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Tuesday 14 January 2014

Fotos de los rodajes de La Guerra de las galaxias comentadas por Chewbacca

Anthony Daniels protegiéndose del Sol

Anthony Daniels, más conocido como C3PO, protegiéndose del Sol


Peter Mayhew, al que todos conocemos como Chewbacca, se entretuvo estos días publicando en su cuenta de Twitter fotos de los rodajes de las películas de la trilogía original de La guerra de las galaxias convenientemente comentadas en clave de humor.


El Daily Mirror las ha recogido en un Storify titulado Chewbacca actor shares rare Star Wars behind the scenes pictures que no debes perderte.


(Se lo vi comentar a @MarcoTaboas).



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Radionomy acquires Winamp and Shoutcast to boost its streaming efforts



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Snapchat's Evan Spiegel Isn't Scaring Off Investors, Despite Mishaps



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Tumblr Introduces @Mentions for Users



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For a Guy With Startup Roots, Kickstarter Offers a Second Shot



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Tesla formally recalls more than 29,000 Model S wall charging adapters



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You can order a gold LG G2 in Taiwan, but just... don't.



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Did Another Boeing Dreamliner Battery Really Just Catch On Fire?

Oyster Raises $14 Million To Build A Comprehensive Netflix For Books

oyster-app

New York-based startup Oyster just announced a new funding round, according to the New York Times. New investor Highland Capital Partners is leading the round, with existing investor Founders Fund also participating.


As a reminder, Oyster is an ulimited subscription service for ebooks. For $9.99 a month, you get access to hundreds of thousands of books on your iPhone or iPad — Android support should come soon.


When it comes to media startups, content deals are very important. For now, HarperCollins is on board, but the four other big publishers have yet to be convinced (Hachette, Macmillan, Simon and Schuster, and Penguin Random House). It’s a great service to read books from indie publishers Workman Publishing, Perseus and countless of others.


One of Oyster’s partner publishers, Smashwords, told its authors how Oyster actually structures its content deals. If a subscriber reads more than 10 percent of a book, the publisher gets 60 percent of the book’s retail list price.


These deals are very publisher-friendly, but also shows that the service counts on casual subscribers. If a reader reads more than, say, 3 or 4 books a month, Oyster won’t be able to cover the costs with the $9.99 subscription.


Oyster has integrated lightweight community features to keep existing users, such as browsing what your friends are reading or are planning to read. The company also features titles every week.


The next important step for the company is probably to get more mainstream publishers on board. The product works — the app is well-designed and it’s a joy to browse the book library. Many publishers are convinced. Now, let’s see if signing major publishing houses is a difficult feat.








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Olympic Park Gives Your Face the Mount Rushmore Treatment



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Kickstarter Needs A Sexual Awakening

dildo-starter

Making hardware is easy. Making sex toys and selling them on Kickstarter is, sadly, hard. Though sex toy makers have long been lumped in with pornographers and and other businesses of ill repute, there is a new crop of sex toy makers looking to get real and hit the mainstream. And we must remember that the sex toy industry isn’t some furtive little market. The industry is worth over $15 billion per year and, whether Kickstarter likes it or not, millions of toys are sold per year to millions of happy customers.


It’s time for Kickstarter to experience a sexual awakening. Here’s why.


These toys are far more interesting than some secret massager hidden deep in your dresser. Modern sex toy makers are enabling cloud features, adding powerful silent motors, and expanding their selection from the traditional to the downright exotic. But Kickstarter as a company still can’t figure out its relationship with these devices, despite the fact that many of them clearly fall within the stated guidelines of the crowdfunding platform.


A Brief History


In the past, Kickstarter has ejected a number of projects that went on to blow way past their funding goals on other crowdfunding sites. Yet other products, most notably this MUA sex toy storage box, are accepted on the platform.


For example, Kickstarter rejected Crave Innovations, a company started by serial entrepreneur Michael Topolovac who had previously raised over $35 million for his software startup. In September, some six months after Kickstarter rejected Crave, the company raised $2.4 million from more than 60 prominent angels and entrepreneurs. For the record, that was $400,000 more than Topolovac had asked for to fund his first batch of toys.


