Month: June 2019

NASA’s trip to the Moon’s surface in July 1969 was preceded by a lot of preparatory missions – including Apollo 10, which involved a mock mission with everything but the actual landing. Astronauts Thomas Stafford and Eugene Carman flew a lunar module nicknamed ‘Snoopy’ by the agency nearly all the way to the Moon during Apollo 10, and then shot the module off into space once they’d completed their task.

There was never any intent to return Snoopy to Earth – it was sent into an orbit around the sun beyond the Moon after the astronauts completed their maneuvers and returned to the command module, and NASA did not track its trajectory. The effort to discover its location began in 2011, undertaken by a group of amateur UK astronomers led by Nick Howes – the same who now claim they’re “98 percent convinced” they’ve discovered where it ended up, according to Sky News. Howes further speculated that if they confirm its location, someone like Elon Musk could recover it and preserve it as a key cultural artefact.

Apollo 10 was the tenth crewed mission in NASA’s Apollo Program, and it involved flying the lunar module to within 8.5 miles of the Moon’s surface – everything up to the last landing sequence where the module would perform its powered descent. In keeping with the ‘Peanuts’ theme, the command module for the mission was called ‘Charlie Brown.’

Notably, the fuel tanks used in this mission weren’t provided enough fuel to return from the Moon’s surface – an intentional limitation imposed in case the astronauts flying the test run were tempted to jump the queue and become the first people to walk on the lunar surface, ahead of Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin .

This is one of those ‘I’m not surprised but I am slightly terrified’ moments in tech development: Enterprise smart glasses company Vuzix announced Monday that it has developed new “fully autonomous” face recognition software in partnership with software developer NNTC.

The new solution will work with Vuzix’s Blade smart glasses, which debuted at CES earlier this year and are positioned as both an enterprise and a consumer product. t’s called iFalcon Face Control Mobile, which is a mouthful, and it’s billed as an “AI-powered” solution that promises local matching against a database stored on-device on a wearable computer that pairs with headset.

It’s intended to be used with set databases, and is ideal for “law enforcement and security guards on patrol,” according to a press release detailing the news. It can find up to 15 faces per frame in under one second, according to the spec sheet, and can also store a database of up to 1 million faces locally – meaning it can do its tagging without any cloud access or connectivity.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that this means it’s going to be relatively circumscribed and specific in its usage: Basically it works best when you know who you’re looking for, and that means suspects or known offenders, and potentially missing people. It’s not like it’s just constantly monitoring and recording faces all the time and measuring that against a global and growing database to attach a name and identity to everyone it sees.

Right now, it’s installed on only around 50 pairs of Vuzix Blade smart glasses for use in “security operations” in the UAE, but Vuzix is pleased about the speed with which it’s progressed from concept to active use.

Use of facial recognition among security agencies and authorities is a hot-button issue, with San Francisco becoming the first major city to ban its use earlier this year. It’s ramping up specifically for airport use, however, and is likely to cover most passengers on departing flights in the U.S. within the next four years. Meanwhile, Amazon shareholders recently struck down a proposal designed to stop the company from selling its own facial recognition tech to government customers.

Debate continues regarding how effective such efforts even are, but general comfort with the idea is clearly not going to be easily won over.

It takes a lot of trust to allow a company to come in and install a mystery box on their network to monitor for threats. It’s like inviting in a security guard to sit in your living room to make sure nobody breaks in.

Yet that’s exactly what Darktrace does. (The box, not the security guard.)

The Cambridge U.K.-founded company, now with a second headquarters in San Francisco, assumes that any network can be breached. Instead of looking at the perimeter of a network, Darktrace uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to scan and identify security weaknesses and malicious traffic inside a company’s network.

Traditional network monitoring typically uses signature-based threat detection of matching against known malicious files, but can be easily modified to evade detection. Instead, Darktrace builds up a profile of the network to understand what the baseline “normal” looks like so it can spot and identify potential issues, like large amounts of data exfiltration or suspect devices.

But how do you win over those who see a sea of meaningless buzzwords? How can you differentiate between the smoke and mirrors and the real deal?

“No one wants the black box making decisions without them knowing what it’s doing,” said Nicole Eagan, Darktrace’s co-founder and chief executive, in a call with TechCrunch.

“So, let them have visibility,” she said.

Darktrace’s founders have roots in the U.K. and U.S. intelligence, where they took what they knew of the cybersecurity threats to the private sector to where the new battleground opened up. In the past half-decade of its existence, the company has gained major clients on its roster — from telcos to banks, tech giants and car makers — supported by 900 staff in over 40 offices around the world.

