If you’ve ever shopped for a pair of prescription glasses, you’ve probably seen first hand how expensive a set can be. Warby Parker’s co-founders are right there with you.

Both fed-up and puzzled over paying hundreds of dollars for a product that’s been around for hundreds of years, the Warby Parker team is shaking up the eyewear industry by selling prescription glasses online, at a price tag of just a pair.

Having crafted their plan during business school, the foursome launched the company two years ago this month. Three weeks after the initial pair went on sale, co-founder, Neil Blumenthal says Warby Parker hit its sales targets for the entire year and adds “we sold out of our top 15 styles in four weeks”. The company has since ramped up to 60-employees.

Two of Warby Parker’s co-founders, David Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal recently stopped by TCTV to give Founder Stories host, Chris Dixon the backstory on how the company got started.

As lifelong eyeglass wearers, Gilboa tells Dixon the group couldn’t understand why “glasses cost more than an iPhone.” After doing some research they realized “there’s a handful of companies that control the entire supply chain.” Not content to roll with the status quo, Gilboa says the team set out to change the landscape by creating “our own brand of glasses …. so we could sell the same product that normally costs 0 for .”

However, because their product was only available online, the team had to figure out a way for customers to try on the frames. Blumenthal says their solution was to create a “first of its kind” program “in the US where you select 5 frames, we ship it to you free of cost and you have 5 days to try them on at home, with no obligation to buy.”

Gilboa adds that this process enables customers to receive feedback from people “they trust” (versus paid sales staffers) and as an added benefit, Warby Parker receives “millions of free impressions” from users who post tryout pictures to their social networking sites.

As the interview unfolds, Gilboa and Blumenthal share plenty more insights, so sure to watch the entire video to hear more.

Past episodes for Founder Stories featuring Jeff Clavier, Cyrus Massoumi, Stephen Kaufer, Mayor Bloomberg and many other leaders are here.

Episode II of this interview is coming up.

TechCrunch

The Pulse Surface Controller is a vibration-based musical instrument that finally puts those years of air drumming to use. It’s a small, piezo-based MIDI controller that lets you turn pretty much any surface into a musical instrument. The device has a built-in suction cup, comes with velcro straps and plugs into your computer’s microphone port. The fun really starts with the dedicated controller software, that converts your percussive punches to your virtual instrument of choice. You’re not limited to drums either, as you can map your taps to a velocity sensitive melodic generator to create musical tones and scales. Luckily you won’t have to sit on your hands to get one of these either, as the Pulse Surface Controller System is available now for , or you can tap-tap-tap the video after the break for a demo.

Continue reading Pulse Surface Controller System: bangs the drum, desk, window

Pulse Surface Controller System: bangs the drum, desk, window originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just spotted in Orkut, Google’s also-ran social networking site: a new Google+ badge, one of the first integrations between the two services. Orkut members who also have a Google+ account are now being rewarded in the form of a badge reading “Google+ user,” which they can choose to make visible on their Orkut profile. No, it’s not a big deal in terms of the feature itself (oooh, a badge), but it’s an indication of Orkut’s current status in Google’s eyes. Orkut and Google+ are different products, and both sites will continue to exist, the company tells us today by way of explanation.

“Orkut has a large user base, especially in Brazil and India, and we will continue to invest in the product,” notes a Google spokesperson. Wait really? How on earth does that fit in with your current social strategy? Sorry, Google, continuing Orkut support just doesn’t make any sense.

The badge was spotted over on Indian tech blog pluggd.in, which prompted the inquiry into Google’s official position on the matter. The company says that over time, it will determine how to best integrate the two products, and that we’re just now starting to see this play out. Things like the Google+ badge, a minor, non-threatening, but obviously awareness-raising new feature is one of those first steps.

Orkut, which still has a sizeable audience of 66 million, thanks to Brazil and India, is still far from dead, though it’s now losing out to Facebook in its home country of Brazil (comScore, January 2011). Google continues to support the service, even confusingly releasing a new Orkut iPhone app just last month, a move some dubbed “too little, too late.”

The increased Facebook usage in the few countries where Orkut once had an edge impacts Orkut’s metrics, but the shift is gradual. The service even grew by 5% in Brazil over 2011 and it’s still the 3rd most popular social network in India, behind Facebook and YouTube. So it’s not that users are shutting down their Orkut accounts, necessarily, it’s that, in time, they’ll slowly abandon them as they migrate to Facebook. It’s not too unlike how we all collectively moved from MySpace to Facebook. It didn’t happen overnight. (You may even still have a MySpace account, but the question is, when is the last time you checked it?)

