Author: azeeadmin

Apple recently invited reporters to meet a handful of companies announcing new products at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. The common theme: All of these products connect to Apple’s HomeKit platform for smart home devices.

By integrating with HomeKit, these companies make their products configurable and controllable via Apple devices, specifically through the Home app and Siri. Last year, Apple rolled out a new software authentication system, which meant that manufacturers no longer needed to include an MFi chipset to be part of the program.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of all the HomeKit-integrated products that will be announced at CES, but it provides a snapshot of what’s coming to the ecosystem in 2019 — smart light switches, door cameras, electrical outlets and more. Here they are:

• New Wemo Light Switches (pictured above) from Belkin that start at $39.99. They allow you to control your lights with Siri or the Home App, and are planned for release in spring or summer of this year.
• A smart light strip and a smart power strip from Eve, a company focused on HomeKit-integrated accessories.
• A new smart outlet from ConnectSense, allowing customers to monitor the power consumption of each outlet. Unlike the company’s existing Smart Outlet² (which fits over existing outlets), the In-Wall SmartOutlet is — as the name implies — actually installed in your wall. It’s scheduled for release in the first half of 2019.
• Kwikset is expanding its Premis lineup of touchscreen smart locks with a new model that it describes as offering a more contemporary and sleek look.
• Mighton plans to launch its Avia smart lock in May. Beyond their more high-tech functions, Avia products are also supposed to be particularly secure locks, and are by the UK police’s Secured by Design initiative.
• The Nanoleaf Canvas is a modular smart lighting system that can create fun, beautiful patterns and even respond to music. A Nanoleaf Starter Kit costs $248.
• Netatmo is announcing a Smart Video Doorbell allowing customers to see, on their phone, who’s ringing the doorbell. It’s also announcing a Smart Indoor Air Quality Monitor that measures air quality, humidity level, temperature and noise.

The curse of open source software is that it is used in pretty much every application and device on the planet, and yet, has pretty much no business model. Sustaining open source is a critical problem for the future of software, because without a durable source of income, the developers behind these critical projects cannot invest their full energies to improve, maintain, and secure them.

Tidelift, a startup founded by a group of long-time open source engineers and executives, has taken on the problem in a compelling way. As I wrote about them last year as part of a deep dive into open source sustainability:

Tidelift is designed to offer assurances “around areas like security, licensing, and maintenance of software,” [Tidelift CEO Donald] Fischer explained. The idea has its genesis in Red Hat, which commercialized Linux. The idea is that companies are willing to pay for open source when they can receive guarantees around issues like critical vulnerabilities and long-term support. In addition, Tidelift handles the mundane tasks of setting up open source for commercialization such as handling licensing issues.

That’s pretty much still the mission of the company, and now it has even more resources to grow. The company announced today that it has raised $25 million in Series B financing led by return backers General Catalyst, Foundry Group, and Matthew Szulik, the former chairman and CEO of open source leader Red Hat, which was acquired by IBM last year in a blockbuster $34 billion deal. That’s a follow-up to a $15 million Series A round last year.

Since I covered Tidelift last June, the company has expanded from its initial launch in the Javascript ecosystem to also offer assurances to packages within the Java, Python, PHP, .NET, and Ruby ecosystems. Among the well-known open-source projects covered under the Tidelift Subscription today are Apache Struts, Vue.js, Gulp, Carbon, Jekyll, Beautiful Soup, and Mongoose. Tidelift says that its subscription now cover hundreds of open source packages.

In addition to covering more packages, Tidelift announced last September that they had reached $1 million in open source maintainer commitments. In a press release, the company highlighted community and discussion platform Discourse as a customer.

CEO Fischer told me that “Our bottom line is that open source doesn’t just need ‘funding.’ It needs a business model that works for creators and users alike, at massive scale.” The company intends to use the new funding to further expand its coverage of popular open source packages and partner with more open source creators.

Garmin’s long been a sort of secret success story in the world of wearables. The company rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as Apple and Fitbit — or even Android Wear and Samsung — but it’s found a nice life beyond GPS systems.

One thing the company’s products products have lacked until now is LTE functionality. The option has become a mainstay for Apple and Samsung products, and certainly makes sense for what is ostensibly a fitness.

