Motorola Wants To Make Modular Smartphones A Reality With Project Ara

[tc_dropcap]It’s been a little over two years since Google announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, and these days Motorola has basically become the most interesting smartphone player in the business.[/tc_dropcap] To wit: the Google subsidiary confirmed earlier this morning that it’s been on what it calls Project Ara, an open hardware platform centered about building modular smartphones and the parts that snap onto them. This, in short, is amazing. The initiative has apparently been in development for over a year now, and Motorola has outlined some of the basics in a blog post here. Long story short, the design calls for a base unit (or endoskeleton) that makes up the frame of the device, along with a slew of additional modules that snap onto the thing to extend its functionality. Are you a fan of physical keyboards? Attach one and start pecking out your emails. Need your phone to last a little longer? Swap out that battery module for a bigger one. The list goes on and on. If the timetable works out the way Motorola wants it to, it’ll release an alpha version of its Module Development Kit sometime this winter. I’ve heard that Motorola is cooking up some interesting things in terms of sensors behind closed doors, too, and it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to think about how they could be compartmentalized for use with a modular smartphone. In fact, Motorola already outed one of them — Associate VP Paul Eremenko alluded the blog post to the existence of a pulse oximeter module that can measure the oxygen saturation of a user’s blood. Granted, neither Motorola nor the fellow behind the viral Phonebloks concept (who the company tips its hat to) were the first to ponder out loud about the possibility of a modular cellphone. Remember Bug Labs? They gained plenty of notoriety back in 2008 for its modular hardware — users could snap on LCD screens, GPS transmitters, digital cameras, and 3G radio modules to a chunky base unit to turn it into a device that approached the sort of functionality one would expect from an early smartphone. And if we’re being honest, the Phonebloks concept that went blew up had little chance of ever becoming an actual product, no matter how slickly creator Dave Hakkens presented it. It seems the timing was just right though, and Motorola plans to tap into that growing Phonebloks fan community to help it figure out where to take the concept. For now, Motorola is inviting would-be users (sorry, “Ara Scouts”) to participate in missions that will aid in the company’s research. The first mission? Users are being asked to download an app and use it to share their thoughts and visions for what they’d want to see Project Ara become, and they’ve got exactly three days to get it done. Seems like a pretty harried pace, but that only bodes well for the rest of us — with any luck that may just mean the first prototype Ara devices get pushed out the door even quicker.

Visually, The Infographics Marketplace, Launches Its New Cloud-Based Collaborative Project Center

Visually, best known as a marketplace for infographics, has launched its new Marketplace and Project Center to grow the audience for its cloud-based collaborative tools. Customers can now use the marketplace to create videos, presentations, interactive graphics, infographics and other visual content. The San Francisco-based startup says there are currently 100,000 creative professionals on the platform and that Visually has paid out nearly $2 million in project fees. Visually gives designers a way to reach clients ranging from startups to Fortune 1000 companies. The company says that of the designers that apply to be on Visually, only 10% meet its quality standards. Founded in 2011 by Stewart Langille and Lee Sherman, the team behind Mint.com's graphics, Visually seeks to change the traditional agency model of content creation. For clients, who have included AOL, Nike, Twitter, NBC, P&G, UNESCO, The Atlantic, Visa, Verizon and Dell, the benefits of using Visually include fixed costs, lower risk, satisfaction guarantees, faster completion rates (sometimes within 24 hours) and access to a wider range of designers. For creative professionals, Visually gives them the chance to work with high profile companies, gain wider exposure for their work and belong to an online community similar to Dribbble or Forrst. “Our customers love the experience they get on Visually–the diverse pool of creative talent, the ease of collaboration, and the speed to market. This launch allows us to provide a comprehensive solution for our customers–a one stop shop for all of their visual content,” said Langille in a statement.

The Budgee Bot Can Help You Bear Your Burden

Kill your mule because Budgee Bot is the first consumer-oriented pack-bot designed for the average user. This twee little robot has a basket and a motorized platform and will follow you anywhere, carrying your shopping, luggage, and pets behind you like a robotic sherpa. The robot holds up to 50 pounds of stuff and you can close it up into a small five-pound bundle. It can sense bumps and cliffs and it has an auto-follow system that will look for and maintain a safe distance from you and your phone. He also loves you. Budgee Bot cares about you and wants to be your friend. Each day he greets you and does his best to cheer you up! His favorite place is to be with YOU! If you'll recall robots like Big Dog were originally designed to act as pack animals on the battlefield. Budgee Bots' creators, Five Elements Robotics, have taken that idea to its obvious consumer conclusion. You can see a few more pictures of the finished product at Spectrum. The company is looking for a November crowd funding launch and Budgee Bot should cost about $1,400 when it's finished – quite a bit to pay for a little robotic Dobby.

