You think your Lockitron and your Nest make that flophouse you call an apartment a smart home? Pshhhh, that ish is basic.

This new whole-home gesture recognition system, called WiSee, comes to us courtesy of a few awesome eggheads from the University of Washington, Seattle. It uses good ol’ WiFi to give you ultimate cosmic power through the magic of gestural control from any room in your house.

Get a load of this demo clip:

Using WiSee, you could complete any number of simple tasks just by putting your hands up in the air and waving them like you’re trying to get a computer to do something for you. “For example, using a swipe hand motion in-air, a user could control the music volume while showering, or change the song playing on a music system installed in the living room while cooking, or turn up the thermostat while in bed,” write its creators in an academic paper on WiSee.

The system requires no special wireless standard, can be implemented with normal hardware, can deal with motion interference and even “accidental” gestures not intended to trigger the system.

“As computing moves increasingly away from the desktop, there is a growing need for new ways to interact with computer interfaces,” reads the team’s paper on the system.

WiSee was made by Qifan Pu, Sidhant Gupta, Shyam Gollakota, and Shwetak Patel. To make WiSee, they used Doppler shift properties to monitor wave frequency changes as people move through an environment and the MIMO capabilities of 802.11n to home in on on gestures from a specific user.

Image credit: University of Washington

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The Federal Communications Commission announced today it has hired Michael Steffan as the director of digital learning. In his new role, Steffen will lead initiatives to expand access to broadband Internet in schools.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski explained, “Broadband and digital tools have game-changing potential for education.” Improving connectivity is a first step toward teachers and students taking advantage of the new education technology.

The appointment is timely given that senators, like John D. Rockefeller IV, are pushing for an extension of the 2010 E-rate program, which subsidizes Internet services for schools and libraries. The FCC believes that these institutions should offer lightning fast connections to the web.

The FCC, which is currently the largest funder of Internet Connectivity in K12 schools across America, has endorsed E-rate reforms. In January, Chairman Genachowski called for the nation’s mayors to bring one-gigabit Internet access to one community in each state by 2015.

Steffen will draw on experience bringing connectivity to America’s most remote school districts. Most recently, he served as the Chairman’s legal advisor on wireline, international, and Internet policy issues. During that time, he oversaw the creation of the Connect America Fund, a broadband infrastructure program for rural America.

The FCC has stepped up its involvement in education, but is also concerned with other sectors, including health care. Last month, the commission appointed Matthew Quinn as Director of Healthcare Initiatives. In this role, Quinn is helping to facilitate the availability of medical devices that require spectrum; and ensuring that rural hospitals and other health care facilities have required connectivity.

Top image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

JetBlue is one of the most well-liked airlines in the United States, but its lack of in-flight Wi-Fi — now a necessary tool for business travelers and tech geeks alike — has been its biggest weakness.

But that’s about to change, as the company just confirmed it will be adding in-flight Wi-Fi later this year to some flights, and that it will be powered by ViaSat’s Exede. It’s also promising that JetBlue Wi-Fi — dubbed “Fly-Fi” — will be faster than all in-flight competitors including Gogo, the largest provider of in-flight Wi-Fi in the U.S.

The company said today in a blog post (emphasis ours):

Our service promises to up the experience to satisfy the increasing appetite for connectivity across multiple devices. Fly-Fi will be smarter, newer, faster and better than anything on the market today for commercial aviation. The up-side is, you’ll soon be able to experience Wi-Fi connections that do more than just frustrate you, the down-side is that because it’s a completely new way to deliver connectivity, there’s still a lot of testing to be done before the FAA, signs off, and our customers start seeing it on their JetBlue flights.

Extensive ground testing is currently being conducted by our partners, LiveTV and ViaSat, to make sure our Wi-Fi works well when deployed in the sky. We plan to install the Wi-Fi equipment on our first aircraft coming soon, at which point an extensive FAA certification process begins. Barring any setbacks during certification, we expect our first Wi-Fi-enabled flight with customers to take to the skies later this year.

We look forward to testing the company’s claims that it truly does offer the fastest in-flight Wi-Fi in all the land. For now, check out the video below to see JetBlue’s Wi-Fi in action versus the competition.

Woman using laptop on airplane via l i g h t p o e t/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The “world’s first Internet-enabled sex toy” is shipping at the end of the month. Soon, Zeus and Hera will be able to satisfy and be satisfied, even when continents apart.

Can LovePalzBook.com be far behind?

The high-tech sex toys first saw the light of day late last year when the LovePalz project was rejected by Kickstarter. The concept is pretty simple: Each partner has one device — Zeus for men, Hera for women — and applies to certain body parts as needed. Then motion-sensing technology in Zeus senses physical action — speed, pressure, and more — and communicates to Hera over the internet, and vice versa, and simulates a real-life connection in real-time.

Which means, for those who are into that sort of thing, a long-distance relationship can get a lot more … personal.

According to Forrester, the top 15 emerging technologies include next-generation sensors and user interfaces, advanced collaboration, smart products, and systems of engagement. I’m not sure this is precisely what they had in mind while compiling the list.

LovePalz says the rechargeable toys will work with any smartphone or desktop computer over WiFi.

The company has taken 5,000 pre-orders already for the $189 devices — $378 for a set of two — and since February 28, when the company opened up payment capability, 1,800 have already pre-paid.

Starting now, the company says, “toys will no longer be for single use by one person but a fun tool you and your lover can use together.”

It’s a brave new world.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Belkin is acquiring Cisco‘s home networking unit, the company announced today, including its products, employees, and the popular Linksys brand, which makes smart routers for home Wi-Fi access points.

“Belkin’s ultimate goal is to be the global leader in the connected home and wireless networking space, and this acquisition is an important step to realizing that vision,” said Chet Pipkin, Belkin’s CEO, in a statement.

To ensure it’s an easy transition for customers, Belkin claims it will honor valid warranties for current and future Linksys products.

When the deal closes, Belkin will account for approximately 30 percent of the U.S. retail home and small business networking market. Meanwhile, Cisco is looking to exit the consumer business market altogether, recently shuttering its Flip video camera unit.

Instead, the networking giant intends to expand in business software and professional services. The company has made a spate of acquisitions to realize this vision, and yesterday picked up Intucell for a cool $475 million.

“We are pleased about this strategic relationship with Belkin to build on Linksys’ position of strength,” said  Hilton Romanski, VP Corporate Business Development at Cisco.

Back in December, Bloomberg reported that Cisco hired Barclays to find a buyer for Linksys. The hunt didn’t last long. But the company likely fetched a lower price the $500 million Cisco paid for it in 2003.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Linksys image via Jonathan Zander // Wikimedia Commons.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Grown-ups have FitBit and Up and assorted other fitness trackers to monitor their own health. Now babies have their own “smart scale” that lets parents “monitor, understand, and share” their kids’ growth.

And you thought all those baby pics on Facebook were annoying.

The Withings Smart Baby Scale — the first-ever Internet-connected baby and toddler scale — comes armed with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the must-have accoutrement of every “smart” gadget these days: a companion app. Parents place the baby on the scale, and all the normal vitals show up automagically on the iOS app, or alternatively on a website.

Once digital, baby’s stats can be sent to doctors, pediatricians, or family members. And, reminiscent of Facebook’s frictionless sharing, the scale can be set to automatically update Facebook or Twitter with every last detail of how many ounces Junior gained this past week.

The French company, which also makes a “Smart Baby Monitor” that shows you live video of your child on your iPhone or Android smartphone, won a CES Innovation Award last week in Las Vegas for design and engineering.