The option will be arriving first on the vivoactive 3 Music, the streaming-focused wearable it introduced over the summer. One of the product’s selling points was the ability to download offline playlists from the likes of iHeartRadio and Deezer. Of course, having a device that’s always connected via Verizon does render that functionality slightly moot. Though Garmin will be adding some more notable services soon, including Spotify.

The main case use here — as with other LTE-enabled wearables — is the ability to take the watch out and leave your phone behind. Garmin’s certainly built up the feature set over the generations, including the addition of Garmin Pay, so you can buy stuff on the go.

The wearable promises up to five days of battery with light usage. That shrinks dramatically down to four hours, however, when you fire up LTE and start streaming or using GPS tracking.

Pricing is still TBD on the watch, which drops later this quarter.

It’s not really CES until Samsung has taken the stage. The company’s annual keynote is one of the tentpole events for the giant consumer electronics show. Sure, the company keeps its mobile powder dry until Mobile World Congress rolls around, but CES is the time when the rest of company’s businesses can shine.

It’s hard to say for sure what will be on display at today’s event, but if past years are any indication (and they usually are), the event will be focused on PCs, home entertainment and appliances. You can also be pretty sure that we’ll be getting a little Bixby action at the event, as the company looks to expand the appeal of its also-ran smart assistant.

Rumors have offered a peek at a handful of other possibilities, including the addition of a more budget-minded version of the Galaxy Home smart speaker — the HomePod competitor Samsung has yet to actually hit the market. Other possibilities include wearables and, perhaps, some content offerings to go along with the latest wave of 8K sets.

The event kicks off at 2PM PT, 5PM ET. 

It’s not really CES until Samsung has taken the stage. The company’s annual keynote is one of the tentpole events for the giant consumer electronics show. Sure, the company keeps its mobile powder dry until Mobile World Congress rolls around, but CES is the time when the rest of company’s businesses can shine.

It’s hard to say for sure what will be on display at today’s event, but if past years are any indication (and they usually are), the event will be focused on PCs, home entertainment and appliances. You can also be pretty sure that we’ll be getting a little Bixby action at the event, as the company looks to expand the appeal of its also-ran smart assistant.

Rumors have offered a peek at a handful of other possibilities, including the addition of a more budget-minded version of the Galaxy Home smart speaker — the HomePod competitor Samsung has yet to actually hit the market. Other possibilities include wearables and, perhaps, some content offerings to go along with the latest wave of 8K sets.

The event kicks off at 2PM PT, 5PM ET. 

A little more than a year ago, autonomous trucking startup TuSimple —flush with a fresh round of venture capital — was preparing to scale up its testing to two full truck fleets in China and the U.S.

TuSimple, a China-based company with an R&D facility in San Diego and test operations in Tucson, has put that money to use.

The startup, which launched in 2015, is taking three to five fully autonomous trips per day for customers on three different routes in Arizona, TuSimple said Monday at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. All of these trips have two safety engineers, one who is behind the wheel, and another monitoring the data pouring in during each trip.

That’s a milestone for TuSimple and the burgeoning autonomous trucking industry, which is getting increasingly crowded.

TuSimple isn’t disclosing its customers. The company did say it has 12 contracted customers.

TuSimple isn’t slowing down either. The startup plans to expand from the 11 autonomous trucks it has operating in the U.S. today to 40 by June. An additional route from Arizona to Texas will come online in early 2019, the company said.

“Exactly one year after debuting our prototype system at CES 2018, we’re now running up to five commercial trips a day in Arizona, expanding our fleet and moving quickly toward our goal of creating the first commercial self-driving truck,” TuSimple founder, president and CTO Xiaodi Hou said.

TuSimple, which is displaying a Navistar International LT semi-truck at CES, also announced that it’s working with Tier 1 supplier Cummins Inc.to enable powertrain integration with its autonomous technologies.

TuSimple, which is backed by Nvidia and Sina, operator of China’s biggest microblogging site Weibo, is working on a “full-stack solution.” This wonky industry term means TuSimple is developing and bringing together all of the technological pieces required for autonomous driving. The startup is developing a Level 4 system, a designation by the SAE that means the vehicle takes over all of the driving in certain conditions.

