Sains and teknologi

Mystery Shopping Service Mobee Acquires Kickscout, The Startup From RunKeeper Co-founder Michael Sheeley

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      Boston-based Mobee, the mystery shopping app built by former Googlers aimed at leveraging mobile to collect real-world data from inside stores and other businesses, has acquired local shopping app Kickscout, created by RunKeeper co-founder Michael Sheeley. Sheeley, who left RunKeeper in 2012 after helping grow the service to 10 million+ users, will now become Mobee’s Chief Product Officer and work with the team in Boston.

      Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it is a combination of cash and stock. Kickscout had not taken in outside investment. Mobee, meanwhile, has $1.1 million in seed funding, and growing revenue, its founder and CEO Prahar Shah tells us.


      Sheeley says that, with Kickscout, he was interested in exploring how mobile could be used to disrupt offline retail, an industry that had yet to change much over the years. He had been testing a number of ideas with the service, initially having users taking photos of things they think their friends might want to buy while in stores.

      Later, Kickscout began to connect offline purchasing behavior with Pinterest – that is, if you had pinned a product on Pinterest, the app could alert you as you were shopping that the wanted product was nearby.

    This idea began to gain some traction, with Kickscout growing to 50,000 users, around half of them actives. Now at Mobee, some of the technology Kickscout was using will be integrated into the Mobee mobile platform, starting with the piece that can help identify behaviors indicating a user is likely shopping, as well as other location-based information. Mobee isn’t moving into the same areas that Kickscout focused on, though, so the Kickscout apps on Android and iOS are being shut down immediately.


    According to Mobee CEO Prahar Shah, the interest in acquiring Kickscout had a lot to do with Sheeley – because of his experience with RunKeeper, and growing a user base.

  “There’s a potential for all these shoppers who are going into grocery stores, going into retail stores, and shopping every day. The idea with Mobee was to turn them all into data collectors,” he explains, referencing how Mobee’s users can take on “missions” where they check for stock, or a product’s placement on store shelves, among other things.

“Mike had really figured out at RunKeeper – and he was figuring out at Kickscout – how to make a user base grow, and how to make a social, viral app,” says Shah.

The social element comes into play at Mobee because the company wants to stand out from competitors like Field Agent, GigWalk, EasyShift and others by offering users an experience which is “more fun,” more social, and more like gaming, Shah explains. He notes that in Boston, where Mobee is headquartered, many users are the local Lyft drivers – a company known for its more fun-loving culture.

The CEO declined to provide Mobee’s revenue numbers or detail its growth, but would say that Mobee saw 500,000 missions completed in 2013, and has customers visiting stores like Walmart and Target to collect data for CPG clients, as well as places like McDonald’s, Panera Bread and other restaurants, plus grocery stores and other retail locations. One of the company’s top users made $6,200 last year off Mobee, Shah also mentions.

Mobee is now expanding for the first time outside of Boston to be available to users nationwide, and is thinking of raising an additional round in 2014. Now at Mobee, one of Sheeley’s first tasks is growing the development team. Today, the company has 15 employees, and will soon be 20 with the addition of more engineers.
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Stealth aircraft

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Stealth aircraft are designed to avoid detection using a variety of advanced technologies that reduce reflection/emission of radar, infrared, visible light, radio-frequency (RF) spectrum, and audio, collectively known as stealth technology.Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during World War II, the planned Horten Ho 229 being described as the first stealth aircraft. Well-known modern examples of stealth of U.S aircraft include the United States' F-117 Nighthawk (1981–2008), the B-2 Spirit, the F-22 Raptor, and the F-35 Lightning II.


While no aircraft is totally invisible to radar, stealth aircraft make it difficult for conventional radar to detect or track the aircraft effectively, increasing the odds of a successful attack. Stealth is the combination of passive low observable (LO) features and active emitters such as Low Probability of Intercept Radars, radios and laser designators. These are usually combined with active defenses such as chaff, flares, and ECM. It is accomplished by using a complex design philosophy to reduce the ability of an opponent's sensors to detect, track, or attack the stealth aircraft. This philosophy also takes into account the heat, sound, and other emissions of the aircraft as these can also be used to locate it.

Full-size stealth combat aircraft demonstrators have been flown by the United States (in 1977), Russia (in 2010) and China (in 2011). The US military has adopted three stealth designs, and is preparing to adopt the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.