Given the declining mindshare for Orkut, however, Google’s continued support for the service doesn’t seem to make much sense. Now is the time to strike, before Orkut turns into a wasteland of inactive accounts. Now is the time to shift those users over to Google+.

What’s surprising is how gentle the Orkut to Google+ shift is beginning – a huge difference from Google’s other efforts at forcing G+ signups across its platform. New Orkut iPhone apps? That’s a confusing message for a company that has pushed Google+ at all costs since its 2011 launch, even to the extent of compromising search results and cluttering up its stark homepage with a “share” button. But with Orkut, Google just treats a large chunk of the world’s social networking users as “those other folks,” using that “different product.”

Sorry, Google, that’s wrong. If your agenda is to kindly shove Google+ down the web’s collective throats through controversial Google+ search result favoritism, forced registrations, cross-platform unification and the like, why does Orkut get a pass? Look, I may not be a fan of the pushy, inorganic growth strategy Google has adopted for Google+, but it’s a strategy. And 90 million accounts later, one could even argue that it’s a strategy that’s working. But Google, if you’re going to go all in, don’t flounce around with Orkut. There’s a narrow window to push those Google-loving, social networking holdouts from one Google product to the next.

Kill the Orkut iPhone apps, forget the silly badges, and announce to the entire Orkut user base that all data will be migrated (or will be exportable) to Google+ in X number of days. Then prepare your blog post touting all the new users Google+ now has. (Sigh).

Image credit, Orkut badge: Pluggd.in.

TechCrunch

Arnova launches 8b G2 slate, hopes to keep it cheap originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget

HBO has been quietly working on its PunchForce tech since about 2010, when it tried to convince British star Amir Khan and Argentine boxer Marcos Maidana to wear the sensors for their light welterweight title bout. Neither seemed particularly eager. Now though, over a year later, the latest in fist-tracking technology seems to be nearing its big debut. Tiny wireless monitors, worn under the wrist of the gloves feed velocity and impact data back to a laptop with a special receiver — all of which now have Uncle Sam’s approval. The real fun though, is what happens next. The information gathered isn’t meant to be locked away in lab, it’ll be broadcast to viewers throughout the fight and, eventually, fed to accompanying apps, presumably alongside its PunchZone stats. Check out the gallery below for a behind the scenes glimpse of PunchForce and hit up the source link to peruse the full user manual.

HBO’s PunchForce hits the FCC, turns fists into data… violent, violent data originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you’re like us and really want to know what’s going on, then you’ve come to the right place. This week, we bring you announcements of LTE expansion from AT&T, US Cellular and Verizon, along with news of three Samsung smartphones that received WiFi certification — each are thought to be high-end devices and bound for US carriers. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride. Let’s explore the “best of the rest” for this week of February 13th, 2012.

Continue reading Mobile Miscellany: week of February 13th, 2012

Mobile Miscellany: week of February 13th, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case it wasn’t already clear to you that later-stage social, mobile and deal-oriented companies led venture fundraising last year, here’s some analysis of CrunchBase data that drives the point home, courtesy of Alexey Tolkachiov at BuzzSparks.org.

421 Companies with the “social” tag in CrunchBase raised a total of .2 billion over the year. Out of this, Facebook alone was .5 billion; out of the 1,941 companies that were included in this analysis, Facebook alone raised 7.3% of the .5 billion total.

A few other social companies, including Twitter, Zynga, LivingSocial, Kabam, along with Chinese sites 55tuan and Lashou, count for another .29 billion. We’ll see how this category looks in 2012 — that is, look for a drop in private funding considering that so many of the leading companies in the category have already raised late-stage capital.

But wait, aren’t some of these companies not only social but also deals sites, or game developers? Yes, and this analysis in some cases double-counts ones that could fit in more than one category. The goal in doing so is to show how companies that are in multiple areas area impacting each of those areas. In any case, this type of categorization problem exists with any such data set; share your recommendations for how to make this clearer in the comments. And click on the categories in the graphic above to see each of the companies included.

Moving along… “Mobile” comes in second, with 393 companies raising a total of .3 billion. The fundings are relatively less concentrated at the top — InMobi, Square and Rearden Commerce all raised above 0 million, but that’s it. The third-largest category, Deals, is even more unbalanced than social. Groupon alone makes up more than half of the .9 billion total.

Mouse over the dots below to see the number of companies and total funding for all the various tags we have in the system.

Finally, the caveat you’ve all been waiting for. CrunchBase is a wiki-style database about startups, and while it seeks to be complete as possible, the data tends to skew towards Silicon Valley web companies. It’s also the largest free site of its kind, and worth analyzing despite any imperfections. In fact, you can help improve it by adding and editing entries about you and your company or venture firm.

