New York Archives - Page 11 of 14

New York Startup: Padcaster Turns Your iPad Into A Production Studio

While to most the iPad is a truly magical device, what makes the iPad even more magical is the amount of accessories available for it. The iPhone has equally as many (if not more currently) cool accessories as well.

You can turn your iPad into an arcade machine, amplifier, guitar teaching tool, midi throughput device, turntables and now an on the go video and photo production studio.

Josh Apter, founder and president of Union Square based Padcaster, created the Padcaster out of necessity.

The Padcaster is an invention born out of my own needs as a filmmaker. I was shooting interviews with an iPad 2 about a year ago and was frustrated that there was no way to mount it onto a tripod. That’s when I decided to build something myself,” said Josh Apter, founder and president, The Padcaster, LLC. “Now, just about a year later, we have the Padcaster. I’ve been testing the prototype and I have to say, I’m quite pleased with the results. Not only can I record high-quality footage right from the iPad, but I can also cut, add effects, and upload it to our Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and blog feeds simultaneously – all from the same device, almost instantly.”

The Padcaster is house in an aluminum frame that allows itself to be mounted to after market lenses, microphones, and other accessories needed for great photographs and great videos. It also has a tripod mount on the bottom which means you can mount the secure Padcaster to any tripod, monopod or other device with a tripod mount.

Apter created an accessory called the Lenscaster that is sold separately from the Padcaster and allows the ability to hook the Padcaster up to cinema style lenses and other lenses that connect via a 35mm lens adapter (not included)

Both the Padcaster and the Lenscaster help move the iPad from consumer device to a more professional on the go photo and video studio.

Linkage:

Find out more about Padcaster here

Here’s a product tour of the Padcaster

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NY Start Up: Moteevate Keeps You Motivated To Get Through Your Plans

If you’re one of those people with great plans and bad follow through than this New York startup may be for you. Moteevate is a motivational site that helps people going on their goals and plans. This is achieved by offering a huge knowledge base of action plans that use easy and manageable steps for just about anything and everything.

Moteevate offers a ton of action plans on a wide range of topics like the arts, business and money, coaching and motivation, music, health and fitness, pets and many more.

You can also create your own goals and action plans and then recruit your social networks aka Facebook friends and motivate friends, to cheer you on and help you with your progress.

For instance, if you’re looking to lose weight you can set up an action plan for diet and exercise or use one of the suggested action plans via Moteevate. Either way, once you’ve picked your plan your friends can monitor your progress and help you out when you’re having an off day and cheer you on when you’re on target.

Moteevate has already helped users with job hunting, finishing their thesis, running, staying in shape while traveling and even conquering the medicine regiment associated with breast cancer. As they said in the interview below, Moteevate is for just about anything, and everything.

Check out the interview after the break.

Israeli Startup: GetTaxi Plans New York Expansion

New York City has reached out to all of the “mobile hailing” applications like Uber, Haillo and GetTaxi to submit proposals to become the official taxi cab hailing app for New Yorks millions of taxi cab users per week.

New York has an enormous amount of taxi cabs that are all sanctioned and controlled by New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. If you’ve been to New York you may have noted that the only cabs you see (and there are thousands of them) are yellow, they all run the same fares and have the same features.

Until now there was only one way to get a taxi cab in New York and that’s by going out on the side of the street and flagging one down. You can’t call the New York TLC and request a cab at a certain address. If you want to do that you need to use a sedan or car service, which can cost a lot more.

GetTaxi told nibletz.com in an email that the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is specifically soliciting proposals for a mobile hailing app. They will only select one, and GetTaxi plans to be that app.

“The smartphone revolution is about to change the way we travel as profoundly as it has changed the way we communicate,” said Jing Wang Herman, CEO of GetTaxi USA and the proud holder of a New York City taxi license. “GetTaxi will take the guesswork out of the NYC taxi experience, making it easier to find a cab, share a ride and pay the fare. We are excited to help New York City improve mobility by better integrating taxis into the transportation ecosystem.”

Here’s how GetTaxi works:

· Find a cab: The GetTaxi App will provide a snapshot of transportation options, helping passengers see if their best option is a street hail, digital hail or booking a car.

· Pay any way you want: GetTaxi will be payment agnostic, enabling passengers to pay in any and every way possible, from a stored credit card to a digital wallet, through a monthly family plan to a direct company account, or even through alternative payment networks such as Dwolla or PayPal.

