Occipital To Create 2nd-Generation Augmented Reality on Mobile Devices (Mashable)

Boulder computer has a vision to start the occipital collected 7 million series A funding, and aims to leverage the investment to develop a platform for new generation of computer vision. Occipital TechStars a veteran, is best known for the code hit barcode scanning app RedLaser, which sold to eBay last year. Now, the most notable is the application startup is 360 for 3D Panorama panoramic image capture by cell phone.

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But occipital several floors. He wants to be the foundation of vision – as RedLaser became the backbone of many applications for scanning bar codes – the power of applications that help mobile users to interact with the physical world around them.

"Panorama 360 is only the tip of the iceberg," says co-founder Jeff Powers.What is the whole iceberg look like?

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"The iceberg is what's underneath Panorama 360 – is the beginning of a platform of advanced computer vision that focuses on fundamentally changing the way we interact with environments", co-founder Vikas Reddy Mashable says "Think Computer VisionPlus increased. Reality and applications that can be when your smartphone has a visual understanding of his environment."

This is where outside developers come in. Spirit will soon launch a platform that gives developers a crack enterprising create new layers on top of the computer vision technology in Panorama 360.

"Currently, there are companies that have introduced mobile applications using limited computer vision techniques," says the investor occipital and new Board member Jason Mendelson. "No one has produced a platform that allows developers to create dynamic content that automatically exploit best-in-class technology of computer vision. "

Occipital is $ 7 million Series A led by Foundry Group. Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group, Manu Kumar K9 Ventures and Gary Bradski Willow Garage will join the board start.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Jurvetson

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Box Office of the Future: Buy Tickets From Online Images (Mashable)

Want to buy your next concert ticket by clicking on a photo? A collaboration between the link image-tagging start something and tickets for events starting Eventbrite paves the way for it. Businesses can have a ticket directly from the images. Links Thing, which already allows members to add all types of labels and social interactive media to their images, have made ​​a marking option Eventbrite Wednesday. The organizers may show and sell tickets to their events via the image tags or promote other events.

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To create a note tag, just copy a URL to something Eventbrite link tag area. The tagged image will then display the details of events and a "join" on the mouse, viewers can click image to buy tickets.

"Remove the picture buys a barrier between cardholder and event spectators, and open up a new world of creativity for the buildings flyers and promotional images for their events," said Chief Marketing Officer link thing Neil Vineberg.

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The function appears to consumers looking for an immediate purchase experience, and organizers want to attract a better promotion of events. The main drawback? Lack of awareness. People online may not be familiar with the idea of ​​the mouse over the pictures for more information – and may miss the ticket to show up everywhere.

For a demo of new features, move the cursor to "The Rainbow Ballroom" text embedded in the image below. And let us know what you think in the comments.

This story originally published here on Mashable.

Which Tech Giants Birth The Most Successful Startup Founders? [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable)

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook compete for top talent. Thus, they attract and hire-purchase of the brightest minds in technology – which, unfortunately for them, then continue to trade in these jobs for a comfortable life avatars of the founders of the start underway. Which of these four mega energy technologies (at one time or another) has occurred, and then transferred to the best talent in the industry? The analysis of a small start-ups that have come from former employees of the technology heavy hitters, and a look at the financing of these start-ups have been raised, could shed light on the answer.

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TopProspect the rescue.The beginning of a site that helps you get hired through social networks of friends, formed the chart below details the analysis of data dating back to 2006 from its users and their social contexts – that the pool has more 3 million people mainly in the area of ​​Silicon Valley.

"We have focused only on companies that were founded during the last 5 years," says its Boot analysis. "Second, we ensured that the companies had at least 10 employees in our network (a very good sign that they are legitimate, and well connected). Companies Finally, we included only with publicly available information on subsidies. "

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Google founders gave birth the most successful, if you measure success by money raised (which is not always the best measure of success).The search powerhouse-turned-social-media company has 13 qualified founders achieved in five years -. The companies have, including Foursquare, color and began Qwiki Together, these startups raised a whopping $ 309 million in aid.

Lowest on the totem pole, at least for now, Facebook. His descendants are the seven founders – Increase in total more than $ 65 million – has gone to find start-ups such as quorums, Path, and asana.

