8 Thought-Provoking Quotes From the Surveillance vs. Privacy Debate

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Etiam pulvinar accumsan euismod. Donec tempor urna id vestibulum aliquet. Etiam sollicitudin quis est a consectetur. Maecenas magna justo, dignissim nec nisi a, bibendum sodales metus. Nulla nec iaculis justo, in facilisis leo. Morbi id orci in elit placerat iaculis sed et nunc. Vestibulum placerat nulla dignissim nulla elementum vehicula. Vestibulum at dui eget eros aliquam pulvinar. Duis et arcu neque. Photo credit #

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CES 2013: CEA Partners With Launch.It For Eureka Park Coverage

Launch.it,CES 2013,startups,startup, Eureka ParkLaunch.it a New York startup that bills itself as an event news and social information management platform announced earlier this month that they’ve partnered with the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) to power the official news channel for Eureka Park, the startup zone at the 2013 International CES.

Eureka Park is in it’s third official year and has grown 40% year over year. This year there are 140 startups exhibiting throughout the duration of the show. In addition Startup America will host a content stage with speakers, panel discussions and even pitches throughout the event.

“Every great company starts with a eureka moment, a unique idea that launches the next must-have product or service. And through our partnership with CEA, we have ensured that you can now find these companies within their dedicated home in the Eureka Park TechZone and online through their dedicated interactive news site,” said Brian Cohen, CEO and Co-Founder of Launch.it said in a post on the company’s website. “I’ve worked at and attended CES for more than thirty years and it has been one of the best places to find these fledgling start-ups and diamond in-the-rough companies waiting to be discovered and make it big.”

Launch.it will provide access to all of Eureka Park’s startups to these important tools:

·       In-depth social analytics

·       Wiki-like environment to make story updates in real-time

·       Investors and media can follow companies to get real-time updates

·       An action box to engage readers for investment and media opportunities

·       Facebook comments for insight and feedback

·       Rich multimedia, tags and geo-location for enhanced engagement and discoverability

·       “Buy it and Trial it” buttons to drive users directly to point of purchase

·       Customized tweets for precise messaging and branding

“CEA recognized early on that startups are now an integral part of the consumer electronics industry and created Eureka Park to cultivate and support the passionate entrepreneurs,” said Trace Cohen, President and Co-Founder of Launch.it. “Having attended CES for the past few years, Eureka Park, in it’s first year last year, was one of my favorite areas to walk through because of the innovative startups looking to disrupt multiple industries. Best of all, I had the opportunity to ask questions, meet the passionate founders behind the ideas and can now support them through our partnership to make sure all their news can be easily found, discovered and shared.”

Of course nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, will be covering the entire show including Starutp Debut and the entire Eureka Park experience as well. We’re looking forward to in depth interviews, pitches and reporting on all of the innovative startups in Eureka Park.

Through our previous web properties, and now nibletz, we’ve covered CES for the last decade. Typically with shows like CES we turn to BusinessWire or TradeShow Wire for up to the minute news releases.

CEA partnering with Launch.it, a startup in it’s own right, will better position the Eureka Park startups to make a bigger splash among the over 3500 companies exhibiting during the week in Las Vegas. Launch.it is better positioned in terms of the newest trends in news delivery and social media over the more traditional news services. This way the startups in Eureka Park have their own clear and coherent voice that’s a bit more relevant than traditional newswire services.

 

SXSW Eco 2012 – Interview with DJ Spooky [Video]

the-book-of-ice-cover

Paul Miller better known as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid was at SXSW Eco 2012 with his session The Intersection of Art + Sustainability

Media is the new medium for conservation. Using art to impact the planet, causing a global shift: Academy Award Winner, Grammy Winners and Artists speak on altering awareness on a global scale through media, film, music and design.

