SigFig, The ‘Mint For Investments’, Gets A Mainstream Spotlight With New USA Today Partnership

sigfigusatoday

Over the weekend, USA Today unveiled a top-to-bottom redesign as part of a new “digital-first” strategy being undertaken by the 30-year-old newspaper.

As anyone who’s stayed in a hotel probably knows, USA Today, which has the second-largest circulation of any daily print newspaper in the United States, is about as mainstream as it gets when it comes to distribution and mass appeal.

So it’s a big coup for SigFig, the relatively small Silicon Valley startup which just launched its public beta in May, to be powering the new personal finance functions for USAToday.com.

SigFig’s technology is helping to power USA Today’s redesigned stock page, online portfolio tracker, and upcoming new mobile apps. The company tells me it expects this could bring SigFig to “millions” more potential users.

The backbone for the new USA Today Money portfolio tracker is provided by SigFig and will contain all of SigFig’s existing features — the ability to track all investment accounts in one place, see interactive graphics that analyze portfolio risk and related fees, and more. The paper also plans to roll out SigFig-powered mobile apps for its portfolio tracker for the iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms sometime in the coming week.

A couple months back, SigFig co-founders Mike Sha and Parker Conrad swung by TechCrunch TV to give us a hands-on demo of SigFig in action:

And here are a couple screenshots of the new USA Today portfolio tracker for the web and the iPhone (click to enlarge):

SigFig USA Today for the web

SigFig USA Today for the iPhone


from TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/17/sigfig-usa-today-redesign-portfolio-tracker-...

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Create a Pizza Contact for Several Pizza Place Phone Numbers [Contact List]

If you have several choices for pizza Reddit user chivadu9 suggests creating a "Pizza" entry in your contact list and adding all the phone numbers of pizza restaurants in your area. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5941741/create-a-pizza-contact-for-several-pizza-place-...

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Is Spotify Preparing To Push Its App Center To Its iOS Mobile App?

spotify mobile app ios

Yesterday, Josh wrote about how Spotify is planning to push out a browser-based version of its music streaming service. Earlier today AllThingsD further confirmed this and added a bit more color: the price is not likely to be reduced at the same time; and it will start rolling out in about a month. We’ve heard a similar report of an October timeframe from a source. And now, in addition to that, we have also seen some evidence of how Spotify could be planning to enhance its mobile app as well, by adding its third-party apps service into the mix.

Currently, Spotify’s desktop app offers a specific section where they show off third-party applications that use the company’s API — for example, a TuneWiki app gives you lyrics to Spotify tracks; LastFM offers personalized recommendations. But there is no link to Spotify third-party apps at the moment in the iOS app.

Adding its app center to the mobile app makes a lot of sense for Spotify as it seeks to make its service more ubiquitous and continues to look for ways of extending time spent on the platform. One developer we spoke to noted that mobile is currently where Spotify has many of its most active users, so this would be one route to building on that. It would also mean closer functionality and parity with the desktop (and possibly web browser) experience. It also comes on the heels of reports that Apple itself is looking into more streaming services, something that could hit competitors like Pandora.

The development was first brought to our attention by a developer called tico-man (link to his site here), who has found a set of files embedded in some of Spotify’s existing code (he’s asked us to keep the method quiet if we report this; so we are). His take: It is a “wonderful HTML 5 bundle of evidence that Spotify is ready to ask their developers to create in-app applications for the iPhone.”

The data does not specifically provide details of an actual implementation, ”But early documentation inside the code is very convincing material that third-parties will be writing apps for their mobile app,” he notes.

We have seen the code for ourselves, and it includes .json documentation specifying details like UserInstallable, Dependencies, SupportedDeviceClasses, AppName, AppDescription, ApiPermissions — all details that could be used by a developer looking to integrate their apps on to the platform.

It also seems to offer other pointers describing certain functions: “The application object manages the interaction between your application and the Spotify client it runs within,” is the description for the application class, for example.

The files also appear to feature code for a newer, unpublished version of the existing Spotify app — further pointing to something that might be coming ahead. This new version is called 1.0.0 (versus the current version of 0.8.3).

It’s likely that, if this is what it looks like it is, while Spotify’s mobile app center may not offer downloads of the apps themselves — that would violate Apple’s own rules on ‘Inception’ like app stores in iOS apps — Spotify could offer such a feature to help users discover the apps. That would provide links out to those apps by way of Apple’s App Store. This is similar to what Facebook does when it offers third-party apps via its iOS native and web apps, or Openfeint does in its iOS app (and will presumably continue to do when it migrates to Gree).

Additional reporting by Romain Dillet.


from TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/09/is-spotify-preparing-to-push-its-app-center-...

