Indiegogo or Kickstarter ?

On apples, oranges, and crowdfunding platforms: Indiegogo’s recent growth highlights the difference between it and Kickstarter

Indiegogo, the crowdfunding platform founded two years before media darling Kickstarter, is today revealing its growth over the last few years. The typically tight-lipped company revealed this information exclusively to PandoDaily after disputing data used to create an infographic comparing the two platforms that relied on Kickstarter’s public statistics and third-party information about Indiegogo’s platform. (Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.)

Slava Rubin, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, says that Indiegogo has now managed more than 150,000 projects and is hosting another 7,000 each week. That’s more than the 4,374 live projects Kickstarter reports on its website, though that doesn’t account for the discrepancy between the number of countries in which both companies operate. Indiegogo allows anyone from some 200 countries to create a campaign; Kickstarter only allows approved projects from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand onto its site.

That discrepancy highlights the differences between Indiegogo and Kickstarter. The former is focused on allowing anyone to raise any amount of money from anywhere in the world; the latter is focused on creating a highly-curated platform that allows a select few to raise money from their fans. This focus has led to rapid international growth on Indiegogo’s part, as Rubin says that the company is now distributing funds to between 70 and 100 countries each month; seen its transaction volume outside of the US triple over the last year; and transferred money to some 190 countries since its launch.

While the numbers themselves are news, their meaning — that Indiegogo and Kickstarter aren’t quite the competitors some might think — is not. As we noted in the revised introduction to our infographic:

We will grant Indiegogo that it and Kickstarter, while both crowdfunding modules, have different models. Indiegogo accepts anybody. Kickstarter does not. Indiegogo gives campaigns the option of keeping all of the money if they miss their goal. Kickstarter does not. So yes, while Lau and Junprung’s data may paint a picture of Kickstarter dominance, it’s also not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Have high-profile Kickstarter projects raised more than similar projects on Indiegogo? Absolutely. Does Indiegogo’s willingness to open its platform for nearly anything, whether it’s a state-of-the-art smartphone or a campaign to send an abused bus monitor on a vacation, allow the company’s service to be used for a wider variety of purposes than Kickstarter? Definitely. These services both have their own strengths and weaknesses, and there’s no reason that they can’t co-exist.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson to be learned from Indiegogo’s revelations. The company has declined to reveal much about itself — using percentages to describe growth is a fickle, easily abused trick — and much of what it has revealed won’t stifle criticism of the service. These numbers are only useful insofar as their ability to lend further credence to the idea that comparing Indiegogo and Kickstarter simply because both operate crowdfunding platforms is as ludicrous as comparing apples and oranges simply because both grow on trees.

[Illustration by Hallie Bateman for Pandodaily]

Source : Pandodaily.com, by Nathaniel Mott

Motorola créé un tatouage permettant de passer des appels

Motorola vient de déposer un brevet pour un nouvel outil de communication semblable à un tatouage permettant notamment de passer des appels plus audibles dans les lieux bruyants.

Bien qu’encore assez marginal, le marché des outils connectés est en plein essor. Les acteurs du digital et des télécommunications redoublent de créativité pour faciliter la vie des consommateurs. Après les Google Glass, les smartwatches et autres outils connectés, Motorola surenchéri avec son “tatouage connecté”. L’entreprise Américaine appartenant depuis 2011 à Google cherche à renverser la notion traditionnelle du Smartphone.  En mai 2013, Motorola avait annoncé qu’il cherchait à remplacer les mots de passe traditionnels avec des tatouages ​​électroniques ou des pilules d'authentification que les gens avalent. Aujourd’hui, Motorola dépose un brevet intitulé “Coupling An Electronic Skin Tattoo To A Mobile Communication Device,” afin de protéger son invention de tatouage connecté muni d’un microphone.

