Author Archives: Anthony Ha
Never Lose Your Keys Again Thanks To StickNFind’s Bluetooth Stickers
Here's a novel way to keep track of your wallet, your cat, or, yes, your keys.
Jimmy Buchheim stopped by the the TechCrunch booth at the Consumer Electronics Show to demo StickNFind, a bluetooth sticker technology that you can use to track almost anything. Once you've attached the sticker to an object of your choice, you can track it down again using the StickNFind iOS and Android apps, which tell you whether you're getting farther from or closer to the object in question — basically, it's the tech version of that that hotter/colder game.
Oculus Shows Off Its Virtual Reality Goggles For Genuinely Immersive Gaming
As someone who devours way too much science fiction, I've always secretly believed that I'll be wearing giant VR goggles at some point in the future. (I'm patiently waiting for my jetpack, too.) Now it looks like I might not be crazy after all — Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, is hoping to take VR goggles out of the lab and put them into the hands of gamers at an affordable price.
The company held a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign for its Oculus Rift headset last year, raising $2.4 million (nearly 10 times the original goal) from 9,522 backers. The company plans to ship its first developer kits in a couple of months, and Luckey dropped by the TechCrunch booth at the Consumer Electronics Show with an early version of the goggles.
Pebble Plans To Start Shipping Its Smart Watch On January 23, RunKeeper Support Delayed Until March
Pebble, the company that says it's creating "the first watch built for the 21st century," announced today that it plans to start shipping on January 23.
The announcement was made via a presentation this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with a post set to go up on the company blog soon.
Ten Companies (Including Logitech) Team Up To Create The Internet Of Things Consortium
Your Internet-connected devices may be getting more cooperative, thanks to group of startups and established players who have come together to create a new nonprofit group called the Internet of Things Consortium.
The phrase, for those of you who aren't too familiar with it, basically refers to the growing trend of uniquely identifiable, Internet-connected electronic devices. Jason Johnson, the consortium's chairman, said that the term was first coined to refer to industrial technologies like RFID, but we're now seeing a wave of consumer products as too, often funded on Kickstarter.
Leap Motion Raises $30M More For Its Gesture-Based Controller, Announces Bundling Deal With Asus
Leap Motion is announcing today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Michael Buckwald told me that the company is still planning to ship its gesture-based controller sometime during the first quarter of this year, and he's also announcing a partnership with Asus that should help get Leap Motion into the hands of consumers.
This is just one of the first in a number of deals that the company has in the works with manufacturers and retailers, Buckwald said. In this case, Asus is supposed to bundle the Leap Motion controller with its All-In-One PCs and high-end notebooks. Buckwald said he'll have other bundling partnerships to announce, as well as deals with other manufacturers to integrate or embed the company's products: "That's a huge part of our distribution strategy."
Leap Motion Raises $30M More For Its Gesture-Based Controller, Announces Bundling Deal With Asus
Leap Motion is announcing today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Michael Buckwald told me that the company is still planning to ship its gesture-based controller sometime during the first quarter of this year, and he's also announcing a partnership with Asus that should help get Leap Motion into the hands of consumers.
This is just one of the first in a number of deals that the company has in the works with manufacturers and retailers, Buckwald said. In this case, Asus is supposed to bundle the Leap Motion controller with its All-In-One PCs and high-end notebooks. Buckwald said he'll have other bundling partnerships to announce, as well as deals with other manufacturers to integrate or embed the company's products: "That's a huge part of our distribution strategy."
SVP Bob Mansfield Says Apple Products Back On EPEAT Certification: ‘This Was A Mistake’
Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield just published a letter on the company's website announcing that Apple has reversed its decision to remove EPEAT environmental certification from its products.
"We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system," Mansfield writes. "I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT."
SVP Bob Mansfield Says Apple Products Back On EPEAT Certification: ‘This Was A Mistake’
Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Bob Mansfield just published a letter on the company's website announcing that Apple has reversed its decision to remove EPEAT environmental certification from its products.
"We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system," Mansfield writes. "I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT."
Google Ventures-Backed Cliqr Brings Old-School Business Apps To The Cloud
In all the talk of cloud computing, Cliqr Technologies CEO Gaurav Manglik says there's one area of enterprise technology that's been sitting out the transition — business applications. The cloud has led to an explosion of new apps, but (to pick two random examples) chip design and medical imaging apps are still running on old-fashioned servers.
Zendesk Brings Customer Support To 20K Businesses, Gets Localized In 11 Languages
Online customer service company Zendesk is announcing a new feature that could help its customers achieve their global ambitions.
Specifically, Zendesk is announcing 11 fully localized versions of its product, in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian-Portuguese, Spanish, and both simplified and traditional Chinese. To be clear, Zendesk customers could already deliver support in 40 languages — but the interface for administrators and support agents were English-only. Now, if your company has offices in multiple countries, each office can manage their customer service in the language of their choice.