An important piece of TuSimple’s approach is its camera-centric perception solution. Much of the autonomous vehicle tech industry has focused on LiDAR to improve the perception of the vehicle, arguably one of the most difficult tasks of automated driving. But LiDAR has its limitations, especially for trucks traveling at speeds of 55 miles per hour and faster on highways.

LiDAR can detect objects like cars to about 250 meters, although the optimal quality falters past 150 meters.  TuSimple’s camera-based system has a vision range of 1,000 meters, the company says.

A little more than a year ago, autonomous trucking startup TuSimple —flush with a fresh round of venture capital — was preparing to scale up its testing to two full truck fleets in China and the U.S.

TuSimple, a China-based company with an R&D facility in San Diego and test operations in Tucson, has put that money to use.

The startup, which launched in 2015, is taking three to five fully autonomous trips per day for customers on three different routes in Arizona, TuSimple said Monday at CES 2019 in Las Vegas. All of these trips have two safety engineers, one who is behind the wheel, and another monitoring the data pouring in during each trip.

That’s a milestone for TuSimple and the burgeoning autonomous trucking industry, which is getting increasingly crowded.

TuSimple isn’t disclosing its customers. The company did say it has 12 contracted customers.

TuSimple isn’t slowing down either. The startup plans to expand from the 11 autonomous trucks it has operating in the U.S. today to 40 by June. An additional route from Arizona to Texas will come online in early 2019, the company said.

“Exactly one year after debuting our prototype system at CES 2018, we’re now running up to five commercial trips a day in Arizona, expanding our fleet and moving quickly toward our goal of creating the first commercial self-driving truck,” TuSimple founder, president and CTO Xiaodi Hou said.

TuSimple, which is displaying a Navistar International LT semi-truck at CES, also announced that it’s working with Tier 1 supplier Cummins Inc.to enable powertrain integration with its autonomous technologies.

TuSimple, which is backed by Nvidia and Sina, operator of China’s biggest microblogging site Weibo, is working on a “full-stack solution.” This wonky industry term means TuSimple is developing and bringing together all of the technological pieces required for autonomous driving. The startup is developing a Level 4 system, a designation by the SAE that means the vehicle takes over all of the driving in certain conditions.

An important piece of TuSimple’s approach is its camera-centric perception solution. Much of the autonomous vehicle tech industry has focused on LiDAR to improve the perception of the vehicle, arguably one of the most difficult tasks of automated driving. But LiDAR has its limitations, especially for trucks traveling at speeds of 55 miles per hour and faster on highways.

LiDAR can detect objects like cars to about 250 meters, although the optimal quality falters past 150 meters.  TuSimple’s camera-based system has a vision range of 1,000 meters, the company says.

A Japanese billionaire who’s paying Elon Musk to fly him around the Moon, assuming all goes to plan with SpaceX’s giant metal phallus, has bought himself a rather different ride in the meanwhile.

The BBC reports that Yusaku Maezawa has elbowed aside nugget-loving U.S. teen, Carter Wilkerson, to bag the title of most retweeted tweet by promising to give away 100 million yen (just under $1M) in cash if people RT the tweet.

His 5 million+ Twitter followers probably helped too.

At the time of writing Maezawa’s January 5 tweet has ~4.6M RTs (and counting), beating out Wilkerson’s April 2017 tweet pleading for free chicken nuggets which now has circa 3.6M RTs.

Sorry kid.

Of course it’s not a fair fight. Wilkerson had just 138 Twitter followers to provide native uplift when his brief plea for “Nuggs” went viral.

Prior to Wilkerson, the world record retweeted tweet was a celebrity group selfie.

So we can add something else to the list of things money can buy (fine art; a ticket to the moon; faux popularity).

In true entrepreneur spirit, Maezawa, founder of Japanese online clothing retailer Zozo, is using his puffed up profile (i.e. as the man who Musk might fly to the moon) to drum up business for his clothing business.

Clearly he’s hoping to get more than just a trip to outer space for the “lot of money” he’s paying Musk for the chance to play lunar tourist. So the key lesson is demand the moon and back folks.

Hence the world’s most retweeted tweet now promotes a Spring sale. Late stage capitalism eat yer heart out.

We can at least be thankful the tweet wasn’t crypto related. After all, given the Musk connection, that sort of spam would have been rather more typical.