He was also on-hand to sign his latest book “The Book of Ice”

“What I have done with this book is to unpack some of the issues that drive my artwork and its relationship to the constantly changing facets of contemporary life in our information-economy dominated, post-everything twenty-first century.  Looking back over the last several centuries, an intense amount of energy has been expended all over the world exploring and unraveling the meaning of humanity’s condition on the planet.  Much of this energy has been spent in perverse and self-defeating ways.  Our vision of modern life is tinged by events like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which makes former disasters like the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident or the 1986 release of radioactive steam in Chernobyl seem quaint and self-contained.  More than ever, we are interconnected, and interdependent.  In the future, regardless of any human action, the planet will be here – we as a species, might not.”

We had a chance to tape a quick interview with Paul Miller/DJ Spooky where we covered the book, his work with Saul Williams and the role that startups play in regards to the environment. (I apologize for the poor lighting conditions and Paul being so dark.  This was 100% operator error and a lack of working knowledge to fix this).

DJ Spooky traveled down to Antarctica with his recording studio to record the ice.  Out of this trip grew Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica a multimedia art project.  As described on his site:

Sinfonia Antarctica transforms Miller’s first person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape into multimedia portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up the land mass. Miller’s field recordings from a portable studio, set up to capture the acoustic qualities of Antarctic ice forms, reflect a changing and even vanishing environment under duress. Coupled with historic, scientific, and geographical visual material, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica is a seventy minute performance, creating a unique and powerful moment around man’s relationship with nature.

This is his third book, following Sound Unbound: DJ Spooky Explores Remix Culture and Rhythm Science both published by MIT Press.  Like The Book Of Ice and Terra Nova, Rhythm Science also included a piece that accompanied it entitled DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation.

Cincinnati Startup: Tracour To Call Bull Crap On Tech Rumors

Will the iPhone 5 have 4G? Is there a 7″ iPad in the works? Will the next Samsung Galaxy device support telepathy? Will the next Motorola Droid support teleporting? If you are a regular reader of tech blogs, (and stopping by here is probably a strong indicator that you are), then you’ve heard your share of tech rumor bullcrap.

A lot of sites rely on third parties that can’t give up all the juice for fear that they would lose their jobs. Other tech sites simply produce great looking documents using photoshop, and then some are too lazy to do any fact checking. Outside of that, every once in a while, legitimate “ninjas” or internal sources actually get something mixed up or a leak they have gets shelved.

Well have you ever tried to keep score?

Sites like The Verge, Engadget , Tech Crunch and Business Insider try and keep score on the hottest rumors about the hottest gadgets, all the while keeping people grounded in what they believe is the truth and what they believe is a little fiction.

Now, you guessed it, there’s an app for that.

Cincinnati based Tracour was first reported on by our friends at TNW. The premise is simple. The platform functions as a database of sorts then it collates technology rumors and attributes them to their respective authors.  When it’s all said and done and it’s time for the rumor to come out, or the device to be released, Tracour keeps score of how correct the rumors actually were.

Brad Sams, the creator of NeoWin and Tracour has his work cut out for him. There are a lot more bloggers, analysts and journalists than there even were two years ago. Just think 18 months ago everyone at The Verge worked at Engadget, Mike Arrington was still pretending to be happy at AOL and there was no Pando Daily.

Tracour is actually a great tool for other blog authors and of course readers. In our days of publishing Thedroidguy while we produced a ton of fresh content everyday, we often went late on the “rumor dejour” because they hadn’t been vetted properly. Sometime it meant we missed a story and other times it meant we saved face by not publishing some ridiculous nonsense. TNW actually does a great job of not pushing the crap out but with Sams’ tool you’ll be able to visualize an author or websites credibility.

In a day and age when even the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have pulled the trigger on a loose lead, Tracour will be a welcome edition to the blogsphere, and of course for others that rely on their fake informants and photoshopped documents, their antics will now have a scorecard. Bravo Brad and Tracour!

Linkage:

Source: TNW

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Charlotte Startup: Rawporter Strikes Exclusive Deal For Libyan Coverage

Citizen Journalism startup Rawporter has reported some very exciting news themselves. The Charlotte based startup has announced that they’ve teamed up with freedom fighter and journalist Matthew VanDyke, who will provide 1st person perspective of the newly liberated Libya, for Rawporter users around the world to use for footage.

