomodo acts as a real-time proxy between the browser and original website.

12. LATTO

LATTO is a cloud-based multiscreen video store platform for streaming live/linear and on-demand video content. It provides personalized monetization options for broadcasters, cable and satellite operators, aggregators, telecommunication operators and more. The interactive media service provides personalized offers and ads as well as an media store for both content and commerce.
The company has recently announced it has closed a $4 million dollar funding round, bringing the total amount raised to $15 million dollars.

13. BillGuard

BillGuard is a personal finance security service powered by the "collective knowledge" of millions of people. Its investors include the founders and CEOs of Google, PayPal, Verisign and Sun Microsystems.
It monitors unsolicited transactions from credit card providers and refunds customers. A freemium model, the iPhone app covers up to two cards free, but is charging a one-time price of $9.99 to protect up to 10 cards, instead of $45.

14. Say Media

Founded in 2009, Say Media is an affiliated marketing company that works across mobile and online to create a network of mobile and gaming sites by bringing publishers and advertisers closer.
This approach has established a network of premium publishers, linked to exclusive offers that the company says converts up to 500% more than regular mobile offers.

15. Commerce Sciences

The company gives retailers the tools to put their customers at the center of any interactive experience, so that store's online presence will become intuitive and grow sales.
It applies behavioral science methodologies to hone its data. The result is an fine-tuned approach to shoppers’ targeting, so improving its impact and effectiveness.

16. Idomoo

Founded in 2009, Idomoo integrates customer data and targeted offers into cinematic, personalized videos. Its fast-rendering, cloud-based service works with more than 60 brands to deliver videos that engage and connect with brand audiences.

17. Correlor

Correlor delivers web personalization and customer intelligence by applying bioinformatics and machine learning to social data, based on consumer personality. It empowers websites with on-site personalization and customer insights, and encourages businesses to provide tailored services for every customer.

18. MyHeritage

MyHeritage was founded by Gilad Japhet in 2003 and now has more than 75 million registered users and over 1.5 billion profiles.
The company "uses the tools of tomorrow to research the family history of yesterday," and its family tree building and historical content search are constantly evolving to provide families with a map of their ancestors’ lifetimes.

19. Moolta

Screen shot of the site Moolta, an Israeli startup
Moolta is a fundraising platform that lets users dare their friends to do crazy things. They can choose to carry out the dare or take up the challenge and post to Moolta.
The company also presents the Moolta community with its own challenges to win cash prizes.

20. eyeSight

EyeSight is bringing Natural User Interface, the technology behind major gaming consoles, to other digital devices, such as mobile phones, TVs, tablets and laptops/PCs.
The company is based in Israel with offices in the U.S., Hong Kong, Japan and Korea. Its management team has expertise in research, implementation and optimization for real-time algorithms and their embedded platforms.

Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Source : Mashable.com

lundi 9 septembre 2013

Google étend la logique de la performance publicitaire au regard

Tarification du regard

Grâce à des capteurs intégrés à ses lunettes intelligentes, Google envisage un nouveau mode de facturation au regard pour les annonceurs.
Afin de financer son moteur de recherche, Google a toujours utilisé des indicateurs de facturation pour ses annonceurs reposant sur la performance. Ainsi le coût par clic (CPC) ou le coût par achat (CPA) permettait jusqu'à présent de mesurer l'audience publicitaire sur Internet. Grâce à un nouveau brevet de "Gaze tracking system" développé pour ses lunettes intelligentes, Google peut désormais mesurer la performance au regard, voire aux émotions. Cette invention permettrait de mesurer en permanence l'exposition à la publicité(physique et digitale) et une tarification au regard.