Une technologie de communication intégrée dans le corps

Ce surprenant dispositif correspond à un tatouage électronique et autocollant fixée sur la gorge de son utilisateur. Il permet de communiquer sans fil en utilisant un réseau WiFi, Bluetooth ou NFC. C’est en fait un émetteur-récepteur capable d’améliorer la qualité sonore en réduisant les bruits ambiants. Il est compatible avec la plupart des appareils mobiles  tels que les smartphones, tablettes, consoles de jeux portable et autres objets connectés. Il est précisé qu’il doit aussi être changé en moyenne chaque semaine et qu’il peut également être appliqué sur les animaux.Le brevet déposé par Motorola ne donne bien entendu que peu de précisions sur l’invention même, ses applications ou encore sa production future. Certains analystes supposent que le tatouage utilisera l’énergie solaire pour fonctionner.

Un avenir à déterminer

Aujourd’hui, il n’existe aucune projection sur l’avenir de ce produit. Il se peut que Motorola cherche à créer des concepts et les protège afin d’empêcher de nouveaux acteurs d'essayer de développer un concept similaire. Il ne faut donc pas spécialement s’attendre à retrouver ce produit sur le marché dans les jours à venir. Ce type de dispositif serait déjà utilisé dans le domaine militaire. Selon Patrick Moorhead, analyste chez Moor Insights & Strategy, l'armée utiliserait déjà des microphones de gorge pour rendre les communications plus claires. De plus, nous n’avons pas de recul pour connaître les effets secondaires que peuvent provoquer cette technologie. Concernant les interrogations sur les problèmes de santé que cette technologie peu engendrer, Motorola reste silencieux.Dans l’avenir ce dispositif pourrait même être utilisé comme un détecteur de mensonges. Le tatouage inclurait ainsi un détecteur de réponse galvanique (utilisant les courants électriques du corps). En effet, la réponse galvanique de la peau est différente lorsque l’individu est nerveux, dit des mensonges ou lorsqu’il est confiant et dit la vérité. Enfin, ce système pourrait aussi permettre de contrôler son smartphone avec la voix. L’annonce du dépôt de brevet par Motorola manifeste certainement le début d’une nouvelle ère d’objets connectés, intégrés au corps humain.

Source : L'Atelier

Boku permet de payer sa place de parking d’un simple sms

Les services de carrier billing se multiplient, simplifiant le paiement et poussant les géants high-tech à nouer des partenariats pour intégrer ces fonctionnalités.

Usages en plein expansion dans le domaine du m-paiement, les services de carrier billing permettent aux utilisateurs de payer divers produits notamment sur les réseaux sociaux et plateformes d’applications en utilisant des crédits téléphoniques pouvant être directement mobilisés par sms. Paradoxalement il s’agit de l’une des formes les plus anciennes de paiement sur mobile, développés dès l’apparition des premiers appareils pour acheter des fonds d’écran ou sonneries spécifiques par exemples. Mais aujourd’hui il s’agit d’un service  indispensable au développement dumarché des applications estimé à près de 25 milliards de dollars. Plusieurs acteurs tentent à présent d’intégrer ces services mobiles dans des usages du quotidien.

Le carrier billing à l’assaut du monde réel

L’entreprise de carrier billing basée à San Francisco,Boku après avoir développé ses services sur différentes plateformes et réseaux sociaux étend son marché au monde réel avec un premier partenariat. En collaboration avec PassportParking l’entreprise permet aux usagers de plusieurs grandes villes américaines de payer leurs places de parking directement par sms, mettant fin ainsi aux appoints approximatifs aux parcmètres. Cette incursion d’un service à l’origine exclusivement digital dans des usages quotidiens et physiques marque une étape menant à la généralisation du carrier billing.  Boku utilise en effet la même technique au cœur de sa chaîne de valeur d’origine, les utilisateurs de PassportParking payent directement leur facture grâce à leur numéro de téléphone, le montant étant déduit du forfait géré par l’opérateur et nom d’un compte en banque ou autre porte-monnaie digital.  

