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360: TeliportMe Brings Its Killer Panorama App To Android (Oh, And It Works On Over 200 Phones)

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 07:03 PM PDT

Last November, TechCrunch’s own Sarah Lacy sat down with Vineet Devaiah from "social streetview" startup, Phototour.in, which, at the time, had just received term sheets from a number of high-profile U.S. investors and had recently been awarded the “Top Emerging Technology Company of 2010″ by Nvidia. The startup was the first international, non-funded, under-20-member company to win the award, according to Devaiah.

Since then, Phototour added Academy Award certificate-winner and entrepreneur Bala S. Manian as an advisor (who was honored for “technical achievement” for his contributions to optical technologies used in films, including Star Wars) and has gained more than 47,000 users for the alpha version of its image and panorama crowdsourcing app, “360″, on Android. Users have logged more than 75,000 panoramas in a relatively short period of time, so, considering the rumors that the iPhone 5 will have a native panorama app, sources tell us that 360 might be a candidate for a potential partnership with Android, so that it can remain neck-in-neck with Apple.

What’s more, Today the startup is officially announcing that it is rebranding as TeliportMe and is bringing 360 out of alpha and into the public sphere in ready-to-wear form. For free. Granted, 360-degree panorama apps for smartphones are nothing new. There are quite a few cool apps and gadgets that have these capabilities on the market, like “You Gotta See This!”, Occipital’s 360 Panorama, and Microsoft’s Photosynth, to name a few.

In light of this competition, TeliportMe wants to distinguish itself from the field by building a high quality Android app, that works across OEMs. According to Devaiah, panoramic apps tend to be very hardware centric because of their reliance on a smartphone’s camera, accelerometer, gyroscope, RAM, and so on. Because Android relies on so many different OEMs, it becomes a tricky proposition to build a good 360-degree app for Android and is the reason why most panorama apps are built on iOS (thanks to the vertical integration it has with its hardware).

Another obstacle for Android is that only about 20 percent of its smartphones have the processing capability of the iPhone, and as panoramic apps require a lot of image processing during photo stitching, many Android phones don’t have enough RAM to make this possible (at least at speed). Devaiah cited the example of a phone like the HTC wildfire, which has the processing capability lesser than that of an iPhone 2G.

This is where the technology that won the startup the “best emerging tech” award comes into play. TeliportMe brought its photo stitching technology to the Android phone, which to a large extent negates the issues caused due to multiple hardware configurations, allowing it to function smoothly over 200 models of android phones. (The startup has also built a version of its photostitching app that works on the browser, which it will be launching soon.)

So, 360 allows its users to quickly take high quality panoramas, which they can then view on the apps 3D viewer. Users can share panoramas via Facebook and Twitter, as well as view, comment, and “like” photos taken by people all over the world on 360′s public realtime feed. The app also taps into the phone’s location to allow users to discover other people using 360 in close proximity, using its “Around Me” option.

Check out 360 in the Android Marketplace here, and for the 360′s humorous take on “the Google+ guy” dissing other photo apps, check out this video. For more on 360, look out, video below:

Three Companies Chi-Hua Chien Of Kleiner Perkins Would Love To Invest In

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 06:30 PM PDT

Today at Aol West Headquarters, a number of entrepreneurs, VCs, and executives gathered to discuss the state of the mobile industry and mobile technology. After a series of individual panels, the day concluded with the crowd of panelists gathering together for a lively discussion about the future of mobile, current mobile trends gaining legs, as well as what’s missing. Chi-Hua Chien of Kleiner Perkins stepped in to give an example of what’s missing in the industry by sharing three particular business models that he’d like to see make their way into the space.

In a prior panel, Chien, Skype investor Howard Hartenbaum, and Tango founder Eric Setton, spoke about how closing the "redemption loop" is becoming one of the most important goals in the daily deals space, specifically on mobile. (Something TC’s Erick Schonfeld talked about in a post earlier this week.) Chien pointed out that one of the big goals is to forge a future where a customer can walk into a store, and the merchant will immediately know who they are and what they want — and that someday soon Twitter and Foursquare will be acting in a way akin to a CRM platform for businesses to help make that happen.

But, as to the three companies that Chien wants to see, and invest in, for starters, he envisions a killer mobile company offering a completely automated personal assistant — something he said really wasn’t “something you couldn’t do before mobile”. He cited the example of one having dinner reservations with a friend who lives, say, 30 minutes away. The user’s mobile device, thanks to location awareness, knows exactly where they are and how far away they are from the restaurant. What’s more, thanks to the fact they made their reservation on OpenTable, the automated assistant will know exactly what time they planned to meet.

But, based on the fact that you’re 30 minutes away from where you’re having dinner, and tapping into a traffic app, they know that there’s congestion on the way. It then might send out an alert to the person you’re having dinner with, or can, in an automated way, message both people to confirm that they’d like to push the reservation back by 30 minutes, make that change, and close that loop with no effort.