In fact, after launching the Duet (Crave’s first pleasure product) on an alternative crowdfunding site CKIE, Crave blew past its $15,000 goal in the first two days, landing $100,000 in six weeks.


duetcrave


Meanwhile, Kickstarter also rejected LovePalz, a Wifi-powered set of devices that mimic sexual behavior remotely AKA teledildonics. In other words, one partner could feel the movements of their partner with a boy version (Zeus) and a girl version (Hera). The company claims to have sold 10,000 pieces since February, when the product officially launched. Each sells for $189, which accounts for a little under $2 million in sales.


Vibease, a company that created app-controlled vibrators in 2012, first tried to go the Kickstarter route before being rejected and instead used Indiegogo. With a goal of $30,000, Vibease went on to raise $130k during the summer campaign with shipments heading out in January.


Vibease is currently raising a seed round.


It would be OK if Kickstarter were consistent with its no-sex stance. But even though sex toys are out, misogynistic pick-up artist guides are fine.


This summer, for example, Kickstarter allowed a seduction guide with ethically questionable advice for men. Kickstarter grappled with removing the book before letting it live on, deciding that the 2 hours left on the campaign wasn’t enough time to investigate.


It all started after a comedian named Casey Malone wrote a blog post about the seduction guide, posting offensive excerpts from it. The author, Ken Hoinsky, argues that these quotes were taken out of context and were meant to inspire confidence, not violence.

Kickstarter later apologized for letting that kind of content live on the site and banned seduction guides.


But it seems the cold winter of sexual squeamishness is thawing. A designer named Lidia Bonilla launched the MUA box. That product lived on Kickstarter and eventually reached its funding goal. In Bonilla’s defense, however, she paid careful attention to Kickstarter’s guidelines to ensure that the project would be accepted on the end-all, be-all crowdfunding platform.


So with all this back and forth and outright banning, what exactly do Kickstarter’s guidelines say about sex-related products?


Well, nothing actually.


Confused?


Privately, the company has told rejected parties that they don’t accept vibrators at all, but this isn’t stated anywhere in the guidelines. I spoke to Kickstarter representatives repeatedly about this and they refused to go on the record but suggested that they haven’t figured out the rules internally.


Kickstarter starts out by giving two overarching guidelines: First, everything must be a project, which means that it has a clear end, a completion date of some sort, and that something will be produced as a result of the project’s completion. The second is that every project must fit into one of the following categories: Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater.


Like any other hardware project on Kickstarter, the above sex toys would definitely be considered “projects”. They would also clearly pass muster of being either a technology or design project. Even both in some cases, as they evolve the original design of sex toys and include features never-before-seen in sex toys thanks to Wifi, various sensors, Bluetooth, and other improvements.


“We don’t curate projects based on taste. Instead, we do a quick check to make sure they meet these guidelines,” reads the website.


Then, the company moves beyond these main guidelines into more specific rules. None of them relate to sex toys at all, except for one:



No offensive material (hate speech, etc.); pornographic material; or projects endorsing or opposing a political candidate.



The pornographic material bit is unclear. One can assume that any Kickstarter video that shows sex or feigns sex of any kind is considered pornographic, but is a sex toy (independent from people or a sexual scenario) considered pornographic? And more importantly, should it be?


The MUA box, for example, shows various sex toys within the promotional video. They aren’t being used, but rather are stored in a pleasure product organizer. So what is the difference between the MUA video and, say, this video, submitted by Crave?



Both are informational, focused on the product, its design, and its viability as a business.


The LovePalz video is admittedly more racy than the other two, but does that mean that two people, fully dressed, in a bed together is pornographic?



Am I splitting hairs? Perhaps. But is Kickstarter’s policy on sex toys important? Absolutely.


Sex Toy Makers Are Makers, Too


It’s 2014, people.


There was a time when a woman’s sexuality was seen as a disruption to man’s harmonious relationship with God or the State. As recently as the fifties, Freud argued that women should only achieve vaginal orgasms. If they couldn’t, they were a failure. If they could achieve clitoral orgasm, on the other hand, they were considered masculine or immature. That is wrong.


Before vibrators were a key function of our smartphones or our sex toys, they were first invented to help male doctors treat female hysteria. Instead of wearing out their wrists masturbating women (yes, this happened), they just built a steam-powered vibrator.