Une tendance qui affecte les géants du e-commerce et des mobiles

Le carrier billing  s’affirme de plus en plus comme tendance de fond affectant transversalement les acteurs digitaux, comme le souligne Jon Prideaux CBO de Boku : « Depuis un an, le carrier billing s’impose progressivement comme une méthode de paiement privilégiée sur des nouveaux appareils connectés comme la TV connectée ou encore les nouvelles consoles de jeux . » Amazon a ainsi annoncé il y a quelques mois un partenariat avec Bango, l’un des leaders mondiaux du carrier billing pour offrir à ses clients la possibilité de payer leurs achats grâce à leurs crédits téléphoniques.  Ce partenariat devrait se concrétiser sous la forme d’application Amazon pour Android, la tendance du carrier billing se répandant à la fois chez les acteurs de l’e-commerce et chez les développeurs d’appareils connectés ( mobiles, tablettes etc). De même Microsoft offre maintenant l’application Bango sur son Windows Phone Store, visant dans un premier temps le marché de l’Asie du Sud-Est avant de s’étendre globalement.

Source : L'Atelier

Fast food for the digital age: Meals are 3D-printed

Two new startups could help bring individual customization to the mass production of meals with 3D printed food.

The 20th century ushered in the age of mass produced food, which — for better or worse — has fed the population with an endless array of new dishes and delicacies. The 21st century food industry may come to be about the individual customization with 3D printed food, however, if two new startups get their way.

Headed by Hod Lipson and Jeffrey Lipton, the Cornell Creative Machines Lab (CCML) is a part of Cornell University researching 3D printing. Having already worked with the International Culinary Center, its prototypes can create scallop nuggets in novelty shapes, cakes with messages printed inside, noodles and hamburger patties. The devices currently take liquid and paste foodstuffs such as melted chocolate, dough and pureed goods, which can be used much like the plastic in typical 3D printers.

Barcelona-based Natural Machines (above) is another startup moving the world of catering into 3D printed territory. According to the Wall Street Journal, the startup uses precise piping directed by digital designs to create pastas, breads and food decorations. It is already in the process of developing a printer for market, which it hopes to retail for EUR 1,000. Connected to the web, users will be able to download recipes and designs, as well as tweet their latest creations.

While regular readers of Springwise may remember Japan-based FabCafe‘s 3D-printed Valentine’s Day jelly sweets, both the research by CCML and Natural Machines could bring the production of digitally-designed meals out of science fiction and into reality. Could your business benefit from the convenience of 3D food printing?

Website: www.creativemachines.cornell.edu / www.naturalmachines.com
Contact: hod.lipson@cornell.edu / www.twitter.com/naturalmachines
Spotted by Murray Orange, written by Springwise

Source : Springwise

The Three Reasons Twitter Didn’t Sell To Facebook

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg tried to acquire Twitter not once but twice, through official channels and via co-founder Jack Dorsey. The details of the efforts are revealed in Nick Bilton’s new book Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal.
I’ll have a full review of the book soon, but I found one passage in particular worth noting. It was late October of 2008, shortly after Dorsey had been ousted as CEO and consigned to a silent role as Chairman, with no voting stock or operational control. Fellow Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone had been invited to visit Facebook for a sit-down with CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The purpose? An acquisition of Twitter.

Zuckerberg, Bilton explains, had been working Dorsey for months to try to arrange a buyout. But his plans were thrown into disarray when Dorsey was yanked from the CEO slot. An email at one point to Jack had given a point-by-point reasoning on why Facebook+Twitter made sense. Among those reasons was the customary threat that Facebook could choose to ‘build products that moved further in [Twitter's] direction’, a tactic that we’ve personally heard many accounts of Zuckerberg employing. The implicit threat: sell to us or we’ll clone your product.

