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Monday 2 September 2013

Neurociencia para Julia

Neurociencia para Julia por Xurxo Mariño 4 estrellas: altamente recomendable Neurociencia para Julia . Xurxo Mariño, @xurxomar. Editorial Laetoli 2012, 224 páginas.


Uno de los grandes misterios a los que nos enfrentamos es el del funcionamiento de nuestro cerebro, que entre otras muchas cosas hace surgir nuestro yo cada día cuando nos despertamos y aquello que denominamos inteligencia, aunque no sepamos definirla muy bien.


Xurxo lleva años estudiando ese quilo y pico de materia gris que hay dentro de nuestros cráneos y sus prolongaciones por todo nuestro cuerpo, y usa esa experiencia para escribir un libro ameno en el que partiendo de cero le explica a alguien que no tiene ni idea qué sabemos de cómo funciona este complejo sistema y para qué sirve, algo que probablemente te sorprenda.


Desde los sentidos hasta los cyborgs pasando por el lenguaje, las drogas, entendidas en el sentido británico de sustancias capaces de modificar el funcionamiento de nuestro cerebro, las herramientas que tenemos para investigar lo que pasa dentro de nuestras cabezas, o un toque a creencias de corte magufo, Xurxo hace un recorrido absolutamente recomendable y entretenido por la máquina de nuestra mente.


Huye además en la medida de lo posible de términos técnicos, aunque cuando hay que usarlos lo hace, pero siempre explicándolo de forma comprensible.


Un libro realmente recomendable aunque hayas leído ya mucho sobre el tema, pues aclara unas cuantas cosas que habrás leído en numerosas ocasiones y que no son como te las han contado. Hasta es muy posible que llames cerebro a lo que en realidad no lo es.


Y por si te quedas con ganas, Xurxo propone al final una pequeña bibliografía.


Lo peor, que no está disponible –al menos por ahora– en formato electrónico, por lo que he tardado más en acabarlo de lo que me hubiera gustado.





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¡Vaya pedazo de cámaras!

Las sondas Voyager llevan a bordo lo mejor que se podía permitir la NASA en cuanto a tecnología a finales de los 70, aunque claro, las cosas han cambiado un poco desde entones.



Sus cámaras eran unos tubos vidicon de sulfuro de selenio de 800 líneas, lo que equivale a una resolución de unos 0,64 megapíxeles. Un iPhone 5 monta una cámara Sony de 8 megapíxeles y otra de 1,2 megapíxeles.



De lo que costaron las cámaras de las Voyager comparadas con las del iPhone mejor ni hablamos. [Fuente: @NASAVoyager2.]


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Plated, The Startup That Delivers Fresh Ingredients To Your Door, Launches In SF

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With the advent of online shopping and Amazon Prime 2-day shipping, humans are growing ever willing to pay for convenience and walk less.


In the wake of this phenomenon, Plated has risen up out of TechStars accelerator in New York to deliver perfectly proportioned ingredients direct to your home for your very own cooking pleasure.


Other companies are catching on, most notably Blue Apron, but Plated continues to push on, today announcing expansion into the San Francisco area.


Before this launch, Plated was only available in a few select areas, including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago and the surrounding areas. Now, the service will hit the west coast serving San Francisco, Sacramento and Oakland.


At demo day graduation from TechStars in late June, Plated announced that it had served over 100,000 meals so far. The company also raised a $1.4 million seed round led by ff Venture Capital.


Plated will continue to experience competition, not only from older companies like Fresh Direct but from those picking up on the aggregate-and-deliver business methodology. Right now, Blue Apron is serving 100,000 meals per month, at the same $10/pp/per meal price, in almost all of the United States.


On the other hand, Plated offers gluten-free options and more selection and is coming soon with a vegetarian option.


We’ve formally reviewed Blue Apron and will bring you a review of the Plated service within the next few weeks, but if you live in SF and want to try it yourself… well, now you can.








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Is That Really You? Face And Speaker Authentication Startup KeyLemon Raises $1.5M Series A

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Swiss startup KeyLemon, which is a spin-off of the Idiap Research Institute and provides face and speaker recognition technology for the purpose of user authentication, has raised a $1.5 million Series A round.


Its first external funding, the backing comes from Debiopharm Investment, the investment arm of Swiss-based global biopharmaceutical group, Debiopharm Group, and Swisscom Ventures, the corporate venture arm of telecom operator Swisscom.


Piggybacking the proliferation of PCs, tablets and smartphones that feature both a microphone and camera, KeyLemon’s face and speaker recognition technology aims to solve the problem of controlling and guaranteeing that the person with the correct identity is allowed to access and use data.