Pricing was not announced, but the product will be available in the second quarter of 2013. If you have Facebook friends with newborns, get ready for the onslaught.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apparently, we love Wi-Fi.

Total cumulative global Wi-Fi-enabled device shipments reached five billion in 2012, according to ABI Research. And the pace of innovation isn’t slowing, with new Wi-Fi protocols rolling out in 2013 and close to 20 billion WiFi-enabled devices predicted to be in the market by 2017.

Naturally, we’re familiar with Wi-Fi in our laptops and smartphones. But the next level of Wi-Fi penetration, the firm says, is likely to be in home automation and smart, connected cars, as manufacturers continue to connect formerly isolated devices, equipment, and other things.

What’s up next? More speed, according to ABI’s Peter Cooney:

“Wi-Fi continues to develop as a technology in many ways,” Cooney said, adding that “the 802.11n protocol is now well established and has pushed the envelope increasing data rates, expanding Wi-Fi into the less crowded 5GHz space.”

The newest Wi-Fi protocols will vastly improve wireless data transfer speeds, with 802.11ac bringing gigabit-Ethernet style speeds and 802.11ad blazing up to a theoretical maximum speed of seven gigabits per second. 802.11b, by contrast, can only manage 11 megabits per second.

Of course, it’s not just Wi-Fi that is connecting our stereos, lights, cars, and smartphones. It’s also the full spectrum of communication technologies such as Bluetooth, UWB, NFC, and Zigbee. In fact, despite the fact that Wi-Fi is pervasive and powerful, it may be one of the least popular wireless communication protocols, as ABI is also predicting that in 2013 all of these technologies (combined with Wi-Fi) will result in more than five billion shipments of wireless connectivity chips in 2013 alone.

Which means that our devices will be smart and connected, even if we’re frying each other with all those radio waves.

photo credit: Palagret via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Over five billion wireless connectivity chips will ship in 2013, according to ABI Research, as our appetite for everything mobile continues to grow. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are both growing, of course, but so are lesser-known specs such as Zigbee, UWB, and, yes, even NFC.

Most of those five billion chips won’t be in phones, as tablets, sensors, cameras, lightbulbs, refrigerators, and more increasingly get connected to the Internet.

I talked to Peter Cooney, a wireless analyst with ABI, just before the the research company’s London offices closed for the Christmas long weekend.

“While the base market is primarily things that we know like smartphones and tablets, the growth is for the internet of things … those devices are growing very quickly,” Cooney said.

Of course, a lot of chips are being made for and shipped in more standard devices, Cooney added: smartphones, tablets, laptops, and netbooks. Even old-school feature phones are incorporating Bluetooth in addition to the standard cellular connectivity radios.

And one technology that we’re not seeing much of this side of the Atlantic is poised for a breakout: NFC. In fact, it’s more than poised, according to Cooney.

“NFC has gone from two million devices in 2010 to 100 million in 2012,” he said. “Android is really driving that growth, but NFC is coming of age … and integration into smartphones is driving growth in other areas.”

In fact, many “other” areas — as in not phones, not tablets, not laptops — are also getting a lot of wireless innovation.

“Really, any kind of consumer device is getting wireless chips,” Cooney told me this morning.

That’s something we’ve seen a lot of this year: sensors and connected switches for windows and doors, lights, heating, and more. SmartThings wants to help you control the real world, as does ReelyActive. And while NFC has been the next great thing for some time, we’re seeing a ton of innovation in the home automation space using multiple wireless protocols.

One of the big trends ABI is seeing is integration — like what Apple did in the iPhone 5 by marrying the LTE and global 4G chips into one.

“They’re essentially integrating to reduce cost and size,” Cooley said. Broadcom, one of the leading suppliers in the “combo IC” (integrated chip) market, will continue to dominate, ABI said.

Even old-fashioned technologies are showing new tricks: Bluetooth smart is coming out, and faster Wi-fi (WiGig) is on the horizon. It all ads up to a lot of wireless devices.

“In 2013 cumulative shipments of Bluetooth-enabled devices will surpass 10 billion and Wi-Fi enabled devices will surpass 10 billion cumulative shipments in 2015,” Cooney said in a statement.

The internet of things, indeed.

photo credit: Gramophone Maryland via photopin cc, BrickArt!san via photopin cc

But there’s a dirty little secret that mobile commerce has been keeping. It’s slow — deadly slow.

Site monitoring and testing company Keynote tracks the speed and reliability of top U.S. e-commerce sites, and over the weekend things slowed down dramatically. Especially today, on Cyber Monday.

“The average page load time for a mobile retail site … on Cyber Monday is now slower than 18 seconds, or roughly twice as slow as normal,” Aaron Rudger, a mobile manager at Keynote, said in a statement.

Source: Keynote

Fastest mobile sites

That’s almost nine times slower than the average time on top e-commerce companies’ desktop sites: 2.27 seconds. And it’s an eternity while you’re standing there staring at your tiny screen. It’s something I’ve noticed personally even when it’s not Black Friday or Cyber Monday, and even when using fast LTE networks with an iPhone 5 or a Google/Samsung Nexus.

But there’s mobile, and there’s mobile.

Of that 16.3 percent of Black Friday commerce that came in over mobile, the lion’s share — 10 of those 16 percentage points — were purchases made on iPads. Only about a quarter of iPads are sold with cellular connectivity — most are Wi-Fi models. And only a very small fraction, about six percent, of iPad browsing sessions come over cellular networks.

All of which means that iPad numbers are very different from what we typically imagine when we think of “mobile commerce.” iPad-facilitated traffic and sales data gets lumped in with smartphones under the big tent of “mobile,” but the tablet experience of a large screen, beefy processor, and fast local Wi-Fi is very different from a tiny screen, over sometimes-jammed cellular networks, and a generally slower processor.

What that means is: mobile shopping on a phone isn’t exactly the best — or speediest — experience.

“This is quite detrimental and will certainly impact a customer’s experience negatively and can easily motivate a shopper to abandon a site altogether or go to a competitor’s mobile shopping site,” Rudger said.

The solution, according to Keynote, is better sites and better testing, especially testing under load.

Source: Keynote

Slowest mobile sites

photo credit: Michael W. May via photopin cc

“The acquisition of Meraki enables Cisco to make simple, secure, cloud managed networks available to our global customer base of mid-sized businesses and enterprises,” said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of the Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. “These companies have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT solutions.”

Meraki was founded by participants in MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science in 2006 and has raised $60 million in venture capital, with Sequoia Capital as the primary investor. It is based in San Francisco. With this acquisition, Meraki will form Cisco’s new Cloud Networking Group.

Read the FAQ and letter to employees from CEO Sanjit Biswas.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Wireless networking chips are a mature market, dominated by companies like Broadcom and Qualcomm. But Israeli startup Celeno Communications has raised $24 million to start the war for wireless networking chips anew.

Celeno believes it has a wedge into the market because it can offer faster WiFi and consumers are downloading more and more video for multiple screens in their homes using wireless networks. The funding suggests that the company is making good progress toward that goal, the company said. Celeno’s technology promises to double the rate of data flow in a wireless network and increase its range ten-fold compared to standard WiFi networks. That’s important because just about every consumer is sick and tired of lousy wireless Internet access.

Ra’anana, Israel-based Celeno makes high-performance WiFi chips and software for high-definition multimedia and data networking applications. In a fifth round of funding, the company has tapped investors including Cisco, Liberty Global, Greylock Partners, and Pitango Venture Capital. To date, it has raised $68 million, making it one of the rare VC-backed semiconductor companies and one of the biggest bets on wireless networking technology.