Surprised by the results? Check the full info graphic below and share your thoughts with us in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr satanslaundromat,

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Airbnb Raises $112 Million to Take Its Marketplace For Places Global (Mashable)

Airbnb, the market for popular sites, has raised $ 112 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global and General Catalyst for more growth internationally. The company is now north of $ 1 billion, according to our sources. It 'a great leap of Series A, $ 7.2 million raised in November 2010. The company has also received a "substantial investment" by Ashton Kutcher, a few months ago.

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â € œToday is a decisive moment â € "both Airbnb as a company and for our community – that will allow us to reach new markets and expand our vision to make way for the worldâ € ™ s most interesting and inspiring accessible to our users" , co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said in a statement.

Andreessen Horowitz, whose portfolio companies now include Box.net, Foursquare, Facebook, Groupon, Instagram, Twitter, Skype and Zynga, led the round with an investment of $ 60 million. Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, founder would also be invested as well.

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Money is clearly intended to fuel growth rather than take their existing investors, such as Facebook, Groupon and others have done with their massive funding cycles. Airbnb face international competition from companies Wimdu, where the public call "imposter". The money could be used for acquisitions, a strategy Groupon used freely.

"And while [Airbnb] has reached a ton in just a few years, we believe that they only scratch the surface of their potential," Andreessen Horowitz, partner, Jeff Jordan, said the acquisition. "You have the opportunity to go much deeper in its current categories to expand into new categories of space and build its global presence. You are truly a pioneer for a new marketplace, where access space is more valuable than property."

This story was originally published on Mashable here.

Android App Displays Brain Waves Via Wireless Headband [VIDEO] (Mashable)

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Here is an experimental program that measures your brain waves. This wireless device includes head-clips on an earlobe and measures of neuronal activity and heart rate. The results are a game application on an Android-powered smartphone, the graphics and information about the status of the brain shows installed in a test sent by 30 seconds.

It reminds us of the unit XWave we tested last winter. This band of $ 100 is not wireless, but connected to an iPhone headphone jack. When he was contacted by an iPhone app, the more cerebral members of our group is able to describe their state of nirvana for all to see.

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While the unit was pretty much a party game, this conceptual framework, developed by KDDI R & D Laboratories, seems to be more advanced. Trends In Japan, unit introduced this week at the International Modern Hospital Show in Tokyo and is more of a biofeedback system, operate portable brainwave measurement to drive to the next level.

The signal from the headband is received on an Android smartphone as the topic plays one of three games in 30 seconds. Since the app shows a graph that charts concentration and meditation, also known as "focused state" and "relaxed state."The app works even without a game where the person thinks to test different emotional discussions for 30 seconds, then measure the results.

The device is not yet available for sale. To date, the concept and stages of research. Could this be a precursor of portable lie detectors? Maybe it could be used for market research, measuring people's reactions to various advertisements or products. Maybe it could be used to measure the level of interest from a technical article on the web.

However, we are skeptical. Let us know in the comments if you think it is a useful tool for brain research, or just another game.

Chart courtesy KDDI R & D Laboratories

This story was originally published by Mashable.

Amazon Acquires UK’s Top Online Bookstore (Mashable)

Amazon announced on Monday that it purchased The Book Depository, a British online book retailer with more than 6 million titles and shipping to over 100 countries. The Book Depository claims on its website that it is the fastest growing book distributors in Europe and the UK's largest online bookseller, with over one million customers.

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Amazon has consisted ebook sales as of late, with remarkable success. Kindle sales started faster than hardcover sales in July 2010 and paperback sales will begin in January. Just five months later, Kindle books were sold in combination as hardbacks and paperbacks.

The Book Depository, on the other hand, is built on a model of "Long Tail" business, noting on its website, "Of the 30 million titles ever printed in English, only a few million of them are in printing. We try to provide as many of these titles as possible. "For books are no longer in print, the publisher will reissue the United Kingdom through its own Dodo Press, which printed 15,000 titles to date.

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There seems to be a gap between the two brands, but Amazon does not seem that integrates the new purchase in its infrastructure as soon as possible – the Book Depository on Monday that Twitter will continue to operate independently.

paid content writer Ingrid Lunden Amazon sees the acquisition of The bookstore as a sign that Amazon "may be trying to expand its long tail with no direct CRED own experts, rather than simply relying on its third-party network provider."