About a quarter of its customers are in financial services, said Eagan. But it takes a lot for the heavily regulated companies to trust a mystery device on a company’s network where the data and security, like financial services, is highly regulated.

Last week it was Xbox body spray. Today it’s a Razer energy drink. E3 is officially upon us, and it’s time for all of the shamless product tie-ins. Though before you go passing judgement on Respawn, note that this is “no ordinary beverage.” No, in a world of of entirely too many energy drinks, this one is “for gamers by gamers.”

The company notes, fittingly, that all of this started off as a 2010 April Fool’s Day prank, then known as the less palatable “Project Venom.” This however, is very much a real thing — in fact, Respawn is now a standalone spinoff brand from Razer.

The powdered drink has caffeine, green tea extract and B vitamins, made to be mixed in a the metal branded shaker (sold separately). “Now you are ready to Respawn,” the company writes somewhat troublingly in the official press release. “Effects should be felt soon after consumption.”

At very least, the “Mental performance” isn’t loaded with sugar, unlike the vast majority of energy drinks on the market. In fact, it contains zero grams of the stuff, per Razer. The stuff is apparently specially formulated for gamers and esports athletes for periods of long focus and mental stamina. Though Razer assures us that other people like content creators and video editors can use it, too.

For everyone else, there’s always coffee.

There’s some new consolidation in the mobile event technology space this morning, with news that the meetings, events and hospitality technology provider Cvent has acquired San Francisco-based mobile event app maker DoubleDutch. The deal includes both DoubleDutch’s mobile event app technology as well as the team, the company said in announcing the deal on Monday.

Founded in 2011, DoubleDutch created both mobile and web apps that gave event hosts everything they needed to set up and monitor the success of their events through a white-labeled solution they could customize to their own needs. The overall platform included event registration technology, the event content management system to manage an event’s entire program, and the event app for the attendees.

To date, DoubleDutch had raised nearly $80 million in funding according to CrunchBase, from investors including KKR, Bessemer Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Enspire Capital, Mithril Capital Management, and others.

The company saw some upsets in more recent years as it struggled towards profitability. It laid off 25% of its workforce in 2016, then laid off another 40% of staff the following year, including its CFO, CCO, VP of Customer Success and others. Also in 2017, DoubleDutch replaced CEO Bryan Parker as CEO after only two months on the job after being appointed to the position from his earlier role as COO. DoubleDutch founder Lawrence Coburn took the CEO role instead.

However, in March 2018, DoubleDutch announced it had finally become cash-flow positive. At the same time, it announced new funding from existing investors KKR, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Bullpen Ventures and that it had completed the acquisition of Eventgrid, an events platform used by Adobe, Dropbox, Sony, and others.

According to DoubleDutch, joining Cvent made sense as both “share a passion for delivering innovative technology solutions for event organizers, including world-class mobile event apps.”

“DoubleDutch is an innovator in the mobile event app space and both Cvent and DoubleDutch have a shared mission to unlock the business value of human connection,” said Lawrence Coburn, CEO and founder of DoubleDutch, in a statement. “We are incredibly proud to join the market-leading team at Cvent. With their global reach and scale, we can fuel our passion to change the way people connect, learn, and grow at live events.”

DoubleDutch customers include SAP, Akamai, WPP, CenturyLink, Innovation Roundtable, BlackRock, ASAE Bosch, and others.

Coburn is expected to depart following the acquisition, according to a report from Skift. DoubleDutch’s other co-founder, Pankaj Prasad, had left in November 2017 to join Salesforce.

The company stressed that existing customers would see no disruption in their service or with their upcoming events — likely a big concern for those who relied on the platform, given how complex setting up and managing events can be. Customers were also invited to Cvent’s Connect User Conference in July in Las Vegas where they could learn more about Cvent’s full suite of solutions.

Cvent, meanwhile, sees the addition of DoubleDutch as a further investment in the onsite experience for events.

“We are extremely excited to add DoubleDutch to the Cvent family,” said Cvent founder and CEO Reggie Aggarwal, added. “By adding DoubleDutch’s industry expertise to Cvent, we accelerate our investment in mobile event technology. We are also proud to welcome the talented DoubleDutch team to our more than 4,000 Cventers worldwide. Together, we will continue to drive innovation in how attendees engage at events.”

Cvent itself was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2016 for $1.65 billion, and ceased to trade on the NYSE on November 29, 2016. As both it and DoubleDutch are private companies, they declined to comment on the deal terms or price beyond their press releases.

