| Quick Fit for iPhone brings more than the 7 Minute Workout to your home Posted: 31 Jan 2014 04:30 AM PST  From the Atkins Diet to Hydrospinning, health and fitness crazes come and go. One of the latest crazes to come to the fore is the 7 Minute Workout, which is basically a short and snappy high-intensity session spanning 12 exercises of 30 seconds each, interjected with a series of 10 second breaks. These can be done anywhere, including the home, and require no special equipment. While there's already a slew of 7 Minute Workout apps, a new one has hit our radar, from the same folks who built the beautiful Wake alarm clock app. So we thought we'd check it out. Quick Fit is taking the 7 Minute Workout philosophy and moving it forward a few steps. Yes, it has all the familiar exercises you've grown to love (?), but it's also bringing its own moves into the mix. Given that doing the same 12 exercises may get tedious if repeated often, Quick Fit is featuring its own set of workouts, based on the same concept of high intensity interval training. How it works As with other similar apps, you have the same familiar 7 Minute Workout exercise videos – jumping jacks, wall sits, push ups, crunches, chair step-ups, squats, tricep dips, planks, running on the spot, lunges, push up and rotations, and side planks. You can also track your progress over time.  
But with the initial launch, Quick Fit is also introducing Quick Abs – a 7 minute intense workout geared towards strengthening your core and making your torso resemble a washboard. However, this will set you back $1.99 through an in-app purchase, which is in addition to the $0.99 the app will cost you in the first instance. It's worth noting here you can also turn the voice-overs and sound effects off, if you wish to play your own music over the top (or workout in silence).  
Though there's only one of these extra workouts available at launch, they'll shortly be adding Quick Yoga and a 4 minute tabata workout too. And yes, you can likely expect even more to be added in the future. Optimized for iPhone and iPod touch, Quick Fit is available to download now for $0.99. ➤ Quick Fit | App Store Feature Image Credit – Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Musicmetric wants to help the entertainment industry dig even deeper into music data and fan sentiment Posted: 31 Jan 2014 03:48 AM PST  Life has been getting increasingly sweet for Musicmetric over the past year. For the uninitiated, the UK-based startup serves up data about musicians' popularity online, covering every cranny from Twitter to BitTorrent. One year after announcing a $4.7m funding round and a deal with Spotify as it prepared to take on the US, the company is now striving to make it easier to locate fans via Twitter, identify trends and discover new artists. The two main new offerings are Musicmetric Insights, which automatically analyzes performances across billions of fan interactions online to produce graphs and summaries. Basically, it's a quick way of seeing who's hot and who's not, and will provide some insight into new releases and campaigns.  Then there's Musicmetric Explore, which will be aimed at everyone from concert promoters to A&R executives, and delivers an overview of any sector of the music market. For example, users can filter down into a range of criteria, including genre, location or performance and gauge fan reaction on a specific social network – if everyone's raving about a band in a specific region, then that could be ripe for a follow-up tour or release.
What could this be used for in real terms? Well, Musicmetric say one example could be a brand or agency that's looking to find the best artist to align themselves with a product. In addition to all this, Twitter mentions and geo-tagging data will also be weaved into artist pages to enhance real-time fan location analysis for Musicmetric users. Data is becoming big business across the media landscape. Earlier this week, we reported that Gracenote, the media metadata behemoth, was incorporating Next Big Sound's real-time music consumption and trending data into its products. Similar to Musicmetric, Next Big Sound is an online analytics platform that measures the popularity of bands across the Web, covering music-streaming services, social networks and radio. Musicmetric will formally launch its new features at Midem in Cannes on February 1. ➤ Musicmetric Feature Image Credit – Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| All the tech news you need to know from Eastern Europe this January Posted: 31 Jan 2014 03:30 AM PST  The past month has brought many interesting stories from all across Eastern Europe. If you think I have missed something, or would like to draw my attention to an important story, feel free to ping me in Twitter (@shlema) or by e-mail at shlema@gmail.com. VK.com drama In the Eastern part of Eastern Europe — I mean, in Russia, — the main tech topic of January was definitely its most popular social network Vkontakte, known abroad as VK.com. Founded in 2006, VK today is one of the top 10 social networks in the world, but what's happening in its top management is similar to struggles of those younger startups, founders and investors of which didn't agree on what they want from the venture. At the end of January, local media learned that VK's CEO Pavel Durov had sold his 12 percent share in the social network to Ivan Tavrin, who is affiliated with another VK stakeholder, Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. The deal puts Usmanov in indirect control of 52 percent of the company, while the other 48 percent is owned by United Capital Partners, which acquired the stake in April 2013. In his post in VK, the "mutinous CEO" Pavel Durov said that he will remain in charge of the social network he's created, but Russian media have already reported that allegedly Durov will leave VK within a month. The news comes after the social network lost two top managers, brothers Igor and Ilya Perekopskiy, who used to be VK's financial director and a vice president respectively. 