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Arduino-based Moving Truck Alarm System [Video]

If you have an upcoming long distance move and you're concerned about thieves breaking into your moving truck you can rig up a motion alarm system that will send a text message as well as trigger an audio alarm. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5941736/arduino+based-moving-truck-alarm-system

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Google Search: A Discussion About The Past, Present And Future With Jack Menzel

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During a visit to the Googleplex last week, I sat down with someone so passionate about search, it’s as if it’s his job or something. Well, it is, and Jack Menzel, Director, Product Management of Google Search, is as excitable as it gets when it comes to talking about his passion.

Who can blame him, though? A lot of people use Google as their default search engine, and that’s no mistake. For almost seven years, Menzel has been laser-focused on making search so simple, that you don’t have to learn how to do it. As the years have passed, you don’t have to be a pro to “Google”, to find the information that you need.

When I spoke with Menzel, I focused on what the future of Google Search looks like, from an insider’s perspective:

The future of search, the way we think about it, is that we want to be able to answer any question. It’s important to not just think of it as “trivia”, though. For example, I want to buy a fuel efficient car. There’s no real solid way to return an answer that simply says “Tesla.” There’s a process, including good sources, you’ll go to those sources and read reviews. The answer to the question (the future of search) is that we’ll be able to understand more about what you’re asking.

I found that Menzel answers many questions in this way, meaning that there is no simple answer to how search will evolve. It’s a difficult problem to solve in a scalable way, but to Google’s testament, they’ve made it look quite simple to us outsiders.

The important focus for Google is to make search act as naturally as possible. “Google wants to give you the world’s most understandable information in the best possible way”, Menzel told me. This “best possible way” includes letting people ask followup questions, as if Google is your best friend and is sitting right next to you on the couch or in the car.

That’s whats motivating us in the future of search.

It’s a tall order, especially when Menzel describes computers as simple “counting machines”, that have to be turned into a machine that can naturally answer any question with powerful algorithms. That made me feel like everything that I’ve done in my career is somewhat trivial.

The key to letting anyone be a pro at using Google Search is the input choices that the company provides, Menzel tells me. Right now you can use your keyboard, voice or Google Goggles, which lets you take a photo of something. Menzel says that “Human language is imprecise, you have to be able to identify its ambiguities and understand what the person is asking.” Once again, no small problem.

Google doesn’t only collect all of the information in the world, the company has to understand it as well. Menzel tells me that crawling the web is incredibly hard, since there are so many mediums to publish fresh content onto the web these days. People have that “real-time” expectation of Google Search, and Menzel tells me that it’s an ongoing project to make the index as up-to-date as possible:

There’s no API for the world. How do you know if a road block is in the middle of a street you’re trying to drive through? What would it really take to understand the information in the world?

When Google crawls a page, it’s not simply reading the data and content on that page, it’s learning about how it’s formatted and what the actual context on the page is. For example, Google knows if a review of a flat-screen TV is about last year’s model, and ranks it accordingly. “You can provide a summary and get them answers quicker if you understand all of that.”, Menzel told me matter-of-factly.

If all of this sounds like work, it is. Hard work, in fact. But Menzel is excited to go to the Googleplex every day:

The reason why it’s so exciting to work in search right now is because it’s like science fiction. It’s like mapping the world. Pragmatically modeling the whole world. Google Search is a Knowledge Graph representation of the web.

Things that used to be difficult are getting easier as Google learns more about the information that it collects:

Because we’re creating this graph of information and applying it to the world, you’re able to do these cool kind of things that used to be hard to do. We’re helping people express themselves more easily.

When it comes to the past for search, there are numerous things that I simply can’t imagine not being able to do. Universal search changed everything, and I wouldn’t want to go back to a world where I can’t search for a topic and get links, images, videos and maps back as a result on one page.

I personally like to observe how other people use technology. For me, when I use Google, I don’t have to think about anything. I simply type in whatever is on my mind and pour through the results that I receive. For others, that’s not the case, and Google wants that to change, according to Menzel:

We want to be able to make people feel like they don’t have to figure out what to search first. You shouldn’t have to think, we will get you as close as we possibly can. You shouldn’t have to learn how to search. It should be like a best friend. Search should be conversational, search should be easy. You shouldn’t have to be in a “mode.”

The lack of universal search wasn’t the only milestone that changed the game, Menzel tells me that Google’s ability to know where you are, location-wise, helps return more relevant search results. Google hasn’t always been location-aware, and going back to that world scares me. Imagine how hard you would have to work to find a restaurant in your neighborhood if Google didn’t know where you were at the moment. Yikes.