Celeno’s chips are already in use at 75 service providers around the world, including Deutsche Telekom, Liberty Global, UPC, Bouygues Telecom, and China Telecom. The company says it can provide “zero packet loss,” which means there will be no annoying artifacts, jerky motion, or snow in a video transferred over a network with Celeno’s chips.

“The new funding comes at an exciting time in our industry as we move toward 802.11ac, the standard set to drive faster WiFi in the home,” said Gilad Rozen, CEO of Celeno. “Celeno, with its superior video-grade WiFi OptimizAir technology, is ideally positioned to capitalize on the increasing requirement by carriers seeking to offer consumers the high-quality video experience they demand on multiple screens throughout the home.”

Celeno’s OptimizAir technology optimizes wireless signals so that it can stream eight 1080p HD video streams over standard WiFi networks, including 802.11a, 802.11n, and 802.11ac protocols. It uses advanced mathematical techniques such as channel-aware scheduling, rate selection, antenna selection and power adaptation for reliable throughput, extended range, and low packet error rate. That basically means it uses known techniques to efficiently manipulate wireless signals to eliminate noise and improve the flow of data. It has smarter antennae and the ability to switch channels to get around interference.

It works with a variety of networking hubs and routers and enables one device to distribute video throughout the home wirelessly to set-top boxes, tablet computers, wireless TVs, digital video recorders, media streamers, laptops, and other devices.

Celeno was founded in 2005 and has 70 employees. Rozen has a lot of experience in digital communications technology and was previously senior vice president at Actelis Networks. He’s also a veteran of the elite research and development unit of the Israeli Defense Forces.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

In-flight WiFi can bog down with lots of bored travelers sharing it. But JetBlue announced today in a company email that its in-flight WiFi will be fast enough early next year to stream movies and TV shows to each airline passenger.

JetBlue said in a memo obtained by The Verge that it will launch high-speed wireless networking on its planes in the first quarter of 2013. Right now, JetBlue uses ViaSat for its WiFi networking. The airline says it will provide free in-flight connectivity until at least 30 planes have been equipped with the high-speed satellite-based WiFi. After a trial period, the service will remain free for email and browsing. But you’ll pay if you want to stream Netflix shows or other movies (like Dark Shadows, pictured above) during the flights. JetBlue expects to deploy the first satellites in a partnership with LiveTV and ViaSat.

The memo said that JetBlue considers free in-flight connectivity to be a competitive advantage over other airlines, particularly those that offer slow service. Only a small percentage of current passengers are satisfied with in-flight WiFi today, the memo said, based on a survey by FlightView. JetBlue promises the ability to load 10 web pages in 1 minute and 18 seconds, compared to 8 minutes and 42 seconds for a rival. JetBlue launched a Ka-band satellite in October with the latest technology.

JetBlue first offered BetaBlue connectivity in 2007, but JetBlue acknowledged that it wasn’t easy to endure in terms of service quality.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

In late 1958, John C. Koss created the first portable music system, the Koss 390 phonograph player.

Bulky and heavy by today’s standards, it was compact for a time in which stereo systems were more like furniture. But when Koss showed the player at an audio exposition, audiophiles virtually ignored it, gravitating instead to the true innovation: the world’s first-ever stereo headphones Koss paired with it for demonstration purposes.

Fast forward 60 years.

In 2010, the Koss company found an old battered 390, literally at a garage sale. The company bought it and restored it. Then earlier this year, John’s son Michael, now chief executive of Koss, connected his father’s first invention to one of his own: the first Wi-Fi-powered internet-addressable headphones available on the market.

He then put a record — one of this father’s favorites, Sinatra’s Fly Me to The Moon — on the turntable, and listened to it in the highest possible MP3 quality, wirelessly. The first true over-the air internet headphones were born.

Fly me to the moon

John Koss started the Koss Corporation with a $200 wedding gift that he diverted — with his wife’s permission — to buy 20 broken-down TV sets to refurbish and rent.

But it was only in 1958, when he paired the first stereo headphones with his “portable” music system, that he introduced the world to personal music … sparking a revolution that lives on in the ghetto blaster of the 80s, the Walkman of the 90s, and the iPod of the 2000s.

“Now, we want to deliver that same experience via the web, wirelessly, directly addressable to any individual wearing this device,” says Michael Koss.

Personal music, without wires

The new product is Striva Pro. Koss sent me a pair of the $450 over-the-ear headphones to test — and they’ll be hard to let go after this review is written.

The goal was simple: freedom from wires. All wires.

“We’d been doing a ton of research on headphones, and the one thing that came out was a consistent complaint about wires,” Koss said. “While we’ve had wireless solutions since the 70s … infrared … radio … BlueTooth … we wanted to make something that works over Wi-Fi.”

Wi-Fi has become so ubiquitous that the company would be able to ride existing wireless infrastructure practically everywhere. That realization gave Koss an idea.

“When we did that, we realized we could run it in an infrastructure mode, and anywhere those headphones could connect to the internet … they could receive the same data from our transmitter.”

That’s the key innovation behind the Striva Pro.

It means that I can put on the Koss Strivas in my home, connect to my home Wi-Fi, and enjoy any stream of music available on the internet, wire-free. And I can take the Strivas to Starbucks, my office, the gym, or any other location on planet earth with open Wi-Fi and do exactly the same.

The Strivas have a battery, Wi-Fi chip the size of pencil eraser, and a tiny microprocessor all onboard. Everything is self-contained, wireless, and simple.

Rock it old-school and new-school

Or, of course, you can also just attach the Strivas to my iPhone and play music right from there, just like ordinary headphones.

But what if you want to be wireless even when Wi-Fi is not available? Koss has you covered with the ability to stream wirelessly to the Strivas from non-internet sources.

Source: Koss

The CAP, or content access point. About the size of a book of matches.

Along with the Striva headphones, Koss includes a content access point, or CAP. Tiny, the size of a book of matches, the CAP  plugs into any headphone jack. Attach your CAP to your iPhone with the included cable, and you’ve just set up a Wi-Fi transmitter. You could conceivably leave your MP3 player in your gym bag, and go work out wirelessly without the need for a publicly available Wi-Fi access point.

“Our chief financial officer puts his phone in his locker and listens to the music in the gym … up to 300 feet away,” says Koss. “We’ve had it up to 500 feet.”

Or you can simply plug the CAP into your computer and stream wirelessly from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or any other app playing sound on your PC.

Frankly, it’s a game-changer: music from the cloud — or your hard drive — straight to your headphones. It’s all of your music plus the infinite variety of the internet, all available without cables.

How does it work?

Koss didn’t spare much with the Striva. In the box you get no fewer than nine components: the headphones themselves, one charger for both the headphones and the CAP, the CAP itself, and a variety of wires of varying sizes for every possible need. Plus, you get a very nice case.

Source: Koss

Selecting the streams and channels you like …

Once out of the box, you pull out the headphones, plug the CAP into your phone, and go to MyKoss.com.

There you walk through a process of syncing the headphones to the CAP and setting up your music preferences, which involves choosing various channels and streams from internet-based radio stations. Channels are groups of similar stations; streams are individual stations.

None of the music originates with Koss: MyKoss.com simply is the handshake that connects your ears with the internet radio stations you’ve selected.

Once you’ve set up your preferences and synced your CAP and headphones, music from whatever channels you’ve selected will flow automatically to your Strivas. It’s not difficult, but it’s not as easy as it could be either (don’t expect granny to do it herself).