It is unclear whether Amazon will continue to give a promise to fund free shipping at the base 100 countries – a lofty goal that the results are probably pretty high shipping costs for the company – and the book The depositary will maintain its long tail model, and focus its activities to best-seller.

[Via The Wall Street Journal]

This story was originally published on Mashable here.

HOW TO: Import Your Facebook Contacts on Google+ (Mashable)

A new extension of Google Chrome allows the extraction of Facebook contacts much easier and helps facilitate the users to build their respective social graph through Google again. The extension called Facebook friends have been together with you, including their names, email addresses, phone numbers, websites, addresses and birthdays. Information can be saved as CSV or imported directly into your Gmail contacts as a folder called "imported from Facebook."

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Google links on a user's Gmail address book. To get started, users are asked to rub their contacts, in order to Google's "Circles" add to friends, family, classmates, colleagues and other user groups. Circles is an attempt by Google to allow users to interact better with certain social groups.

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But the interaction can be the heart of the problem that Google faces when you go against the social networking site Facebook trucks. Having users start from scratch is not easy to sell, and Chrome does not allow extension of this problem, unfortunately. The extension does not export the story of a Facebook user – that many users will probably see it as a positive signal in any case – you will not find the flow of Facebook photos, videos and updates Update on Google.

Stephen Shankland CNET reporter pointed out that this tool probably will not rub well with Facebook, citing Article 3.Two terms of service of Facebook: "You will not collect users' content or information, or access to Facebook, using electronic means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders or scrapers) without our permission ".

Google News Google is likely to foster animosity between the two tech giants like Google have long argued that the user should be able to easily retrieve the data (eg, Google, pickup, you can extract data , including Google contacts.) Facebook, however, argues that Google's practices raise "serious privacy."

If building your network Google is a high priority, however, this extension is Chrome a big help. Creator Mohamed Mansour, however, warns: "Use at your own risk, users who used 30K, nobody received a message ban Facebook, but I can not guarantee it."

This story was originally published on Mashable here.

Scan-to-Pay Features Coming Soon To a Mobile App Near You (Mashable)

The Spark of Genius series provides a unique feature of startups and is made ​​possible by Microsoft BizSpark .. If you want to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see details here Name: Card.io

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Fast Pitch: Fast and easy to scan mobile credit card.

Brilliant idea: Pay by credit card without any manual input.

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Previously director of products and current maps AdMob.io co-founder and CEO Michael Mettler know this all too well. AdMob, Mettler saw firsthand how quickly consumers spend $ 0.99 on mobile applications, but much more reluctant to expensive purchases.

"A key to better performance in the mobile advertising business … got to move from Web to mobile," says Mettler. "However, the buying experience on the phone is still very bad, and we wanted something very simple and very elegant, to try to build."

Sun co-founder Josh Mettler and Bleech Snyder, formerly of AdMob, came up with the idea of ​​credit cards, mobile application to scan for faster payments.

"Card.io is all about, the friction of the purchase process," says Mettler.

Card.io is a software development kit for developers of mobile applications.Developers register, download, copy and paste the SDK code in their applications, and can start accepting credit card payments by scanning their applications.

For application users will Card.io a faster way to pay – just keep your credit card until your phone's camera, instead of manually entering credit card information.

Technology Card.io is scanning remember something that you can find in other mobile applications, and there are a few off-the-shelf optical character recognition (OCR) solutions for those who are responsible for approx. But Card.io has built its computer vision and machine learning algorithms to read the cards in a hurry, says Mettler.

Yet shortly.I address only a portion of the coupling in the mobile payment process by credit card. You still have a real credit card handy, there's no avoiding going through space to find your wallet, at least for the moment.

"Eventually, if we can make all the payment information is stored on the phone, it is safe and you feel good provisioning off, we hope to solve this shopping experience on the phone," Mettler says.

Choose the developers have accessed Card.io's SDK last week, so we'll start to see credit card starts scanning technology in use in the very near future. Mettler says, including advanced versions of Card.io MogoTix Task rabbit and release.

Card.io has raised $ 1 million in a round led by seed eBay CEO Michael Dearing.