· Share a ride and split the fare: GetTaxi will introduce a simple ride-sharing feature that allows passengers to identify and join a shared ride, using GetTaxi to easily split the bill at the conclusion of the ride.

· Find an accessible or hybrid vehicle: With GetTaxi, New Yorkers will be able to track the location of special vehicles, making it easier to find the one you need.

· Earn loyalty points: Earn points every time you use GetTaxi that are redeemable for free rides and merchandise.

· Choose your language: GetTaxi will be available in New York in 16 languages, catering to the city’s diverse population and ensuring that it’s easy for tourists to get around as well.

· Rate your driver: Let your driver know they provided good service with a 5 rating.

· Find lost property: Because GetTaxi knows exactly which car you were in, we can quickly alert the driver that the passenger has left an item in the taxi.

GetTaxi has announced exciting partnerships with Des Moines Iowa based Dwolla for payment processing, and with HopStop which will allow GetTaxi users to combine their commute with more than one transportation method. Using HopStop users will be able to coordinate their cab ride with buses, subways and other transportation available in New York.

Linkage:

Find out more about GetTaxi here at gettaxi.com

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So What’s The Big Deal About Amsterdam Startup: Karma

(photo: TheVerge)

The tech based interwebs typically go hog wild anytime Josh Topolsky and the crew at The Verge write about anything. It’s just about the same reaction when Michael Arrington suggests something on Twitter. 90% of the time both Arrington and the Verge are right about what they are writing about. But as far as I’m concerned, not this time.

An Amsterdam based startup called “Karma” was in the spring class of TechStars New York and presented on Thursday morning during TechStars NY Demo day.

Their product was actually pretty cool, and under a different set of circumstances, or maybe two years ago, it would have been a game changer. But really, it’s not. Combine that with the fact that they lied on stage during their demo day presentation and we’re quickly called out by Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick, and well, maybe they should just go back to Amsterdam.

But before we get into the lies, the cars and the planes… let’s talk about why fundamentally this is a stupid idea, in 2012.

Karma is a “hot spot” sharing startup. According to their pitch deck they promote what they are calling “social telecom”. It works like this. The actual user purchases a re-packaged Sprint/Clearwire Overdrive miff portable hotspot for $69 from Karma. They then pay as they go $14 per gig for internet.

Then, they share their wifi with complete strangers. Now it’s pretty secure that’s not the issue. When a sharer signs onto XX persons Karma mi-fi they are taken to an “about” page about the owner of the hotspot, perhaps you can do some of your own advertising or invite them to see pictures of your dog.

The “sharer” signs into the miff using their Facebook and they are given 100mb of internet on that particular mifi. The person who’s miff they are on is given a matching, free 100mb. So potentially if you let 10 people sign on per week through their Facebook you’re earning an extra GB in free internet from Karma.

Now statistics show that the average Joe uses 221mb of internet a month so it’s really not a bad deal on the surface.

Why don’t I like it? Well first off it’s Clearwire’s WiMax service. In June 2012 unless you live under a bridge in the arctic circle you know that Clearwire nor Sprint is taking on the daunting task of building out any more wi-max network. That faux G is over and making way for LTE.

Clearwire most likely has no interest in this partnership with Karma for their LTE product which is still a good ways away.

Now secondly, it may be against something you didn’t read in the Clearwire TOS, in fact it probably is, but there’s nothing that says you can’t sell your wifi/mifi password for say $2.00 or $5.00 to a colleague or friend. If you get a couple of those guys, then you’re paying your whole internet bill in no time.

Then there’s that whole issue of Facebook, and tracking and data going back to Facebook, Karma, Clearwiere and everybody’s partners.

Next is, how do you go about sharing this anyway. Do you sit down in Central Park and say “Hey Bro, you can get on my wifi, all you gotta do is sign in through Facebook”, yeah that doesn’t sound the last bit shady.

Now we may not have to worry about Karma. They lied on the stage at TechStars Demo day today and it didn’t slip past the great crew over at Betabeat.

Reportedly (and now admittedly), Karma’s CEO Robert Gaal, stood on the stage at Demo Day and said that they had already forged partnerships with ride sharing startup Uber and American Airlines. Whoops….

Apparently their partnership with Uber was a total lie and Kalanick quickly took to Twitter to correct Mr.Gaal with these tweets (source:BetaBeat)

Gaal failed miserably at trying to diffuse the situation and then eventually took to Tumblr to all but admit he was lying and not just about Uber about American Airlines too. Gaal said on Tumblr:

We apologize profusely for claiming Uber and American Airlines are working with us – a statement we never received explicit permission to use. And we apologize to TechStars and the whole TechStars community. We did not mean to overstate anything or unfairly take advantage of the network and the opportunities it has opened up for us.

