Want to buy a specific camera for someone for the holidays, but can’t find it in your budget range? A new website called Greentoe is bringing price negotiation to the consumer electronics world — think Priceline for gadgets. The website, which launched in October, allows shoppers to name their price on anything from brand name TVs to camera lenses. Here’s how it works: After finding a product, users can submit an offer for what they would pay. Greentoe then notifies its network of retail partners to see if a merchant will accept. If a deal is made, the item ships to consumers directly from the retailer, which can be anything from a small to big-box company. “When you walk into a Best Buy, you can’t haggle with employees for the price you want,” Joe Marrapodi, CEO and co-founder Greentoe, told Mashable. “There wasn’t a way to ask for a lower price, so we wanted to develop a way to do it digitally.” One example highlighted on the e-commerce site is that a shopper recently shaved $50 off a Fujifilm camera, bringing the price from $263 to $213. Not a bad deal. So could this be the new Priceline for the tech world? Maybe. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below. Image via SevenWafflz Gamer Gifts 1. Triforce Lamp Know a Zelda fan in need of some power, wisdom and courage? This beautiful wood and acrylic lamp can be hung or shelved. The pixelated carvings on each side warm the room with dappled light. Price: $95.00 2. Portal 2 Graphic Poster The best part of this stylish turret-themed poster is the tiny print at the bottom: “hello.” It’s impossible not to hear that depressive little robot voice. Price: $32.82 3. NES Moleskine This hand-stamped stocking stuffer is great for students or journos with retro roots. Price: $10.00 4. Skyrim iPhone Stats Case Elder Scrolls fans will enjoy adding this clever case to their inventories. The iPhone obviously has magical properties. Using it will add +10 to your speechcraft skill. Price: $37.20 5. Xbox 360 Bullet Buttons Hardened shooter fans (think Call of Duty) might enjoy this Xbox controller hack. Etsy seller DiselLaceDesign provides bullets that fit perfectly, but you’ll need a special screwdriver to put it all together. Price: $11.98 6. Chrono Trigger Zeal Mousepad SNES time travelers will recall the floating kingdom of Zeal and the abuses that lead to its downfall. Memorialize the mysterious realm with this snazzy mouse pad. Price: $14.00 7. Goomba Cufflinks Perfect for that Nintendo-themed wedding you have coming up. Or something. Price: $28.00 8. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Punchout! This pixelated print packs a one-two punch in terms of geeky cultural references. The Internet’s favorite astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was memeified last year as a “reaction face,” used to mock Internet arrogance. Mix that with a reference to the 1987 Nintendo game Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!, and you’ve got one hell of an Internet inside joke. Price: $11.00 9. The Reterners (Final […]
In the age of Photoshop, it’s almost impossible to say with absolute certainty whether any given image is real, but one former Photoshop employee hopes to change that. Fourandsix Technologies, a startup founded by a former Adobe Photoshop executive and a digital forensics expert, unveiled its first piece of software this week, which promises to help law enforcement determine whether a photo is authentic or not. The software, called FourMatch, analyzes the meta data in picture files to quickly determine if a photo has been modified. FourMatch relies on a comprehensive database of more than 70,000 “signatures” that are left on a file from each piece of hardware and software that goes into creating it. As the company explains in a description of the product, “Once an image has been edited and resaved from a software product, this signature is changed to match the software rather than the original capture device.” FourMatch is primarily intended for police and lawyers who need to determine whether a photograph has been tampered with in any way between the time it was first captured and submitted as evidence. However, the software won’t tell you exactly how the image has been altered — if it has been at all — because it only analyzes the file data rather than the image itself. For this reason, it can just tell you if a file has been touched by another application. “This first product we’ve put out is not a magic bullet that will tell you everything you need to know about an image,” Kevin Connor, the company’s president and co-founder who worked at Adobe for 15 years, told Mashable. “This is sort of a first step and there are certain scenarios when it will be very valuable, particularly in the law enforcement space.” Indeed, the software currently retails for $890 so it’s clearly not intended for the average consumer. In the future, though, the startup plans to release other tools to determine the authenticity of pictures that should have broader use. In particular, Connor sees a growing need for technology that can detect photo fraud in medical research, help media companies assess whether their photographers have been too liberal editing their photos and sift through pictures going viral on social media to figure out whether they’re real. Likewise, he thinks tools like this could help banks verify the authenticity of pictures of checks and other payments taken by customers. “People are using images more and more to communicate and facilitate transactions,” Connor said. “There will be more situations when you might want to be able to verify that it’s true.” Image courtesy of Fourandsix Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/09/21/fourandsix-fourmatc/