Part of what’s making that possible now, he says, is the very existence of mobile, but it’s also thanks to the maturity of the platforms that are now being accessed by maturing APIs. The automated personal assistant addresses a need set that couldn’t be solved in an asychronous environment on a desktop.

Secondly, education is a trillion dollar market “that’s completely screwed up”, because it involves millions of children going to sit in a classroom for 7 hours, and it combines three different businesses for the state: the real estate business, the union labor management business, and certification business.

When, in reality, education should be delivered in a realtime basis to students who are learning at their own pace, who don’t have to sit in a room full of 30 people in an antiquated environment — a realtime, mobile solution that’s learning based as opposed to curriculum based. This second idea is a bit more nebulous, but Chien is hitting on an important theme here: How badly American education is in need of disruption and innovation, especially as that would relate to mobile.

The third model Chien alluded to was health and fitness. “We all wish that we could lose ten pounds”, he said, and now there’s a device in your pocket that can seamlessly manage its owner (personal assistant theme again), encourage the user to exercise, eat healthier, whatever the case may be. It can truly manage the place at which you are paying attention to your health, your exercise regimen, and helping you to lead a healthier lifestyle.

There’s a huge need here, Chien said, something that never could have been tackled in a PC environment, simply because the overhead of checking a website every day (as opposed to a mobile device that’s portable and always with you) is just unsustainable. It knows what you’re eating, what the caloric intake of that food might be, can advise you against consuming that third ice cream cone, and can tell your heart rate after a 5 mile run. When one combines that with display information designs and notifications optimized for a mobile setting — well, it’s enough to make an entrepreneur water at the mouth.

Afterwards, Schonfeld asked Chien if these were actually three stealth startups that Kleiner Perkins had recently invested in, to which Chien laughed and said, no, but if there are companies out there making these products, Kleiner may very well be interested.

“And those aren’t just dinky features … those are companies”, Chien said. “Those are companies attacking trillion dollar markets.”

I also kept hearing a theme of automation in what Chien talked about, and clearly, at least in his mind, (though I think it’s in the minds of many others as well), that automated processes, whether they be customer service, healthy living, or retail processes, are going to be big not just because we’re lazy, but because they help us focus on doing the things we love.

Mobile Neighborhood App Blockboard Now Covers All Of San Francisco

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 03:13 PM PDT

What would Craigslist look like if it was a mobile app? It might look a little bit like Blockboard, a neighborhood app which is expanding today from its initial neighborhood of the Mission in San Francisco to the rest of the city. Co-founder Stephen Hood demoed the app at our Mobile First CrunchUp today.

It is designed from the ground-up as a neighborhood app through which neighbors can interact with one another. They can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a Blockwatch, post general observations about the neighborhood, ask their neighbors questions, and post pictures of lost and found items.

The app has the feel of a bunch of neighborhood flyers on your phone. “Have you seen this dog?” “Free kitchen cabinet in original packaging on sidewalk.” “Dropped baby hat. Blue with pom poms. Near little star?” A week ago I asked, where is the best Cuban food in the Mission and received 8 answers (and that was in the private beta). At some point you can imagine people listing items for sale.

Chief engineer and co-founder Josh Whiting was actually a former senior engineer at Craigslit. Before that he was at Delicious, where he met Hood. There is another Delicious connection in that founder Joshua Schachter is an investor. The company raised a $1 million seed round last May. The company renamed itself and retooled the app from its original Blockchallk concept of pinning virtual notes to GPS coordinates.

You can still pin pictures and notes on a map, but that is almost a buried feature. The app is more about creating a community, but one that is grounded in your real neighborhood. You pick your neighborhood, which limits the posts and other neighbors you see in the app to that micro-community. In a day and age when people no longer talk to their neighbors, much less know who they are, maybe it will take a mobile app to make people good neighbors again.



Latest Gmail For Android Update Breaks Third Party Apps

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 10:27 AM PDT

If you're anything at all like me, then you update your apps as soon as possible; after all, new is always better right? Well those who rely on certain apps and widgets that tie into Gmail may want to hold off.

The latest update for the Gmail Android app packs some performance fixes and battery improvements, but we're hearing that there's more to the update than meets the eye.

Certain developers (most notably Federico Carnales, of Launcher Pro fame) were notified a few weeks ago that because of potential security issues, the API used by certain apps to access Gmail messages would be removed in the 2.3.5 update. As a result, most apps that relied on that older API are locking up or force closing whenever they are opened. Even though Google seems to have made efforts to reach out to the developer community, at least a few people were caught by surprise and have updated their app descriptions in the market accordingly.