During the meeting, Williams and Stone threw out a valuation: $500 million. Zuckerberg was not shocked, as Dorsey had already informed him that this was the range that would be sought.
But the sale didn’t happen, and the reasoning behind the rejection was outlined in an email by Williams to the board, which is partially quoted in Bilton’s book.

It seems to me, there are three reasons to sell a company, Ev wrote in an e-mail to the board outlining why they should decline Facebook’s offer. 1. The price is good enough of or a value that the company will be in the future. (“We’ve often said that Twitter is a billion dollar company. I think it’s many, many times that,” Ev wrote.) 2. There’s an imminent and very real threat from a competitor. (Nothing is going to “pose a credible threat of taking Twitter to zero.” 3. You have a choice to go and work for someone great. (“I don’t use [Facebook]. And I have many concerns about their people and how they do business.”)

There are a few interesting points in this passage, which we’ve emphasized. First among those is that the board saw Twitter as a billion-dollar company in 2008, and Williams saw it as many times that. In 2008, Twitter had fewer than 11 million users, and had yet to see the exponential gains that would come in early 2009 as a result of publicity like Ashton Kutcher’s public race against CNN to be the first million-follower account. Twitter’s current IPO filing places a roughly $11.9 billion value on the company. Even with a crappy infrastructure still wobbling under the weight of the users it did have, Twitter’s leadership had faith.

That faith extended to the fact that there was no competitor, including Facebook, who could pose a ‘credible threat of taking Twitter to zero’. The concept of Twitter, and its execution, was so unique that even a company with Facebook’s resources was ill-equipped to mimic its behavior and success. This is reinforced by another anecdote in the book about a possible $12 million Yahoo acquisition, which was politely declined very early on in Twitter’s life. The number, even with only 250k active users of what was still an Odeo side project, seemed so low to Biz, Williams and Dorsey that it became a running joke.

And lastly, Williams was also uncomfortable about a culture mis-match. The book as a whole drills down deeply into some very flawed, very human characters. But a strain that runs throughout is that the core creators of Twitter were all looking for ways to democratize human connections. That started with Odeo and continued through to the Twitter experiment. Williams felt that Twitter could be negatively impacted by intermingling with Facebook’s company culture, and was willing to bet hundreds of millions of dollars that it would be better without that influence.

We seem to talk more and more about the mercenary nature of Silicon Valley — and the popularity of ‘acquisition as business plan’ — daily. But, it turns out, there are still people making decisions based on something other than the seven deadly sins.

And one can’t discount the impact that lightly veiled threats have on negotiations. They can often lead to a sour taste, and we’ve heard about more than one negotiation with Facebook that has been spoiled by this kind of hint-dropping. Facebook took roughly three years to clone Twitter’s core ‘follow’ feature, launching Subscribe in 2011. It was later re-named ‘Follow’.

Dorsey, for his part, was ambivalent about a Facebook acquisition, saying that “If the numbers are right, there’s a success story in either path.” At the time, he was fresh off of his removal as CEO, with little hope of getting any real power in the company back. That turned out to be wrong, thanks to friendly investor Peter Fenton, but it’s not too surprising that he saw the money as a fair trade.
But the board agreed with Williams’ reasoning and declined the offer. Zuckerberg would then go on to court Dorsey heavily, but refuse to give him a head of product position. Dorsey never went to Facebook, and when Twitter IPOs, he’ll get his voting shares back.
An interesting note: Williams actually blogged about the offer, and the three reasons, earlier this year but never disclosed that it was Facebook. An interesting quote from the piece:

At the time, the offer we had on the table for Twitter—though a heck of a lot of money and a huge win for investors and anyone else involved—didn’t seem like it captured the upside. Even though we weren’t huge, and there were still a lot of doubters, I believed our potential was unbounded.
…
In the Twitter case, we had no desire to sell. I had actually just become CEO and was raring to go—as was the team. Additionally, the company we were having the discussion with didn’t seem like one in which we’d fit particularly well or the team would be stoked about.