L'optimisation des tarifications publicitaires grâce au regard

Le brevet déposé propose un système intégré de capteurs et de lunettes mesurant l'attention du regard, relié en permanence à un serveur. Grâce à ce système de caméras embarquées, Google mesure quels supports publicitaires sont visionnés et pendant combien de temps. Ces images et coordonnées sont directement transférées au service de tarification qui facture directement les annonceurs concernés. Les lunettes enregistrent donc toute consultation visuelle de contenu publicitaire, en ligne ou physique (journaux, affiches, magazines etc.) Pour l'instant Google n'envisage pas d'exposer de la publicité directement sur l'interface Glass et a d'ailleurs interdit aux développeurs d'applications de vendre de l'espace publicitaire. Mais d'autres services, notamment Google Now, moteur de recherche d'applications intelligent, seront ouverts aux contenus publicitaires.

Vers la mesure des émotions?

Le “Pay per Gaze” - littéralement “coût par regard” - n'est qu'une première étape du développement de la mesure de la performance dans le marché de la publicité. Avec cette application Google peut en outre mesurer le niveau de dilatation de la pupille et ainsi détecter l'émotion suscitée chez l'utilisateur. Cette fonction pourrait permettre aux annonceurs de comprendre les réactions des consommateurs au contenu publicitaire et travailler davantage sur les émotions pour inciter à l'achat. D'autres accessoires de wearable technology, notamment le bandeau intelligent Muse permettent déjà de mesurer les émotions d'un utilisateur et de les intégrer dans les moyens de communication digitaux.

Source : L'Atelier

vendredi 6 septembre 2013

Des fenêtres photosensibles réduisent la facture énergétique des “smart buildings”

Fenêtres intelligentesDes chercheurs de l'université de Berkeley ont mis au point une vitre régulant automatiquement les flux de lumière et de chaleur, permettant de grandes économies d’énergie dans l’industrie.

Alors que les dépenses en chauffage, éclairage et air conditionné des bâtiments représentent près de 40% de la facture énergétique annuelle aux Etats-Unis, des chercheurs du laboratoire Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ont mis au point un nouveau matériau filtrant la lumière et régulant la chaleur automatiquement. Cette vitre changeant d'opacité selon l'intensité de l'énergie reçue permettrait ainsi des économies à grandes échelles et vient renforcer la tendance des fenêtres intelligentes en pleine explosion. Selon un raport de NanoMarkets ce marché est amené à doubler d’ici 2018 et représentera jusqu’à 2,7 milliards de dollars.

Un matériau composite régulant la lumière et la chaleur

Il existe déjà depuis plusieurs années des vitres pouvant changer de teinte et s'adapter ainsi aux variations d'intensité de la lumière naturelle, mais ce nouveau matériau mis au point par les chercheurs de Berkeley permet non seulement d'opacifier automatiquement la vitre mais peut également bloquer la chaleur du soleil tout en maintenant un certain niveau de luminosité. Cette vitre électro-chimique est constituée d'un alliage de verre à l'oxyde de niobium et de cristaux nanométriques d'oxyde d'indium-étain, ce dernier matériau ayant la propriété de rester transparent et est déjà utilisé dans la fabrication d'écrans plats et de surfaces tactiles. Cette vitre est également conductrice d'électricité, ainsi en impulsant une faible décharge la vitre laisse uniquement passer la lumière et bloque la chaleur, en augmentant la puissance la vitre peut devenir entièrement opaque. Ce dispositif économe et intelligent permettrait donc une meilleure gestion de la régulation de la lumière et du chauffage dans les bâtiments.  

Vers des bâtiments plus intelligents

Dans un contexte d'optimisation de la facture énergétique mondiale, les fenêtres intelligentes offrent une alternative efficace pour réguler la consommation d'électricité en chauffage et air conditionné. Ce matériau pourrait filtrer jusqu'à 35% des rayons UV sans pour autant réduire le niveau de luminosité dans la pièce, cependant les matériaux composant cette fenêtre intelligente sont encore très coûteux et le processus de fabrication doit être simplifié pour pouvoir compenser son coût par les économies d'énergie réalisées. Le marché des fenêtres intelligentes pour un usage industriel ou domestique est en constante augmentation, récemment Saint-Gobain le géant du verre mondial a acquis la start-up Sage Electrochromics pour 80 millions d'euros en vue de se diversifier dans le verre intelligent. Au vu du coût encore consséquent des matériaux utilisés, cette nouvelle technologie devrait attirer principalement les clients commerciaux, avec plus de 25% d'économies réalisées sur le chauffage et le refroidissement grâce aux techniques d'assombrissement automatique. 