Using the Strivas takes a little bit of instruction, something you might not have had to undergo for any other pair of headphones before, due to Koss’ Apple-ification of the user interface: as few buttons as possible. In fact, there are just two controls: a joystick-like uni-button (my term) on your left ear, and a volume control strip.

Source: John Koetsier

Everything but the kitchen sink …

Turn the Striva on by pressing the joystick — a short press to go into Wi-Fi mode, a long press to look for a broadcasting CAP. Swipe it back for the next stream, forward for the previous stream, push up to “approve a song” … or hold back for the next channel, hold forward for the previous channel … you get the picture.

After a while it’s second nature, but you will be checking the (very good) visual manual more than once.

Volume is a bit of a tricky beast: A long control strip curving up the side of the left headphone. It senses your finger and adjusts the volume up or down as you swipe.

Well, that’s the theory.

In practice, volume control is a little hit and miss, and you’ll find yourself adjusting up and down multiple times to get exactly what you want. I tried different methods: full finger, fingernail, fingertip. Ultimately, a full finger press moving at medium speed seemed to work best. There’s a definite cool factor, and fewer moving parts mean great reliability, but the control strip is exactly optimal right now.

What about the sound?

And audio quality? I asked Michael Koss about that.

“Like everything else, it’s garbage in, garbage out. We’re dealing right now in a society that’s very used to compressed sound … it boggles my mind that I can walk through an airport see teens sharing ear buds, but people have gotten used to that level.”

In practice, I found the headphones to offer excellent sound — depending, as Koss said, on the audio source. Where available, the entire Striva system scales to the quality of 320 kbps MP3 files. That’s better quality than typical music downloaded from iTunes, which is 256 kbps AAC (a different audio codec from MP3).

“We’re quite comfortable with the product we’re releasing. It’s getting the best throughput you can with that technology,” Koss says. “But if the source material is lousy  … we can’t do anything about that.”

Would I buy them?

$450 is not a cheap pair of headphones. And the earbud versions, which are coming in a few months, are $500 … the cost of extreme miniaturization.

There’s also room to improve. The volume control can be made more reliable, and MyKoss could be made into a platform that, perhaps, tweets songs that you say you like.

But having all the music on the internet in your head is compelling. And the music you love, wherever you go, without wires … I’ve fallen in love.

Perhaps it’s sort of like the Retina Display iPad or MacBook Pro. Once you’ve used it, you can’t go back (but if you’ve never experienced them, it’s hard to tell what you’re missing). Having experienced my music wirelessly anywhere I wanted it, it’ll be hard to go back to cords.

And Koss hasn’t skimped on any components with the Striva: all the connectors and wires you need are right in the box.

So would I buy them? I’d have to say yes.

As Michael Koss says, “It’s an IP addressable end point that you stick in your ear.” Welcome to the future.

photo credit: S. Randall Saffen via photo pin cc, flyzipper via photo pin cc

With the cost of living in New York City constantly increasing, New Yorkers have come to appreciate anything that’s free. And Wi-Fi provider Boingo‘s latest deal has it working with Google Offers to bring free Wi-Fi to New York City’s subway riders.

Boingo offers the free service in six subway stations from June 25 to September 7. The selected platforms are limited to a group of stations along 14th and West 23rd streets in Manhattan.

The free service also extends to the more than 200 above-ground Boingo hotspots in New York City.

For Google Offers, this means that smartphone users can search for local deals while on subway platforms, and for Boingo, it means plenty of exposure.

But Boingo has a much larger stake in this. After all, it’s teaming up with Transit Wireless to bring Wi-Fi to 36 subway stations by the end of the year. By 2017, Boingo says it intends to bring service to over 270 stations, which means that not even subway tunnels will be a viable escape path for technology-weary New Yorkers.

Here’s the full list of free Wi-Fi-equipped stations:

• A, C, E station at Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street
• L station at Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street
• C, E station at Eighth Avenue and West 23rd Street
• 1, 2, 3 station at Seventh Avenue and West 14th Street
• F, M station at Sixth Avenue and West 14th Street
• L station at Sixth Avenue and West 14th Street

Photo: Flickr: Paul Lowry

I was at San Francisco airport last Friday waiting for a six-hour flight to New York when the gate agent announced that the aircraft we were scheduled to board was having trouble with WiFi. People around the gate were incredulous. As it turned out, our aircraft had other problems, so they swapped airplanes. When we were boarding, another passenger inquired about the status of WiFi on our new plane. (It worked.)

A lack of in-flight internet access may have played a part in prolonging the mixups during Facebook’s IPO. Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld boarded a United jet from San Francisco to Newark airport shortly after trading began and before the full extent of the problems were known. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Flying at 37,000 feet, Mr. Greifeld was cut off from these stages of the mess. He had an armrest phone, but it didn’t work, he says, adding there was no Internet access on the flight.

If he had been flying United or Virgin America to JFK instead of Newark, he would have had WiFi and could have stayed in touch with the market and the SEC.

(Despite many people’s perception that in-flight WiFi is delivered by satellite, most of the aircraft offering WiFi in the United States use ground-based stations. The reason the phone in Greifeld’s armrest didn’t work was that spectrum was reallocated to Gogo for providing WiFi.)

San Francisco-based Virgin America was the first airline to offer WiFi on every flight, beginning in May 2009.

“Overall, usage is about 16%, but it varies widely across routes (with short hauls and red eyes seeing much lower numbers for example,” said Virgin America spokeswoman Abby Lunardini. “The average uptake across all of our SFO-JFK and SFO-BOS flights (this includes red-eyes!) is now 26%. We believe that the availability of power outlets, our Silicon Valley flyer base, and our other tech-forward features have made our WiFi usage higher than what may be expected.”

Gogo is the leading provider of in-flight WiFi in the U.S., serving Air Canada, AirTran, Alaska, American, Delta, Frontier, US Airways, and Virgin. Southwest has WiFi but uses Row44 as its provider. Very few United aircraft have WiFi. Ironically, JetBlue, which was among the first to experiment with in-flight internet on a plane nicknamed BetaBlue is a laggard when it comes to WiFi. Gogo has filed for an IPO and is in its SEC-mandated quiet period. A spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The odds of having WiFi on a given plane are highest on Virgin America and AirTran (100%, unless something is wrong) and Alaska. Delta has equipped 100% of its mainline U.S. fleet. You’re virtually guaranteed to be out of touch on United and JetBlue. Because of the location of ground stations, WiFi is available over the 48 contiguous United States and border zones in Canada and Mexico.

There’s a productivity component to WiFi. When I was working on one flight, someone responded on Twitter that $18 was a lot for a single flight’s worth of WiFi. But when you divide that by 6 hours, $3 an hour for increased productivity is a bargain.

“There was a time when American Airlines catered to tech-savvy business travelers, as one of the first to offer fleet-wide seat power,” said Swipely CEO Angus Davis. “But recently I was in for a rude surprise when I found a BOS-MIA American flight lacking in-flight Gogo WiFi. Virgin America has raised the bar, and after flying them so often, I just took it for granted that the AA flight would offer WiFi. I was wrong, and it cost me three hours of lost productivity. Next time I’ll double check before booking on AA.”

I would even pay a higher airfare for flights with WiFi than a flight without. In case you’re wondering, this story was written and filed aboard a Virgin flight from JFK to SFO. A speed test on my flight showed 0.32 Mbps downstream and 0.18 Mbps upstream.

United, which doesn’t have WiFi on most of its aircraft, was forced to respond to Virgin’s introduction of WiFi on the lucrative SFO-JFK and LAX-JFK routes. United planes on those routes now have WiFi. Although United used Gogo for those routes, it’s planning on using satellite-based WiFi for the rest of its fleet.