The passage presents us with an intriguing alternate reality where Facebook acquired Twitter, establishing an essential monopoly on the world’s largest and most recognizable social networks. And an example of how it’s still possible to mesh the concepts of business acumen and moral code.
[Photo: (CC) Flickr/Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com]

Source : Techcrunch

Here's The Evidence That The Tech Sector Is In A Massive Bubble

The stock market is at an all-time high. Tech startups with no revenue have billion-dollar valuations. And engineers are demanding Tesla sports cars just to show up at work.
Here's the evidence that we're in a new tech bubble, heading for a crash, just like the dot com bust of 1999.

Interest rates are effectively at 0%.

(Fred / Think Progress)

Before we get into specific evidence that the tech sector is inflated, it's worth restating the macro-economic context: Interest rates are basically at zero and have been for some time. When borrowers are paying close to zero interest on loans, that makes money cheap to get. This chart shows the Fed's target rate for interest since 1970.
People with money generally have a choice: save it in interest-paying, risk-free bank accounts or invest it in riskier assets that may pay more money over time. When interest is at zero, virtually any other kind of investment is likely to pay more because the risk-free alternative is so lousy. So investment asset bubbles get created. Stocks tend to go up.

The stock market is at a peak, which is exactly what you'd expect in a zero-interest environment.

(Yahoo Finance / Jim Edwards)

We've had five years of solid growth in stocks. People who have invested in stocks in the last five years now feel very, very rich. What could possibly go wrong?

The market moves up and down, in cycles, as this chart of the S&P 500 stocks shows.
We're due for a downturn.
(BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink, whose company manages $4.1 trillion in assets, agrees that the Federal Reserve is creating “bubble-like markets.”)

In the tech sector specifically, there has been a recent run-up in deal prices.

(Thomson Reuters / PricewaterhouseCoopers)

This chart was published by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which tracks merger and acquisition activity in the tech sector.
It notes that "software deal volume tripled that of the second quarter."
The driving force?
High stock prices and corporate giants who are rich with cash and need to invest it, PwC says.

It's not just tech asset prices that are high. Salaries are high, too.

While unemployment generally may be high, in the tech sector it is very low.

(REUTERS/Edgar Su)

Tech companies, led by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, are lobbying Congress to relax immigration rules so they can hire more foreign talent because they believe domestic talent has gotten too scarce and too expensive. It's driving up wages bills like crazy. Matt Allen, a tech recruiter at Vertical Move, told me recently:

We're experiencing first hand greater insanity than the dot-com days when Interwoven Software was pulling out BMW Z3's for engineers who joined. Instead, we're seeing sign-on bonuses for individuals five-years out of school in the $60,000 range. Candidates queuing-up six, eight or more offers and haggling over a few thousand-dollar differences among the offers. Engineers accepting offers and then fifteen minutes before they're supposed to start on a Monday, emailing (not calling) to explain they found something better elsewhere.

That suggests that wages in tech are in a bubble.
Want an example?

Twitter svp/technology Chris Fry got a $10 million pay packet. He only joined the company last year.

(Twitter)

Twitter's Chris Fry comes with a high price.

Fry is paid more in annual compensation that Jack Dorsey, the chairman of Twitter's board and the founder of the company. That's how much the price of wages has risen in the tech world. Fry is not a one-off event. Facebook's vp/engineering, Mike Schroepfer, got $24.4 million in 2011, Reuters noted:

One start-up offered a coveted engineer a year's lease on a Tesla sedan, which costs in the neighborhood of $1,000 a month, said venture capitalist Venky Ganesan. He declined to identify the company, which his firm has invested in.

It's not just wages that are expensive. Company valuations are rising too. 

Supercell, the game company, just raised $1.5 billion in new funding at a valuation of $3 billion. Supercell has real revenue — $178 million in Q1 alone. But you've got to question the logic of the people doing the deal: Investor Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, believes he has a "300-year vision" of the future.
Even the CEO of Supercell thought he was joking when he first heard about it.