Pouch, the U.K.-based money-saving browser extension, has been acquired by German ‘publishing technology’ platform Global Savings Group.

Exact financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although I understand it to be a cash purchase and in the 7-figure U.S. dollar range, plus performance related bonuses.

The entire Pouch team are joining Global Savings Group, and founders Ben Corrigan, Jonny Plein, and Vikram Simha will continue working on Pouch as its “Global Product Leads”.

Launched publicly in September 2016, Pouch is best known for its shopping tool that automatically alerts buyers to working voucher codes as they visit over 3,000 U.K. e-commerce sites. The Pouch browser extension is available for Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox. It’s free to download.

Last year, the company garnered a nice PR boost after appearing on the BBC television show Dragons’ Den. This included receiving investment offers from all five Dragons, culminating in an offer of £75,000 in exchange for 18 percent equity split between Touker Suleyman, Jenny Campbell and Tej Lalvani. However, as is quite common in Dragons’ Den, the deal ultimately fell through, with Pouch eventually seeking equity financing on better terms elsewhere.

The London startup was backed by a consortium of angels, including Andreas Zollmann, and had raised just £345,000 in total. Pouch also won the MassChallenge prize and went through the Huckeltree Alpha Programme in 2017 and the Natwest Entrepreneur Accelerator programme in 2018.

Meanwhile, Global Savings Group’s acquisition of Pouch looks like a decent fit. The company offers commerce content to help publishers find additional routes to monetisation. It operates over 100 digital assets for various leading publishers globally. In the U.K., this includes powering discount voucher sites for Daily Mail and Metro, delivering “inspirations, recommendations, deals and discounts” to consumers.

Regarding Pouch, Global Savings Group says it will incorporate the product into its white label offering for publishers in multiple markets.

“Pouch allows our users to shop with the confidence that they are always getting the biggest saving, without wasting time searching for deals across the internet,” says Pouch co-founder Jonny Plein in a statement. “We are incredibly excited to join the Global Savings Group family and continue to improve our products and build new tools that help people save time and money when shopping online”.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the company’s first overseas factory in Shanghai will focus on producing Model 3 vehicles for the Chinese market only.

Musk is currently in China to break ground on the new factory today, which is being developed in partnership with the Shanghai government — an ally that is likely to be incredibly useful. The deal was announced by Tesla in July and it was followed quickly by the opening of Model 3 pre-orders for China-based customers in November.

Initial construction of the Shanghai factory is set to be completed by the summer, according to Musk, who said that he expects production to begin before the end of this year. The facility is aimed at churning out 500,000 EVs a year when it reaches full production, which should happen during next year, all being well.

Musk clarified on Twitter — his go-to for public announcements — that Tesla’s U.S. facilities will continue to manufacture vehicles for the U.S. and other markets.

Tesla isn’t the only one planting manufacturing roots down in the country. Byton, a U.S-China rival founded by former BMW and Infiniti executives, said this week it is on track to complete production of a plant in Nanjing by May. The outpost will have a capacity to produce 300,000 vehicles per year, the company said.

In June, Byton secured a $500 million Series B funding round from investors FAW Group, Tus-Holdings and CATL. The company has raised $850 million from investors in addition to loans and subsidies from China.

Despite optimism behind the Shanghai project, China has been the source of concerns for Tesla in recent times.

The country has reduced subsidies for green vehicles while its ongoing trade spat with the U.S. is raising concerns for U.S. businesses looking to reach consumers in the middle kingdom. Tesla’s share price dropped by nearly eight percent before the New Year after the company reduced the price of the Model 3 by seven percent in China. That followed reductions to the Model X and Model S in November, and it also coincided with Musk pledging to reimburse tax credits to U.S. customers who miss them because their pre-December order isn’t delivered before the end of the year.

Still, the Chinese market is the largest in the world for electric vehicles and hugely important for future growth.

The country is said to already account for 35 percent of global EV sales, according to Bloomberg intelligence, which reports that cumulative sales reach four million in August 2018. That’s just the start. Chinese city Shenzhen, known as the world’s mecca for hardware technology, has replaced all buses with electric versions and 99 percent of its taxis, and the government wants 20 percent of all car sales to be plug-in hybrids or battery-powered models by 2025 — that’s around seven million cars per day.