The most likely place to go for Durov, as Russian journalists see it, is his "pet project" instant messenger Telegram. Founded independently from Vkontakte in the US, Telegram is based on a protocol developed by Durov's brother Nikolay and is claimed to be faster and more secure that most alternatives. According to statistics provided by Pavel Durov to Roem.ru, Telegram has recently reached 1 million unique daily users, while its user base grows by 100,000 per day. In other news - Ukrainian startup iblazr, known from its successful Kickstarter campaign for a synchronized flash for smartphones, has changed its name to Conceptor and announced a new product, iPhone case, Lunecase.
- Award-winning Russian startup Displair that has developer a "screenless screen" is on the verge of bankruptcy, top management say they're looking for a "new strategy."
- Czech accelerator Startup Yard has signed a partnership with GoodData to give its startups free access to the data intelligence platform.
- Polish social learning startup Brainly has reached 20 million users.
- Russian Internet behemoth Yandex has agreed with Facebook to index public data of users from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, other CIS countries, and Turkey.
- Slovenian startup CubeSensors won the TechCrunch Hardware Battlefield competition.
- Bulgarian startup accelerator Eleven.bg has released its performance figures after 1.5 years in business.
- Amsterdam-based Rockstart Accelerator is actively looking for teams from Central and Eastern Europe for its next batch.
- Russian publisher Mann, Ivanov, and Farber has published an infographic on the biggest Russian Internet companies and richest people in the industry.
- Belarus-developed game World of Tanks has overtaken the famous World of Warcraft by revenues in 2013.
- German VC EarlyBird is raising a $130 million fund to invest in startups in Turkey and CEE.
- UK job search engine Adzuna has launched in Russia with a fully localized version of the website.
- Estonia has published the source code of its Internet-based voting system on GitHub.
Investments and acquisitions - Russian tech entrepreneur Yuri Milner took part in a $1.2 million funding round for First Opinion, a service that lets users text a doctor any time and get a quick advice.
- Ukrainian-American startup Keen has raised $1.6 million and is about to open an R&D office in Kiev.
- Bulgarian seed fund LauncHub has announced its investment in nine teams from South Eastern Europe: Appticles, GameMatch, Greenpie, Prefer.ly, WP Toolbox, Equafy, Mediately, IQ Friends, and BGMenu.
- Estonian Java productivity tools maker ZeroTurnaround has raised a $2.7 million funding round.
- Ukrainian venture fund TA Venture's portfolio company Little Eye Labs has been sold to Facebook for $15 million.
- Russian-founded startup HipFlat has raised a $335,000 round to launch a real estate search engine in Thailand.
- Czech travel booking startup Skypicker has raised $500,000 in funding and acquired a competitor, WhichAirline.
- Polish cloud accounting startup Infakt.pl has attracted $1 million in funding from its existing investor PointNine Capital as well as RTA Ventures and a business angel Thomas Modzelewski.
- Ukrainian startup Shoppyy, which offers a mobile app to navigate in shopping malls, has landed a $100,000 funding round.