Companies with broken business models are highly valued.

(Jason / Goldberg / Facebook) 

Fab CEO Jason Goldberg

Fab.com, the design retailer, recently raised $165 million in new investment this year, for a total of $336 million in all venture funding. It did so despite laying off 440 employees after deciding that the flash sales model — in which customers are asked to suddenly purchase a daily deal — doesn't work. It was Fab's second business model "pivot" — the company started life as a gay community site. We're not saying Fab is going out of business. We're saying that Fab's backers have been fabulously generous.

Companies without meaningful revenue are highly valued.

(Natasha Foote / Pinterest)

Pinterest just raised $225 million in new investment funding, a stake that values the company at $3.8 billion. That valuation is fictional, of course. It's based on the notion that the company could be sold or go public at that price. That price is 10 times what investors have actually plowed into the company. To be clear, Pinterest is showing every sign of turning into a great company. It has already solidified a role for itself as a key referrer of online retail and e-commerce traffic.
But still, this is a company that currently is rumored to make only between $9 million and $45 million in revenue.

Companies with no revenue at all are highly valued.

(Snapchat / Apple iTunes)

Snapchat is rumored to be raising a new round of funding that values the company at $3.6 billion on paper. This company has zero revenues.
Zero.
And it's not easy to see how it might make money: It's defining product deletes itself after just a few seconds.
The last time we saw companies with no revenue receiving high valuations from investors was right before the 1999/2000 dot com crash.

Yahoo is again paying top dollar for companies with no meaningful revenue, just like it did in 1999.

(Wikimedia, CC)

Tumblr's David Karp and Yahoo's Marissa Mayer

Yahoo recently paid $1.1 billion to acquire Tumblr, the social blog network. Tumblr's revenues are so small Yahoo isn't required to mention them in its financial statements — they just don't move the needle. Again, to be clear, Tumblr is actually an excellent product with 50 million users. But for Yahoo to make money on this deal Tumblr will have to generate profits after sales of greater than $1.1 billion.
My sources tell me that with the right adtech, Tumblr could generate several hundred million in ad sales revenue over the years. But they don't believe Yahoo will ever get its money back on the deal.
This is significant because Yahoo does not have a good track record when it comes to buying in a bubble. In 1999, right before the last tech crash, it bought Broadcast.com for $5.9 billion in stock and GeoCities for $3.57 billion. Neither business had meaningful revenue and both have since been shuttered.

Companies are making dumb decisions: This startup chose beef jerky over a 401 (k) plan.

(waitscm | Flickr)

The New Yorker recently wrote:

Hunter Walk, an entrepreneur who recently co-founded an early-phase venture firm called Homebrew, told me about a startup where he’d previously worked. The company had needed to figure out whether to spend its limited budget on beef jerky to keep around the office or 401k plans for the staff. “We put it to a vote: ‘Do you want a 401k or jerky?’ ” he explained. “The vote was unanimously for jerky. The thought was that well-fed developers could create value better than the stock market.”

Correction: Walk now tells me that the beef jerky incident happened in 2001. The New Yorker presents the anecdote as if it were current. Nonetheless, there are plenty of companies making dumb decisions. For instance ...

Companies are making dumb decisions (part 2): There are more Facebook ad agencies than regular ad agencies.

Facebook has about 300 so-called Preferred Marketing Developers. They all do one of just four things: Place ads on Facebook, manage Facebook pages for companies, provide social media analytics, and create marketing apps for Facebook. They are basically ad agencies, in the sense that advertising clients hire them to promote their brands via Facebook.
But there are more Facebook PMDs than there are major ad agencies in the U.S., even though the non-Facebook ad business is many times the size of Facebook. Not all of these companies will survive, and a few have recently realized that there is not enough money to support them all. Even Facebook has moved to cull the herd.

Serious investors are beginning to suspect a tech bubble has formed, and that a crash is coming.