Cvent tells TechCrunch its interest in DoubleDutch was for three main reasons: the product, people and the customers — the factors that drive all its acquisition decisions. Over the years, the company has picked up several other businesses, including Wedding Spot, Alliance Tech, Social Tables, and others. It also merged with Lanyon a few years ago. Cvent owns other event apps including CrowdCompass and QuickMobile, as well.

The company tells us it’s still working through how it will integrate DoubleDutch into its global organization, and can’t comment on specific positions or rolls at this time.

 

Ever since Google acquired Waze back in 2013, features from each have been slowly making their way back and forth between it and Google Maps – and today Waze gets a big upgrade with Google Assistant integration, which means you can use the smart voice companion within the app.

Google Assistant in Waze will provide access to your usual Assistant features, like playback of music and podcasts, but it’ll also offer access to many Waze-specific abilities, including letting you asking it to report traffic conditions, or specifying that you want to avoid tolls when routing to your destination.

Google has done a good job of rolling out support for Assistant in its own Android Auto in-car software, and even brought it to Google Maps on Apple’s competing CarPlay system earlier this year. The benefits of having Assistant work natively within Waze are many, but the number one might be its potential to reduce distractions while on the road.

Waze remains a top choice among drivers, and anecdotally most Uber and Lyft drivers I encounter still swear by its supremacy over the competition, including Google’s other own-branded Maps solution.

Google Assistant will be available via a roll-out starting today in the U.S., in English only to start and on Android smartphones. Expect that availability to expand over time.

You’ve been meaning to apply to the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt San Francisco 2019, right? Whether you need more time due to procrastinating, shillyshallying or your propensity for last-minute decision making (hey, we don’t judge), we’re offering you a reprieve. Yup, we’re extending the application deadline for one week.

The extended application deadline expires on June 25th at 11:59 p.m. (PT). It’s time to procrastinate on your procrastination. Apply to the Startup Battlefield right now!

The application process is simple, free and highly competitive. Toss your proverbial hat into the mix and our seasoned TechCrunch editors (a deeply discerning bunch) will comb through each application to select 15-30 of the best early-stage startups.

All competing teams receive free, extensive pitch coaching from these same Battlefield-tested editors. They’ll advise, instruct and guide you to your best pitch possible. You’ll be ready to walk on to the Main Stage at Disrupt — in front of a live audience numbering in the thousands — to deliver a six-minute pitch and demo to our expert judges. Then get ready to think on your feet as they grill you with questions.

The judges select a group of finalists who go on to round two and pitch again to a new set of judges. And then only one team will emerge victorious, hoist the Disrupt Cup and take home the $100,000 equity-free cash prize.

The Startup Battlefield is one of the best platforms for launching your early-stage startup to the world’s “technorati.” We live stream the entire event on TechCrunch.com, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Plus, it’s available later on-demand.

Need more convincing? Consider these stats and you’ll see it’s not hyperbole, people. In 12 years of Battlefields, 857 companies have competed and form the Startup Battlefield alumni community. Those startups, including the likes of Vurb, Dropbox, Mint, Yammer and more, have collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and generated 109 exits.

Don’t miss out on this reprieve! Apply to the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 before the new deadline expires on June 25th at 11:59 p.m. (PT).

While you’re in application mode, why not apply for our TC Top Picks program, too? TC Top Pick designees receive a free Startup Alley Exhibitor Package, VIP treatment and plenty of media and investor exposure.

Here’s an interesting by-product the news today that Salesforce would be acquiring Tableau for $15.7 billion: the company is going to make Seattle, Washington (home of Tableau) the official second headquarters of San Francisco-based Salesforce, putting the company directly in the face of tech giants and Salesforce frenemies Microsoft and Amazon.

“An HQ2, if you will,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff quipped right after he dropped the news during the press and analyst call.

HQ2, of course, is a reference to Amazon and its year-long, massively publicised, often criticised, and ultimately botched search (it eventually cancelled plans to build an HQ in NYC, but kept Arlington) for its own second headquarters, which it also branded “HQ2.”

If real estate sends a message — and if you’ve ever seen Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, you know it does for this company — Salesforce is sending one here. And that message is: Hello, Microsoft and Amazon, we’re coming at you.

As we pointed out earlier today, there is a clear rivalry between Microsoft and Salesforce that first began to simmer in the area of CRM but has over time expanded to a wider array of products and services that cater to the needs of enterprise knowledge workers.