As example, KeyLemon cites the example of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which face the problem of ensuring that the right students access the right classes, and that they attends the classes.


The company’s solution solves this problem by identifying the user via what they look like and the sound of their voice as an alternative or complementary method of user authentication to the tried and (sometimes) trusted username/password.


In terms of the end customer, KeyLemon’s technology is sold both as a kit to OEMs, chip vendors and ISP providers, for the use in handheld devices and embedded applications, as well as a cloud solution for online authentication aimed at e-learning platforms, universities, and companies providing online identity access management solutions/digital signage.


It also offers a freemium version of its product direct to consumers who want to get in on the face and speaker authentication action, in the form of a Mac and Windows app.








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Sooqini Raises $500,000 Seed Round For Its ‘UK TaskRabbit'

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With the heavily-funded and U.S.-based TaskRabbit having a few teething problems, the jury is still out on how much growth there is in a reverse-marketplace for ‘tasks’. But that isn’t stopping a few UK TaskRabbit-inspired clones services from pressing on, though noticeably, one of those, Sorted, recently pivoted away from TaskRabbit’s model.


Today, UK task marketplace Sooqini is announcing that it’s raised $500,000 in seed funding, and with it a new website and greater emphasis on the trust element of its service, including verified sellers via a tie-in with identity and reputation verification startup Veridu. The new backing — the company’s first external funding, having been bootstrapped — is being led by Lars Toft Larsen, and Paolo Rubatto, founder of Start Capital. Both Larsen and Rubatto join Sooqini’s board.


Launched in 2011, London-based Sooqini lets users buy or sell a wide range of services — anything from accounting, translation, and things like digitising business cards, to cleaning, gardening and other general errands. Using a reverse-marketplace model, buyers post tasks to Sooqini’s website or through the iOS app, and receive offers from interested sellers. They then choose the best offer and pay when the job is completed, with Sooqini taking a 15% cut.


The startup says that there are currently around 15,000 sellers offering services on Sooqini and that £300,000 worth of jobs have been posted to date. In addition to the newly-designed website, the iOS app is to be updated this month and an Android version is pegged for October.


As well as its standard offering, the company sells what it calls the ‘Sooqini Silver Service’, which makes the process for buyers a little more frictionless, with Sooqini acting as a sort of Personal Assistant to the buyer. The company says that this elevated service is aimed at users who need a number of tasks done each month. They pay a monthly subscription that also covers the costs of small tasks, such as table reservations and a UK travel itinerary, and Sooqini’s team does the heavy lifting of filtering the best offers from sellers.


The introduction of a premium version of Sooqini is no doubt an attempt at solving the major downside of a reverse-markplace for general tasks in that it requires quite a lot of work from the buyer, which is counter-intuitive from a supply and demand point of view, depending on how bespoke the task is of course. That’s also the reason why competitor Sorted pivoted.








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Japanese E-Commerce Giant Rakuten Confirms Acquisition Of Video Site Viki

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Rakuten has confirmed that it will acquire Viki, a global video streaming platform that crowdsources translated subtitles. The Japanese e-commerce giant, which says it will sign an agreement to buy Viki tomorrow, did not disclose financial terms, but is reportedly paying $200 million.


The acquisition of Viki is another strong signal that Rakuten is positioning its $16 billion Internet services ecosystem as a competitor to Amazon and Netflix. Over the past two years, Rakuten has acquired e-reader services provider Kobo and European streaming video platform Wuaki.tv.


Based in Singapore, Viki operates similarly to Hulu.com by offering premium content such as primetime TV shows and movies. Its advantage over other on-demand video services is crowdsourced subtitles from 22 million users in more than 160 languages, which allows Viki’s content providers to quickly enter new markets.


In July, Viki added Blake Krikorian, founder of Sling Media and now corporate VP at Microsoft overseeing XBox, and Dave Goldberg, CEO of Survey Monkey, as strategic investors. Viki’s existing investors included Andreessen Horowitz and more, having raised $24.3 million in publicly-disclosed funding.


In a statement, Rakuten chairman and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said, “There are a striking number of synergies and shared philosophies between our two businesses; the Viki model is built on a powerful community, focused on removing the language barriers that have traditionally trapped great content inside geographical borders. Since our foundation, Rakuten’s focus too has been to open up great services, content and goods to a global community. Viki is a perfect complement to Rakuten’s joint philosophies of Empowerment and Shopping IS entertainment.”








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