- Estonian cloud startup Cloutex has closed a $600,000 funding round.
- Latvian Cobook, developer of a Mac app for contact management, has been acquired by US-based FullContact.
- Ukrainian big data startup DataWiz has attracted $100,000 in funding from Russian fund Altair Capital.
- Ukrainian startup Advice Wallet, the product of which is a mobile app-based loyalty program for shops and entertainment venues, has landed a $2 million series A funding round.
- Polish SMM startup Socializer has been acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network.
- France's carpooling website BlaBlaCar has launched in Russia and Ukraine by acquisition of the similar local service Podorozhniki in a deal allegedly worth $1–3 million.
- Russian venture fund Runa Capital has invested $2 million in a German web hosting startup Cloudpartner.de.
- Russian Internet company Yandex has signed a multi-million deal with MultiShip in order to create a logistics service aggregator.
- Rocket Internet-backed Russian online fashion retailer Lamoda has secured $13.7 million in fundingfrom IFC, a member of the World Bank Group.
- Canadian SMM platform HootSuite has purchased Romanian startup UberVU for $15 to $20 million.
Don't miss: How the Kiev disturbances are affecting Ukraine's tech sector – for better and worse Image credit: Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Google turbo-charges Russia’s Street View imagery ahead of the Winter Olympics, adds Slovenia too Posted: 31 Jan 2014 02:06 AM PST 
With the 2014 Winter Olympic Games kicking off in Sochi, Russia, on February 7, Google has just announced it's adding a tonne of imagery from a slew of towns, cities and sights of the gargantuan country to Street View. From today, you'll be able to view ground-level imagery from Vladivostok, Yakutsk, Irkutsk and Sochi, which together account for around 1.5 million people. As you can see from the map above, Google has been doing a lot of driving, dipping into the farthest reaches of the country. Last year, Street View cars covered 300,000 km in Russia, which it says constitutes around 60% of the population. Here's a look at Yakutsk in the east. In related news, Google says it's also introducing its first ever imagery in Slovenia, with the Central European country becoming its 56th inclusion on Street View. ➤ Before games, updating Street View imagery in Russia | Google Blog This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Sina Weibo users set new messaging record, but is engagement on ‘China’s Twitter’ falling? Posted: 31 Jan 2014 01:38 AM PST  China's Sina Weibo has broken its record for messages sent per minute, after 863,408 million 'tweets' were sent during the first minute of the Chinese New Year. The record surpasses the previous best of 731,102 posts, set during the last Chinese New Year period, as Tech In Asia reports. The milestone is impressive but it comes at a time when users of Weibo — which is often seen as 'China's Twitter' — are reported to be less engaged with the service than ever in response to China's efforts to minimize its influence as a free thought platform. 
A report commissioned by The Daily Telegraph measured the activity of 1.4 million Weibo users over the past three years, concluding that activity has dropped drastically, particularly in the wake of a crackdown on the service during the final months of 2013. The newspaper suspects that China's aggressive regulations to curb the service have reduced engagement within the sample group. The government has taken a range of actions to 'clean' what it calls 'online rumors' — perhaps best described as information that is at odds with the regime. Regulation and action has included the introduction of compulsory real-names in 2012, the shutting of Weibo's commenting function for three days, a user contract to increase accountability, and more. The Telegraph graphic below plots Weibo's most significant milestones over the past three years against the activities of the sample group. The result suggests that last summer's crackdown was particularly effective (for the government) in lowering activity. This is a screenshot — we recommend that you visit the Telegraph directly for an interactive version. 