The most well-known of these was the tug-of-war between the two to acquire LinkedIn, a struggle that Microsoft ultimately won. Over the years, as both have continued to diversify their products to bring in a wider swathe of enterprise users, and across a wider range of use cases, that competition has become a little more pointed.

I’d argue that the competitive threat of Amazon is a little more remote. At the moment, in fact, the two work very closely: specifically in September last year, Amazon and Salesforce extended an already years-long deal to integrate AWS and Salesforce products to aid in enterprise “digital transformation” (one of Salesforce’s catch phrases).

Placing Salesforce physically closer to Amazon could even underscore how the two might work even closer together in the future — not least because cloud storage is now a notably missing jewel in Salesforce’s enterprise IT crown as it squares up to Microsoft, which has Azure. (And it’s not just a Seattle thing. Google, which has Google Cloud Platform, acquired Tableau competitor Looker last week.)

On the other hand, you have to wonder about the longer-term trajectory for Salesforce and its ambitions. The Tableau deal takes it firmly into a new area of business that up to now has been more of a side-gig: data and analytics. Coming from two different directions — infrastructure for AWS and customer management for Salesforce — enterprise data has been a remote battleground for both companies for years already, and it will be interesting to see how the two sides approach it.

Notably, this is not Salesforce’s first efforts to lay down roots in the city. It established an engineering office in the city in 2017 and as Benioff pointed out today, putting deeper roots into what he described as a “unique market with tremendous talent” will open up the company to tapping it even more.

Low code and no code are the latest industry buzzwords, but if vendors can truly abstract away the complexity of difficult tasks like building machine learning models, it could help mainstream technologies that are currently out of reach of most business users. That’s precisely what Microsoft is aiming to do with its latest Power BI platform announcements today.

The company tried to bring that low code simplicity to building applications last year when it announced PowerApps. Now it believes by combining PowerApps with Microsoft Flow and its new AI Builder tool, it can allow folks building apps with PowerApps to add a layer of intelligence very quickly.

It starts with having access to data sources, and the Data Connector tool gives users access to over 250 data connectors. That includes Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe, as well as of course Microsoft services like Office 365 and Dynamics 365. Richard Riley, senior director for Power Platform marketing, says this is the foundation for pulling data into AI Builder.

“AI Builder is all about making it just as easy in a low code, no code way to go bring artificial intelligence and machine learning into your Power Apps, into Microsoft Flow, into the Common Data Service, into your data connectors, and so on,” Riley told TechCrunch.

Charles Lamanna, general manager at Microsoft says that Microsoft can do all the analysis and heavy lifting required to build a data model for you, removing a huge barrier to entry for business users. “The basic idea is that you can select any field in the Common Data Service and just say, ‘I want to predict this field.’  Then we’ll actually go look at historical records for that same table or entity to go predict [the results],” he explained. This could be used to predict if a customer will sign up for a credit card, if a customer is likely to churn, or if a loan would be approved, and so forth.

While Microsoft admits this won’t be something everyone uses, they do see a kind of power user who might have been previously unable to approach this level of sophistication on their own, building apps and adding layers of intelligence without a heck of a lot of coding. If it works as advertised it will bring a level of simplicity to tasks that were previously well out of reach of business users without requiring a data scientist.

The 2019 Audi Q8 is the shape of the future. It’s beautiful as it successfully merges the look of a sports sedan with the shape of an SUV. It has flowing lines, crisp angles and just the right look on and off the road. Inside, it’s comfortable though a bit smaller than the name suggests. And under the hood, Audi paired a capable V6 engine with a 48-volt battery, creating a mild-hybrid setup that supposedly helps with fuel economy.

Yet after spending a lot of time in the Q8, I found it backwards. Most crossovers provide the comfort of a sedan with the utility of an SUV. This one has the rough comfort of an SUV with the limited utility of a sedan. Worse yet, driving the Q8 around town can be a frustrating experience.

I spent a couple of weeks in the new Q8 on a road trip from Detroit through Canada to New York City. I took it over the countryside, around hilly passes, and through four of the five boroughs. My kids spilled Cheetos in the back. I lived in this car for thousands of miles. This experience is different from most vehicles reviews. Most car reviews are penned after a few hundred miles in the car, which can often lead to milquetoast conclusions. Not this time.

I don’t like the Q8. The bad outweighs the good. The stunted driving characteristics ruin the otherwise gorgeous vehicle.

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Review

The sedan is bleeding out, and the crossover is holding the knife. Consumers are overwhelming, picking these quasi-SUVs over sedans or sport utility vehicles. There’s a good reason, too. Crossovers often provide the supple ride quality of a sedan with the utility of an SUV. I’m sorry to report the Q8 does the opposite. It has the rough ride of an SUV and the limited utility of a sedan.