Disney Research in Zurich, Switzerland, has developed a new process called “Physical Face Cloning” that allows it to create realistic animatronic characters. The technology scans the head of a human before putting the coordinates and expressions into a 3D program. Measurements such as skin and thickness are then used to produce a 3D printed mold of the face before a silicon layer of syntheic skin is attached. The result is a realistic-looking robotic head with accurate expressions and features such as wrinkles. Disney will use the technology and process to produce life-like animatronic figures in its theme parks to add to the realism of the interactive characters. Watch the video below to see the entire process. Image courtesy of Flickr, Express Monorail This article originally published at PSFK here Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/08/17/disney-clones-faces/
Stop wearing fedoras to your VC pitch meetings, startup founders. When investor money and tech blog mentions rain down, startups can make silly mistakes, like blowing all their cash on a mechanical dinosaur. The cast of HBO’s Silicon Valley came to SXSWi, the mecca of startups, to deliver on-point advice for not being a entrepreneurial idiot. Listen to these guys — they play startup types on TV. Silicon Valley premieres April 6 on HBO. BONUS: What Is Bitcoin and How Does It Work? Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/04/04/startup-mistakes-silicon-valley/
Think about it: How many hours do you spend researching where to go, what to do and where to eat when you’re planning a vacation? The information you need is spread across dozens of travel sites and local vendor sites, which can be hard to navigate, especially if they’re in another language. Ruzwana Bashir feels your pain. That’s why she launched Peek, what she describes as “OpenTable for the activities market,” in 2012. The site curates activities in cities around the world — London, Chicago, Napa and more — and lets you book activities, including wine tastings, hot air balloon rides and tours on the Seine. Perhaps the most fun element of the site is “Perfect Days,” which are 24-hour itineraries curated by celebrities and tastemakers with local knowledge of various cities. Jack Dorsey (a Peek investor) describes his perfect San Francisco Day, the band Neon Trees curates a day in Santa Barbara, and designer Cynthia Rowley shares her favorite Miami hotspots. Not only is Peek’s one-stop shop for activities booking a welcome addition to the $27 billion activities planning industry, but Bashir has business chops to make it a success. She’s an Oxford alum (a former president of the Oxford Union) who did private equity at the Blackstone Group and investment banking at Goldman Sachs, then went on to do business development at Gilt Groupe and helped to found Art.sy. Bashir earned her MBA at Harvard in 2010, where she was a Fulbright Scholar. So it’s no wonder she got Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Eric Schmidt to be part of Peek’s $1.4 million seed round. We spent a day with Ruzwana Bashir and one of Peek’s other early investors, Todd Kimmel of Montage Ventures, to learn how Peek is scaling smarter (hint: more cities). Homepage image: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/10/15/peek-scaling-smarter/
Over the past three weeks, we’ve shed light on America’s 8.3 million women-owned businesses, spurred by American Express OPEN‘s recent report, The State of Women-Owned Businesses. In our Female Founders Series, we’ve spoken with prominent female founders about their influences, their ambitions and the challenges they’ve faced, in hopes of helping other aspiring female founders to embark on the journey, or to keep going. We’ve named 44 female founders whom every entrepreneur should know, and the series has sparked quite a conversation in the comments and on social media. Now it’s your turn to ask a few of these female founders your questions — face to face. At 2 p.m., we’re going live with three female founders to talk about the entrepreneurial journey and how to build your own business. Join us at 2 p.m. for a Spreecast panel — moderated by Allison Silver, VP Brand, Advertising and Advocacy at American Express OPEN — with these accomplished women: Rachel Sklar, Founder, Change the Ratio and TheLi.st Angela Jia Kim, Founder, Om Aroma and Savor the Success Kellee Khalil, Founder and CEO, Lover.ly The Spreecast is embedded below — log in to ask questions via chat or to go on-camera with the panelists. You can also tweet your questions, but be sure to include the hashtags #FemaleFounders and #PoweringTomorrow. Thanks for joining us and for #PoweringTomorrow! Series presented by American Express OPEN The Female Founders Series is presented by American Express OPEN. For the full State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, visit openforum.com/women. American Express OPEN salutes, celebrates and wants to help fuel the future of women business owners. Join the conversation on Twitter and tell American Express OPEN how you’re #PoweringTomorrow in your community and with your business. American Express OPEN There are 8.3 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. Women-owned businesses employ 7.7 million Americans The top cities and states for women-owned businesses may surprise you. Laura Fitton, Founder, One Forty Nell Merlino, Founder, Make Mine a Million Rashmi Sinha, CEO and Co-founder, SlideShare Sandra Yancey, CEO and Co-founder, eWomenNetwork Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/08/21/female-founders-spreecast/