Source : L'Atelier

mercredi 4 septembre 2013

Is the Middle East the next new market for tech startups?


tehran
[This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, "Startup Rising" by Christopher M. Schroeder. Copyright © 2013 by the author and reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.]

The West tends to look at the world through the prism of its own successes, and believes that it has a monopoly on innovative ideas and entrepreneurship. Nothing amuses the entrepreneurs I meet around the world more than when some US politician who refers to entrepreneurship as a “leading American export,” as if other, thousands-of-years-old entrepreneurial cultures have only recently discovered it.
And one of the most common questions I hear from American entrepreneurs, investors, and policy makers as they consider looking at new growth markets is, what will be the “next Silicon Valley” of a certain region or country?

“Interesting businesses are and will be created outside of the Valley, in the States and around the world,” Ben Horowitz, the former CEO of the tech juggernaut Opsware and co-founder of one of the most successful venture capital funds in the world, readily concedes.

“But think of the movie business. Great films are made in many locations, but there is a reason that the vast majority of successful films — certainly in aggregate dollars — come from Hollywood. That’s where talent wants to be. There is Bollywood in India but it pales in comparison. In fact, how many technology startups outside of Silicon Valley or the US have built multi-billion dollar businesses?”

When I pushed venture capital investors who have opened up offices in emerging markets about why they do so, two consistent themes arise. First, they look for large market opportunities — one may lose money in a place like China, but for all its challenges, it’s too big to ignore. Second, emerging markets offer outstanding engineering and call-center talent, invariably much cheaper than in the United States.

As for opportunities for regional or even global innovation from the emerging worlds?
“It happens all the time, especially for services aimed at local or even regional needs, which explains Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu in China,” notes Mike Moritz, chairman of the legendary Sequoia Capital — a pioneering venture capital firm responsible for backing the likes of Apple, Google, Cisco, PayPal and LinkedIn which are among the other most successful technology companies in the world.

“But Silicon Valley has always been a magnet for immigrants. It’s the place where raw technical abilities will always be embraced by successful companies and worldly leaders.”
But what happens when the vast majority of talented people don’t want to move — when they not only want to stay home, but are driven by almost patriotic passion to make change where they come from?

The real question going forward won’t be whether Silicon Valley is the only game in town or where the next one will crop up. Rather, it will be how rapid and inexpensive access to its innovations in software and devices will create new, multiple “hubs” of innovation in every corner of the globe.

This will also challenge the West’s definition of “innovation” as only the next shiny, new thing. The word has different ramifications in emerging markets that are gaining access to software and devices for the first time. These markets create innovative solutions for their own challenges and opportunities. From their unique experiences and circumstances, in fact, their solutions may one day be adopted globally.

What if information technology could make geographic proximity and network effects of talent less important? We know this is already happening in our day-to-day lives. Skype, group chat, social networks, collaborative software, and other, ever-advancing video connections are already mainstream and improving daily. They have had clear impact on the social and political dialogue in every country where they are embraced. They create hubs of action in many walks of life  unimagined even five years ago, and tweaked by individuals to better attune them to local and regional cultural needs and norms. These experiences may not yet be as ideal as face-to-face proximity, but for a new generation raised on them, and by breaking down barriers of distance, might they be plenty good enough?

There is precedent for how local need-solving becomes globally competitive innovation in the hardware business. Certainly no one in the early 1980s would have expected Japan or Korea to become a dominant player in mobile devices and consumer gaming. Who would have imagined that Finland, a country known mostly for wood products, would create Nokia — a company that first used mobile communication to facilitate connections between forestry and milling locations hard to reach with traditional telephony?