A quick survey I did of my tech-savvy Twitter follower base found that out of 34 respondents, 13 said that availability of WiFi would influence their choice of airline “a lot.” Six more said they “will always fly WiFi equipped planes when available, regardless of cost.” Although they are hardly representative of the general public, many of them are the type of high-value customers airlines covet.

As people have become accustomed to in-flight WiFi, they have also become accustomed to griping about it. Complaints about in-flight WiFi are common on Twitter.

“Latency, poor connectivity and bandwidth often lead to frustration,” wrote one respondent to my survey.

But that may be changing with this summer’s introduction of ATG4 on Virgin America.

“Gogo has estimated on average four times faster speeds than currently available,” Lunardini said.

(For the record, my experience has been that Gogo works better in the air than AT&T’s 4G LTE cellular network does at SFO.)

One respondent wrote, “It’s neat, but I’m also often more productive without the distractions of the Internet. (Possibly relevant: I’m over 40.)”

Although some travelers may consider WiFi indispensable, Virgin doesn’t — at least for now. Lunardini said the airline wouldn’t hold a flight solely to fix a WiFi problem.

It may want to reconsider: According to my survey, 20 out of 34 people would rather wait one hour to have WiFi fixed than fly six hours without it.

[Top image credit:  robert paul van beets/Shutterstock]

Intel just made a million nerds swoon with the announcement that it would be giving the gift of free, universal WiFi to new ultrabooks and tablets.

The chip maker, which powers a huge range of devices from multiple manufacturers, is partnering with WiFi-focused software company Devicescape. That company’s software will integrate with Intel’s Smart Connect technology to keep those super-skinny computers and shiny tablets online, all the time, automatically.

Devicescape confirmed the news on its website and told reporters that Intel would be using its connection manager software to link laptops and tablets to millions of open global hotspots. The connections will happen automatically, and devices will be able to detect and automatically get onto WiFi networks even while in sleep mode.

Devicescape’s network includes more than 8 million open, quality-controlled WiFi access points. They call it a “curated virtual network,” and it’s constantly being updated by a crowdsourced army of mobile devices that run Devicescape in the background.

To date, the software is being used mostly for mobile devices, which allows carriers and users to switch to open WiFi networks when cellular networks are congested.

Here’s a video showing Devicescape execs explaining how their tech works. You should watch it; the CEO has a hypnotic Scottish accent.

“Smartphones have changed end-user expectations around their device experience, and elements of the mobile experience will naturally make their way into personal computers and tablets,” said the company’s CEO, said David Fraser, in a release today.

“These devices shouldn’t be offline but should be capable of reaching a network automatically to allow for syncing information and notifications. Intel-based devices will now be able to use our global WiFi Offload Network to do exactly that.”

Top image courtesy of Realinemedia, Shutterstock

It’s rarely a good thing when the country’s biggest cable providers partner up, but subscribers might be okay with today’s news.

Customers of Bright House, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner will soon be able to connect to each other’s Wi-Fi networks. The combined network, named “CableWifi” will vastly expand each company’s hotspot offerings under a larger, cross-compatible umbrella.

Connecting to CableWiFi will work via a single set of credentials that can be used across all of the partnership’s 50,000 hotspots in New York City, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando, and Philadelphia.

The offer, however, isn’t entirely new. Independently, cable companies have been offering similar deals for their customers for some time. And they’re not new to working together, either: The current partnership is an expansion of a previous one between Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner that appeared in 2010.

Instead, the news here is that the five companies, all of which have very significant user bases, are working to counter a greater threat: Wireless providers like Verizon and AT&T which threaten to steal away all of the cable companies’ customers’ mobile Internet time.

To counter that, companies like Time Warner have had to make their mobile Wi-Fi offerings more compelling — making their wireless networks as large as possible is one of the best ways to do that.

But the companies still have a while to go. While 50,000 hot spots is significant, the cable companies’ offerings pale in comparison to those of metro Wi-Fi providers like Boingo, which offers over 500,000 W-iFi hotspots.

Via CNet; Image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple has changed the name of the latest generation of its cellular-connecting iPad in some countries, calling it simply “iPad WiFi + Cellular,” after a wave of complaints from people claiming that Apple’s previous branding was wrong and misleading.

The change was first reported by 9to5Mac. See image below.

Until the change, Apple was using the name “iPad WiFi + 4G,” implying that its newest iPads used fast 4G, or LTE-grade networks. However, in many countries where the newest iPad was being sold, including in Australia and the UK, there were no carriers that actually offered such quality networks. Some consumers felt misled. Australia actually sued Apple. While Apple had previously discontinued its marketing campaigns around 4G in those countries, this is the first time it is actually changing the name of the iPad itself. Apple made the change because of continued confusion in places like the UK.

Notably, Apple even changed the name in the U.S. and Canada, the two countries where 4G LTE is offered by at least five carriers. It also changed the name on its Web sites in UAE, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, New Zealand, Ireland, Hong Kong and Malaysia. However, apparently it hasn’t changed the name in all countries yet — though that’s probably because the change was decided on just a couple of days ago and it probably takes a while for sites to make the change.

Top image is from Apple’s site today; bottom image from May 9th

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Underground Wi-Fi service is finally coming to New York City subway stations.

Transit Wireless has a signed a deal with Wi-Fi provider Boingo to wire New York City’s underground subway stations with Wi-Fi access. Service will roll out gradually over the next five years to stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens.

Boingo’s mobile plan runs for $7.95 a month, and the company already offers 500,000 hotspots worldwide, which will make this a pretty good deal for Boingo customers already living New York City.

As far as non-Boingo riders go, the company will  provide roaming service to subscribers of Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Specific details on the consumer end are scant so far, though Boingo is promising more details as time goes on.

“Our announcement this morning was very much focused on the alignment between Boingo and Transit Wireless,” Boingo corporate communications manager Katie O’Neill told VentureBeat.  “The customer experience side is in development, and will have more to announce later as the plans evolve.”

Transit Wireless’s deal with Boingo is a part of a larger ongoing effort to wire New York’s 277 underground subway stations with cell phone service. The first six stations went live last September, and Transit Wireless expects another 30 to be live by the end of this year.

While one of the major rationales behind the project is to allow subway riders to make emergency 911 calls underground, it’s hard to avoid feeling as if increasing Wi-Fi and network penetration would only serve to increase crimes. Theft on New York City trains is a big issue, after all – and one that has only gotten more significant as more riders have taken to using their phones and tablets while riding.

Photo via Flickr user http2007

The next evolution of the Internet or so-called “3.0” is supposed to be semantic, smart if you will. Smart, automated social tools were all hyped to go viral at this year’s SXSW conference several days ago. These tools promise to turn us, via our smartphones, into all knowing masters of our environment, prompting us to meet new friends at IRL serendipitous moments. But, instead, the big story turned out to be the short lifespan of these apps. All of these Location Based Services (LBS) apps focus on hooking into your friends on Facebook, Linked-In, and Twitter and alerting you when “real” friends entered your “geo bubble” of life. They also suggest new friends or friends of friends that you should meet.

The technology worked – I was alerted to many people that I should meet who “liked” the same stuff on Facebook; but that turned out to be boring, as our common interests turned out to be only fan pages for TV shows or bands. I was also alerted that friends were nearby. Alas, friends that I wanted to see I had already texted or rendezvoused with.