The Verge and their comment community hypothesized that for Karma to be truly successful in the United States, they would need to partner with one of the major carriers, after today’s spectacular Demo Day performance, that’s not likely happening.

Linkage:

I mean if you want to, you can check out Karma here

Here’s the source piece from the Verge

And the story about the mistruths from BetaBeat

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Brother can you spare a Big Mac?

New York Startup: SinglePlatform Acquired By Constant Contact For $100M

Another New York startup has just had a really big exit. This time it was, web and mobile advertising specialists SinglePlatform. As the name implies, SinglePlatform is one centralized robust advertising platform that allows advertisers to update their advertising in one centralized location.

Our friends at tech.li report that SinglePlatform estimates their reach to be 200 million people every month. SinglePlatform allows the management of advertising space both big and small.

“SinglePlatform lets small businesses quickly distribute rich content so that consumers can find it at the very moment they are looking to make a purchase decision,” Constant Contact said in a press release. “The SinglePlatform offering complements the current Constant Contact suite of online engagement marketing tools by helping small businesses reach and engage their next customer even earlier in the customer lifecycle.”

Forbes reports that the deal was structured as $65 million in cash, $5 million in cash and equity for retention purposes, and up to $30 million based on performance over the next two years, for a total of $100 million.

The company expects the deal to contribute $10 million in 2013 and adds that it should be accretive in late 2013 to early 2014.

Linkage:

New York Startup: Return On Change Crowd Investing For High Impact Startups INTERVIEW

As we get closer and closer to the SEC’s July 4th deadline to come up with rules for crowdfunding startups, we’re likely to see more and more crowdfunding startups emerge. Earlier this month we reported on Ohio crowdfunding startup Fundable who has already opened for business, with a more traditional Kickstarter, Indiegogo model until the crowdfunding rules are announced and brokers are approved.

A New York startup called Return on Change LLC, has also thrown their hit in the crowdfunding arena. They’re now in a private beta and promise to provide a way for investors to connect with game-changing startups.

“The timing could not be better,” said Sang Lee, founder of Return on Change. “We saw the huge potential in crowdfunding, and now, with the signing of the JOBS bill, look forward to connecting investors with ventures that can make a real difference.”

RoC also announced a contest that provides incentives for startups to register. The first 100 startups that meet RoC’s criteria will have the opportunity to win one of three $1,000 funding prizes. The company is seeking startups in the areas of clean energy, biomedical, social ventures and technology.

With all this excitement about crowdfunding we got a chance to speak with Sang Lee, one of the founders of Return On Change. Take a look at the interview below the break.

Cornell University Startup: Empire Robotics Wins Five Minute Pitch Contest

A robotics startup founded by Cornell University students in Ithaca New York took home the top spot in the recent Worcester PolyTechnic Institutes Venture Forum Five Minute Pitch Contest.

The young entrepreneurs are hoping to develop their robotic gripper technology, think those wild orange gripper things, that functions robotically.

According to the Worcester Business Journal
The gripper is a ball-shaped elastic membrane filled with granular material attached to a robotic arm. The air pressure inside the ball is manipulated to adjust the softness or hardness of the gripper, allowing it to conform around and squeeze objects.
This exactly the kind of tech that’s missing for bringing more agile manufacturing to the United States, to automate manufacturing lines in the United States, and that’s exactly what we intend to do with this patent pending technology,” John Amend, the company’s chief technology officer told a roomful of businesspeople, investors and others gathered in the school’s campus center Tuesday evening.

The team took home a prize of $2500. While they aren’t breaking the bank with that kind of prize money, they are getting invaluable exposure from the investor community.

A company called SafeSiren which makes a safety device for school students took home the second pace prize. Other ideas presented included a better way to sterilize catheters, an energy management system for hotels and a blue tooth device designed to replace hearing aids. Check out the source link below for more on those companies.

Source: Worcester Business Journal

NY Startup: JustDecide Helps You Make Decisions INTERVIEW

Have you ever wanted someone to help you make a decision. Maybe you didn’t feel like talking to a friend or relative about your decision. Maybe you didn’t want to call the advice call in show? Well now there’s a startup for that, and it’s called JustDecide.