TechCrunch

We’ve talked about the Lumia line quite a bit in the past few months, but the series is finally starting to feel real. Just last week the 900 was made available for pre-order, and today we’re seeing reports that the staggeringly high-priced Lumia 800 bundle is just hanging out on Microsoft store shelves waiting for some new Windows Phone fans to stroll in.

Along with the phone itself, which is compatible with AT&T’s network, you’ll get a Nokia Play 360 Bluetooth speaker, Nokia Purity HD headphones and a Luna Bluetooth headset. Unfortunately, that means you’ll be paying 9 for a phone that should probably cost you around 0-0 (with carrier subsidies) and getting a whole bunch of stuff that’s nice and all but that you never really wanted to begin with.

Ah, the joys of marketing.

And as if the price point wasn’t difficult enough, the phone (which is unlocked, by the way) can only be bought in stores, according to WPCentral. Oh, and not just any store — in Microsoft stores.

There are only 16 of them in the country, according to this store listings page, and six of those happen to be in California.

I’m going to try to keep this brief, but I feel I have to comment.

Nokia and Microsoft have a problem. Nokia fell from its throne last year, and needs more than just a pick-me-up to reclaim the title. Windows Phone has been a joke for most of its existence. Both companies, however, have enough resources to take a small hit in profits for the sake of building up customers.

So why? Why make it so damn difficult to buy what happens to be a really, really great phone?

TechCrunch

More than half of America’s married couples will tell you, breaking up is hard. Hard and expensive. After living in denial, dodging rumors and eventually coming to terms with the inevitable, Sony has finally taken over Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson’s 50-percent stake in the pair’s former joint venture, a move that was earlier reported to have cost €1.05 billion (.37 billion) to complete. The now fully Sony owned Sony Ericsson will be renamed Sony Mobile Communications, though a few of the outfit’s already announced children are keeping their papa’s name. Hit the break for Sony’s small press release.

Continue reading Sony finalizes divorce with Ericsson, renames itself Sony Mobile Communications

Sony finalizes divorce with Ericsson, renames itself Sony Mobile Communications originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The problem that former Sun Microsystems chief executive Jonathan Schwartz is trying to fix with his new startup is clear enough.

More and more people are having to care for older relatives as US population ages, and many of these people also have kids to take care of, too. But, the current online methods for sharing sensitive health information aren’t always appropriate. Emailing caregiver information can lead to tastelessly targeted ads on Gmail or Facebook. Online project management software may be too bloated or insecure for sharing medical histories between just a few people. Offline documents — the  most common form of communication in this area — are simply hard to share between all the people who need access.

So his company, CareZone, is launching publicly today with an extremely simple answer: a productivity tool for caregivers. At this point there’s not a single feature that is only relevant to the job it’s trying to solve. But the collection of them is designed thoughtfully for the purpose of the site, and could prove to be the start of a much more comprehensive answer to streamlining online health care.

The interface today will remind you of Yammer (that is, a really simple private version of Facebook), or maybe of other tools like Basecamp. You create an account, and then you can create profiles that you control for the people you’re taking care of. So, maybe a sick grandparent or child — which are both personal use cases for Schwartz, by the way.

The structure of the site is focused around each profile of each person receiving care, which is the equivalent of teams or projects in other types of productivity interfaces. As the creator of a profile, you can invite other users to receive access, which you can easily revoke at any time. Those you might invite include professional caregivers, other friends and relatives who are helping out, and medical staff. The site is organized to show lists of those receiving care on the left, and those doing the caring on the right.

Inside of the profile, users can fill out an ongoing journal about the person receiving care, list their current medications, sketch out to-dos in list form, add any relevant contacts, share free-form notes, and upload files. The profile of the love one goes beyond basic information like name and address to include space for medical information like blood type and any allergies.

The site, from the interface to its terms of service, is designed around privacy. There are no ads — no targeting can be tasteful in this sort of environment. There are no communication channels or integrations with Facebook or twitter or anything designed to increase growth, simply because it’d be inappropriate for most friends on those services to have access.

The business model, instead, is a month subscription of , or per year for each profile of someone receiving care. If you need to create multiple accounts because you have more than one person to care for, Schwartz says you’ll be able to get a volume discount. You can get a free account for a year if you sign up by March 15, including up to three accounts for loved one’s profiles.

The overall market is as big as the health stats you see about the US population. Schwartz highlights that around 90% of those 65 and older have a chronic issue, and that 400,000 babies are born in the country every month.