In fact, these apps didn’t fly with the social early adopters at the show for an important reason: They caused smartphone batteries to die, leaving attendees at a social conference without the ability to be digitally social. No tweets, texts, photos, or profile updates get pushed when your iPhone goes dark. The problem at hand with LBS apps is that they require the GPS radio to run nearly full-time, have a clear view of the sky to get a signal, and report back to a server their location.

When you’re using your smartphone for navigation, your windshield and roof barely block the signal, and typically your cigarette lighter adapter keeps the juices flowing during this peak power usage. When your phone is in your pocket or purse, your body acts as a Faraday cage, blocking GPS signals from reaching it as it struggles to get a position.

I like to say that GPS stops at the door. (Full disclosure: I run a company that’s betting WiFi and Bluetooth will steal the market from GPS for location-based apps.) Companies like Google are taking rolling carts with sophisticated WiFi measuring gear through airports and malls, using the retailers’ access points to physically map them into a virtualized GPS. This enables the Android Maps application to move the blue dot to about the same spot in which you stand. This results with WiFi working much like the GPS satellite system does to the Maps application on your smartphone when you’re outside.

But life is more than your virtual representation as a blue dot. Inside, maps are boring. I can find the bathroom with signs, and the registration desk via arrows. Instead, think of the potential for radio waves as triggers for actions to occur in your phone, or in the cloud – making intelligent decisions automatically while your phone sits in your pocket.  And unlike GPS, which requires a clear view of the sky, Bluetooth and WiFi radios inside your phone work inside the confines of your walls and halls.

Your smartphone has WiFi, which normally requires you to connect to an access point, and Bluetooth which requires pairing to another device to communicate. Using these same radios without the need for connecting, when you walk into a specific space, your dating app could alert you to a suitable match (after you enable ice-breaking in-room digital serendipity), or your social networking or business app could let you know when a friend or to-be customer is within eyesight. Maybe your mobile phone calls could get routed to a landline for drop-free calling. All without compromising your smartphone battery. Now that is true social and smart innovation.

Dave Mathews is a inventor and founder of NeuAer, an open proximity platform that enable apps to become smart via low-power radio waves already found on devices in your environment.

[SXSW image credit:  Kevin Krejci/Flickr]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Eye-Fi, a company that produces wireless-transmitting memory cards for cameras and tablets, announced today it has raised $20 million in its fourth round of funding.

The company makes SD memory cards that can transmit photos and other stored data wirelessly between cameras, tablets, and computers. The card uses Wi-Fi to share pictures without needing to take a memory card out of one device and plug it into another. Eye-Fi cards are especially helpful when you want to share pictures you took with your digital camera on-the-go with a smartphone. You can transfer the file to your phone and then upload it to all social networks you belong to.

Eye-Fi was the first on the scene, but other companies have followed suit. Toshiba’s FlashAir card will be available this year and Panasonic is developing a similar WiGig supported SD card, which will transit files at gigabit speed over short distances.

The company also announced a partnership with Japanese mobile operator NTT Docomo, which also served as the lead investor in this fundraising. The partnerships includes plans to integrate Eye-Fi technology with the carrier’s personal cloud system. NTT Docomo customers will be able to send photos they take to their phones and share them with social networks.

Eye-Fi is using the funding to add Michele Don Durbin, a former Skype and eBay exec, to the team as vice president of marketing.

Eye-Fi was founded in 2005 and is based in Mountain View California. The company has been funded by Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures and TransLink Capital and has raised more than $40 million.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Qualcomm Atheros expects that the next-generation of WiFi wireless networking will roll out in a smoother manner than past industry transitions and with less confusion for consumers.

The new 802.11ac wireless technology,  dubbed 5G WiFi by rival Broadcom, promises blazing fast internet access that is several times faster than today’s existing network speeds for 802.11n chips.

Rob Chandhok, Qualcomm president of internet services and senior vice president, said in an interview that the 802.11ac technology will likely see a simultaneous rollout for both access point chips as well as end-use devices. The first wireless networking 802.11ac chip sets are expected to debut late this year or early next year, depending on when the engineering standard is finalized by an industry consortium. This time, there has been less squabbling around the standard among industry players, Chandhok said.

“The adoption is going to be much faster once it’s ready,” Chandhok said. “We’re going to drive this into the market.”

In the past, companies have fought over the standards and they have also rolled out access point chips first before getting device-side chips out into the market.

In advance of next week’s Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Qualcomm Atheros, a division of Qualcomm in San Diego, Calif., is launching its ecosystem support around 802.11ac technology. The company believes its 802.11ac chips will be used for home and office networking, smartphones, tablets, PCs, laptops, televisions, home routers, gateways and enterprise access points.

802.11ac is the next generation of WiFi that operates in the same 5 gigahertz band of the radio spectrum as its predecessors, 802.11a and n. (802.11b operated in the 2.4 gigahertz band, but 802.11ac is compatible with all past versions of WiFi).

The technology is faster because it uses a wider channel for delivering data, at 80 megahertz instead of 40. It uses 256-QAM, a modulation scheme that is four times more efficient than the prior 64-QAM scheme. And it taps multiple antennae using the MIMO spatial stream technology, using twice as many streams as were available before.

With the faster technology, users can sling video from a central hub to a screen in a distant bedroom. They can synch a lot of music or video files wirelessly, and surf the internet without killing the battery life of the device they’re using. The full transition to WiFi chips with 1.3 gigabit-per-second speeds will likely take place within the next two years.

Qualcomm has already created one chip, the WCN3680, that will be able to combine 802.11ac technology with standard WiFi, Bluetooth and FM radios on a single chip as a companion to Qualcomm’s 28-nanometer Snapdragon processors. The device will likely have firmware upgrades that capture the final engineering standard and make sure the device is compliant, Chandhok said. A bunch of other chips will be ready for different applications. Qualcomm Atheros will sample its 802.11ac chips in the second quarter. But consumers won’t see them in devices until late this year or early next year.

The devices use 4G LTE mobile networking to connect to the internet from any location and essentially allow you to add huge amounts of storage to your mobile device. Using the wireless connectivity, you can use your smartphone or iPad to view more than 300 high-definition movies stored on a Seagate mobile wireless storage device. You could store the whole catalog of James Bond movies in HD and have each movie ready to play at your fingertips.

Seagate and Verizon are demonstrating the new technology at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas.

The 4G LTE-connected storage will use the network to connect up to three WiFi-enabled devices to the internet at the same time. The two companies have been working on the technology for about two years and created a multi-party collaboration last year that also includes Novatel Wireless and Skycross. The timing for Seagate’s product hasn’t been determined yet.

“This is an example of innovation in storage,” said Scott Horn, vice president of global marketing for Seagate, in an interview. “It opens up new possibilities for getting your content when you are on the go.”

Consider, for instance, entertaining your kids by letting them watch a movie from a huge collection while they’re sitting in the backseat of a moving car. Each of the kids could be watching a different movie at the same time. The device will be portable, using rechargeable batteries with up to five hours of battery life. It can have WiFi connectivity.

Seagate is also showcasing other storage solutions as well at CES. They include the GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage, first introduced in May 2011. The drive is a WiFi-enabled storage device that can stream media to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Seagate is unveiling new features that improve the device.

The storage company is also unveiling its GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter (pictured right, $99) and the GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt adapter ($199), both of which will let users transfer data at high speeds using Intel’s Thunderbolt technology. The GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter will be available in the first quarter, and the desk version will be ready in the second half of the year. Seagate will also show some GoFlex Slim hard drives with more storage, 500 gigabytes instead of the previous 320, for the Mac.

For more gadget news, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.