Crawling the web has also gotten more sophisticated, Menzel explained:

How fast we crawl the web, that’s crazy! When Google started, we were crawling once a month. Sometimes the crawler broke and we skipped months. Today when people publish things they want to know why it’s not there. Sometimes it’s even a bug when its not instantly on Google.

Some evolutions in Google Search you’ve been able to see immediately, some not so much. It’s usually the changes you can’t see with your eyes that make most of the difference:

Remember when there wasn’t auto-complete and search? That sucked. The improvements we make are usually ones you can’t see, though. Algorithmic innovations are hard to explain and some of our core ranking improvements are really phenomenal.

To say that Jack Menzel is an interesting character would be an understatement. The same would go for saying that he’s ridiculously smart and his brain-wheels are always churning. I could tell during our conversation that he was probably thinking two or three years down the road, as far as what his team is experimenting with. I was able to get a really interesting insight into how things work at Google, at least for the Search team. At the end of the day, most people know of Google as the “search company”, so it’s only fitting.

When it comes to integrating social into all of its products, Menzel tells me that Google is “just getting started.” We chatted for a while about it, but that’s for another piece on another day.


from TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/09/google-search-a-discussion-about-the-past-pr...

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Hackathon Contestant HeatData Obsessively Tracks How People Interact With Mobile Apps

heatdata


It’s become more clear than ever that analytics about how people interact with things — from physical stores to television screens to websites — are key for businesses to optimize their relationships with potential customers. And the more detail, the better.

It’s this philosophy that drove Jason Shah to build HeatData over the past 24 hours at the Disrupt SF 2012 Hackathon. HeatData is an app that captures gesture data on mobile to let app owners know exactly where and when users swipe, double tap, and zoom on certain places in the mobile app.

Shah, who works full-time as a product manager at Yammer, tells us that a close comparison to what HeatData does is Optimizely, the successful A/B testing startup that launched out of Y Combinator back in 2010. But Optimizely logs only actions on apps such as clicks — not activity such as zooming and swiping. Shah says that HeatData tracks those activities too to give app owners a full picture of how people interact with their apps, information that could lead to increased revenues.

Watch the video embedded above to see Jason Shah talk in more detail about HeatData and his experience building it. In the video embedded below, you can see his 60-second on-stage demo of the app:


from TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/09/hackathon-contestant-heatdata-tctv/?utm_sour...

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Talkcast tonight, 7pm PT/10pm ET: Pre-Event Edition!

Once again, we come to that time of the week where wee discuss the news of the week that was, and (in this case) anxiously anticipate the week to come. We know there's an event happening Wednesday, so we have all of that speculation to cover, as well as whatever burning topics the chat room has a hankerin for.

Tonight we'll be joined by the Managing Editor of The Mac Observer, Jeff Gamet, and iMore chief Rene Ritchie. You never know who else will show up though, so you ought to come by just in case.

If you want to influence the conversation, or find out what all this "aftershow" business is all about, you really ought to just drop by. Don't worry, the door to my House (of Crackpot Theories) is only closed because I have the air conditioner on.

Believe me, it's a much better show when I'm not talking to myself! To participate, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for +5 Interactivity, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (Viva free weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free X-Lite or other SIP clients (aside from Skype or Google Voice), basic instructions are here. Talk to you tonight!

Continue reading Talkcast tonight, 7pm PT/10pm ET: Pre-Event Edition!

Talkcast tonight, 7pm PT/10pm ET: Pre-Event Edition! originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 09 Sep 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/09/09/talkcast-tonight-7pm-pt-10pm-et-pre-event-edit...

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Check out the 9 startups demoing at September’s New York Tech Meetup

Screen Shot 2012 09 09 at 4.17.59 PM 520x245 Check out the 9 startups demoing at Septembers New York Tech Meetup

Anyone that’s found themselves eying New York’s tech scene is bound to have heard of NY Tech Meetup, the massive monthly gathering that comes together to watch approximately 10 companies demo their work to the tech community for 3-5 minutes each. Every month a slim 850 seats are available for the meetup’s more than 26,000 members at NYU’s Skirball auditorium, and so once the tickets go live, they sell out almost instantly.

In case you didn’t grab a ticket this month, or are geographically-challenged, TNW once again (read: August & July) has a list of the 9 startups demoing at the event so you can see what you’re missing. Note: some of these companies are just starting out and may have announcements planned, while others have already made a name for themselves in the industry.

Condition One:

Condition One combines the power of the still image, the narrative of films and the engagement of tactile controls to create powerful emotional experiences of ‘being there.’ Condition One doesn’t just open a window into another world – it makes the viewer an active participant. Download our showcase iPad app, featuring a wide range of sample content including: travel, sports, news, music and entertainment.