The Q8 has a puzzling powertrain. It doesn’t like to go forward. Several times throughout my time with the Q8, I nearly got into an accident because of the timing of the transmission. It often left me hanging in the middle of the road while it took its time to translate the engine’s instructions to the tires. I was honked at constantly while in NYC.

A turbocharged 3.0-liter V6 rests under the hood, and Audi says it’s good for 335 HP and 369 pound-foot of torque. The Q8 is not underpowered, and it sports a version of ZF’s ubiquitous 8-speed transmission. The Audi Q8 is one of the first internal combustion vehicles to be paired with a 48-volt mild hybrid system. This is said to help improve fuel economy by relegating acceleration to a mild hybrid setup, and this could prove to be the cause of my frustration.

Whoever’s to blame, in real life, the transmission feels like it doesn’t use the first and second gear. There’s a second or two hesitation between the time the pedal is engaged until the car decides to move forward. Once underway, the Q8 is a lovely expressway cruiser with plenty of power to overtake meandering sedans. At speed, it’s comfortable and confident. At a standstill, it’s hesitant and frustrating.

I’m not alone in this frustration. Car and Driver says the Q8 is “it felt hesitant around town unless we crushed the gas pedal.” Motor1 says, “At times [the transmission is] clunky, particularly when accelerating…” Motor Trend stated, “We noted, however, a longish delay in the delivery of torque after you give it some beans.”

Audi built the Q8 as a multipurpose utility vehicle and equipped it with several driving modes, including Dynamic, which lowers the vehicle and supposedly changes the transmission response. Select Off Road or All Road, and the Q8 raises a few inches, providing better ground clearance. This is handy on Michigan roads where post-winter potholes are the size of bathtubs.

These driving modes give the Q8 added utility and foreshadow a future where cars better adapt to their driver’s needs. Audi has offered similar features for years but not to this extreme. The Sport mode drops the Q8 to the ground while the Off-Road mode raises the Q8 to a level where it could tackle serious terrain.

Sadly, the adjustable modes did not address the lackluster powertrain. Even in Sport mode, the Q8’s transmission was sluggish.

At least the Q8 is comfortable.

The interior of the Q8 is lovely and features Audi’s new dual-touchscreen infotainment center. I love it. Audi long had the best user interface in the industry. This one is entirely different and even better.

There are two touchscreens in the middle of the Q8. The one on the top handles media, mapping, and vehicle settings. The one on the bottom is for climate control. Both feature fantastic haptic feedback. Hit a button on the screen, and a slight vibration makes it feel like you touched a real button.

To me, this dual screen setup is a better solution than a giant screen like Tesla or Ram uses in their vehicles. In Audi’s solution, both are tilted to provide easy access, and there’s less of a learning curve. The setup follows the general button placement found in cars for the last few decades. Climate is always on and always on the bottom. The radio and mapping screen is on the top and can be turned off to reduce distractions.

A screen lives behind the steering wheel, too, and sports a similar layout to Audi’s current system. The driver can easily switch between information screens with the speedo and tach on either side. Hit a button on the steering wheel, and the gauges reduce in size while the map increases. It’s a handy feature.

The Q8’s seats are fantastic and nearly make up for the lackluster driving capabilities. They’re firm yet forgiving with endless adjustments. The seats, with their built-in massagers, made the boring Ohio turnpike a bearable experience.

The Q8’s interior space is not as ample as I expected and I think it has to do with the naming scheme. The Q8 joins the small Q5 and seven-seater Q7 in Audi’s lineup. The name suggests the Q8 is larger than the Q7 in the same way that the Audi sedan A8 is larger than the A7. But it’s not. The Q8 is a five-passenger vehicle with less cargo room available than the Q7.

I was able to get three suitcases and a couple of backpacks in the back. The lack of storage space is evident throughout the cabin. The center console is only two smartphone’s deep. There isn’t a spot for sunglasses. Two adults could sit in the backseat, but I would fight for the front.

Again, the Q8 is comfortable, and a nice size, but the name suggests a larger vehicle.

Like it or not, the Q8 is the shape of the future. Its sheet metal conveys a sense of on or off-road sportiness. The Q8 is designed around the driver, too, and the Q8 could be a fantastic package. It looks beautiful inside and out; I love the shape and form of the Q8. It’s stunning and comfortable to sit in. I don’t like how the Q8 drives.