The Spark of Genius series highlights a unique start and is made ​​possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three years, access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting a network investors national and incubators. There are no upfront fees, so if your company is privately owned, less than three years, and generates less than $ 1 million in annual revenues, you can register now.

This story originally published here on Mashable.

Scan-to-Pay Features Coming Soon To a Mobile App Near You (Mashable)

The Spark of Genius series provides a unique feature of startups and is made ​​possible by Microsoft BizSpark .. If you want to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see details here Name: Card.io

[More Mashable: read & write album reviews on "Yelp for music" site]

Fast Pitch: Fast and easy to scan mobile credit card.

Brilliant idea: Pay by credit card without any manual input.

[More Mashable: What's going on around you? Banjo Knows]

Previously director of products and current maps AdMob.io co-founder and CEO Michael Mettler know this all too well. AdMob, Mettler saw firsthand how quickly consumers spend $ 0.99 on mobile applications, but much more reluctant to expensive purchases.

"A key to better performance in the mobile advertising business … got to move from Web to mobile," says Mettler. "However, the buying experience on the phone is still very bad, and we wanted something very simple and very elegant, to try to build."

Sun co-founder Josh Mettler and Bleech Snyder, formerly of AdMob, came up with the idea of ​​credit cards, mobile application to scan for faster payments.

"Card.io is all about, the friction of the purchase process," says Mettler.

Card.io is a software development kit for developers of mobile applications.Developers register, download, copy and paste the SDK code in their applications, and can start accepting credit card payments by scanning their applications.

For application users will Card.io a faster way to pay – just keep your credit card until your phone's camera, instead of manually entering credit card information.

Technology Card.io is scanning remember something that you can find in other mobile applications, and there are a few off-the-shelf optical character recognition (OCR) solutions for those who are responsible for approx. But Card.io has built its computer vision and machine learning algorithms to read the cards in a hurry, says Mettler.

Yet shortly.I address only a portion of the coupling in the mobile payment process by credit card. You still have a real credit card handy, there's no avoiding going through space to find your wallet, at least for the moment.

"Eventually, if we can make all the payment information is stored on the phone, it is safe and you feel good provisioning off, we hope to solve this shopping experience on the phone," Mettler says.

Choose the developers have accessed Card.io's SDK last week, so we'll start to see credit card starts scanning technology in use in the very near future. Mettler says, including advanced versions of Card.io MogoTix Task rabbit and release.

Card.io has raised $ 1 million in a round led by seed eBay CEO Michael Dearing.

The Spark of Genius series highlights a unique start and is made ​​possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three years, access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting a network investors national and incubators. There are no upfront fees, so if your company is privately owned, less than three years, and generates less than $ 1 million in annual revenues, you can register now.

This story originally published here on Mashable.

Foursquare Is Facebook’s Equal on Super-Social INQ Phones (Mashable)

The "Facebook phone" comes! Thus, the media praised in the distant past, which has since been rewritten in truth, INQ Mobile, a handset manufacturer with a social inclination, working with Facebook to provide INQ Cloud Touch A rich smartphone with Android Facebook integration. Monday, INQ Mobile, and Foursquare have announced their collaboration on the experience of the home screen similar to the alignment of Android devices INQ. Mobile Marriage help users discover and explore the best places near Foursquare.

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The release of the pending integration with Foursquare level operating system – such as Facebook integration in the NQI "Facebook phone" – a deep connection Foursquare gives users instant access to the site distribution functions and recommendation.

"Because it directly built into the Android, you can navigate and even without the firing of the application," wrote the Foursquare corporate blog.

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According to press materials released INQ to-be planned, "People will be able to scroll back and forth between Facebook and Foursquare home screens, depending on what they do, what they want and want to connect with."

What we have, then a lineup of super-socialized INQ handsets that level / Facebook Foursquare pitch. Both will compete for the attention of users on the screens of the house two devices INQ. A company may be looking for one billion users and the other ten million euros, but in the eyes of manufacturers of portable devices, social networks, the arena site, are equal.Same, but added that NQI Four Square, not Facebook, the power of the selected location services from their mobile phones.

Let us remember too much importance to the decision INQ to note that the device maker's mobile phones have limited support and are supporting are not yet available in the United States. As such, INQ will do little to enhance Foursquare level in the hierarchy of social networking yet.

This story was published here on Mashable.