Most recent fighter designs will claim to have some sort of stealth, low observable, reduced RCS or radar jamming capability, but there has been no air to air combat experience against stealth aircraft.


Limitations



  1. Instability of design
    1. Early stealth aircraft were designed with a focus on minimal radar cross section (RCS) rather than aerodynamic performance. Highly-stealth aircraft like the F-117 Nighthawk are aerodynamically unstable in all three axes and require constant flight corrections from a fly-by-wire (FBW) flight system to maintain controlled flight. As for the B-2 Spirit, which was based on the development of the flying wing aircraft by Jack Northrop in 1940, this design allowed for a stable aircraft with sufficient yaw control, even without vertical surfaces such as rudders.
  2. Aerodynamic limitations
    1. Earlier stealth aircraft (such as the F-117 and B-2) lack afterburners, because the hot exhaust would increase their infrared footprint, and breaking the sound barrier would produce an obvious sonic boom, as well as surface heating of the aircraft skin which also increased the infrared footprint. As a result their performance in air combat maneuvering required in a dogfight would never match that of a dedicated fighter aircraft. This was unimportant in the case of these two aircraft since both were designed to be bombers. More recent design techniques allow for stealthy designs such as the F-22 without compromising aerodynamic performance. Newer stealth aircraft, like the F-22, F-35 and the Sukhoi T-50, have performance characteristics that meet or exceed those of current front-line jet fighters due to advances in other technologies such as flight control systems, engines, airframe construction and materials.
  3. Electromagnetic emissions
    1. The high level of computerization and large amount of electronic equipment found inside stealth aircraft are often claimed to make them vulnerable to passive detection. This is highly unlikely and certainly systems such as Tamara and Kolchuga, which are often described as counter-stealth radars, are not designed to detect stray electromagnetic fields of this type. Such systems are designed to detect intentional, higher power emissions such as radar and communication signals. Stealth aircraft are deliberately operated to avoid or reduce such emissions.[citation needed] 
    Current Radar Warning Receivers look for the regular pings of energy from mechanically swept radars while fifth generation jet fighters use Low Probability of Intercept Radars with no regular repeat pattern.
  4. Vulnerable modes of flight
    1. Stealth aircraft are still vulnerable to detection during, and immediately after using their weaponry. Since stealth payload (reduced RCS bombs and cruise missiles) are not yet generally available, and ordnance mount points create a significant radar return, stealth aircraft carry all armament internally. As soon as weapons bay doors are opened, the plane's RCS will be multiplied and even older generation radar systems will be able to locate the stealth aircraft. While the aircraft will reacquire its stealth as soon as the bay doors are closed, a fast response defensive weapons system has a short opportunity to engage the aircraft. 
    This vulnerability is addressed by operating in a manner that reduces the risk and consequences of temporary acquisition. The B-2's operational altitude imposes a flight time for defensive weapons that makes it virtually impossible to engage the aircraft during its weapons deployment. New stealth aircraft designs such as the F-22 and F-35 can open their bays, release munitions and return to stealthy flight in less than a second. Some weapons require that the weapon's guidance system acquire the target while the weapon is still attached to the aircraft. This forces relatively extended operations with the bay doors open.
    1. Also, such aircraft as the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter can also carry additional weapons and fuel on hardpoints below their wings. When operating in this mode the planes will not be nearly as stealthy, as the hardpoints and the weapons mounted on those hardpoints will show up on radar systems. This option therefore represents a trade off between stealth or range and payload. External stores allow those aircraft to attack more targets further away, but will not allow for stealth during that mission as compared to a shorter range mission flying on just internal fuel and using only the more limited space of the internal weapon bays for armaments.

Reduced payload


















In a 1994 live fire exercise near Point Mugu, California, a B-2 Spirit dropped forty-seven 500 lb (230 kg) class Mark 82 bombs, which represents about half of a B-2's total ordnance payload in Block 30 configuration
Fully stealth aircraft carry all fuel and armament internally, which limits the payload. By way of comparison, the F-117 carries only two laser or GPS guided bombs, while a non-stealth attack aircraft can carry several times more. This requires the deployment of additional aircraft to engage targets that would normally require a single non-stealth attack aircraft. This apparent disadvantage however is offset by the reduction in fewer supporting aircraft that are required to provide air cover, air-defense suppression and electronic counter measures, making stealth aircraft "force multipliers".

  • Sensitive skin
    • Stealth aircraft often have skins made with Radar-absorbent materials or RAMs. Some of these contain Carbon black particles, some contain tiny iron spheres. There are many materials used in RAMs, and some are classified, particularly the materials that specific aircraft use.
  • Cost of operations
    • Stealth aircraft are typically more expensive to develop and manufacture. An example is the B-2 Spirit that is many times more expensive to manufacture and support than conventional bomber aircraft. The B-2 program cost the U.S. Air Force almost $45 billion.
  • Reflected waves
    • Passive (multistatic) radar, bistatic radar and especially multistatic radar systems detect some stealth aircraft better than conventional monostatic radars, since first-generation stealth technology (such as the F117) reflects energy away from the transmitter's line of sight, effectively increasing the radar cross section (RCS) in other directions, which the passive radars monitor. Such a system typically uses either low frequency broadcast TV and FM radio signals (at which frequencies controlling the aircraft's signature is more difficult). Later stealth approaches do not rely on controlling the specular reflections of radar energy and so the geometrical benefits are unlikely to be significant.
    • Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with support of DARPA, have shown that it is possible to build a synthetic aperture radar image of an aircraft target using passive multistatic radar, possibly detailed enough to enable automatic target recognition (ATR).
    • In December 2007, SAAB researchers revealed details for a system called Associative Aperture Synthesis Radar (AASR) that would employ a large array of inexpensive and redundant transmitters and a few intelligent receivers to exploit forward scatter to detect low observable targets.The system was originally designed to detect stealthy cruise missiles and should be just as effective against aircraft. The large array of inexpensive transmitters provides a degree of protection against anti-radar (or anti-radiation) missiles or attacks.

Schlieren photograph of T-38 shock waves


Schlieren-Soldering-Iron-Heat. Note that the soldering iron tip itself is not glowing because it is not Infrared photography. Had the photograph been a composite ofSchlieren and infrared, the soldering iron tip would show as a source of illumination and the atmospheric disturbance caused by the heating would show as well. The infrared point of origin or target would be unambiguous.


Photography of bow shock waves around a brass bullet, 1888


Schlieren Signature  Schlieren is the German plural of schliere, which is German for the English word streak. Schlieren are visible streaks produced in a transparent medium as a result of variations in the medium's density leading to variations in refractive index.Anything that disturbs the atmosphere may be detected (Schlieren Photography) because of the Schlieren effect caused by that atmospheric disturbance. This type of Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) detection falls under the category of Electro-optical MASINT. A telephoto or telescopic picture of a jet passing between the photographer and a full moon will sometimes show the outline of the aircraft as well as the atmospheric distortions of the exhaust plumes. This passive principle can be used at all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Passive signature intelligence has captured stealth aircraft in flight by accident, when such aircraft fly between Google Maps satellites and ground. Once a stealth signature has been captured, it may be loaded into a database library for an active and live satellite search at any point in the future. Ground at past versus ground at present differential comparisons can be made to determine flight paths and altitudes of stealth aircraft. This disturbance and disturbing influence method has been used for finding ships at sea through wake generation tracking and even in Wilson cloud chambers for particle discovery and tracking. The key principle is that the disturbance is much more visible in area and volume than the disturbing point source and converges attention to the much smaller disturbing source.

Infrared (heat)Some analysts claim Infra-red search and track systems (IRSTs) can be deployed against stealth aircraft, because any aircraft surface heats up due to air friction and with a two channel IRST is a CO2 (4.3 µm absorption maxima) detection possible, through difference comparing between the low and high channel.These analysts point to the resurgence in such systems in Russian designs in the 1980s, such as those fitted to the MiG-29 and Su-27. The latest version of the MiG-29, the MiG-35, is equipped with a new Optical Locator System that includes more advanced IRST capabilities.
In air combat, the optronic suite allows:

  • Detection of non-afterburning targets at 45-kilometre (28 mi) range and more;
  • Identification of those targets at 8-to-10-kilometre (5.0 to 6.2 mi) range; and
  • Estimates of aerial target range at up to 15 kilometres (9.3 mi).
For ground targets, the suite allows:
  • A tank-effective detection range up to 15 kilometres (9.3 mi), and aircraft carrier detection at 60 to 80 kilometres (37 to 50 mi);
  • Identification of the tank type on the 8-to-10-kilometre (5.0 to 6.2 mi) range, and of an aircraft carrier at 40 to 60 kilometres (25 to 37 mi); and
  • Estimates of ground target range of up to 20 kilometres (12 mi).
Longer Wavelength RadarVHF radar systems have wavelengths comparable to aircraft feature sizes and should exhibit scattering in the resonance region rather than the optical region, allowing most stealth aircraft to be detected. This has prompted Nizhniy Novgorod Research Institute of Radio Engineering (NNIIRT) to develop VHF AESAs such as the NEBO SVU, which is capable of performing target acquisition for SAM batteries. Despite the advantages offered by VHF radar, their longer wavelengths result in poor resolution compared to comparably sized X-band radar array. As a result, these systems must be very large before they can have the resolution for an engagement radar.The Dutch company Thales Nederland, formerly known as Holland Signaal, developed a naval phased-array radar called SMART-L, which is operated at L-Band and has counter-stealth.

OTH radar (over-the-horizon radar)Over-the-horizon radar is a concept increasing radar's effective range over conventional radar. The Australian JORN Jindalee Operational Radar Network can overcome certain stealth characteristics. It is claimed that the HF frequency used and the method of bouncing radar from ionosphere overcomes the stealth characteristics of the F-117A. In other words, stealth aircraft are optimized for defeating much higher-frequency radar from front-on rather than low-frequency radars from above.

Advancements in computational powerThe stealth platforms may have slower advances in materials technology and physical limits so that further advances in stealth become either impossible or unaffordable. This may force future stealth platforms to stand off from their targets and use active countermeasures and long range weaponry to strike targets.However if the stealth aircraft are constantly upgraded they can hope to jam or evade emerging threats better than similarly equipped non-stealthy platforms could.
  • Operational usage of stealth aircraft


The F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft.
The B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bomber

The U.S. is the only country to have used stealth aircraft in combat. These deployments include the United States invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, the Kosovo Conflict, the War in Afghanistan the War in Iraq and the 2011 military intervention in Libya. The first use of stealth aircraft was in the U.S. invasion of Panama, where F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft were used to drop bombs on enemy airfields and positions while evading enemy radar.

In 1990 the F-117 Nighthawk was used in the First Gulf War, where F-117s flew 1,300 sorties and scored direct hits on 1,600 high-value targets in Iraq while accumulating 6,905 flight hours.Only 2.5% of the American aircraft in Iraq were F-117s, yet they struck 40% of the strategic targets, dropping 2,000 tons of precision-guided munitions and striking their targets with an 80% success rate.


 In the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia two stealth aircraft were used by the United States, the veteran F-117 Nighthawk, and the newly introduced B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bomber. The F-117 performed its usual role of striking precision high-value targets and performed well, although one F-117 was shot down by a Serbian Isayev S-125 'Neva-M' missile commanded by Colonel Zoltán Dani. The, then new, B-2 Spirit was highly successful, destroying 33% of selected Serbian bombing targets in the first eight weeks of U.S. involvement in the War. During this war, B-2s flew non-stop to Kosovo from their home base in Missouri and back.



In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, F-117 Nighthawks and B-2 Spirits were used, and this was the last time the F-117 would see combat. F-117s dropped satellite-guided strike munitions on selected targets, with high success. B-2 Spirits conducted 49 sorties in the invasion, releasing 1.5 million pounds of munitions.

During the May 2011 operation to kill Osama bin Laden, one of the helicopters used to clandestinely insert US troops into Pakistan crashed in the bin Laden compound. From the wreckage it was revealed this helicopter had stealth characteristics, making this the first publicly known operational use of a stealth helicopter.

A recent use of stealth aircraft was in the 2011 military intervention in Libya, where B-2 Spirits dropped 40 bombs on a Libyan airfield with concentrated air defenses in support of the UN no-fly zone.



The F-22 Raptor fifth generation stealth air superiority fighter

Naval variant of the F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation stealth multi-role fighter
A Sukhoi PAK FA fifth-generation stealth multirole fighter

Stealth aircraft will continue to play a valuable role in air combat with the United States using the F-22 Raptor, B-2 Spirit, and the F-35 Lightning II to perform a variety of operations.

The Russian Sukhoi PAK FA stealth multi-role fighter is scheduled to be introduced from 2015, to perform various missions.

The Sukhoi/HAL FGFA, the Indian version of the PAK FA is scheduled to be introduced from 2017 in higher numbers, also to perform various missions.

The People's Republic of China plans to introduce the Chengdu J-20 stealth multi-role fighter round 2018. A prototype was flown in early 2011.



  • Stealth aircraft lost

Main articles: F-117 Nighthawk#Combat loss, Andersen Air Force Base B-2 accident , and RQ-170 Sentinel


The first time that a stealth aircraft was shot down was on 27 March 1999, during Operation Allied Force when an American F-117 Nighthawk was brought down by an Isayev S-125 'Neva-M' missile launched by a Serbian Air Defense crew who were operating their radars on unusually long wavelengths.The pilot ejected and was rescued and the aircraft remained relatively intact due to slowly striking the ground, inverted.

In December 2011, Iranian sources showed videos of a captured US RQ-170 stealth drone in a good shape with intact central controlling unit.The information was later confirmed by US sources. The analysts say that the drone might have been captured by electronic cyber attack or jamming. There are reports that China and Russia asked Iran to inspect the drone less than a week after the Iranian video was released.

A B-2 crashed on 23 February 2008 shortly after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The investigation stated the B-2 crashed after "heavy, lashing rains" caused water to enter skin-flush air-data sensors, which feed angle of attack and yaw data to the computerized flight-control system. The water distorted pre-flight readings in three of the plane's 24 sensors, causing the flight-control system to send an erroneous correction to the B-2 on takeoff. The B-2 quickly stalled, became unrecoverable, and crashed. The sensors measure environmental factors including air pressure and density, for data to calculate airspeed, altitude and attitude. Because of the faulty readings, the flight computers determined inaccurate airspeed readings and incorrectly indicated a downward angle for the aircraft, which contributed to an early rotation and an un-commanded 30-degree pitch up and left yaw, resulting in the stall.
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Indian Ad Retargeting Startup Vizury Is Raising $20 Million

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Vizury, a Bangalore-based ad retargeting startup, is in talks with investors to raise an additional $20 million by March this year, with existing backer Inventus leading the round, according to sources familiar with the company.

The Series C investment is being done reportedly at a $60 – $70 million valuation — perhaps low-sounding to a Silicon Valley ear, but a typical figure for an ad tech company of this size in India. As a point of comparison, rival Criteo is currently valued at $1.86 billion.

The financing will be used to expand aggressively in China and Japan, Vizury’s co-founder Chetan Kulkarni said in an interview.

Kulkarni would not share current revenue details for Vizury, but he said the company helps generate $300-$400 million in annual sales for its customers including Virgin Airlines and Chinese e-commerce company Yintai. Vizury is likely to raise one more round before it goes public, expected in about a year’s time.

Vizury has already raised $11 million in funding, including a $9 million Series B round in October 2012 from Nokia Growth Partners, Ojas Venture Partners and Inventus Capital Partners. The startup had raised Series A funding of $2 million from Ojas Venture Partners and Inventus in November 2010.

This upcoming Series C round will likely be the last but one round of funding for Vizury before it lists on an exchange in about an year’s time.

Vizury is among a bunch of fast growing Indian adtech companies such as InMobi and Komli Media that are beginning to take on global rivals including Google.

Companies such as Criteo and Vizury are seeing huge growth in business from e-commerce customers who want to woo back their online visitors. These startups target ads at people who visit e-commerce sites but move on before buying anything. Retargeting means that when they visit other sites, they will continue to see ads for products from those e-commerce sites. Vizury’s online ad platform now counts around 500 million monthly users.

While online advertising continues to grow, there is an increasing emphasis on more sophisticated technology to make sure that the investments being made in it are providing the best returns, by making sure to match ads better with people who will be most receptive to them.

InMobi showed signs of its ambitions to go beyond just being a mobile ad network when it acquired Overlay Media in January last year to improve ad personalization, after raising some $200 million from SoftBank. Komli Media has raised around $97 million in funding so far from investors including Norwest Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

“We’ll invest in building local products for markets like China, because that’s the only way it can become a billion dollar market,” Kulkarni told Techcrunch. China currently contributes around 20% of Vizury’s business, but Kulkarni aims to make the country contribute nearly half of its total revenue within next few years.

Vizury, which also counts Chinese online travel agency Ctrip among its top clients, currently generates annual revenues of about $20 million, according to one of the potential investors. The startup’s closest rival is French ad retargeting company Criteo, which raised $251 million after its IPO on NASDAQ last year.

Kulkarni of Vizury, who co-founded the startup along with Gourav Chindlur and Vikram Nayak in December 2008, said he will evaluate options to IPO in about 18 months.

“We could consider a listing in Hong Kong apart from the U.S., especially given Vizury’s growth ambitions in Asia,” he said.

Vizury, and other adtech startups are also betting on a growing base of mobile users in markets such as China, India and Japan. India’s online marketplace Snapdeal, which is backed by eBay, is seeing mobile users account for over 30% of its total traffic. Around 20% of the traffic that visits Flipkart, India’s biggest e-commerce site, comes from mobile devices.

“Despite this growth in mobile traffic, the key question is how much of this actually converts into sales. And that’s where we are seeing divergent trends–sales conversions on mobile are lower in India when compared with those in China for instance,” Kulkarni said.
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New Report Shows That Most Of China’s Gamers Are Still Playing On PCs, Not Mobile

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A new report from China’s GPC (link via Google Translate), an industry group for game publishers, shows that China’s video game industry is now worth 83.17 billion RMB (or $13 billion), a 40% increase over the past 12 months (h/t Games In Asia). While the growth is not surprising, the fact that most of that revenue came from PC-based games may be, especially considering the amount of attention that has been focused on the rise of mobile in China.

Most of this year’s revenue, 64.5% or about $8.7 billion, was generated through client-based PC games. Browser games took in a comparatively low $2 billion, while mobile games earned just $1.8 billion. Social games–which many developers depend on to spread the word about their products–earned less than $1 billion. As Games In Asia notes, most browser games can’t be played easily on mobile devices, so these figures mean that PC games made up more than 80% of revenue earned by China’s gaming industry in 2013.

A lot of focus has been placed on the rise of China’s mobile gamers. For example, Tencent gave mobile developers a potentially lucrative outlet when it launched messaging app WeChat’s highly anticipated gaming platform. Several China-focused mobile game companies have also recently picked up significant funding. These include Chukong, one of China’s largest mobile game developers, which recently raised a $50 million Series D led by New Horizon Capital, bringing its total funding to date to an impressive $83 million (its existing investors include GGV Capital, Sequoia Capital’s China fund, Disney’s Steamboat Ventures and Northern light). Another mobile game developer in China that recently received funding is Beijing-based Yodo1, which announced a $11 million round from GGV Capital earlier this month.

Developers are busy figuring out how to cope with the challenges that come with distributing and monetizing mobile games in order to take advantage of China’s rapidly increasing smartphone penetration, and they have good reason to. There are more than 500 million Android and iOS devices in China, according to top analytics firm Umeng, and that number is expected to grow to 800 million next year, and top-grossing Android games can make $5 million to $10 million per month.

Smartphone penetration is growing rapidly in Asia and, as in other markets, most of the time players spend in-app are on games. As a result, many developers have focused on HTML5 to help them develop casual games that can be played on different mobile OSes, as well as figuring out a distribution strategy for China’s highly fragmented app marketplace. Developers shouldn’t ignore PC gamers. But the report from GDC shows that game developers who want to be profitable should consider developing a multi-channel strategy, too.

Another nugget of insight from the report is that even though the list of top developers in China is still dominated by foreign companies like Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Glu, domestic game companies are starting to take a bigger chunk of revenue–$7.8 billion to be exact, or a 30% increase year-over-year.


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Tactus Raises Series B To Help Bring Its Disappearing Touchscreen Keyboard To Market

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There were plenty of media darlings at last year’s CES, but few tickled people’s fancies the way that Tactus and its amazing disappearing tablet keyboard did. The company has spent the past few months crafting reference devices for would-be partners and gearing up to help OEMs bring that impressive keyboard tech to market, but now it’s looking to supercharge those efforts with a newly raised Series B round.

Sadly, the company is keeping most of the particulars under wraps for now — Tactus didn’t disclose the size of the round or the full list of new names that are joining existing investors like Thomvest Ventures. In fact, the only new investor Tactus specifically called out is Ryoyo Electro, a sizeable Japanese OEM (that I’ve honestly never heard of) that the company originally tapped as a strategic partner late last year.

And what exactly does Tactus plan to do with a freshly minted Series B? To expand on what it’s been doing for the past year or so — working with OEMs to fine-tune the Tactus experience ahead of some big initial launches. Naturally, part of that fine-tuning comes in the form of developing different sorts of keyboard layouts for OEMs to implement since the last thing a forward-thinking device manufacturer needs is a killer feature that competitors can pick up and run with themselves.

We’ve seen the traditional keyboard layout in action before: it involves pumping up areas of the screen that correspond to your usual set of alphanumeric keys, but more exotic configurations would see the gaps between keys to bulge instead to better guide users’ fingers where they need to go.

To hear Tactus CEO Craig Ciesla tell it, the first batch of devices with those expanding keyboards should hit store shelves toward the middle of this year, and with any luck that’ll just be the beginning. After all, the company has pointed out in the past that the process of crafting traditional glass cover lenses that sit over tablet and phone displays is tricky and costly enough to make a fluid-filled Tactus layer a viable choice. When asked if Tactus’ ultimate goal was to completely supplant traditional cover lenses, Ciesla cautiously confirmed his ambitions.

“It’s not going to be a case going from Q1 2014 where everything is glass to Q1 2015 where everything is Tactus,” he noted. “This is a better interface, it’s more satisfying, it’s lighter, it won’t shatter. It’ll just take time.”Bold words, but we’ll soon see how right he is — Tactus has promised to show off some updated models when CES starts in earnest next week, so check back to see if these guys (and their partners) can make good on their lofty promises.
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Iconic ZX Spectrum Home Computer Of The ’80s To Be Reborn As Retro Gaming Keyboard For iOS

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In the U.K., the iconic 8-bit home computer of the 1980s was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Few keyboards have surely been pounded as hard as the Spectrum’s rubberised complement of grey rectangles.

Released in 1982, the 48K computer-in-a-keyboard was last produced in 1990. But if this Kickstarter campaign (from veteran Spectrum games dev Elite) hits its funding target then the ZX Spectrum will be reborn as a Bluetooth keyboard for iOS, initially, with plans to add support for Android, Windows Phone, PCs and Macs down the line.

Elite is seeking £60,000 (~$99,000) in crowdfunding to fund production of the first 1,000 units and bring the Spectrum back to life. The Bluetooth ZX Spectrum will be able to be used, not so much as a tough-to-type-on Bluetooth keyboard, but to recreate that authentic rubbery Spectrum gaming experience in conjunction with future app releases from Elite that will be available to buy from the iTunes App Store (and later from Google Play, Amazon’s App Store and Microsoft’s Windows Store).

The Bluetooth ZX Spectrum keyboard will also be backwards compatible with Elite’s existingZX Spectrum: Elite Collection apps — which feature Spectrum gaming classics such as Jet Set Willy, Manic Miner, Cybernoid, Monty on The Run and Skool Daze (to name a few). The apps will be sold separately to the keyboard — which is being priced at £50 to early Kickstarter backers (which includes Elite app credit and delivery in the U.K.).

The Bluetooth ZX Spectrum keyboard may also work with some third party apps — so you could use it for other keyboardy functions, albeit the form factor was never designed for speedy touch-typing — but Elite notes that compatibility cannot be guaranteed.

Elite is licensing the ZX Spectrum trademark and has been granted the right to replicate the Spectrum’s form factor — and says it’s the only company that has been granted that right from the IP holder.

Nostalgia fans should direct their clicks to Elite’s Kickstarter page. The company has raised £17,000 of its £60k target so far — from more than 280 backers, and with 28 days left to run on the campaign. If successful they are aiming to ship the Bluetooth ZX Spectrum keyboard to backers next September.
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DJI’s Phantom 2 Vision Makes Aerial Photography Easy

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The advent of affordable quadcopters has made aerial photography accessible for almost anybody. Getting really good results still often takes a bit more than just attaching a GoPro to a quadcopter. A few months ago, I looked at the DJI Phantom and that was already a lot of fun to fly, though the images you could get from an unmodified Phantom can be quite shaky.

Now, DJI has launched the DJI Phantom 2 Vision, which comes with a built-in camera you remotely control through your phone. As far as out-of-the-box quadcopters go, the $1,200 Vision sets a new standard for anybody who wants to get into aerial photography and is a heck of a lot of fun to fly.

One thing to remember here is that you are looking at a prosumer device – and not just because of the price. This is not the kind of remote-controlled helicopter you can pick up at any discount store today. Just like its predecessor, the Vision has a built-in GPS unit that allows it to fly back home if the connection to the remote controller is ever interrupted. In the near future, DJI will release an app that will turn the Vision into an autonomous drone by allowing you to input GPS coordinates and have it fly a circuit without your input. 

What makes the new Phantom stand out, though, is the fact that you get a direct video downlink from the camera that shows up on your iPhone or Android device. To do this, DJI built a mobile app and added a Wi-Fi extender to the remote (which you have to charge separately). As the remote has a range of up to 1,500 feet, the Wi-Fi connection between the phone and Vision would likely break up after just a few hundred feet. With the USB-charged Wi-Fi extender, you should be able to keep the video going up to almost 1,000 feet (though all of this always depends on your local conditions, too). 

The phone app comes in handy for more than just seeing the video link. It also includes a heads-up display with all the pertinent information about your flight, including speed, distance, height and battery life. You can also use it to see a radar-like screen that tells you where exactly your quadcopter is in relation to your own position. 


The phone controls all the settings for the built-in camera. The wide-angle camera itself is comparable to a GoPro Here 3 Silver Edition and can, among numerous other settings, take 1080p video at 30 frames per second (fps) and 720p video at 60 fps. Unlike the GoPro, it can also record 1080i at 60 fps. Thanks to the built-in vibration-damping platform underneath the vision, the video you get from this unit is significantly better than from an unmodified Phantom 1.

When it comes to these kinds of videos, higher frame rates are often desirable, as the slowed-down video makes the recording feel quite a bit smoother. All of the images are beamed to your phone, but also stored on a microSD card.

Using your phone, you can start and stop video recordings, but you can also take still images. The 14 megapixel camera doesn’t exactly rival a DSLR, but does a nice job of keeping up with different lighting conditions and in a pinch, you can always set your exposure settings manually from the app. You can also take images in RAW format, but so far, DJI hasn’t made any tools available to actually read these images in Photoshop or other photo-editing suites (chances are it will at CES this week). 

I’ve got a feeling these kinds of images will be the next trend in wedding photography (let’s just hope the photographers are better fliers than this guy). 

Here is an example of what raw video from the Vision looks like: 

The gimbal underneath the Vision only moves vertically, so it doesn’t fully eliminate vibrations and only compensates for the quadcopter’s forward and backward motions. When you’re flying sideways, your image will also be slightly tilted to the side. Overall, though, this system does away with virtually all of the dreaded “jello effect” that often marred videos from the original Phantom when paired with a GoPro. 

Unlike the previous Phantom, which had a battery life of about 10 minutes, the Vision comes with a far more powerful battery. I didn’t quite feel like crashing my review unit by running out of juice (though it should automatically land itself if it does indeed run out), but in my tests, the unit easily stayed in the air for a good 25 minutes, which is on par with DJI’s promises. In return, though, the battery, which includes the on/off switch for the quadcopter, is proprietary and an additional unit will set you back about $150. 



How hard is it to fly the Vision? I’m not an experienced RC flyer, but just like the earlier Phantom, the Vision is pretty easy to get in the air and land after you’ve watched the introductory videos. Once it’s flying, the live video and radar scope make it straightforward to stay in control, though inexperienced flyers should definitely go slow at first. This isn’t a toy, after all, and it has four fast-spinning rotors that could easily hurt somebody. Because of this, you probably want to stay away from people at first (and trees, power lines and everything else, really). 

I never quite crashed the Vision, but I did make a couple of ungraceful landings that didn’t seem to faze the Vision. If it’s anything like the original Phantom, which I did manage to crash into concrete and trees when I tested it, it should stand up to quite a bit of punishment. 

It’s also worth remembering that the FAA would prefer it if you didn’t fly any remote-controlled planes within the proximity of an airport (three miles is the standard for regular remote-controlled aircraft) and to keep them under 400 feet. 

If you have $1,200 dollars burning a hole in your pocket, the Vision is probably among the coolest toys you can buy right now (and hey, it’s even $200 cheaper than Google Glass). It won’t let you start your own Amazon Prime drone delivery service, but it’ll give your videos and photographs a whole new perspective. 


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