And yet look how far we’ve come. In the U.S., we’re more sexually liberated than we’ve ever been. Sex toys are fun, flashy, and no longer objects of derision. Sex has driven almost every major breakthrough in technology in the past few decades. The internet speaks for itself — sex is everywhere. The invention of chat gave us cyber sex. The ubiquity of video on the internet started with the desire to digitize porn. Even new technology like Vine and Instagram and Snapchat left us with Vineporn and Nastygrams and Snap Spam.


So why should participants in the hardware revolution miss out?


Despite multiple requests to discuss the line between pornographic and not, Kickstarter offered no clarification. But that’s their right.


If they worry that a teenager might see a sex toy on the site, the company has every right to avoid that scenario, no matter how ridiculous the concern might be. (Most sex toy sites don’t have an 18+ gate. If a teenager wants to find sex on the internet, Kickstarter is the last place they’d go.) Still, if Kickstarter is concerned about sexual or adult content, the crowdfunding site can simply exclude sex toy makers from the service.


What’s not so cool is the fact that Kickstarter can’t give more insight into the line between too sexy and suitable. Why does a box that stores sex toys make it on the site but a discreet vibrator gets rejected?


Entrepreneurs for hardware companies have to be as frugal as possible because they’re building something physical that costs money to make and to distribute. Kickstarter has made that journey easier for many of them, who can afford to make a few prototypes, a nice video, and send in an application. But not for those who make sex toys. They are forced to go to other crowdfunding sites (and still succeed wildly) after wasting time and resources on Kickstarter.


Maybe Kickstarter isn’t the home for makers?


What Next?


The sex toy industry is worth $15 billion annually. Breakthrough technologies like the smartphone, various sensors, and the ubiquity of connectivity have paved the way for a true era of disruption in the sex toy industry, transforming what has long been a store full of awkward, dick-shaped vibrators into shelves full of connected, intuitive, design-centric pleasure products.


Kickstarter has the opportunity to be a part of this just as much as it has the right to avoid this sexually charged hardware revolution. That decision is entirely up to the company. Where Kickstarter shouldn’t have a choice is in the guidelines regarding what is accepted and what isn’t.


The Kickstarter business is entirely dependent on entrepreneurs. By alienating certain entrepreneurs, or being unclear about the guidelines of the platform, Kickstarter is ultimately damaging the key to its own success, as well as the success of these sex toy makers.


People want to get off. Why won’t Kickstarter let them?








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Next-gen strategy game engine lets you control an army of 5,000 units at one time



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Appeals court strikes down key parts of the FCC's net neutrality rules



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This Watch's Mechanical Altimeter Lets Climbers Stay Stylish

Visualized: a closer look at an HTC One prototype



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Esta aplicación graba los videos en horizontal siempre; aunque pongas el teléfono en vertical


La aplicación Horizon utiliza los sensores del teléfono para mantener la grabación de video nivelada y en la proporción de video correcta, más ancho que alto, en horizontal aunque el teléfono se ponga en vertical por torpeza o por accidente. Es más, con esta app el vídeo mantiene su horizontalidad aunque el teléfono se esté girando constantemente.


O dicho de otro modo y más brevemente, Horizon combate la plaga del Síndrome del Vídeo Vertical que padecemos tanto como odiamos.


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Hyundai and Kia tap SoundHound to help you identify music in your car



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After Raising £3.5M Pre-Launch, Lending Works Opens Its P2P Loans Business In UK

Lending Works Directors Portraits

A new UK startup is giving P2P lending a go. Competing most directly with Zopa, and RateSetter, London-based Lending Works has opened for business this week, matching those that have savings to grow, with those that need to borrow money.


But its claimed unique selling point is the level of protection it gives to lenders. Whereas existing P2P lenders will dip into reserve funds to repay lenders if borrowers default, Lending Works insures against default and risk, at no extra cost to customers. Or so the pitch goes.


The company has also announced that it raised £3.5 million if funding prior to launch. The lead investor in the round is David Kyte, founder of the Kyte Group in 1985 and before that, one of the founder traders of London exchange, Liffe.