Second-screen apps are all the rage among sports-minded entrepreneurs these days, but the startup TOK.tv thinks it’s set itself apart with an offering that focuses on voice, not text. Its first product, TOK Baseball for iPad, just went live in the App Store. TOK Football is set for release after the World Series concludes, and other sports will follow before the company looks to expand to other markets. Here’s how TOK Baseball [App Store link] works — or rather, how it doesn’t: unlike most second-screen apps for sports, you don’t simply get live updates while exchanging text-based messages with friends or consuming tweeted commentary from the world at large. Instead, TOK Baseball uses second-screen technology for what’s in some ways a more traditional experience. After downloading the free app, you can invite up to three friends to join you in TOK Baseball for a specific game. Once that happens, your iPad will display live-updating stats for whichever game you watch, while enabling you to talk to one another in actual verbal conversation. All current games are displayed on a map (see photo above), so you can all switch over to receive updates and shoot the breeze over a different game, or one person can move back and forth between multiple hangout sessions. A set of built-in sound effects let you augment your trash talk or celebrations. TOK.tv founder Fabrizio Capobianco believes his app solves two key deficiencies for sports fans at home: TV doesn’t provide a constant stream of statistical updates, while texting with different groups of friends who can’t make it to your couch in person lacks the immediacy and excitement of actual conversation. “The idea came from the fact that I watch a lot of baseball alone at home with my dog,” Capobianco says. “It always felt a bit pathetic to be watching baseball alone and screaming ‘homerun!’ by myself while the dog looks at me with a strange face. And I want to scream, ‘homerun!’ and not have to take the time to type it out.” Capobianco is right that a simple, voiced-based approach gives TOK Baseball — and his company’s future offerings — an interesting counterpoint to the second-screen apps fans are used to being pitched. Do you think TOK.tv can catch on with sports fans? Give us your take in the comments, and for a video walk-through check out the clip below. Get Your Tickets to Mashable Media Summit The Mashable Media Summit 2012 will explore the impact that technology is having on media, and how digital media is affecting our lives and changing the world. This one-day conference will bring together the brightest minds in media, including content creators, technology leaders, entrepreneurs, social media executives and journalists. Date: Friday, Nov. 2, 2012 Time: 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Location: The TimesCenter, 242 West 41st Street, New York, NY 10036 Tickets: Purchase early bird tickets on Eventbrite. A Look Back at Last Year’s Mashable Media Summit Mashable Media Summit 2011 Media Summit 2011 The Mashable […]
Kevin Rose on the Old Digg, the New Digg and Google Kevin Rose’s Biggest Regret About Digg Kevin Rose answered questions in an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit, responding to some queries on YouTube. Here he talks about what happened with the troubled launch of Digg v4 in 2010, seen as the biggest mistake in the company’s history. Kevin Rose’s Thoughts on the New Digg Kevin Rose on Google Kevin Rose on Future Diggnation Episodes Kevin Rose on His Businessweek Cover Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/08/02/digg-kevin-rose-reddit/
Got a question for Karnjanaprakorn? Use the chat feature above to get it answered live! Karnjanaprakorn is the CEO and co-founder of Skillshare, a community marketplace for classes. Skillshare is a community of teachers and students driven by a passion to share real-word skills through collaborative learning. Previously, Karnjanaprakorn led the product team at HotPotato, which was acquired by Facebook, and developed products and services that organized the creative world at Behance. He is also a venture advisor for Collaborative Fund, a 2012 TED Fellow and was listed as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2012 by Fast Company. Karnjanaprakorn is a graduate of the University of Virginia and VCU Brandcenter. He currently lives in the East Village, New York City. #StartupLab is a free virtual mentorship program created by The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of over 500 of America’s most successful young entrepreneurs who have, collectively, generated tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. #StartupLab offers millions of entrepreneurs, small business owners and startup founders the tactical advice they need to launch and grow new businesses via live, interactive video chats, educational content and mentorship opportunities — right on Facebook. Scott Gerber Scott Gerber is a serial entrepreneur, author (Never Get a ‘Real’ Job), TV commentator and founder of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneur…More Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/09/13/live-chat-skillshare/
While pursuing an MBA at MIT in 2010, Tim Fu tore his ACL, an incident that led to surgery and six months of physical therapy. “It was a really tough process, especially at home, without the coaching of a physical therapist,” Fu recalled to Mashable. From his frustration, the idea for a business was born. Home Team Therapy, which launched in private beta this week, is using online video and video games to help physical therapists guide patients through their exercises at home. “The videos are detailed, but have a conversational tone,” Fu explains. “Our Kinect application will actually track patients doing their exercises and will use subtle clues to guide patients in the right direction — think Dance Central for physical therapy.” The Kinect application is being developed for Windows, so all users will need is a PC and a Kinect sensor, the latter of which Home Team will provide. The Home Team platform also allows patients to track progress and communicate with therapists between appointments, Fu says. You can see the program in action in the promotional video below: Fu says he wants therapists and doctors to be able to use Home Team’s tools for free. Patients can opt into the tools for a monthly subscription of about $20 — costs a physical therapist could presumably add on to his or her own standard fee. Fu’s two co-founders are Dr. Anil Ranawat, an orthopedic surgeon, and Dr. Ben Gelfand, a physical therapist, both of whom he worked with when he tore his ACL. The Boston-based startup employs a three-person team of developers and designers and is entirely self-funded. Its product was showcased at SXSW’s Interactive Accelerator in Austin this year and plans to launch its services publicly this summer. Image via Yellow Dog Productions/Getty Images. Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/03/11/home-team-therapy/