If you’ve ever struggled with a decision (and who hasn’t) than you know the foundation for JustDecide. With this innovative new startup from New York, you get real life people who have had to make the same decisions as you, help you make informative, good decisions. Heck, this startup is life changing.

Jay Amato, a New York executive with quite an impressive resume, launched JustDecide just over a week ago as a platform for social decision making. Amato goes over his resume in our interview with him below. He founded JustDecide when he was faced with the dilemma of making the decision on what to do next.

We talk with Amato about JustDecide, decision making and the New York startup scene. Since TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012 we’ve heard different views on whether New York’s startup scene is actually more segregated than it’s west coast counterpart.

Check out the interview below. Based on his life experiences, and lengthy executive work history Amato provides a different perspective on a lot of things in the startup process.

New Incubator: IncubateNYC Comes To Harlem

We all know that New York City is for the most part, Silicon Valley of the east. Some of the top Startups and technology innovators are being born in the city that never sleeps. We’ve covered a slew of great New York Startups like Sonar, Edaman,FourSquare and plenty more.

We learned t TechCrunch Disrupt NYC that unlike the Valley which encompasses several areas in the region like San Francisco, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and countless others, the New York tech scene is united on one front a segregated on the other. Each area within New York, like Manhattan, Brooklyn and now even Harlem has their own thriving tech hubs.

Marcus Mayo and Brian Shields are two Harlem based entrepreneurs who are trying to unite the Harlem startup scene and invigorate its infrastructure by launching a new startup incubator called IncubateNYC.

According to this story from cnbc.com, New York may have a thriving startup scene, but Shields and Mayo are willing to bet that most of the 486 Startups that have received funding are confined to 9 zip codes.

Mayo and Shields officially launched IncubateNYC in December after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put out a call for proposals for a Harlem based small business incubator. Shields and Mayo couldn’t wait for Bloomberg to select a winner, they immediately went to work in borrowed office space.

IncubateNYC helped the two founders connect with a technical co-founder to help with their own startup focusing on digital payment processing for retail stores. They also immediately started helping other Startups. To date they’ve helped 10 other Startups with resourcing, networking, mentoring and other things that area Startups need. They’ve also partnered with Columbia University and Google to bring resources to startups.

“What we’re providing is an environment for entrepreneurs to collaborate, share ideas and work together to take those ideas to the next level,” Mayo told cnbc.com

Linkage:

Find out more about IncubateNYC at incubatenyc.org

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Brooklyn Startup Launches SwapOMatic The Bartering Vending Machine

Just the other day we were talking about, and tweeting out how hot bartering was. We even ran an interview with the founder of Arizona startup Kwiddy which is an online site to facilitate person to person bartering or trading (as in real life).

Well this Brooklyn startup has taken a concept art piece and turned it into almost a viable startup. The SwapOMatic machine doesn’t accept credit cards, cash or change. Instead, if you see something cool in the machine that you want, you can swap it for something that you’re willing to give up.

For now the machine operates on the honor system and doesn’t give a monetary value to anything in the machine because value depends on how bad someone wants something.

However, with all the publicity and interest the SwapOMatic team has picked up, they are currently reworking it for the next design. This machine is part concept art, but it is an actual working machine. In fact they have it sitting at the Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn, where anyone can swap anything for the stuff inside of the machine.

On the company’s website it gives you a text base map of what’s currently inside the machine. Take a look below:

As you can see it’s a wide variety of things. Everything from YiGiOh trading cards to hand written poems have lived in the machine and traded for other stuff.

The SwapOMatic team has a kickstarter project going on now for $135,000 so they can do more research and development on how to actually make this a viable business and a product to promote bartering. They have raised $34,529 (at the time this article was written) of the $135,000 goal. There are 10 days to go.

Bartering is becoming hotter by the minute. Bartering goes back to probably the stone ages where people would trade their goods, like vegetables and milk, for meat and clothing. Bartering has taken on a new life of it’s own thanks to the internet and sites like Craigslist and now Kwiddy which offer online bartering solutions.

The trading and bartering phenomenon is so hot that A&E has just launched a new show called barter kings.

We’re hoping that the SwapOMatic team can either raise this $135,000 or other angel money so they can develop this idea. We could see a day where you could swap your iPad nano for a baseball card you’ve always wanted. Or a stack of cd’s for something else new and more interesting.