According to software engineer Chris Banes, the change in question blocks access to the app's database:

Basically, previously an app just had to declare that they use the READ_GMAIL permission in it's Manifest and it would all work. Now though, they've added the android:protectionLevel=”signature” which means that only the Gmail app itself can access it's DB (as that's the only thing which will have the right signature).

I've compiled a preliminary list of apps that seem to have been affected by the update. Bear in mind, these are only the apps that have explicitly acknowledged being affected; if you come across any more, let us know in the comments.

Sony’s Qriocity Delivers Video To Xperia Devices

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 07:49 AM PDT

Sony's Qriocity service isn't exactly a stranger to the mobile space — its Music Unlimited app launched in the Android Market just last month — but astute users know this is only half of what Qriocity really has to offer.

Their video-on-demand component sees a lot of action across the Sony ecosystem, with footholds on the PS3, PSP, and web-connected Bravia televisions. The question, then, is if will we ever see that service make the same mobile shift that Qriocity's music offerings have.

According to a post on Sony Ericsson’s Product Blog, the answer is yes, and soon!

The Qriocity video service will launch this Monday (August 1), with a boatload of movies and television content from NBC, Universal, Fox, Sony, and Paramount in tow. Unfortunately, the roll out won't be quite as broad as we were hoping. Unlike the Music Unlimited app, which is available for all Android devices, Sony plans to limit Qriocity video to its own handsets.

So far, the Xperia mini and mini pro are slated to be the first to benefit from the service, which is accessed by an app from the Android Market. Later in the year, more Xperia devices will get access to the service by way of a softwate update.

I'd wager there's still some hope to see Qriocity expand beyond Sony's Android lineup in the future, and preferably by official means. I’m sure some enterprising hackers would be able to make the .apk available, but I’d personally pay for a service that just worked on my device. Of course, official expansion would force Sony to deal with the same compatibility issues that Netflix has had to contend with. Whether or not they think it would be worth the effort is up in the air, but it could provide some much needed leverage for its subscription service.

HTC Reports Record Profits In Q2, 12.1 Million Handsets Shipped

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 07:37 AM PDT

Looks like things are going well over in Taiwan, as HTC has reported record-breaking Q2 results this morning. In fact, the company sold 12.1 million units in the second quarter totaling a 123.7 percent year-over-year growth rate. After Q2 taxes, that brings YOY growth to 102.9 percent. If you aren't good with percentages, that's huge. In terms of quarterly growth, HTC is up 24.8 percent from the first quarter.

A solid chunk of this can be attributed to China, which was HTC's "standout" market. Entry-level models such as the Wildfire S, Salsa, and ChaCha (a.k.a. AT&T's Status Facebook phone) also made an impact by broadening HTC's portfolio. Of course, the Sensation and the Evo 3D certainly did their part, as well.

As I said earlier, HTC's on a roll. Unfortunately, Apple wants to be one massive roadblock in the company's path to success. Apple recently won over the judge after requesting an ITC import ban on HTC products. This could certainly hurt HTC, although the Taiwanese company has definitely put forth an effort to protect itself where patents are concerned.

The $300 million it spent picking up S3 graphics certainly beefed up its portfolio by 235 patents (and patent applications) to be exact. But there's no telling whether or not Apple will trip up HTC as this legal tussle moves forward.

Estimated projections for next quarter don’t stray too far from the growth the company’s seen during Q2. HTC expects to ship 13.5 million units, which would represent 98 percent growth year over year. If all goes as planned, that’s a net revenue of $4.8 billion next quarter alone.



Samsung Goes Mum With Phone And Tablet Sales Stats

Posted: 29 Jul 2011 06:50 AM PDT

Anybody notice something missing from Samsung's Q2 results? Hint: it was the phone/tablet sales data. But why? Well, according to Samsung's "new information policy," phones and tablets data will heretofore remain a secret. "As competition intensifies, there are increased risks that the information we provide may adversely affect our own business," said Samsung's investor relations boss Robert Yi on the Q2 conference call.

Hmmm. Well what risks exactly is he talking about? Yi certainly refused to delve any further into the matter, but analysts expect it has quite a bit to do with the company's current legal battle with Apple. This seems a little misleading, to be honest. Samsung and Apple's beef is related to patents, focused on both design and software. Sales stats don’t really change that. Then again, if Apple can prove to the judge that Samsung's "copycat" devices are cutting into its earnings, Samsung may face some trouble. I'm no lawyer so don't quote me on that, but it's a thought.

Another thought, which may not get the best reaction, has to do with our recent article about Android's return rate. Whether that number is right or wrong, a mega-manufacturer of millions phones a year would rightly want to keep that data to itself.

Either way, analysts seem to agree that Apple is one bad mamma jamma to play rough with, and Samsung will probably continue to step lightly until this whole legal mess is over.