Sina Weibo's apparent loss is very much a gain for popular messaging app WeChat. The service, owned by Internet giant Tencent, has more than 270 million active users and has become a key service in its own right. WeChat has been jabbing away at Weibo for a while, evidenced by Sina chairman Charles Chao's admission that increased competition is reducing time users are spending on Weibo. Furthermore, Sina has even introduced its own chat app rival. Interestingly, WeChat is almost certainly a service that concerns Chinese authorities less than Weibo. That's because it hosts private conversations — both one-on-one and in groups — which cannot go viral in the same way that posts on Weibo (or Twitter, for that matter) can. Despite being a private service, Tencent has come under fire for censoring users that attempt to send sensitive terms in WeChat. The company denied those charges and blamed a service "glitch". Sina, which is listed on the NASDAQ, says its user base continues to grow. Its most recent report claims 60.2 million daily active users, which is an 11.2 percent year-on-year increase. Images via Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images, Tech In Asia, Daily Telegraph This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Canada’s spy agency reportedly tracked travelers who used free airport WiFi service Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:17 PM PST  A new NSA leak alleges that the US intelligence agency worked with its counterpart in Canada (CSEC) to test a system that tracked travelers who passed through one of Canada's "major" airports, CBC News reports.
Information presented to the news agency shows that visitors who logged into the free WiFi service provided at an undisclosed Canadian airport could be tracked "for days" after they moved on. CBC News reports that the CSEC/NSA could pick up travelers when their devices were logged into other WiFi networks across Canada and at US airports. The documents suggest that the system was trialed by the NSA and the CSEC with a view to scaling it into other countries — though there is no mention of data captured or tangible results. The head of the CSEC last year assured Canadians that it has never targeted its citizens via domestic or international spying programs. ➤ CSEC used airport Wi-Fi to track Canadian travellers: Edward Snowden documents [CBC News] Image via ssguy / Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Influential Bitcoin exchange BTC China begins accepting Renminbi deposits after 6-week block Posted: 30 Jan 2014 10:30 PM PST  BTC China, until recently the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, has begun allowing users in China to make deposits in their local currency (Renminbi), ending a six-week block that affected domestic users and sent the price of the virtual currency tumbling. The site stopped accepting deposits in Renminbi on December 18 following a memo issued by the Bank of China (BoC) that warned of the risks surrounding Bitcoin, although users could use US dollars and other international currencies. That action is thought to have been the spark that sent the valuation of Bitcoin crashing from $880 to $435 in under a day. BTC China CEO Bobby Lee tells Coindesk that the company has reassessed the implications of that note, and decided that it wasn't aimed at Bitcoin businesses. You'll note this is Lee's assumption, since it appears he hasn't had direct contact with the government or BoC: Previously, we judged doing this as not being viable, however, we have since changed our stance. We looked again at the guidance issued in December and we think it's a reasonable for us to accept customer deposits via our corporate bank account. The fact the PBOC said exchanges need to register with MIIT essentially means it recognises exchanges as a business category and BTC China as a legitimate business.
Lee's rationale may be that his company overreacted to the BoC's warning, but more cynical observers might put this down to the drop in business that BTC China has seen since implementing the restriction. Business has been slower since the block, Lee says, and BTC China is no longer the world's largest Bitcoin exchange: Volumes in China have been down since December. A lot of the people we have spoken to have stopped trading, they've cashed out, so activity has calmed down a lot. Volume is certainly going to be low for the next few days because we're going through a Chinese New year period.