 

Moveable Ink:

Imagine email that never goes stale. Email that’s always timely. Email that’s relevant no matter where you are. You can stop imagining: The future of email is here, and it’s called Movable Ink.

 

CMP.LY:

11 Check out the 9 startups demoing at Septembers New York Tech MeetupSocial media disclosure is more than regulatory compliance. Transparent communications by brands and their advocates build trust, improve engagement and increase ROI.

CMP.LY unified marketing solutions — offering disclosure, monitoring and analysis — help brands build and protect their trusted social networks, while mitigating risks and optimizing their programs across social platforms

 

Docracy:

Docracy is a home for contracts and other legal documents, socially curated by the communities that use them. Our mission is to make these documents freely available for everyone, while in the process making them easier to customize and use.

 

Clear Health Costs:

Your Source for Finding Health Care Prices.

Medical prices vary widely. We think it’s important that you know prices.
We have collected these cash or self-pay prices for procedures and items.

 

Brewster:

iphone Check out the 9 startups demoing at Septembers New York Tech Meetup

Your personalized address book. Access everyone you know in a whole new way.

 

Enterproid (Divide):

Divide is a secure private workspace that keeps your business data separated from your personal life. Securely sync email, contacts and calendar with Exchange, Lotus Notes or Gmail and optionally set a separate screenlock around that data for extra security.

 

VoiceBunny:

Screen Shot 2012 09 09 at 4.03.57 PM 520x250 Check out the 9 startups demoing at Septembers New York Tech Meetup

Fast and professional voices for any type of project.

 

TurboVote:

Screen Shot 2012 09 09 at 4.13.49 PM 520x276 Check out the 9 startups demoing at Septembers New York Tech Meetup

TurboVote makes voting from home as easy as renting a DVD from Netflix.

 

Hack of the Month, StatusChart:

kennedysgarage 520x350 Check out the 9 startups demoing at Septembers New York Tech Meetup

“a clean, simple way to display all of the jobs, projects, hackathons and accolades that make you who you are.” — BetaBeat

from The Next Web http://thenextweb.com/events/2012/09/09/check-9-startups-demoing-septembers-n...

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Hacker Returns From Wilderness Exile To Disrupt Sally Struthers

Photo by Mel Stoutsenberger

Peter Ma says hadn’t switched on his HP laptop for nearly six months when he booted it up at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon yesterday afternoon.

From May until August he backpacked alone in the Sierra Nevada, with no electronics other a watch and a head lamp, just trying to get away from society and come up with a truly new idea. “I wanted to get in touch with basic human needs,” he explains.


Peter Ma hacking away on his two laptops

Ma says he has worked as a developer since he graduated from college five or six years ago. But last spring he felt like the startup he was working for wasn’t going anywhere, and he had just split up with his girlfriend of four years. It was time to do something new, but he didn’t know what. So he retreated to the mountains to figure it out.

He found more questions in the mountains, but that didn’t stop him from showing up at the hackathon ready to code. He says he didn’t have any idea of what he wanted to work on when he showed up, but he completed two apps: Project Care, an app that brings video conferencing and social networking to Sally Struthers style child sponsorship programs, and Dream Recorder, an Android app to make it easy to capture audio notes about your dreams before you forget them.

On Project Care he collaborated with Igor Lebovic, the founder of CalorieCount, a company that was acquired by About.com in 2006, and a contributor to last year’s Startup Bus winner TripMedi.

The idea is to bring greater transparency and personal connection to child sponsorship by giving you a more direct connection with the kids you sponsor via video conferences. Plus once you start sponsoring child, you can also connect with other people who sponsor the same child or children that you sponsor. It uses OpenTok for video conferencing (with the option to save video chats to Dropbox), Stripe for payments and DokuSign for agreements.

He built Dream Recorder on his own. It’s an audio recorder optimized to make it easy to capture audio even when you’re half asleep. You launch the app before you go to bed. If you have dream you want to remember, you can just grab the phone and shake it to start recording. Once the app has been inactive long enough it stops recording and saves the audio files to Evernote, Dropbox or Microsoft SkyDrive.

Once the hackathon is over Ma says he’s going to get back to work on starting a restaurant with a partner in LA — a San Francisco location Honey Badger Cafe.

Lead photo by Mel Stoutsenberger / CC


from TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/09/hacker-returns-from-wilderness-exile-to-disr...

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Repurpose a Coat Hanger as a Flip-Flip Hanger [Repurpose]

If you have several pairs of flip-flops, sandals, or other thin and lightweight shoes you can easily cut and bend a regular wire coat hanger to keep your footware organized and off the floor of your closet. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5941721/repurpose-a-coat-hanger-as-a-flip+flip-hanger

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