A simple tool like this could very well be what  a lot of people want, but it also might not go far enough to get users away from their manila folders of offline docs, or their private Basecamp setups or whatnot. Schwartz, who is cofounding the company along with long-time friend and entrepreneur Walter Smith, has a bigger vision in mind, though.

He’s looking at ways this site could be a main portal for connecting to all sorts of other health information. All sorts of health devices and applications starting to provide instantaneous feedback about heart rates, blood sugar levels, average temperatures, and every other aspect of human life. You could see this interface becoming more of an aggregator for all this data.

Another area, and the one that seemed most obvious to me when I was getting briefed on the launch, was connecting with existing enterprise medical systems in order to integrate all the data about an individual from multiple providers. Schwartz was certainly interested in this when I asked him about it, but was also very cautious. Having spent most of his career in the enterprise software business, he’s very much aware of the difficulties of integrating legacy systems and following existing compliance laws. Health data, in particular, is tough to use because of legal (HIPAA) requirements that prohibit medical staff what they can share in writing.

For now, Schwartz says CareZone is focusing on simple iterations: internationalizing to Spanish, Mandarin and other languages, as well as making sure that the site follows all local laws, particularly in countries with far more restrictive privacy laws than what this one has. But he’s already looking at how to make CareZone more of a portal. One feature that I discussed with him was some sort of service for bulk scanning and uploading relevant offline docs into the system. Some other ones were some sort of budgeting system for health-related costs, and a calendar for tracking relevant dates.

TechCrunch

Online payments platform and PayPal competitor WePay is announcing its growth data for 2011, and revealing details on the startup’s product strategy for 2012. In case you aren’t familiar, WePay is a Y Combinator backed startup that launched in 2009 to take the hassle out of group paying. Unlike some of its competitors, the service was able to dead simple way to collect, manage and spend money for groups.

On WePay, you can create a unique, FDIC insured account for each group. While the account is still associated with your name, but you can keep each group account totally separate from your personal transactions. Group money can essentially be kept separate from any individual accounts you may have. You can also designate specific individuals to have control over accounts.

But as co-founder Bill Clerico tells me, last year the payments platform evolved into a broader offering, allowing any merchant or user a simple way to accept payments beyond just the group model. “We believe the benefit of using WePay is around simplicity of user experience and great customer service,” says Clerico. He explains that users can sign up with Facebook Connect, and WePay underwrites the risk of these individuals accepting payment by looking at their online presence, and social connections to evaluate risk.

Last year, the startup, which is processing several million dollars in payment volume per month, started listening to customer feedback and launched a number of new products to add to the platform, including WePay Stores. The feature lets any site integrate a payments storefront by inserting an embed code. WePay also launched an API as well.

The company grew nearly ten times in revenue in 2011, and doubled headcount with 20 new employees (the company plans to double employees again this year). WePay also grew revenue generated by its API by 15x in 2011. Partners like GoFundMe, which replaced PayPal with WePay as its primary payment platform, are helping fuel this growth, says the startup.

Social media is a big driver for WePay. About half of all WePay payments were initiated through social media. More than 25,000 people and organizations have collected donations and over 250,000 invoices have been paid through WePay in 2011. And almost 0,000 was collected using WePay from 806 Occupy Wall Street-related accounts.

WePay says that it exited 2011 at a multi-million dollar revenue run rate and a compounded monthly growth rate of 30 percent since launch.

As for what’s next, Clerico says that mobile is an area where WePay has not yet explored and will launch mobile apps in the coming year. And WePay, which has raises .5 million in funding, could be on track for raising another round. Clerico tells us that much of the earlier investment in the company is still in the bank, but the company may raise new funds for expansion and growth purposes.

TechCrunch

We first heard about Google’s foray into home-based hardware late last week, when it asked the FCC for Special Temporary Authority (STA) to have employees test an “entertainment device” in their homes (as opposed to a lab). According to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, it’s rumored to be a Sonos-like device related to the Android@Home Tungsten hub we saw at Google I/O last year. It appears, however, that’s not all Google’s got in store, as some information has trickled out about another Google-branded gadget. Apparently, it’s a “next generation personal communication device,” and Mountain View has asked the FCC for another STA to test 102 of them in the same cities as the aforementioned entertainment box: Mountain View, LA, New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Why? Well, Google wants to track its Bluetooth performance and evaluate “the throughput and stability of the home WiFi networks that will support the device” in a real-world setting. Other details about the device are scant, but we do know that testing on this second Google-made gadget is ongoing through July 15th, so here’s hoping we can get a glimpse of one between now and then. Check out the FCC docs for both devices at the source below, and feel free to sound off on what you think Google’s got in store in the comments after.