Beyond simply allowing cash deposits again, BTC China has introduced its Maker-Taker program, which rewards those who increase liquidity (by offering multiple buying and selling offers) with 1,000 RMB ($165) when the total paid out to makers passes 100,000 RMB. Those that 'take out' pay a 0.3 percent fee on transactions. Lee believes the program "brings more market depth and more liquidity to the site, plus it reduces volatility, which makes for a healthier for market for bitcoin in China." He says BTC China has already paid out close to $500,000 in fees, though Pando Daily notes that there have been challenges — some trading bots appear to have been exploited over maker fees. The company is yet to see a big spike in activity, nor has there been a surge in the valuation of Bitcoin in response to BTC China's change, but once word gets out, that's likely to change. Lee admits, however, that the potential for Chinese authorities to "change the rules" on Bitcoin could affect users' confidence in putting money into the exchange Bitcoin has seen a spike in activity in China during the Chinese New Year period. Hong Kong-based exchange ANXBTC gave away $65,000 in the virtual currency by feeding into the seasonal tradition of gifting money in red envelopes. New Year's Day is today, so it remains to be seen if BTC China has reopened domestic currency deposits with enough time to take advantage. Headline image via Zach Copley / Flickr, screenshot via Reddit This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Oops – Microsoft’s Xbox team caught tweeting from an Android device Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:50 PM PST  We laugh when celebrities promoting companies do so using a rival product — remember Oprah sending a tweet praising Microsoft's Surface from her iPad, or BlackBerry's one-time Creative Director Alicia Keys tweeting from an iPhone? — but what about when companies themselves do it? The team behind Microsoft's Xbox Twitter account has some explaining to do after tweeting updates from an Android device, as eagle-eyed Twitter user Romit Mehta spotted. (Thanks to Tweetbot, one of the few apps that shows which client a tweet is sent from.) The @Xbox account's most recent tweets at the time of writing come from a combination of Twitter for Android, social media management service Sprinklr, and the Vine app. That suggests that some are being sent from an employee's personal phone. 
Xbox isn't only the Microsoft team that has prioritized other devices ahead of Windows Phone. Earlier this week, Microsoft's Bing search team launched its Rewards program on mobile — it's initially available on iOS and Android, and "coming soon" to Windows Phone, Microsoft's own platform. It's one thing for staff to use other companies' devices for personal use, but another issue entirely when it is for public-facing company properties. Windows Phone could do with all the support it can muster. It accounted for a mere three percent of smartphone shipments last year, according Canalysys, and has a sub-five percent share of smartphone sales in the US. Headline image via Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images, screenshot via @theromit This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Report: Box confidentially files for its IPO Posted: 30 Jan 2014 03:24 PM PST  Is Box getting ready to become a public company? The cloud storage service company has reportedly filed paperwork for an upcoming IPO, according to Quartz. The move was done confidentially in accordance with the JOBS Act, very much in the same manner that Twitter did last year. It's been expected that Box would eventually go public. Company CEO Aaron Levie has said in the past that he's eyeing an IPO in 2014. By filing secretively, Box is able to withhold some of its financial numbers, albeit temporarily until the actual announcement is made. The company has signed with Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and JP Morgan Chase to help it with its stock offering. Quartz says that the company is looking to raise $500 million through a public offering. If true, Box would be the first of the major cloud storage companies to go public — it was always up for debate whether it would be it or competitor Dropbox. To date, Box has more than 200,000 businesses using the service and over 20 million individual users. The company touts that it has been adopted by 97 percent of the Fortune 500 companies while also making itself more accessible in various industries, including in the IT space, healthcare, and others. It has also been spending the past year working on improvements to its system, including the addition of new security measures for its customer companies. In February, it rolled out device and data protection, real-time reporting, and integration with Samsung's KNOX product. And at the end of last year, Box released features for IT administrators to help them manage what content is shared in company accounts and who can access them. Box has raised $409 million in venture capital, including $100 million in its Series F round in December from Telefonica Digital, DFJ Growth, Telstra, Mitsui & Co, and others. It's believed that Box is valued at $1.2 billion based on 2012 venture rounds. It's unclear about whether it's a profitable company. We've reached out to Box for comment and will update this if we hear back.
Update: A Box spokesperson issued this statement to us: "We don't have anything to share at this time. We're focused on continuing to build our business and expand our customer relationships globally." Photo credit: John Moore/Getty Images This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Bloomberg: Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise chief Satya Nadella in line to become next CEO Posted: 30 Jan 2014 02:25 PM PST  Bloomberg is claiming that Satya Nadella, Microsoft's head of its Cloud and Enterprise division, is set to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO.
The report also suggested that Microsft's board is considering removing Bill Gates from his role as chairman. Independent director John Thompson is believed to be a frontrunner for the position. Ballmer announced last August that he planned to retire after a replacement was found in the next 12 months. Microsoft indicated at the end of last year that it hoped to name his successor in early 2014. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