Other investors include Max Ashton, who runs a number of investment companies including Meridian Equity, Alex Rogers, and Keith Saldanha, head of investment marketing at Man Group. So a decent mix of backers from the financial and fintech worlds.


Lending Works says that personal loan borrowers are selected by the company’s team of “highly experienced underwriters” using advanced underwriting techniques and electronic credit scoring. Loan terms and lending periods are both one to five years.


However, it’s the startup’s level of lending protection — ‘Lending Works Shield’ — which it reckons sets it apart from others in the UK. It includes a reserve fund, borrower default insurance and fraud and cyber crime insurance. “For the very first time, people who wish to lend via the peer-to-peer model can do so with Lending Works in the confidence that their money is protected against borrower defaults and fraud”, says Lending Works.


The company is targeting a net return to lenders of approximately 5.1% AER when their money is lent for five years.


As for why Lending Works is entering what already looks like a well-served market, including companies that use a P2P model, it points out that in actual fact peer-to-peer lenders are capturing only 1% of the UK personal loan market, which by some accounts is estimated to be worth £25 billion.


Ka-ching.








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Visually Raises $8.1M To Build Out Its Marketplace For Infographics And Other Visual Content

visually

Infographic haters, despair. Visually, the startup that’s best-known as an infographic marketplace, is announcing that it has raised $8.1 million in Series A funding.


The company started out as a tool for creating infographics, but over time it has moved to a marketplace model, connecting companies who want infographics with people who want to be paid to make them.


At the same time, Visually has moved away from an exclusive focus on infographics. It now describes itself as “the world’s marketplace for visual content,” and when I looked at the Staff Picks section of the website, I definitely saw a lot of infographics, but I also found interactive graphics and videos. Co-founder and CEO Stew Langille (previously director of marketing at Mint.com) suggested that the marketplace could expand into other types of content, too, like mobile apps.


“We want to be platform agnostic,” he said. So are there types of content that Visually won’t get involved with? “Essentially, we’re about content marketing and storytelling. A logo design isn’t really that interesting to us because there’s no real story.”


Brands that have used the Visually marketplace include AOL (which owns TechCrunch), Red Bull, Twitter, NBC, and P&G. The company says its projects can be completed in one-third the time and at less than half the cost — Langille argued that Visually is becoming increasingly competitive with creative agencies. And while he doesn’t claim it will eliminate those agencies entirely, he said the marketplace will play a growing role in companies’ content and campaigns.


“We are definitely eliminating the inefficiencies and taking some of [the agencies'] business, no question,” he said.


The new round was led by Crosslink Ventures, with additional investment from Correlation Ventures, SoftTechVC, 500 Startups, Giza Ventures, Quest Ventures, and Kapor Capital. Crosslink’s Eric Chin is joining the Visually board.


The $8.1 million total boils down to $6.1 million in new venture capital funding, because it also includes a $2 million convertible note that the company announced last year. (That’s on the top of the $2 million that Visually raised in seed funding.)


In addition to expanding to other types of content, Langille said he hopes to introduce more customization, more automation, and more tools for distributing the content once it’s created.








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8 Great Icon Font Generators to Give Your Site a Custom Feel



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Huawei launches 5.5-inch B199 in China with a battery for hire



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Moto X Coming to Europe in February



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AMD says its next PC chip trumps Intel with 12 'compute cores' and smoother gaming



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Watch NASA’s Amazing Monkey Robot Walk, Climb and Clear Obstacles

¿Cuánto tiempo sobrevivirías si llegara algún tipo de fin del mundo?

Findelmundo-1-1


¿Sabes orientarte? ¿Tienes suficiente comida? ¿Pueden ayudarte tus instintos, tu familia y tus amigos? He aquí una especie de medio-juego, medio-calculadora creada por la gente de Us Vs Th3m para averiguar Cuánto tiempo sobrevivirías tras un evento apocalíptico .


Yo no he salido del todo mal parado; firmo ahora mismo:


20Yearsapo-1


Pero los hay que resisten solo… semanas. ¡Ouch!


(Vía The Presurfer.)


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Valve's VR-friendly Steam UI launches in beta prior to its headset reveal



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Virgin Galactic tests new thrusters, further disregards gravity (video)



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CyanogenMod's new gallery software now available as a beta download



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