Look at mobile. Basic cell-phone penetration in Egypt, a land of 80 million people with annual per capita GDP under $6,500, is over 115 percent. The penetration numbers hold true throughout the Middle East.  Yet currently only 8 to 12 percent of these users have access to smartphones.  Can we fathom what kind of innovation may come from countries — those that never even knew landlines — that attain mobile smartphone computing access of 50 percent and more of their citizens? Mobile experts told me we could see sub-$50 smartphones within three years to help drive this adoption.
Moritz concedes, upon further reflection:
I’ve found in my travels that if you put great entrepreneurs from any corner of the world in the same room with each other, they are quite similar even if their mother tongues, religions, and colors are different. They look at the world, problems, and opportunities the same way. Their minds, their energies, and their desires to succeed are a lingua franca. They talk to each other as if they’ve known each other their whole lives.
Is any of this, however, truly possible and scalable in the Middle East?
In the face of brutal oppression in some nations and political uncertainty throughout the region, it’s hardly an idle question. Added to political instability, the gap between the mega-wealthy and the desperately poor throughout the region remains shocking; education and literacy offer profound challenges. Corruption, high unemployment, heavy reliance on government largesse, archaic and often indecipherable rules of law, and cultural resistance to investing beyond fixed assets are all daily realities.

For all the enthusiasm that came with the Arab uprisings, Arabs are still debating vehemently the kinds of societies and governments they will create, what role religion and women will play, and how business practices will be proscribed. One need only spend a few days in Amman or Cairo, going through metal detectors in every restaurant, hotel, and tourist destination, to sense how the political and social realities can keep risk capital — and, indeed, business itself — sidelined.

But while we must take these concerns seriously, they can also mask the three-fold hurricane-force wind these entrepreneurs have at their backs.

First, technology offers an irreversible level of transparency, connectivity, and inexpensive access to capital and markets unprecedented only five years ago. A new generation in the Middle East, as elsewhere, has never known a world before information technology, and they have a keen understanding of how others like them live and create opportunity for themselves.

Second, this generation benefits from regional and global capital now more comfortable with political risk. Twenty years of experience in other emerging markets, all but dismissed as economic engines less than a generation ago, has laid important groundwork. Nearly all of these countries were, and remain, equally marred by political uncertainty, opaque governments, corruption, and weak infrastructures.

Third, changing market dynamics, growth, and opportunity in the Middle East were in motion well before the uprisings. The Arab world alone has over 350 million people, nearly twice the size of Brazil — a GDP larger than Russia and India, and per capita GDP nearly twice China’s. Disposable income has grown 50 percent over the past three years, to over $1 trillion in 2012.  It’s a young market, with over 100 million people under the age of 15, who love their connectivity, mobile phones and rapid adoption of smart devices.

And this new generation is hungry. If there was one universal sentiment that connected every young entrepreneur I met it was this: Their revolution was not merely about overthrowing longstanding dictatorships, but challenging a generational premise and complacency of their parents that things could not change. “Why should we accept mediocre jobs in lumbering large companies or the government — assuming we can even find those?” one Jordanian founder told me. “In fact, I don’t understand why my parents accepted it! We can be better!”

These entrepreneurs come from every walk of Arab life. They are women and men, devoutly religious and culturally Islamic, college educated and self-taught, young and old and from literally every country in the region. They are above all realistic about the odds against them, yet unfazed by the political and infrastructural barriers.

They view the recent political change as an unprecedented opportunity and, in some cases, confirmation of their efforts over many years. They are unleashing social and economic forces that will create the foundations of a new Middle East. These forces will build and evolve over years, but will be accompanied with a speed and transparency through technology that will hold any leadership, and themselves, to instant accountability.

These entrepreneurs are not naïve. They expect setbacks. But they believe they are on the right side of history.

So to me, the most interesting question of all is why wouldn’t the Middle East be ripe to unleash a new era of tech-based entrepreneurship and innovation of the sort that has driven growth and job creation around the world?

[Image courtesy Shahrokh Dabiri]