(UBS, Art Cashin)

Art Cashin, the the director of floor operations for UBS Financial Services, has been around the block. He recently worried that he he was seeing things that reminded him of 1999:

"I do worry a little bit that we're beginning to hear things that are reminiscent of the 1999-2000 period—the number of hits, the number of eyeballs," said Cashin, ...

"I think if we hold to the old tried-and-true—how many dollars are coming in—then we might be better served," Cashin said. " But people are extrapolating, in some way, in a manner similar to the way they did in 1999-2000." 

"For an old fogy like me," the trend of extrapolating future earnings based on users and viewers "gets the warning flags flying," Cashin said.

Andreessen Horowitz is pulling up the ladder.

(Flickr / coltera)

Andreessen Horowitz is is the sine qua non of Silicon Valley investor groups. It had stakes in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Groupon and Zynga. Now it is saying it will no longer invest in early stage consumer-oriented startups. They're done.
Andreessen is interested more in later stage and business-to-business-oriented companies. Companies with actual prospects of real revenue, in other words.
This, arguably, is the kind of "flight to quality" you often see when asset prices and stocks start falling. What does Andreessen know that we don't?

One of the most legendary tech investors, Tim Draper, thinks we're at the end of the curve.

(youtube/2millionminutes, Tim Draper)

Timothy Draper is the founder of  Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital outfit that has invested in dozens of tech startups. He's been around since the days when Hotmail was the big new thing. He recently told The New Yorker that he believed tech venture capital may have reached the top of its cycle:

“I’ll draw you the cycle,” he said, taking my notepad and pen. He scrawled a large zigzag across the page. “This is a weird shark’s tooth that I kind of came up with. We’ll call it the Emotional Market of Venture Capital, or the Draper Wave.” He labeled all the valleys of the zigzag with the approximate years of low markets and recessions: 1957, 1968, 1974, 1983, and on. The lower teeth he labeled alternately “PE,” for private equity, and “VC,” for venture capital. Draper’s theory is that venture booms always follow private-equity crashes. “After a recession, people lose their jobs, and start thinking, Well, I can do better than they did. Why don’t I start a company? So then they start companies, and interesting things start happening, and then there’s a boom.” Eventually, though, venture capitalists get “sloppy”—they assume that anything they touch will turn to gold—and the venture market crashes. Then private-equity people streamline the system, and the cycle starts again. Right now, Draper suggested, we’re on a venture-market upswing. He circled the last zigzag on his diagram: the line rose and then abruptly ended.

"Abruptly ended"?
Let's hope he's wrong.

Source : Business Insider 

App replaces doctors’ equipment, enables eye tests anywhere

The Peek Vision app enables roving doctors to give patients a full eye exam using their smartphones.

Consumers have replaced a number of devices — mp3 players, digital cameras, handheld games consoles — with their smartphones, so it seems possible that the handsets could even replace expensive medical equipment. The Peek Vision app just might be proving that point, enabling roving doctors to give patients a full eye exam using their smartphones.

Developed by members of the International Centre for Eye Health — a research group based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine — the app leverages the existing functionalities of today’s smartphones to allow doctors in rural or low-income areas to deliver eye care to citizens in a mobile and inexpensive way. Doctors and optometrists using Peek Vision will be able to check patients’ abilities to see color, test for long and short-sightedness, and also detect the presence of cataracts and other eye conditions. The app uses smartphones’ cameras, flashlights and display to check how the eyes react to stimuli, while doctors can also track the progress of separate patients and also easily keep a record of their geolocation.

The team are currently carrying out research to ensure the app is accurate enough for medical purposes, although a release date and price hasn’t yet been announced. Are there other ways smartphone features could replace professional equipment with a cheap portable alternative?

Website: www.peekvision.org
Contact: www.peekvision.org/contact-us
Spotted by Murray Orange, written by Springwise

Source : Springwise