“Weʼre excited to participate in this incredibly unique opportunity, Matt is genuinely trying to make a
difference and weʼre extremely proud to assist in his efforts to bring more visibility to Libya while it
undergoes a massive transition,” said Kevin Davis, co-founder. “Weʼve been building a powerful
platform to help people share their stories and this is a great example of our vision being put into
practice.”

Rawporter will have a page (http://rawporter.com/pm/matthewvandyke) dedicated to Mr. VanDykeʼs videos and photos that anyone can view or purchase. Any proceeds from video and photo sales will be donated to a fund for the family of a journalist killed while reporting in a conflict zone. Additionally, Rawporter will be subsidizing a portion of Mr. VanDykeʼs expenses so that he can focus on his mission and worry less about logistics. Mr. VanDyke will attempt to make himself available to respond to assignments if possible but wants to reinforce that there will be significant limitations on his time.

“Citizen journalism played a key role in the Libyan civil war. The videos captured by Libyans in the early days of the revolution were broadcast through the internet and helped mobilize international support for the war. I believe that Rawporter is an innovative company that will facilitate the dissemination of Arab Spring footage from Libya, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere. Their technology will also assist in the broadcast of revolutionary footage from beyond the Arab world that is essential to attracting the attention of the international community to support struggles for freedom worldwide. My partnership with Rawporter is another opportunity for me to contribute to the cause of freedom, as well as another cause I care deeply about – journalism and freedom of the press. I hope that my participation can help expand Rawporterʼs market and give another way for the voices of the oppressed to be heard,” said Matt VanDyke.

Rawporter offers a unique app for both iOS and Android phones that allows users to participate in the action and supply “citizen journalistic” videos and photos for news outlets, media sites, blogs and more to use across the Rawporter network.

Adding this partnership with VanDyke solidifies Rawporter’s commitment to full fledged journalism in addition to their innovative platform.

Linkage:

For more information visit rawporter.com

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Israeli Startup: Jinni Is Powering Big National Sites With Pandora Like Movie Engine

You may not have heard of Yosi Glick, the founder of Israeli startup Jinni, but one things for sure you will probably agree with his fundamental principles behind video discovery.

Glick talks in this story with Bloombgerg’s Cliff Edwards about how most video (movie)  discovery/recommendation sites have things all wrong.  Edwards uses the example of the movie The Usual Suspects. When you watch The Usual Suspects on most video platforms it’s going to recommend Se7en. While both could be characterized as crime thrillers, the audience for Usual Suspects is hardly the audience for Se7en.

Glick’s startup Jinni has put a lot more into discovery when it comes to movies. They provide in-depth algorithms and matching, making it more like a Pandora for movies. Jinni has created an “entertainment genome” that weighs thousands of different parameters to serve up like minded suggestions for movie viewers.

In addition to offering a much more thorough recommendation engine for movie viewers, LG Electronics invested $5 million into Jinni for voice recognition software. The voice recognition software taps into the platform where a user could say “I want to watch a Harrison Ford action movie” and it would serve up Indiana Jones or Star Wars.

LG and Jinni are mum on whether the technology has gone into this next round of smart tvs that the Korean manufacturer is putting out.

They must be doing something right because some of the top companies in the world have employed Jinni’s technology. Best Buy’s movie rental site uses Jinni and Microsoft entered into a deal last September to incorporate Jinni’s software into the Xbox 360 service.

Linkage:

Put Jinni to your own test here at their website

Source: Bloomberg

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Chicago Startup: Journatic Under Fire For Partnership With Chicago Tribune

Journatic, a chicago based new media startup that delivers content for some of the major newspapers across the country in a quasi-syndication form, has gone under fire for inking a partnership with the Chicago Tribune. In reading about this all over the internet it seems a bit crazy that they’ve had such blowback from Chicago.

The company produces content for cities all over the country including, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Miami and other large metropolitan areas.

The Tribune deal has come under fire because the newspaper giant laid off many of it’s local beat reporters in lieu of using the Journatic service. Journatic is actually based in the Chicago Tribune tower so the Tribune didn’t go far for this outsourcing, and unfortunately it’s the way many papers are going, as they lose more and more readership to the internet.