Google makes ‘next gen personal communications device,’ is testing it in employee abodes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NewME Accelerator, the incubator launched last year to support minority entrepreneurs, just announced its latest group of startups.

In her blog post about the new class (NewME’s second), founder and CEO Angel Benton also talks about the success rate of the first group of NewME alums — 60 percent of them have raised money, adding up to a little more than 0,000 in total funding.

For the current class, Benton says NewME received more than 300 applications. This year’s program will be based in the Hub San Francisco co-working space. Participants in the 12-week program don’t receive funding from NewME, but they get to live and work with a community of entrepreneurs, and they also receive mentorship and access to services from NewME partners. (Last month, the program added Andreessen Horowitz as a partner and sponsor.) In exchange, NewME takes a 4 percent stake in the company.

Even though the second session is just about to start, NewME is already accepting applications for the next class, which starts in August. While most of the promotion around NewME has focused on African-American entrepreneurs, the program is also interested in companies with founders and CEOs from other underrepresented minorities, namely those who are women or Latinos.

Here are the new companies (the descriptions come from NewME):

The Modul.us
Founder: Rachel Brooks
Desription: TheModul.us allows small businesses to affordably configure products through their software.

Butlr
Founder: Andre Gabriel
Description: Butlr gives you the easiest, funnest way to find any kind of deal on the Web.

Ubi Video
Founder: James Norman
Description: We are a discovery entertainment platform that offers the only digital video experience you can call your own.

AgLocal
Founder: Naithan Jones
Description: AgLocal connects independent farmers and producers with the demand of local business and consumers.

Helpr
Founder: Tendekai Muchenje
Description: Helpr is a one stop customer care portal that literally makes customer care as simple as @#*!.

Kairos (still in private testing)
Founder: Amanda McClure
Description: Kairos overlays data on top of real life interactions in the enterprise market using facial recognition and augmented reality.

pictureMENU (still in private testing)
Founder: Christopher Lyons
Description: pictureMenu allows restaurants to bring their menu’s into the 21st century by allowing them to create “smart menus” accessible via tablets and mobile phones. pictureMenu’s tie into a restaurants POS system.

TechCrunch

Photosharing app Instagram went through a subtle redesign this afternoon. In addition to the brand new “Sierra” filter, Notifications improvements and a UI/UX refresh where the feed, popular, share and news buttons have all been divorced of their copy and are now just streamlined symbols, the company has added the “Lux” feature.

Lux, denoted by an eclipse symbol in the bottom left hand corner of the app’s image edit dashboard,  is basically an adjustment of image brightness, midtone contrast and saturation in order to bring out the details in an iPhone photo — sort of like what iPhone HDR wishes it was.

Those of you familiar with iPhone photography might be familiar with the basic premise of Lux (boost midtones) as you’ve probably already been using it in another popular app, Camera+

I downloaded the .99 Camera+ app a couple months ago just so I could use this much-lauded “Clarity” feature, which, if you’re the type of person who likes to impress your friends with your iPhone “photography” skills, was the secret first step in the process of creating a successful Instagram post,  basically …

1) Open Camera+

2) Use Clarity.

3) Save photo to Camera.

4) Open Instagram.

5) Upload photo from Camera.

6) Use filter.

7) Post.

Revel in the Likes.

Instagram Lux saves users steps 1 through 3 — Which is huge (and brings things to a level playing field for those of you that are too lazy to obsess over phone photography have never heard of Camera+). Basically Lux is the biggest thing since Tilt Shift.

And just you wait until Instagram starts letting people rotate their photos! Or comes to Android even!

In the meantime iOS users can find Instagram in the App Store here.

TechCrunch

This above is the first glimpse of Android 4.0 running on the Nokia N9. Yes, it looks like Ice Cream Sandwich is in being ported to the company’s iconic handset by no other than Alexey Roslyakov and team NITDroid — the folks who previously put Android on the Nokia N900. The project, which is still in its early stages, made significant progress after recently overcoming a framebuffer driver/HAL hurdle, allowing ICS to be displayed on the phone. In addition, a dual-boot solution is in the works letting Meego and Android 4.0 coexist on the device. We certainly can’t wait to experience using Ice Cream Sandwich on some of the hottest white hardware around. Can you?

Nokia N9 spotted running Ice Cream Sandwich, dual-boot in the works originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Steve Troughton-Smith (Twitter), Netbooknews  |  Alexey Roslyakov (Twitter), talk.maemo.org  | Email this | Comments
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