The New York City Parks Department started adding free Wi-Fi, courtesy of AT&T, to the parks-and-recreation experience over the summer. Now, park visitors are making more than 4,000 connections per day for a grand total of 750,000 free W-Fi connections at parks since June.

Of course, our thirst for the web will never be quenched, so New Yorkers and tourists can revel in the fact that the parks department added free Wi-Fi at four additional locations today: Mineral Springs and Tavern on the Green in Central Park, Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park and Devoe Park in the Bronx.

The new locations add to the growing list of New York City parks now offering the mobile and Internet-obsessed a reprieve from the great outdoors.

Other parks with free Wi-Fi include Astoria Park in Queens, Herbert Von King Park and McCarren Park Field House in Brooklyn, Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan and Clove Lakes Park in Staten Island, Battery Park, Rumsey Playfield, areas of Thomas Jefferson Park in East Harlem and Joyce Kilmer Park in the Bronx.

The Wi-Fi rollout is all part of an on-going five-year plan, backed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City of New York, to wire-up 26 different public park locations spanning all five boroughs.

[Image via mfakheri/Flickr]

Unlike both smartphones and Sony’s upcoming Vita handheld gaming competitor, the Nintendo 3DS can’t connect to the internet through a cellular network, which limits the ability to download games/updates and online play to locations with a reliable wireless hotspot.

As part of the new partnership, travelers at Chicago’s O’Hare, New York’s JFK, and Houston’s George Bush airports (among others) will now have free access to Boingo hotspots — thus allowing you to use your 3DS to surf the web and stream Netflix movies. Boingo hotspots will also grant users access to the Nintendo Zone, which has promotional offers, retail coupons, game previews, trivia and downloadable 3D videos.

The Boingo deal expands a network of over 29,000 freely accessible hotspots for the Nintendo 3DS that already includes AT&T wireless hotspot locations, Westfield shopping centers and Best Buy stores.

“With the holiday season approaching, more leisure travelers and families with children will fill our airports and have access to our hotspots,” Boingo Senior VP of Strategy and Business Development Colby Goff said in a statement. “Our state-of-the-art networks will provide Nintendo 3DS users with seamless connectivity and fast, reliable service to help them make the most of their travel downtime.”

While the 3DS initially suffered from lower than expected sales, it’s now doing considerably better in the months following a drastic price cut (from $250 to $170). Nintendo is also quick to point out that the 3DS is on pace to exceed first year sales of the original DS, which has sold over 50 million units worldwide.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Education technology is a red-hot market, and both startups and investors are taking note.

Edmodo, a social network for education, stands poised to benefit tremendously from the great shifts taking place in educational delivery. The company announced today that it raised $15 million from  Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capital. Greylock partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Benchmark Capital general partner Matt Cohler also joined Edmodo’s board.

A typical student will spend 13 years in the classroom before graduating high school, and American taxpayers invested more than $536 billion on K-12 education during the 2005-2006 school year, according to the Department of Education.  At this rate, roughly $7 trillion dollars will be spent on a public primary education by the time today’s kindergarteners receive their high school diplomas in 2024. And that’s not accounting for inflation.

Edmodo is a free tool that allows teachers to create and maintain a private social network for their classroom. It’s available to students and teachers on PCs and any wireless device, such as a smartphone, or an iPod Touch. Edmodo can be used to share educational content, manage projects and assignments, handle notifications, conduct quizzes and create collaborative learning experiences that live long after the school day has ended. The company dubs the experience the “educational graph,” which closely tracks the Facebook’s “social graph.”

Edmodo was founded in September 2008 and has grown to more than 5 million users in the past year — a tenfold increase from just one year ago.

“This is a really exciting time in the education space, with more and more classrooms having access to the Internet,” Edmodo co-founder and chief executive officer Nic Borg told VentureBeat. ”We’re excited to be bringing cloud technologies to the classroom.” At a private event with Hoffman, Borg told a group of reporters that more schools were equipped with Wi-Fi in 2010 than in the previous five years combined.

Edmodo recently demonstrated the scale and flexibility of its educational technology, teaching students about polar bears through a live video stream. In collaboration with Polar Bears International, Edmodo sent five researchers to the tundra to host a series of three live, interactive webcasts that were viewed by students in 1,700 classrooms in 40 different countries, and 48 states in the U.S.

Edmodo will remain free for teachers and students to use, Borg stressed. Ultimately the company has its sights set beyond the classroom. The company wants to be the Salesforce for Edtech, Borg said, and move school districts’ legacy information technology to the cloud. Edmodo hopes to  save school districts money and eliminate the hassles of maintaining legacy IT by selling “premium services,” and replicating these information systems with a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) model.

Each year $40-$50 billion in K-12 education is spent on non-salary expenses, Borg says. Part of this goes to maintain computer systems to handle functions such as grading, attendance and other academic record-keeping. Typically IT procurement for schools is done at a district-wide level. But because millions of students are already using free Edmodo classroom software, the company has  injected itself into school districts from coast-to-coast, avoiding the need for lengthy approvals. How’s that for viral marketing?

Edmodo is based in San Mateo, CA, and currently has 35 employees. Hoffman is a previous investor in the company, and Edmodo has received previous funding from Union Square Ventures and Learn Capital.

This was StartX’s second demo day. Students and companies spend months preparing to present at the event. It’s a chance for them to get face time with some of Silicon Valley’s most well-known venture capital firms and angel investors — and a chance to pick up some funding for their companies.

“This is going to be one of the top three accelerators in the world,” said Charles River Ventures investor George Zachary, who was an investor in Twitter. “The most exciting things in the Bay Area are YC, StartX, AngelList and 500 startups — the list drops off after that.”

The program has received more than 1,000 applications and has accepted 24 total. Around one in every five people who have participated in StartX have been women. Two recipients of the Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 award that encourages college students to drop out and start companies, have also participated in StartX.

The team of each company doesn’t have to be composed entirely of students, but the founders that are students have to hold a majority equity stake in the company. So it is geared more toward student entrepreneurs and gives them a chance to try building their own company from scratch with some help.

Here’s a list of the companies that presented today and a brief description of what they do:

6dot Innovations: This company has created a portable braille embosser that can quickly create braille labels. The device has a few buttons that let blind individuals type out messages, mathematics, music and other types of information in braille on a line of tape. The company plans to make money off labeling tape and third-party software add-ons. 6dot Innovations expects to launch the main product in the fourth quarter this year.

Clear Ear: This company is trying to solve “the earwax” problem. The company is creating a device that automatically cleans out an ear canal. It’s designed to be safer and quicker than typical earwax cleaning procedures, which can lead to complications. There are three products that project light into the ear to make it easier to see where the earwax is in a person’s ear.

GameClosure: GameClosure is an application that lets developers quickly build online social games like Zynga’s FarmVille. It is basically an HTML 5 game development kit. The games work across both mobile devices and web browsers on regular computers. The company has already built one game — called Pop Star Defense — that works across most devices.

Juntos Finanzas: Juntos Finanzas is a text-messaging based system that tracks spending practices. Whenever a user leaves the supermarket, they can text a number with how much money they spent. At the end of the month, the user receives an email message or a physical letter that includes a story of how much money was spent over the month and what kind of spending habits the user has. It’s like online financial advisory app Mint.com, but for low-tech users who don’t have ready access to the web and smartphones.

Kitchit: Kitchit gives consumers direct access to chefs and tools to help them plan private events. It also gives chefs a way to find cooking gigs so they can focus on cooking rather than the logistical details of running a restaurant. You can think of Kitchit as a social catering network — for graduation parties, weddings and other events.