It was widely reported that Journatic’s executive editor Peter Behle offered Journatic staffers a $50 bounty to not engage in conversation about the upcoming lucrative deal with the Tribune and instead talk to a supervisor. They probably didn’t want Tribune reporters asking Journatic reporters about the deal out on smoke breaks in common areas in the Tribune Tower.

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EXCLUSIVE: Los Angeles: 23 Year Old Woman Launches Smartzer, A Startup That Will Change Video Forever

smartzer, tv, kevin harrington, Karoline Gross, Nibletz

23 Year Old Karoline Gross Is The Founder Of The New Video Platform Smartzer (photo: K. Gross)

This story has wow written all over it and Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else has it first.

With all the innovation in video in the past few years we knew it was a matter of time before someone, some company or some startup would find a way to hot link or link map products in videos, like product placements, to actually make them clickable and then purchasable. We didn’t know it would be a 23 year old woman from Los Angeles that would do it. That’s exactly what Karoline Gross and her startup Smartzer are doing.

Imagine watching a movie or an episode of one of your favorite shows and seeing an iPad or some cool new iPad charging cradle you haven’t seen before. When the Smartzer officially launches this fall, and the video content is Smartzer enabled you will be able to click that iPad or iPad charger and see more in-depth information about the product or purchase it. This is what people like Kevin Harrington, CEO of “As Seen On TV” has been dreaming about.

When the technology launches producers will have to integrate the Smartzer system into their videos in order for it to work, but with the progress Gross has made so far, and the fact that she’s in Los Angeles meeting with studio executives all the time, it won’t be too long until we see this technology on the big three networks. You will be able to use your smartphone to watch tv and interact with tv  for more than just checking in and redeeming deals, you’ll be able to click, look and buy.

You like the jacket Ryan Seacrest is wearing on Idol, click, look, buy. You like the dress your favorite star is wearing on the red carpet, click, look buy. What about that song in Glee, click, look, buy. Yes we knew it was coming and Smartzer is setting the pace.

We got a chance to catch up with the busy 23 year old entrepreneur and here’s what she had to tell Nibletz about herself and her amazing startup:

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Startup Quick Byte: Birmingham Al Startup Inks Deal With Zillow

A Birmingham AL new media startup called magiccitypost.com, which is a community news and lifestyle site in Birmingham Alabama has inked a new deal with real estate giant Zillow. The startup operates out of Birmingham’s Innovation Depot a local tech accelerator.

The Birmingham Buziness Journal reports that a new co-branded web product will launch next month. Although the details are scarce it would make sense that it will be some sort of real estate directory or interactive listing section for the site.

Emily Lowery, founder of Magic City LLC said that the launch will include rebranding and new marketing. She would not disclose the financial details of the deal to the Business Journal. It has been reported that the deal is expected to double their annual revenue.

Source: Birmingham Business Journal

Exclusive: Italian Startup 20lin.es Prepares To Disrupt Social Collaborative Writing At International Book Fair

A team of 10 relatively young entrepreneurs in Italy have teamed up to create something quite disruptive in the collaborative writing space. The four founders and six collaborators are all between the ages of 24 and 26. Their startup called 20lin.es is set to debut on May 10th during the International Book Fair in Turin.

So how does it work? Writers collaborate with each other in what co-founder Alessandro Biggi calls a 20×6 format. The writers collaborate on what 20lin.es calls a “pill”. A pill is a short story made up of 6 sections with 20 lines each, hence the name 20lin.es.

Biggi took some time to explain to Nibletz how this new innovative collaboration works:

“At any moment, 20lin.es selected users can start a new story by writing a (max) 20lines input that will stay active for 20 days.  If other users like such input, they can decide to contribute to the story by writing a second section of max 20lines.  More users can then decide to either continue the story by adding a new section or to re-write the previous one. In such a way, every input can be developed in a large/endless number of possibilities.  Every story can have max 6 sections while each section can be voted, commented and shared by any user.  At the end of the 20 days of activity of the input, there will be a 6-sections story with the highest approval. It has finally became a Pill and it will be digitally published.  20lin.es publications will collect 20 different Pills originated from 20 different inputs or the 20 most liked stories started from the same input.  20lin.es publications will be sold on: iTunes, Amazon and directly on 20lin.es

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Anonymous Is Building A New Social Music Platform

The RIAA and the hacktivist group Anonymous has been at odds for a while. Anonymous and coherts LulzSec went after most of the major record labels in 2011 getting usernames, email addresses and more and doing data dumps all over the place.