Firefox Gets Guest Browsing Mode On Android, Web Audio API Support On All Platforms

Mozilla today launched version 25 of its Firefox browser for Windows, OS X, Linux and Android. The highlight of the new Android version is a new guest browsing mode that allows you to share your phone or tablet with your friend and family without having to worry about them looking at your browsing history, bookmarks, passwords or other data. Once you tap the “New Guest Session” button, Firefox will restart with a clean profile and once your guests close the browser again, all of their information will be wiped. This, Mozilla argues, “means you can let friends and family borrow your phone or tablet to surf the Web and make sure your own information is safe and secure.” Also new on Android is support for Firefox's mixed content blocking, the organization's technology for blocking man-in-middle attacks and eavesdroppers on HTTPS pages, as well as the ability to take any image in the browser and turn it into a wallpaper for your device or add it as a photo to a contact. As usual, this version also introduces a number of new features for developers, including support for some new CSS3 features and the Contacts API. The one feature users will likely notice first, though, is that developers can now write add-ons for the Android version that add indicators to the URL Bar, similar to what Firefox's desktop users are already used to. On all platforms, Firefox now supports the Web Audio API. This may not sound all so revolutionary at first – the web always had some kind of audio support, after all – but this API allows developers to manipulate audio in the browser in ways that weren't previously possible. In today's announcement, Mozilla specifically notes that this technology will be extremely useful for developers who want to write browser-based games. It offers support for positional audio, for example, as well as for effects like reverb. To showcase these capabilities, the organization teamed up with Goo Technologies, which created a pretty cool technical demo that uses the company's HTML5 graphics platform and the Web Audio API to showcase the kind of immersive experience developers can create in the browser. The Web Audio API is a W3C standard, but as usual, different browser vendors implement these standards in different ways. To help developers make sure their apps work in all browsers, Mozilla published a guide to how its version is different from those of its competitors.

The Spring Funds Social Good And Earns You Cash Back Automatically For Dining Out

The Spring lets you save the world without doing anything. You connect your credit card to The Spring, pay with it at local restaurants, and automatically trigger donations to needy neighborhood causes while also earning yourself cash back. There are no check-ins or pay-up-front coupons. Just eat at great local restaurants like you normally would and you make a positive impact in your community. The Spring launches today in San Francisco at a dozen restaurants, including local favorites Dosa and Gracias Madre, and has plans to expand to other cities eventually. Its iOS app and site have a Yelp-like guide for finding participating restaurants, and it even pulls in Yelp reviews to help you discover top eateries. The Spring is totally free, so there's little reason not to sign up and punch in your credit card info. Even if you forget about it, you might happen to eat at a Spring-equipped spot and do some good accidentally. That might mean funding a soup kitchen, an education garden at an inner city school, or technology training at the local women's center. Do Good, Pay Less Here how founder Brent Schulkin describes The Spring: “The story is, you're Josh. You live in San Francisco's Mission District. You love your neighborhood, and love the idea of supporting it. But in reality, you don't really do much volunteering or donate to every little thing. Although those are your values, you want to do something that's easy. You're busy and don't want to be inconvenienced. I'm the same way. Most people are. And we can all use The Spring.” When you pay your normally priced bill with your Spring-connected credit card at a partnered restaurant, 3 percent goes to local causes, 3 percent goes back to you which you can cash out through PayPal, and 3 percent goes to The Spring to expand the service so it can fund more causes. You get an email thanking you for triggering the donation, with info about the project you funded, and sharing buttons to tell friends how they can help. A Loyalty App With Heart Why would a restaurant pay 9 percent of their revenue to be part of The Spring? Because the donations create an emotional connection between the customer and the business. The Spring incentivizes people to try out an eatery, to keep coming back, and to tell their friends. It will take time to prove, but the theory is that a windfall of customers will handily make up for the 9 percent. It's simple for businesses to sign up, too. There's no hardware, iPads, or clumsy point-of-sale systems to integrate or train employees on. As long as they use a reasonably modern credit card system, everything happens quietly in the background after the check is paid thanks to The Spring's payment processing partner. Even with this value proposition, The Spring will still have a tough time gaining traction. There are plenty of restaurant finders, loyalty apps, and ways to donate money. Mogl gets you more cash back, but doesn't help anyone but you. eGood gives 10 percent to causes, but requires cumbersome tablet use at checkout and doesn't get you any discount. Then there's Belly, Flip, Pirq…but The Spring hopes its combination of social good and rewards will win out. Another issue will be trying to convince Bay Area restaurants to come aboard - businesses that are constantly hammered by startups trying to “help.” It only has 13 signed up right now, so that will have to grow. Luckily The Spring has a former head of sales from Groupon leading its on-boarding charge, and this time he has something positive to push. Frictionless Activism Schulkin's been looking for a better way to make a difference for 10 years. He led protests in college but saw no effect, then started Carrotmob to harness collective buying power to push local businesses to give back. But Carrotmob was too complicated, so he raised money from some angels and worked with eco-design studio Greenstart to make social good as simple as possible. Out flowed The Spring. You do good and feel good while actually paying less for food. Schulkin concludes, “This is a total no-brainer. Why wouldn't you sign up?”