Leglytics: Leglytics is a legal document search engine designed for lawyers and legal researchers. It’s designed to be a simple search engine — like Google search – for legal documents instead of more complicated search engines like LexisNexis. The search results are visualized with an array of dots, with larger dots representing more important documents or legal cases. The company doesn’t actually host its own data — it’s basically an application programming interface (API) that ties in with other sites that carry all the data.

Qwhispr: Qwhispr is an application that aggregates data from social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. The app filters the information it gets from the social media sites — such as unimportant content like a happy birthday note. The app extracts important keywords and returns them to the person executing the search.

PredictiveEdge: PredictiveEdge has an app to help retailers determine an optimal price point for products. It determines price based on the price for other products that are somewhat similar or carry similar characteristics. The actual product will be a web application that’s sold as a subscription.

WiFiSLAM: WiFiSLAM is working on an indoor global positioning system that uses WiFi hotspots to figure out where an individual is within a building. Current GPS technology doesn’t typically work in buildings and can’t pinpoint an exact position. A phone scans for WiFi hotspots and checks the signal strength of all nearby routers. The application then determines a person’s position based on the signal strength of nearby WiFi routers. The app should be compatible with current smartphones. It uses as much battery power as a typical WiFi connection.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple’s iOS 4.3 update for the iPhone and iPad has officially landed, bringing with it new features like improved support for AirPlay media streaming, and WiFi hotspot capabilities that let you share your mobile internet connection with other devices.

Apple first unveiled the update last week with the launch of the iPad 2. It will support the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, later generation iPod Touchs, and both the iPad and iPad 2 (which will ship with the update, but won’t support WiFi hotspots). Strangely, Apple isn’t offering the update for the Verizon iPhone 4 yet, likely because that device is running a slightly updated version of iOS 4.2 that already includes the hotspot feature.

That the Verizon iPhone is left out of this update tells us that Apple may also have to deal with similar fragmentation issues that’s currently plaguing Android devices. Since there are so many different Android devices out there, Google can’t easily roll out updates to all of them, and developers have to be careful about implementing features that aren’t supported on certain devices. The Verizon iPhone will most likely get iOS 4.3 in a few weeks.

The hotspot will allow five devices to share your iPhone’s network connection, but only three devices will be able to do so over WiFi; the other two will have to make do with a USB or Bluetooth connection. As for AirPlay, the update will allow apps and websites to stream video to the Apple TV wirelessly from your iPhone and iPad, in addition to just streaming media.

Here are some other new features that will be included in iOS 4.3:

• A new version of the Safari Web browser that promises to run JavaScript at least twice as quickly as the previous version.
• iTunes Home Sharing, which allows you to share music, movies, and TV shows from iTunes on your computer onto any device.
• A new customizable feature for the switch on the side of the iPad — you can now use it to either lock the screen rotation or to mute the volume.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Wi-fi hotspot provider Boingo has filed to go public on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker “WIFI” and is looking to raise $75 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Boingo operates around 211,000 Wi-fi hotspots around the world — most of which are in Asia. In fact, only around 15 percent of its active hotspots are in the United States. The company has a number of recurring payment plans that charge anywhere from $8 a month (for mobile devices) to $60 a month (for any device at an international hotspot) to access the Internet.

The filing shows that companies feel like there’s a window for IPOs right now and that the good performance of the tech industry during the recovery may be enticing to investors.

The Southern California-based company sees around 10 percent of its subscribers end up quitting the service each year — though those are replaced by new subscriptions. The had 54,000 subscribers in 2007, but grew to about 140,000 subscribers at the end of 2009. The company had 191,000 subscribers through its most recent operating quarter, which ended in September. The company’s churn rate (the rate at which old subscribers are replaced by new ones) has dropped to around 9.6 percent this year.

But Boingo does seem to be at least a little vulnerable to the free Wi-fi stunts pulled by companies like Google over the holidays. One company — normally Google — typically signs up with a few airports and other locations to offer free Wi-fi access. Boingo may have had 140,000 subscribers at the end of 2009, but the company only added 7,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2009. It added 59,000 new subscribers in the first three-quarters before that. Boingo does list companies offering free Wi-fi as a significant risk for its future success.

Boingo hasn’t raised any money since it completed its third round of funding in 2006. It raised a whopping $65 million from New Enterprise Associates in August that year. But the company has quietly grown throughout the past several years, with its revenue up 16 percent from $56.7 million in 2008 to $65.7 million in 2009. The company brought in $20.2 million in its most recent operating quarter ending in September, up 23 percent from the same quarter in 2009.

The company is also on track to be profitable for the first year in the past several years — it hasn’t lost money since June in 2009. Despite the best attempts of companies offering free Wi-fi during the holiday season, Boingo made $1.5 million off $19.8 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009. Its income for the most recent operating quarter ending in September was also up 237 percent to $2.1 million, from $626,000 in the same quarter in 2009.

Boingo is also pitching its services to wireless providers like AT&T and Verizon as a way to reduce the load on their 3G and soon-to-be 4G wireless networks. The looming roll-out of faster wireless networks and phones that act as mobile hotspots poses an obvious threat to Boingo. But then again, that’s not a bad way to spin it seeing as one of the largest complaints is the load at events where a lot of people are accessing wireless networks all at once. Boingo indicated that it wants to expand its service to public events like sports events and conventions in the filing.

Investors seem to be getting excited about the Internet again (a crazy notion, I know). Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, Pacific Crest Securities and William Blair & Company are listed as the underwriters for the public offering.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple still hasn’t confirmed that it’s releasing a CDMA version of the iPhone next year for Verizon’s wireless network (and other CDMA networks globally), but at this point we can rest assured that it’ll happen.

Now there’s word that Apple is also working on a CDMA version of the iPad 2 to keep the Verizon iPhone company, according to the site Digitimes.

The news makes sense given that Verizon’s current mobile internet solution for the iPad isn’t sustainable for the next year. Currently, Verizon offers a free MiFi device, which lets multiple wireless devices connect to Verizon’s network, with the purchase of an iPad.

If true, that would make three versions of the iPad 2 from Apple for 2011 — the WiFi only and UMTS versions (which supports 3G networks like AT&T’s), together with the CDMA flavor. Digitimes reports that Apple is slated to start mass iPad 2 production in the second half of January, and it expects to ship 500,000 to 530,000 units to retail channels in that month as well. The company will ship equal amounts of the WiFi and CDMA iPad 2, and slightly more units of the UMTS version.

Sources say that about 60 to 65 percent of current iPad shipments are of the UMTS 3G variety, so it makes sense for Apple to push out slightly more units of that version. That tells us that consumers want iPads with mobile internet built-in, even if it costs significantly more than the WiFi only version.

Apple is reportedly also aiming to improve the iPad 2’s anti-smudge and anti-reflective screen features in a bid to compete with the Kindle and similar devices. Both would be welcome updates given how much of a fingerprint magnet the current iPad manages to be. Last week we also reported that the iPad 2 may get a smaller bezel and improved rear speaker, and it’s pretty much certain that it will also receive both front and rear cameras. I also expect an overall thinner and lighter design, given Apple’s tendency to slim down its products (and the iPad surely needs some weight-loss).

Digitimes’ sources estimate that Apple will ship around 40 million iPad 2s in 2011, making up around 65 to 75 percent of the tablet PC market. In comparison, Apple is expected to ship 16 million iPads in 2010 (several million of which will likely spill over into 2011 sales). In October, Apple announced that it shipped 7.5 million iPads since it launched in April.

Front photo by Rego Korosi