The new service called Anontune is still in the early stages of development. The system is designed to pull songs from third party sites like Youtube and then users can put them into their own playlists and share them. They plan to do all of this and all the while keep the service from getting shut down by the music industry, reports wired.

“We would say stuff like, ‘People really use YouTube as a music player yet it really sucks for that purpose … it’s too unorganized,’” the anon wrote to Wired. “And then, ‘YouTube does make a good music player but you can’t play all your songs on it since the obscure ones aren’t uploaded,’ then eventually, ‘Hmmm, what if you were to combine music websites like Myspace, Yahoo, YouTube and others?’”

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Miami Startup: YourListen Crosses 100,000 Audio Uploads

Audio sharing site Yourlisten.com, founded by Scott Goodman, hopes to become the audio version of Youtube. They are well on their way as they recently announced their 100,000th audio upload. That’s definitely not too shabby for an audio file sharing site not based in Silicon Valley, and having to deal with the fallout from sites like MegaUpload.

Yourlisten.com is a free user-generated network that allows flexibility for uploading just about any kind of audio file. You’ll find a variety of music, podcasts, ringtones, interviews, soundbytes and other audio files on Yourlisten.com. The user can share the audio on the site, with friends and across social networks.

You would be surprised at the types of audio files that you can find on yourlisten.com. It’s not the site of the day out there to replace sites like megaupload. There are a lot of spoken word poetry pieces, international interviews and songs by new and undiscovered artists. A quick perusing of the site found that WTOP radio in Washington DC (one of the top billing radio stations in the country) uses Yourlisten.com to host interviews for people to listen to if they miss them during the original broadcast.

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More Changes At AOL As Patch Editor In Chief Brian Farham Steps Down

There was actually positive news out of the AOL camp last week when it was announced that they were selling 800 patents to rival Microsoft for $1 billion dollars. That news was quickly overshadowed by the Facetagram announcement later in the day. The patent sale to Microsoft was a great move for AOL’s bottom line however there still seems to be trouble and disorganization in their media division, which is supposed to be their bread and butter.

The Blogsphere erupted with joy last week when Michael Arrington announced that he and Crunchfund partner MG Siegler would be participating at Tech Crunch Disrupt NY. Arrington will be the main interviewer and pseudo MC again, but this year there will be a lot less speculation swarming around him. Last year during Tech Crunch Disrupt NY Arrington’s removal from the company that he founded was just starting to bubble. Relief has been in the air knowing that the next Disrupt will be hosted by the man himself. Of course PandoDaily wasn’t the least bit excited about that.

With the TechCrunch/AOL/PandoDaily headlines taking center stage many missed the fact that AOL’s Editor In Chief of their Patch properties Brian Farham was stepping down. While on the surface it seems that Farnham was happy with the progress that Patch has made under his leadership, Forbes magazine was quick to point out that AOL recently hired a chief content officer for Patch which bumped Farham down to the number two position.

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Ford & Yahoo Team Up For Reality Show About Electric Cars

Being on the road in a Prius makes you really appreciate both the hybrid and the full on electric car. While traveling to cover startups in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Cameron and I saw charging stations out in front of local government office buildings, which was a breath of fresh air. We also brought you this story earlier this month about a NC startup that is re-inventing the charging station.

With all this talk about electric cars it’s no wonder that Ford has teamed up with Yahoo to release a web-based reality show about electric cars.

The new show called “Plugged In” will chronicle the lives of three two person teams driving the new Ford Focus electric. The teams will compete in scavenger hunt like challenges in 10 major cities including Los Angeles in New York, mostly on the east and west coast where electric cars are gaining popularity and where gas is over $4.00 per gallon and quickly approaching $5.00.

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