Linkage:

SwapOMatic Website

SwapOMatic’s Kickster Page

Source: Tech.li

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Interview With New York Startup Spark Rebel

Social discovery is one of the hottest online and mobile crazes right now. There are social discovery sites for everything from restaurants, events, people, things, food and fashion. Spark Rebel is an amazing blend of social and discovery revolving around fashion that real women are wearing today. Sure it’s nice to be able to shop the top tier boutiques in Chelsea, Manhattan and Rodeo drive and Spark Rebel does have feature some high fashion, but the thick of this social discovery site for fashion is what everyday women are working to work, out on the town or for a relaxing evening.

As people’s lives got busier and busier and they began to take to online shopping over in store shopping, an entirely new way to discover things popped up. The problem with traditional online shopping sites is that you’re seeing what the stores want you to see. You’re seeing the fashions that the buyers are seeing and not necessarily what everyone’s wearing.

Then, you go about your busy day and see that awesome outfit a woman is wearing at Starbucks or you see a must have dress on a woman in the elevator with you, and then you never see it again.

Spark Rebel uses a mixture of social, discovery and recommendation to bring the hottest trends and fashions to their users.

Spark Rebel was born out of site for teenage girls, which is a segment even harder to curate than traditional women’s wear. We got a chance to interview Spark Rebel. Check out that interview after the break

Interview With NY Startup Edamam Becoming The Worlds Food Knowledge Base

Edamam founder and CEO Victor Penev has a lofty goal. He wants his company to become the goto place for food knowledge in the world. While the goal seems quite lofty as I am writing this right now, if you watch the video below you’ll see that Edamam may well be on their way to doing just that.

They launched their consumer facing product, a mobile app which pulls over one million recipes from different sources, at the DEMO conference in April in Santa Clara California. This isn’t just your run of the mill recipes.com app though, the UI is appealing, the navigation is a breeze and you can separate and search through recipes six ways to Sunday.

On the business side Edamam offers an intense, information packed widget for food blogs and websites to tap their vast knowledge base in the same ways as the mobile app and more. They are also offering an API for developer partners to tap that big food database.

In this interview with Edamam they talk about how they plan on being the goto place for food knowledge. In a few years time they hope that the end user will be able to go to the grocery store, by a piece of salmon and get a treasure trove of possibilities wrapped around Edamam information.

Off camera he admitted that he would love to see Edamam being tapped by the users smartphone in the grocery store, and then a smart refrigerator, stove, or other appliance that offers recipes, food guidance, wine recommendations, anything. We’re talking the Jetson’s Rosie in the big data era.

We’ve covered quite a few food startups here at Nibletz, this is the first time that a startup has such a clear path to the future. We really wish these guys well, and after you watch the video you’ll see they have their stuff together and could easily achieve that lofty goal.

Linkage:

Check out Edamam here at their website

See more of our TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 Coverage here

We’re on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide startup roadtrip, check it out here

NY Startup: LocalBonus Offers Extremely Simple Loyalty Rewards Program

After this years South By Southwest we quickly predicted that the “social discovery” space would become a thing of the past and that “Loyalty Rewards” would take it’s spot as the startup du jour. Now that loyalty and rewards is filling up faster than you can say Groupon, what’s going to set these startups apart is effect on the merchant and ease of use for the user.

NY startup LcoalBonus has both of those factors in check. LocalBonus is one of the easiest reward programs to set up. You simply add an existing credit card account to your LocalBonus account and you’re ready to earn rewards. In fact you can set up all of your credit cards if you choose.

LocalBonus plans a national rollout. They started out in New York and expanded last month into Seattle, Portland, Sacremento and Denver. LocalBonus founder and CEO Derek Webster told us that there are over 800 merchants in the program already.

More + video after the break
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We Check Out NY Startup TAPP, Automagically Updates Your Address Book

We caught up with the founder of a new startup called TAPP at TechCrunch Disrupt this week in New York.

TAPP works like Plaxo. It essentially updates your contacts and address book automagically. When your friends, family members and colleagues update their phone numbers, instant messaging id’s and email addresses TAPP updates them for you.

TAPP just recently moved to New York where they are launching their app to iOS and Blackberry first. They have plans to work on an Android version very soon.

TAPP also has other features like TAPP ID now you can communicate via TAPP ID rather than your actual phone number if you so choose. You can also customize your TAPP ID with a link that’s easy to share across your network of contacts.

This is just one of many startups in the telecommunications field at TechCrnuch Disrupt. Most of them were focused on conference calling and messaging.

Here’s the video interview: