Alibaba Rival JD.com Launches Crowdfunding Site For Startups

China’s largest e-commerce companies are eager to leverage their millions of users and hoards of data for new projects. For example, Alibaba’s other businesses include healthcare management, financial services, and cloud data. Now JD.com, its smaller but still formidable rival, is branching out into crowdfunding for startups.

JD.com, which filled 689 million orders last year, has launched JD Equity Crowdfunding platform to help startups secure capital. The project is an offshoot of Coufenzi, the crowdfunding site JD.com opened last July.

Like Kickstarter, Coufenzi allows users to contribute funds toward individual projects and products. So far, projects on Coufenzi have raised a total of RMB280 million (about $45 million).

JD Equity Crowdfunding, on the other hand, is designed for entrepreneurs who need to find early-stage investors. The site isn’t the first startup crowdfunding site in China, but with JD.com’s resources, it claims to already be the largest. Its competitors include CTQuan, which has raised $4 million in venture capital backing and uses a model similar to AngelList.

A JD.com spokesperson told TechCrunch that JD Equity Crowdfunding plans to differentiate from other platforms by “developing a complete ecosystem for startup companies.” In addition to the crowdfunding site itself, this includes resources such as JD Cloud, its cloud computing unit, financing tools, marketing support, and training from JD.com’s management, as well venture capital partners like Capital Today, ZhenFund, and Sequoia Capital. In exchange, JD.com will take a small equity stake in each successfully funded startup (though it isn’t disclosing how much).

“We believe that securing funding is only the first step in the success of a startup, and we want to ensure that companies on our platform have all the tools they need to reach their long-term goals. We are experienced in growing our own business rapidly, and helping our partners grow into success, and will draw upon this knowledge to help our partners succeed,” said the company.

The startups on JD Equity Crowdfunding will be pre-screened. The first batch includes gaming laptop builder Thundeobot, Fastwheel, which makes transportation devices; and social media company WeBuzz.

As Technode notes, however, equity crowdfunding sites in China face several challenges, including lack of understanding about how the model works by potential investors and the current lack of laws to regulate equity crowdfunding (though that may change soon thanks to recently drafted legislation).

Not only can launching projects that focus on entrepreneurs help e-commerce companies gain goodwill among startups that might use their sites or services, but it can also help them eventually diversify their revenue streams.

Like JD.com, Alibaba is also investing in entrepreneurs, but so far it has focused mainly on e-commerce sellers who rely on its various platforms, including Taobao and Tmall, to conduct business. These include funds aimed at vendors in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as one for female entrepreneurs in China. The company, however, is reportedly planning to found its own crowdfunding site for startups, according to TechNode.

Featured Image: Shutterstock



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OnePlus’ latest product is a palm-sized drone

Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus picked a great day to launch an unexpected product. The DR-1 is a tiny quadrocopter that you can pilot with an included remote for a bit of fun.

The company claims that the DR-1 is the samllest remote-controlled drone in the world. It can fly for about eight minutes on a 20-minute charge, and can perform four-axis flips on command.

The DR-1 is available in limited quantities via OnePlus’ site for $19.99.

You can’t buy it through OnePlus’ online store for India, but you can enter a giveaway to get your hands on one via the company’s local Facebook page.

➤ OnePlus DR-1

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Line’s COO Officially Takes Over As CEO To Turn The Messaging App Into A Mobile Services Platform

Three months after announcing the transition, Line has officially received shareholder approval to appoint Takeshi Idezawa, the messaging app’s former chief operating officer, as its chief executive officer. The company said that Idezawa will take over the reins from its previous CEO, Akira Morikawa, today.

Morikawa will move on to a position as an advisor.

It has been a busy year for Line as it seeks to transform itself from a messaging app into a platform that provides a wide array of services for users to access from their smartphones. According to Line, Idezawa’s accomplishments during his 12 months as COO include Line’s new “LIFE platform strategy,” which wants to turn the app into “an integral part of everyday life in an era where smartphones have evolved into an indispensable device for people all over the world.”

The “LIFE platform strategy” has included the creation of a $42 million fund to invest in companies that provide online-to-offline, e-commerce, payment, media, and entertainment services that can potentially be integrated into Line’s core app.

One of the main reasons Line is focusing on adding more services to its platform is to make sure that its earnings are no longer so closely tied to its main messaging app (which monetizes through branded accounts and the sale of stickers) or its connected games platform. Revenue from games have plateued for Line, as well as other messaging apps like WeChat.

The company is also key to grow outside of Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, its key markets in Asia. Last year, Line postponed its IPO to focus on its global business, with Idezawa saying that it would localize features for different markets, like voice services in Europe.

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Don’t Read The Comments — Let Diffbot Analyze Them Instead

Diffbot‘s mission, according to CEO Mike Tung, involves “teaching a robot how to read and understand web pages.” Today it expanded that understanding to include forums, comments, reviews, and other online discussions.

When Tung talks about understanding webpages, he means turning the content into structured data — say, looking at an article and identifying the title, author, text, images, topics, and so on. That information, in turn, can help businesses find track the content that’s relevant to them. (Diffbot customers include Microsoft/Bing, Cisco, and eBay.)

Until today, however, Diffbot could perform its analysis on an article or a product page, but it couldn’t do the same for the comments under the article or the reviews under the product description.

Tung said there are couple of specific challenges when it comes to analyzing these kinds of discussions. For one thing, comments are often presented in a JavaScript widget, so it’s not as straightforward as pulling the text — it requires “a bunch of visual analysis,” he said. For another, discussions often use more casual, colloquial, and emoji-heavy English, so Diffbot needed to develop “a more specialized language model.”

You can try it out for yourself using Diffbot’s testdrive page, where you can see Diffbot’s analysis for any page. To try it out, I looked at the results for a post I wrote last week that got more comments than usual, and I could see the basic attributes of each comment — author, time, text, language, and author link.

This gets more interesting in aggregate, when you can start finding larger trends in the conversation — Tung noted that while there are a lot of social media monitoring tools, it’s harder to track conversations across the web, where you’ll find “detailed, well-thought-out discussions.” For example, he said a shoe company could identify which shoes customers identify as most comfortable in their online conversations.

Diffbot says its new Discussions API supports Facebook Comments, Disqus, Livefyre, WordPress, Blogger, Automattic’s Intense Debate, Kinja, Hacker News, Reddit, and more.

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See You This Week In Montreal And Toronto

Here we go! TechCrunch is winging its way to Montreal and Toronto this week for some amazing meetups. We want to see you there so I hope you’ve purchased your ticket, eh.

All the pitch-off companies are picked and the judges are in line to offer pithy commentary. The pitch-offs will follow our tried and true formula. We’ll pick 6 to 8 startups per city and they will have 60 seconds to pitch. Unless you get an email from me specifically stating you are in the pitch-off then you are not in the pitch-off. Applying is not the same as making it. That said, we want to talk to as many of you as possible so be ready with your pitches as we make the rounds. It’s a great opportunity to show off your work, your ecosystem, and your city.

See you soon!

The meetup starts at 7pm and goes until 10:30pm. Tickets cost $10 and include drinks.

Place: Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT)

1201 Boul St-Laurent, Montréal

Montreal, QC H2X 2S6

Canada

Time: Wednesday, April 1, 2015 from 7:00 PM to 10:30 PM (EDT)

Buy tickets here.

TechCrunch Meetup Toronto

HIGHLINE

Thursday, April 2, 2015 from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM (EDT)

Toronto, ON

Buy tickets here.

Pitch-Off Competition

Participants interested in competing in the pitch-off will have 60 seconds to explain why their startup is awesome. Companies will be chosen by TechCrunch.

Pitch-Off Winners

Pitches will be rated by 3-5 judges, including TechCrunch writers and local VCs. First Place will receive a table in Startup Alley at an upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Second Place will receive (2) tickets to an upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Third Place will receive (1) ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt.

And whether you’re an investor, entrepreneur, dreamer or tech enthusiast, we want to see you at the event. Come one, come all. It’s sure to be a night to remember.

7:00pm Doors Open

8:00pm On stage interview with a VC

8:20pm Pitch-Off Competition

9:00pm Winners Announced

9:30pm Networking

Notes

This is a 18+ event.

All ticket sales are final and non-refundable

$1 from each ticket will go to the OSMO foundation, a Montreal-based grassroots non-profit supporting aspiring local entrepreneurs through initiatives like the Notman House.

For more information on sponsorship packages and to discuss becoming a sponsor, please contact partner@credoprod.com

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When April Fools Gets More Love Than Good Policy

Here is something to ponder about: Silicon Valley will have gotten more work done on its April Fools day jokes tomorrow than Washington has gotten done in the past several years. And that’s scary, for as much as playing PacMan on Google Maps is funny and maybe even endearing, driving on bridges ready to collapse is not.

Things are not looking good in our nation’s capital, and they haven’t in a long time. Gridlock in Congress has kept legislative action of almost any kind at a complete standstill, while the nation’s aging infrastructure continues to disintegrate. Just at a time when more attention has finally been garnered by these persistent problems, Indiana dropped gasoline on the smoldering fires of the culture wars, reigniting interest in such vital issues as who can eat at a Dairy Queen.

This weekend, I argued quite strongly that Silicon Valley is now at the zenith of its power, and wields it with a force almost unknown by any other industry today. Tech has become the most powerful force in the universe, which while perhaps a tad hyperbolic, seems so eminently true when we look at just how little actually gets done politically.

Even technology’s critics are calling it quits. Evgeny Morozov, perhaps one of the most consistently strident critics of Silicon Valley and its political and social culture, recently wrote that there was practically no radical undercurrent in technology criticism and that “While radical thought about technology is certainly possible, the true radicals are better off theorizing—and spearheading—other, more consequential struggles, and jotting down some reflections on technology along the way.”

For Morozov, trenchant criticism has declined due to a lack of a framework for analyzing the relationship between technology and society, which he pithily summarizes as “No vision, no critique.” He offered a mea culpa here as well about his own writing: “Thus, I must acknowledge defeat as well: contemporary technology criticism in America is an empty, vain, and inevitably conservative undertaking. At best, we are just making careers; at worst, we are just useful idiots.”

It’s not just technology’s critics though that lack imagination and vision, but its proponents as well. Silicon Valley’s leaders talk about the idyllic utopia that rests just on the other side of this funding round or new product release, and yet, when we look around our society at the number of challenges we face, the action seems completely absent.

Of course, there were visions in the past. The internet was supposed to bring the world together, if not fully for peace, then at least for understanding. The internet was then supposed to be a cyberlibertarian paradise, bereft of the complicated regulatory state that had supposedly brought the physical economy to its knees.

Just in the last few days, we have seen the darker side of this network, with the Chinese government likely behind massive attacks on GitHub, as well as with the continued growth of ISIS in the Middle East. The internet is increasingly dividing into independent and militant fiefdoms, almost the antithesis of what it was all supposed to be about.

Today, it was announced that Silicon Valley heavyweights Ron Conway and Sean Parker are launching a new think tank that will hopefully get more involved in at least some of our nation’s pressing issues, such as infrastructure and economic opportunity. We should definitely have a more steady voice in policy discussions and try to minimize the wide distance between government officials and the technology world.

Policy briefs are not a vision statement though, and that sort of leadership still seems really far off. Instead, we are too busy deploying the next feature to really see what effect all of our work is actually generating. We have barely scratched the surface on what our technologies and startups are doing for workers, such as immigrants and contract laborers. While we have started responding to the need for cybersecurity (a need we created!), we do so more out of avarice than service.

There are visionary statements galore in this industry, but so little real thought about what those statements mean outside of a couple of blocks in South of Market. Even worse, there is a persistent groupthink about technology and politics, despite the vast interest that most nerds have with engaging on these topics.

What does Silicon Valley stand for? Technology progress is too easy – those words have almost no meaning whatsoever. Do we represent every individual in the pursuit of their creativity and industry? Do we want the world to become more egalitarian? Do we want more of our personal property to be managed by others? There is a cacophony of views out there, but those views are expressed so limitedly that they are almost silent to hear.

That wider discussion might be ambitious, but we can always take a few early steps. Taking a cue from some of Apple’s recent software releases, maybe it is time that we actually spent some cycles figuring out how to clean up our existing products and services rather than purely push new features. Commentators always talk about our country’s financial debt, but what about the country’s technical debt in terms of lines of code? How can we rebuild reliability, safety, and security in terms of technology and economics into the products that consumers and enterprises use everyday?

Silicon Valley has had enviable success for some time now. There are moments in a country’s history when everything looks lost, only for success to be found right around the corner, and we have the ability to potentially offer the way forward. That requires a bit more time to think and to ponder, time for concentration that just isn’t available in these frenetic unicorn days. If we can look around though, we might not just find the next big product, but a more fulfilling purpose as well.

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Etsy IPO Price Expected At Between $14-$16 A Share, Starting Roadshow Tomorrow

Today, Etsy gave a few more key details about its upcoming initial public offering.

The company, which is known for its marketplace for handmade and vintage objects and plans to trade on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “ETSY,” said today that its expected IPO price will be between $14 to $16 a share. Etsy also said that its roadshow, which is the time that a company’s executives and bankers travel to potential stock buyers to gin up interest in the IPO and often secure early sales, is slated to begin tomorrow.

Etsy, which was founded in 2005, plans to raise up to $100 million in the IPO. The company officially signaled its intent to go public a few weeks back on March 4, when it filed an S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can read more in-depth analysis of Etsy’s planned IPO and its financials here.

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Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock Says AOL’s Connected Delivers On The Promise Of Reality TV

“Reality TV” is one of those phrases that inevitably begs for scare quotes — with its staged scenes and melodramatic confessions, a reality TV show’s relationship with reality can be … complicated. But Morgan Spurlock, director of documentaries like Super Size Me, suggested that the new online video series Connected might live up to “the promise of reality television.”

AOL (which owns TechCrunch) is launching the series today by posting the first four episodes. Connected is based on the Israeli show of the same name, with (in this case) six New Yorkers given handhold cameras to record their lives.

Each episode is a little under 30 minutes long, making this AOL’s first move into “longform” video. In the video above, Spurlock (who’s one of the executive producers on the show) and AOL’s video president Dermot McCormack talked about the big bet that the company is making on the program.

By using online distribution, Spurlock said, “the filter is pulled away,” because the show didn’t have to shy away from risqué content. The goal, he added, was “to create a show from a nonfiction standpoint that would rival something that you would see on subscription or late-night, basic cable.”

But does giving someone a camera really lead to more honesty? Sure, there’s not a big crew following the cast members around, but aren’t they still performing for camera? Spurlock said that’s true — but only at first.

“Once that period is gone and they become, like, human beings again, then that’s when the magic comes,” he said. “Because what starts to happen is, they do become normal, they do become real, it becomes cathartic as they start to share their lives and these intimate moments with us.”

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YC-Backed Neverfrost Wants To Kill Windshield Frost And Keep Rocks From Ruining Your Day

I’m a fan of all different sorts of rocks. Rock music. Rock gardens. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

But there’s one type of rock that I — and most other drivers, I imagine — hate with a deep, fiery passion: rocks that hit my car’s windshield at 70 mph.

Few things so small can wreck your day so suddenly. Everything is going great. The sun is shining. Hell, you probably even have time to grab some coffee before your meeting with — *BAM!* , you’ve got a 2-inch scar streaking across your once flawless glass.

Neverfrost, a YC-backed company that has been working away quietly up in Waterloo for the past few years, wants to beef up your windshield’s ability to handle the stray rocks that may come its way — and while they’re at it, they want to end windshield frosting and help drivers save fuel by keeping their car’s interior cooler.

Neverfrost began its life in the University of Waterloo’s Nanotechnology Engineering program, where it was initially a fourth year design project for the company’s founders, Khanjan Desai and Chong Shen.

Here’s what Neverfrost is claiming its film can do:

• Reduce frost forming on the windshield by about 95%. It’ll still form on reaaaally cold nights; but Khanjan tells me that even that frost should be considerably lighter than it otherwise might. It’ll also make snow considerably easier to scrape off, as it won’t be able to stick.


• Increase your windshield’s resistance to rocks by up to 6x. This is possible because the material is on the exterior of the glass (unlike most tints, which go on the inside), and is a bit softer than the glass itself. When a rock hits the film, the force is spread across a wider area.


• It’ll reject 90% of infrared heat from the sun, which Khanjan tells me is about 40% of the total solar energy that’ll enter and heat up your car. That means less A/C required to keep things cool, and thus less fuel burned powering your A/C.


• It does this with minimal impacts on optics; it’ll allow 88% of visible light through your windshield, which is only about 2% less than what most bare glass windshields allow and should be within legal limits in the US and Canada.

(Note that these stats are from the company’s tests, and are not something I was able to personally test. Once the film approaches commercial availability, I’ll happily fire some rocks at my car’s windshield in the name of science.).

So how does it work? While the company doesn’t reveal every ingredient in its secret sauce, they explain the product as “nano-composites sandwiched in a single 100 micrometer thick film”.

Wondering how can you get Neverfrost for your windshield?

For now at least, you can’t. It has to be professionally applied by an authorized dealer, and they’re primarily working with trucking fleets in California and Ontario for now — because no one knows the pain of a chipped/frosted windshield like the folks who drive across the country all-day-every-day for a living.

With that said, the company tells me that they hope to be available commercially to consumers by next fall. Interested parties can sign up for more details here.

One interesting thing to note about the company: unlike many (most?) YC-backed companies, Neverfrost isn’t planning to make Silicon Valley its home any time soon. They need to be somewhere cold to test and iterate on their product, and the Valley isn’t exactly known for its snow fall.

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Google’s Inbox email app adds support for custom Snooze times

One of the most useful features in Google’s new Inbox email client is the ability to set Snooze times for when you want to save some email to read for later. Google’s now making the tool a little more versatile.

Previously, you could only assign generic morning, afternoon and evening times. Now these are customizable, and somewhat automated too. If you snooze to, say 7:30AM, you’ll be asked whether you want to set that as your new ‘morning’ time.

Once you update a time, the rest of your snooze options will adapt too, but you can always change your Snooze times in a new settings menu for the feature.

Google is also making it easier to access your contacts from Inbox on the Web; it’s added a link on the left-hand side of the client. The company says it continues to listen to feedback and intends to make it easier to delete emails and add signatures.

The changes will be rolling out to Inbox users later today.

➤ Custom Snooze in Inbox by Gmail: Rise and shine…on your time[Gmail Blog]

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Facebook’s new Scrapbook tool makes it easy to collect all your kids’ photos in one place

The people who first started using Facebook have grown up. As that core audience has aged, there are a lot more Facebook users with kids who consequently post thousands of baby photos onto the platform.

Facebook is now making it easier to collect photos strewn across various albums with a new Scrapbook tool. It basically lets you tag your children in photos so that you can collect them all in one place, even if your two-year-old doesn’t have her own Facebook account. You can then share the Scrapbooks with your friends.

Scrapbooks can be co-owned with your partner to make it easier for parents and guardians to work together on the albums. You can also choose any title for your kid; it could be his or her name, initials or any goofy nickname of your choosing. Only you and your partner can tag children in the photos.

To start a Scrapbook, go to your profile, click on About, and then enter the Family and Relationships section. You’ll see the option to create a Scrapbook there.

Scrapbooks are rolling out in the US today on the Web, iPhone and Android.

➤ An Optional Way to Organize Photos of Your Child on Facebook [Facebook]

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Facebook’s New Photo “Scrapbook” Lets Parents Give Kids An Official Presence

For the first time, children under 13 are allowed to have an official presence on Facebook. They still can’t have a profile, but their parents can now tag photos of them (or pet) to create a “Scrapbook”. This lets parents collect photos of their baby, toddler, or pre-teen in a centralized place they can share with friends or loved ones. Scrapbook will first roll out in the US on iOS, Android, and desktop.

Facebook’s tells me it’s looking into how it could let parents hand off control of the scrapbook to their kid when they turn 13 and can legally join Facebook. And if you hate seeing baby photos, giving parents a way to identify them could be the first step to Facebook hiding them from your feed.

Turning Emergent Behavior Into Product

Meet Ram. Ram is a bouncining baby boy launched by Facebook Scrapbook product manager Dan Barak and his co-founder (wife). Barak wanted a better way to compile all the photos of Ram he was uploading on Facebook, so he built one.

“Before Ram was even born, I started seeing friends who were parents adding photos of their kids and tagging their partners” Scrapbook product manager Dan Barak tells. This was a clever hack. By tagging their child in photos as their partner, a parent could instantly notify their significant other they had added photo of their kid, made it visible to their partner’s friends, and created a place to find those shots in the Photos Of Me section of their partner’s profile.

“We asked and interviewed a bunch of parents and found 65% of partners who share photos of their kids on Facebook [in the US] do this” say Barak.

So like Twitter turning “RT:” into the retweet button, Barak took all the benefits of the tagging hack and baked them into Facebook Scrapbook.

How To Scrapbook

To create a scrapbook, people can go to the About section of their profile, and then the Family And Relationships tab. There they’ll see options to start a scrapbook from scratch or make one for an existing child. This lets them establish themselves as a parent and create a phantom presence for their kid (which has ad targeting ramifications I’ll get into later).

Barak tells me an easter egg in the family member selector for starting a scrapbook lets you choose to make one for your pet.

First you’ll see a cute animated video about how Scrapbooks work, starring a baby elephant named Elly. You’ll then select whether to co-own the scrapbook with your partner, which means they’ll also be able to tag photos of your kid, get notified about those tags, have the photos default to being visible to their friends, and change the Scrapbook’s privacy settings.

Once the Scrapbook is created, parents will be shown photos tagged with them or their partner, and can click to identify which ones feature their little munchkin. The Scrapbook then becomes a special collection of photos of the kid from other albums. Parents can tag their kid in other people’s photos too, and give a notification if the privacy setting of those photos changes.

When You Know What’s A Baby Photo…

Barak says Facebook wanted to “ship [Scrapbook] early and get feedback” from parents, so there’ll be a prominent link in the product to send comments to the company. One feature Facebook plans to add is a subscribe button that will let loved ones like grandparents get a notification any time a photo is added to a kid’s scrapbook.

But shipping early has its risks too. Facebook hasn’t quite figured out an elegant way for Scrapbooks to work for mixed families with step-children and step-parents. A maximum of two people can be the owners of a Scrapbook, and those people have to be in a formal relationship on Facebook. Divorced parents could always start sepearate Scrapbooks, but there’s some potential for emotional stress.

Getting parents to out themselves could be good for Facebook’s business, though Barak says it wasn’t an incentive to build the feature. To use the Scrapbook, you have to list yourself as a parent, which signals to Facebook’s advertisers that they might want to target you with ads for toys or kid’s clothes.

On the brighter side, people who despise seeing baby photos on Facebook may be in luck. When I asked if Facebook could use the Scrapbook tags to identify which photos have kids in them so it could hide those photos from people who never look, like, or comment on them, he admitted “It’s something we’ve thought about.”

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Google launches $100 Chromebit dongle that turns your TV into a Chrome OS computer, shows off flipping Chromebook

Google is making a big push into Chrome OS today. The company just announced a $100 TV dongle that turns any TV into a Chrome OS computer, as well as new Chromebooks.

The new ASUS ‘Chromebit’ is the most interesting announcement. Due this summer, the dongle attaches to your TV via HDMI and turns your screen into a full-fledged Chrome OS computer. Google says it will cost less than $100 and is smaller than a candy bar.

Otherwise, there’s a new $249 ASUS Chromebook Flip, which folds into tablet mode and, naturally, features a touchscreen as well. It’s all metal, 15mm thin and weighs less than two pounds.

Finally, it’s also introduced the cheapest Chromebooks ever, The Haier Chromebook 11 and the Hisense Chromebook, both of which cost $149.

Developing…

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Google Maps Easter Egg Sets Pac-Man Loose On City Streets

Google has created a new Easter Egg for Google Maps (pretty much just in time for actual Easter) which lets you play Pac-Man in real-world locales on the company’s Maps apps for desktop and mobie devices. It’s easy to play, by either navigating to the Google Maps website or opening the app on your Android or iOS device, and then just searching for a location where Pac-Man might show up.

Google is offering hints to help you find the iconic 1980s video game protagonist, but if you’re in a hurry just search for “times square” and you should see a pixelated map flag icon like the one pictured here. Click on that and you’ll launch into a game with simple controls, letting you control Pac-Man as he evades his ghostly enemies with either the arrow keys on a computer or by swiping up, down, left and right to change direction on mobile.

Rack up a decent high score with your five lives and then share it with others to see how well you can Pac in the streets.

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Amazon’s New Dash Button Hardware Offers Instant Orders For Staple Products

Amazon has new hardware called the Dash Button that allows one-press ordering of products you’re likely to want to replace on a regular basis. The Dash Button comes in a number of different branded versions based on what it’s coded to order, and includes an adhesive backing and hook holster to let you stick it where it’s most convenient.

The Dash Button is a natural extension of Amazon’s one-click ordering feature on the web, but turned into a hardware gadget that makes ordering laundry detergent, for instance, as easy as actually starting the wash cycle. Amazon clearly hopes that if you have a physical one-button device near the place where you actually consume these consumables, you’re more likely to have the presence of mind to order them via its service before you run out, when a trip to the corner store might prove more convenient even than home delivery.

You setup Amazon’s Dash Button using the Amazon mobile app, and then connecting to your Wi-Fi network to assign the product you want the Dash Button to order with a single press (limited by brands pictured on the hardware at launch, apparently). Once it’s configured, the button will automatically trigger an order to your default address using your default Amazon payment order, and you can cancel it via your phone should you have second thoughts. Amazon won’t trigger another order made via subsequent button presses until the first one is delivered, the company notes, unless you override that manually.

At launch, the eligible products for the Dash Button include things like toilet paper, cleaning products, juice, personal grooming products, dog food and much more.

The Dash Button is tied to Amazon’s Dash Replenishment service, which will offer direct integration for the same kind of service into devices themselves. Imagine, for instance, a coffee maker that has a button to automatically re-order coffee beans or filters, or a washing machine with a built-in button to order detergent. Amazon has already partnered with a number of companies to make this happen, and will ship the first-such devices this fall. Some products will even auto-detect when they need replacement supplies and order instantly if a consumer enables that feature.

For now, the Dash Button is the easiest way for consumers to get on board, but you’ll have to be a Prime Member and request an invite to get on board. The hardware itself is free, however, as Amazon clearly wants to make the purchasing process as easy as possible in the interest of selling more consumables down the road.

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Frame.io Is Cloud-Based Collaboration For Everything

Given the world’s shift toward video, both in terms of consumption and creation, it’s almost surprising how tedious and painstaking the process of post-production collaboration can be. Lots of services focus on pieces of the problem, like accelerated file sharing or review in-progress collaboration, but there isn’t really a service that covers everything, end-to-end.

Frame.io, launching today, wants to be that service.

Frame.io was designed to stand on its own and integrate with any type of files, from music to photos to video, without having to sit on top of an existing service like Vimeo or Dropbox. Users can share files up to 5x faster than Dropbox, according to cofounder Emery Wells, review clips frame-by-frame in a collaborative environment, and even draw on various frames to add more specificity to certain comments.

Frame.io handles version control so that nothing gets mixed up from one draft to the next, and makes sure that content shared through Frame.io is viewable on any device.

“Our key differentiator is we aren’t just solving work in progress review, or just large file sharing, or just web based media collaboration,” said Wells. “We aren’t just focusing on video or just focusing on photos because that’s not how people work. We’ve built something from the ground up that is optimized for all types of media and is only limited by our own ideas.”

Frame.io offers a free product that allows for 2GB of file storage, one project and five collaborators per month, with paid tiers starting at $15/month and going up to $150/month.

The service has been in beta for the past six months with more than 680 users and 150 companies already using the platform, with clients like BirchBox, Refinery 29, and Facebook, among others.

Frame.io – Crafted with Love in NYC from Frame.io on Vimeo.

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Alcatel OneTouch’s Cross-Platform Smartwatch Opens Pre-Orders For $150

The Alcatel OneTouch Watch, which got its debut at CES this year, is officially going on sale today with pre-orders starting at $149.99 directly from the company’s U.S. website. The smartwatch is unique among those from larger OEMs in that it works with both iOS and Android smartphones, packing in support for health monitoring features, phone notifications and music controls on both kinds of devices.

Alcatel’s device has a circular face, and at launch will ship with a black sport band (with more options set to be made available later on this year). It uses Bluetooth LE to connect to your device, and has a 42 mm watch face, with a 1.22-inch 240×204 display. The device uses touch-based input, but depends on a tapping interface using the home area that takes up a small chunk of the bottom of the round screen, similar to the Moto 360’s bottom black bar. A printed exterior bezel with number markers at 12, 3, 6 and 9 helps hide the fact that it isn’t a full circle.

The watch has a hidden USB 2.0 port in the band that lets it charge to full capacity in just an hour, which is a nice change from the field of proprietary and induction chargers used by many manufacturers in terms of convenience. A full battery charge should provide between two and five days of use, according to the company, depending on your usage.

Alcatel’s device will have limitations in terms of function vs. the Apple Watch on iPhone, of course, as it’ll be limited to access privileges afforded accessories like the Pebble. That still means it’ll be able to control camera shutter functions, as well as music playback, however, and provide notifications. On Android, it should have more flexibility in terms of accessing system features. It also has a built-in heart rate sensor, electronic campus, gyroscope, altimeter and NFC tag, and is IP67 water- and dust-resistant.

The device works with smartphones running Android 4.3 or higher, and with iPhone 4S or newer with at least iOS 7 installed.

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Securifi Adds Serious Home Automation To Its Almond Routers

Own an Almond router? It’s about to get a dose of home automation thanks to new firmware from Securifi. The company behind the clever (and attractive) routers just announced a new set of features that will better position its product in the marketplace.

These home automation features are a natural fit for Almond routers since Securifi designed the router to be showcased in a home rather than stuffed in a closet like most routers. The latest router can even be hung on a wall.

Securifi launched the original Almond router in 2012 and quickly followed it up with a new model in 2014. Then, earlier this year, the company pushed out another router that packs more of what made the first two special: It combines top-tier technical specs with a pretty face. And now it does home automation, too.

The new home automation features work in an “if that than this” scheme. However, unlike the online service of IFTTT or SmartThings, the platform is ran locally on the router and does not require a connect to the Internet. The latest Almond router, the Almond+, is compatible with ZigBee and Z-Wave devices, effectively giving the router the ability to talk to thousands of different home automation modules. This includes everything from smartlocks to connected thermostats and the like. Between ZigBee and Z-Wave, a home owner can make a home automation system that will rival the Jetson’s.

Securifi is releasing its own connected outlets. The outlet keeps with the nut theme and is called Peanut.

I found the system easy to configure through a smartphone app. The app’s flow is logical and the setup nominal, which is what made the original Almond popular.

This move into home automation is an ambitious plan for Securifi, but a smart move. So far no one from Nest to ADT to SmartThings have found the secret sauce. Securifi presents an interesting proposition by integrating the home automation hub directly into a router making it a powerful connection hub.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Wx8B2MC1PXs/

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MoPub Founder Jim Payne Joins Board Of Ad Analytics Company Metamarkets

Following last month’s announcement of $15 million in new funding, analytics company Metamarkets is bringing on someone new its board of directors — Jim Payne, founder and former CEO of MoPub, the mobile ad company acquired by Twitter.

Payne left his full-time role at Twitter last fall, and since then, it sounds like he’s been focused on making angel investments and advising startups.

Payne joins Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures, Jeff Epstein of Bessemer Venture Partners, and Mike Kourey of Khosla Ventures on the Metamarkets board. CEO Mike Driscoll explained that Payne will be filling the board’s independent seat: “We were looking to bring someone in with real operational expertise.”

Payne added, “I never had really had an independent board director when I was building MoPub. There were plenty of times when I would have appreciated having someone who’d been through it before.” He also said this is his first independent board seat.

Payne actually became familiar with Metamarkets back in 2011, when MoPub was “just five people” and started using Metamarkets’ analytics. It soon became “an indispensable tool,” allowing the MoPub team to track traffic and revenue, and even to make broader policy decisions, like how to work with different ad platforms.

Other clients include Vungle, Millennial Media, and the Financial Times. Payne suggested that the company’s technology could actually apply to areas beyond ad tech.

