By night, Jay writes for TechCrunch and has been contributing to the blog since 2009.
By day, he manages Digital Strategy for Alliance Data. Prior to that, he held Art Director and Designer jobs at GSW Worldwide and Resource Interactive leading interaction design and mobile prototype projects.
You can reach reach him at jaydonovan at crunchgear dot com.
We’re on the ground here in Barcelona for the 2012 GSMA Mobile World Congress and are happy to report that, according to the GSMA press release, the planned strike by Metro subway workers has been staved off. An agreement has been reached.
The Bus workers, however, are apparently still negotiating. → Read More
Mint.com, the financial service we first mentioned at TechCrunch40 in 2007 (wow, that seems like a long time ago), announced that they have launched a new native app specifically for 9 and 10 inch Android tablets running Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.
This new app, available in the Android Market, will join the previously available versions for iPhone, iPad and Android mobile phones. Curiously, there is no mobile web version (that I have been able to find). → Read More
In a recent publicity venture for their new movie “Chronicle”, 20th Century Fox enlisted the help of viral marketing agency Thinkmodo to design and execute a rather unique campaign element that surely caused several doubletakes over the New York City skyline.
If you thought you saw some flying humans in the sky over parts of New York City and New Jersey in the last couple of weeks you are, in fact, not crazy. You were merely exposed to a new kind of avant garde marketing technique brought to you by the same folks that unleashed the iPad Head Girl a few months back. → Read More
In a lot of the Paneldome demos I have done, I (flailingly) play guitar, but I am actually a bass player. That’s why I am excited to hear about the Zoom B3 Effect Pedal/Amp Simulator released today at NAMM.
The promise of “a stompbox pedalboard with the power of a multi-effects pedal and USB audio interface” for bass guitar is tempting. This all-in-one design would definitely be convenient to throw into your gear bag on the way to a gig, without requiring a bunch of extra cables and dongles — you know, kind of like a regular old pedal effect. Sounds interesting. → Read More
Jeez, CES is barely over and already NAMM is upon us. Unfortunately, this blogger is not in Anaheim for that event, but to be honest, I am still reeling from the few days I spent at CES with Team TechCrunch. Instead, I’ll happily watch the music industry event from a safe distance this year.
I did however spy the iRig PRE while I was at CES but it was not yet ready for prime time. It has been officially announced. → Read More
Wow. Talk about not doing your homework. ION Audio has apparently infringed on the patents, trademarks and designs of three companies by debuting a new iOS peripheral at CES. The Guitar Apprentice (which is honestly a pretty cool idea) appears to use concepts that Behringer sent to the US Patent and Trademark office over a year and a half ago.
But it’s not just the product concept.
The trademark on the name “Guitar Apprentice” is actually owned by another company called Legacy Learning Systems and if that were not enough, the headstock design on their guitar shaped controller could be in dispute by Schecter Guitars. → Read More
In August, I remember seeing YouTube links for the band One Like Son, who recorded an entire song using only their iPhones and a few iPhone peripherals (in addition to their instruments and drum programs). Today, I received a press release indicating that the band have finished recording an entire 10 song album using the same setup.
Intrigued, I contacted Stephen Poff, the mastermind behind the record, to get a few more details about the impetus and methods behind the project. → Read More
We get mailed a lot of stuff at TechCrunch and sometimes a good item will slip through the cracks. This iRiffPort has been sitting in my pile of gear since it came out in October. I wrote a review. Shot some photos. It was all ready to roll and then somehow it got misplaced and I forgot about it completely. Too bad, because it is a good cable.
This week, I received a postcard from Kevin Robertson, head honcho at PocketLabWorks and also the creator of the iRiffPort. He asked me what I thought of his device (and the software with which it works). The iRiffPort…Oh yeah, I think I remember that I liked that thing. What happened to it? I dug through my closet, found it, plugged it in and lo and behold, I had remembered correctly—it was a solid device. → Read More
Smart TVs were everywhere at CES. I must have seen two hundred of them while I was there. I could report on specs, resolution or 3D screens, but really, I am more curious about that word “smart” than I am about the raw specs. Is it merely the sum of new features that defines what a Smart TV is or should be? Just what exactly is it that makes a Smart TV, well…smart?
It probably has something to do with apps right? Maybe. Internet connectivity? Likely. Gesture controls? Possibly. Rather than speculate, I decided to visit a few people at the CES booths of Samsung, Sony and LG in order to get their take on Smart TVs. Basically, I asked them all the same 2 questions: How do you define what a Smart TV is today and what is your company’s vision for Smart TVs in the future? → Read More
The story about Vuzix’s new AR/holographic enabled concept glasses broke last week, but I had a chance to catch up with Clark Dever from Vuzix (with my rogue TechCrunch ghetto cam) for a brief video explanation and demo of the technology.
The short of it is that it involves some highfalutin’ technolgy to get the displays to accurately display into the lens material. Their displays were quite clear and the demo devices show that accurately. Additionally, the displays will ultimately be able to work with a series of wearable gyroscopes for truly “hands on” interface interaction. → Read More
IK Multimedia unleashes a plethora of new hardware this week at CES 2012 within their iRig line. This triumvirate of products look to make it easier than ever to use iOS devices, live and inline, with analog musical instruments like guitars, bases, vocals and regular DJ consoles. → Read More
Nielsen is reporting today that teens have more than tripled mobile data consumption and also continue to hold top spot as the most engaged mobile messaging segment.
The report states that “In the third quarter of 2011, teens age 13-17 used an average of 320 MB of data per month on their phones, increasing 256 percent over last year and growing at a rate faster than any other age group”. → Read More
While consumer electronics (CE) merchandise returns are often an overlooked scenario for consumers they are undoubtedly top of mind for manufacturers and retailers because of their billion dollar price tag. “Put another way, manufacturers spend about 5 percent to 6 percent of revenues to manage all aspects of a customer return. For retailers, returns represent approximately 2 percent to 3 percent of sales,” according to a new study put out by Accenture.
What’s more shocking is that, typically, only 5% of those returns are due to defective products. The other 95% of returns are either because of product frustration or buyer’s remorse. In the end, the items make their way back to stores in good shape but at a cost to retailers and manufacturers, the study continues. → Read More
Another example of creative use of Augmented Reality rears its head in the form of an online scavenger hunt with a chance to win an iPad 2.
The team at Metaio who created the Junaio Augmented Reality browser and German creative shop Kreativagentur Thomas have partnered to create a scavenger hunt where you can use Junaio to scan special images hidden around the web to unlock AR content and experiences. At the same time, you collect stars for each scan. Collection of these stars can get you in the running for a chance to win a free iPad 2. → Read More
German augmented reality firm Metaio showcased some updates to their core technologies today at this year’s ISMAR conference in Basel, Switzerland. The company is documenting this update with out-takes from some highly technical white papers and also, thankfully, with a few video demonstrations (for the algorithm-ly challenged out there – like me).
The basic gist of this update to their core augmented reality capability is that the company have been able to create AR technology advancements on 3 fronts:
Augmented Reality company Total Immersion released a free, Augmented Reality SDK today called D’Fusion. The updated kit is specially designed for multi-platform developers of games, apps and marketing solutions.
To mark the occasion (and demonstrate the tech) Total Immersion are also launching a free iOS game in the app store called Skinvaders. The game, which takes advantage of Total Immersion’s face tracking technology, uses the player’s face as the battlefield. It’s freaky, yet cool. → Read More
I was able to attend Metaio’s InsideAR 2011 conference last week in Munich and check out many new and updated Augmented Reality concepts at the event. Several concepts I saw at the trade show portion resonated with where consumer AR is headed and some were merely for entertainment. But pretty much everything I saw tried, in some way, to push the envelope of technical possibility. I saw some cool new AR Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) from Vuzix and Sony (although Sony would not let me photograph their prototype), lots of furniture configurators, augmented textbooks, a DIY content authoring system and more. → Read More
With over 200,000 pre-launch signups and 40,000 users in their beta program, it’s very likely that you saw a vizualize.me resume link show up in a friend’s Facebook status update last week when the site soft launched. I know I did.
The Toronto based company (and winner of Startup Weekend Toronto 2011, and International Startup Festival’s Top Elevator Pitch) has been gradually taking their resume visualization service live over the last week or so. But they are considering their site fully load tested and “officially” launched today.
If you haven’t heard about it yet (unlikely), vizualze.me is a web service that imports your Linkedin resume information and expresses it as an infographic. It’s a neat idea and an appropriate format for the attention-span-challenged medium in which it lives…the Internet. → Read More
ModoPayments’ simple and comprehensive solution for providing mobile payments is interesting and what’s more, its offer-based approach may have finally cracked the code for monetizing check-ins. This is something that mobile location-based service providers (LBSs) like Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla and ShopKick have, no doubt, been laboring over since their inceptions. And while ModoPayments is, at present, a non-NFC mobile payments platform, they plan to integrate with NFC too, when NFC reaches retail maturity.
Based in Dallas, Texas and led by CEO Bruce Parker, ModoPayments is a startup with a goal to do exactly what their tagline says – “convert redemptions to payments and make payments mobile”. What exactly does that mean? First, know that ModoPayments definitely has a payments piece and I’ll come to that in a moment, but a supremely important part of their business plan is creating and tying value offers to the purchases they enable in order to enhance and promote their mobile payments solution. → Read More
Junaio, the mobile Augmented Reality browser created by German AR firm Metaio, has been updated this morning: Version 3.0 now supports scanning barcodes. Some of you are probably thinking “Whoop-dee-doo, every app can scan barcodes nowadays.” And you’re right; it’s not really a big deal in that sense. When you consider Junaio’s capability at advanced image recognition, using it to scan 1D and 2D QR codes is kind of like using a bazooka to shoot an arrow. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