Former Googler Opens Crowdfunding Campaign To Teach Kids To Code With A Cute, Blinking Bot

File this under “holiday gifts for next year”. A startup called Play-i has opened a crowdfunding campaign to put into production a pair of educational robots that teach children the basics of coding from a young age. The project comes from Vikas Gupta, Google's former head of consumer payments, who sold his previous company Jambool to Google for $70 million in 2010. In addition to the $148,085 that Play-i has raised in the last 24 hours, the startup closed $1 million in seed funding from Google Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, and a number of other investors last spring. The two robots Play-i is hoping to take to market are named Bo and Yana, both of whom are controlled using a companion app. By putting different action buttons in order, kids can build a visual set of commands: if they clap, for instance, Bo might move forward. Pivoting around his center, he can also play a xylophone, or offer up a flower from a test tube in his hand. It doesn't look much like traditional coding, but the idea is to get kids thinking in terms of actionable storytelling. Bo and Yana can also interact with each other. But note that while Bo can spin and wheel around, Yana has no wheels, being a stationary eyeball type. There are other products out there that gamify coding basics for kids, like Move the Turtle and Cargo-Bot. So the idea of linking a set of actions to a game or otherwise relatable and enticing character isn't anything new. Nor is Play-i the first to pioneer programming with toys, as products like the Bee-Bot are already on the market. Yana and Bo are nonetheless very giftable, and quite charming, even from an adult's perspective. The two blink their big, luminous eyes and trill, Tickle Me Elmo style, upon command. According to Gupta, the designs were meant to be appealing but not to look like pets.

Payments Giant First Data Acquires Mobile Loyalty Startup Perka For ~$30M To Take On Square And PayPal In SMB Market

In an effort to catch up with Square and Paypal, payment processing giant First Data has been quietly increasing its presence in the mobile payments market. As the largest credit card processing company in the U.S. with over one trillion dollars in card transactions passing through its network each year, First Data is looking to throw its weight around - even if its competitors do have a head start. Today, the payment infrastructure company announced that it has acquired Perka, the mobile loyalty startup whose launch TechCrunch was first to cover back in October, 2011. Perka is First Data's second acquisition in October and follows its purchase of Andreessen Horowitz-backed mobile payments startup, Clover, two weeks ago. With its acquisition of Clover, First Data has been looking to ramp up its support for small businesses, particular around point-of-sale (POS) infrastructure. The move enables First Data to give customers that are using its old school credit card terminals an opportunity to upgrade without having to turn to the Squares and PayPal Here's of the world. And, today, by adding Perka's subscription mobile loyalty services to the mix, First Data is beginning to build out the other side of its fledgling in-store payment solution. While terms of the Perka deal were not disclosed, sources tell us that the acquisition price was slightly lower than what it had paid for Clover, which we have confirmed in a 10K filing (page 71) to be a net-cash consideration of $34.1 million. Alan Chung, Perka's co-founder and CEO, said that the startup's 8 product developers and 28 total employees are still with the company and that Perka will continue to operate autonomously out of its Portland, Oregon and New York offices. In its two years as an independent company - with less than $1 million raised in angel funding - Perka has manage to scale to 50 U.S. states and several countries, catering to customers that range from local coffee shops to modern retailers like The Melt. Since launch, Perka introduced two loyalty subscription services, which essentially bring those "buy 10, get 1 free" punch cards we all know and love online - and to your mobile device. Through its mobile apps, Perka allows customers to connect with their favorite local merchants and receive recognition for their patronage in an increasing tier of “perks." On the other side, Perka allows merchants to tap into customer intelligence, and connect with loyal users them via social media even when not in the store. As to why Perka opted to partner with First Data, the founder says that, in the end, it's all about scale. By teaming up with the largest payment processor in the U.S., Perka will be able to achieve scale faster than it would have on its own, as well as tap into the company's financial resources, brand recognition and its more than 6 million credit card terminal customers in 34 countries.