“It seems to me like it would be relevant to any marketplace, anything with that same real-time dynamic and a lot of events happening in a short amount of time,” he said.

Driscoll agreed that Metamarkets might be useful for analyzing things like user engagement and mobile payments, and he said the company is looking at “adjacencies to type of data we’ve built today.”

“But we also know the value of focus,” he said. “We will continue to build out the business in the space that we’re in.”

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Huge Todoist for iOS update adds smarter task creation, new gestures and themes

Task management app Todoist is getting a huge update today on iOS as the app hits version 10. There are a slew of new features in what Todoist is calling its “most comprehensive update ever”.

First up, an Intelligent Input feature allows you to type dates, labels and priorities directly into the task field – Todoist will automatically recognize the information you write to apply them to a new task, saving you time from having to fill in all the details separately.Another time-saver, you can now add items by simply clicking on the new red circle in a task view or project. Alternatively, a new ‘pull’ gesture lets you add into the middle of a list; pull your fingers apart to separate two tasks and create a new one between them. And if you need to move stuff around, you can re-order or indent tasks and sub-projects using a longpress.

Tasks can now be marked as complete or rescheduled with a swipe. If you have many items to sort through however, you can now select multiple tasks to set as complete, change due dates, update priority, delegate to a new person or move to a new project.Natural language recognition for voice commands has been improved as well. Todoist says if you create a task by saying “run a mile with Joseph every Thursday at 6am starting March 29th and ending October 12th,” the app will be able to understand what you mean and schedule a task accordingly.

The app is getting a bit more colorful too, as it’s added support for 10 themes with fancy colors including tangerine, sunflower and amethyst. It’s gained updated welcome and log-in screens, and some redesigned menus too.

It’s a significant update that could make creating and sorting through complex task lists a lot easier. While these features are hitting iOS users first, Todoist says it will soon roll out equivalent updates for its Web, Mac, Windows and Android apps. In fact, folks on Team Google have a complete Material Design overhaul to look forward to as well.

➤ Todoist [iOS]

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Infinit’s New Mobile Apps Might Be The Best Way To Transfer Those Pesky HD Videos

French startup Infinit just released its mobile app for both iOS and Android. In addition to providing a simple way to send files to your friends and colleagues, it is now a full-fledged AirDrop replacement as well. As a reminder, Infinit is a file-sharing service that differs from WeTransfer or CloudApp as it uses peer-to-peer technology to boost file sharing between two users. And there isn’t any file size restriction.

Until now, many video game developers or postproduction specialists were using Infinit to send big files to their colleagues. For instance, Infinit can handle a huge uncompressed 100GB video file without breaking a sweat. You don’t need to leave your computer open as Infinit can pause and resume your uploads.

Behind the scene, when two persons are in the same office, Infinit uses the local network to send those files as quickly as possible. But if you are at home, Infinit seamlessly switches to a secure peer-to-peer connection. Finally, if your recipient is offline, Infinit also starts uploading right away by sending the file to its servers.

At first, the company didn’t see how a mobile app would be useful for these particular use cases. But chances are that your phone is now your primary camera. You might want to send a few HD videos from your last vacation. Right now, it is very complicated to send those files to your friends, or even to your computer. Infinit makes this a little easier.

When you open the app, you are presented with a big paper plane button at the bottom. If you press it, you can select a few photos and videos, and then send them. If your friend uses Infinit, they will receive a push notification to accept the transfer. Otherwise, they will get a link to download the files from Infinit’s servers.

The app doesn’t create a web gallery to showcase your photos, it sends your photos without compressing them or altering them in any way — this is where Infinit stands out from messaging apps that all compress your photos and videos. On mobile, the company uses the exact same technology as on desktop, meaning that you can send your files and forget about them. It takes advantage of your local Wi-Fi, creates a peer-to-peer connection if you are not on the same network or uploads to Infinit’s servers.

Finally, Infinit is a great way to share files between your own devices. Maybe you are using a Windows PC, an Android phone and an iPad — Infinit now runs on a all these platforms. And I find the user experience much more effective than using AirDrop, uploading a file to Dropbox or sending an email to myself.

Infinit raised $1.8 million from Alven Capital and 360 Capital Partners and is a Techstars NY alumnus. The company plans to roll out a premium offering soon.

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Featured Image: Bogdan Suditu/Flickr UNDER A CC BY 2.0 LICENSE



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Is the Apple Watch hype media-driven or are consumers actually interested?

Less than a month has passed since the Apple Watch launch event, and we’re still almost a month from anyone actually being able to buy it. Still, it’s a brand new Apple product, so it must be a Web traffic goldmine, right?

We turned to data from SimilarWeb to assess who is benefiting from Apple Watch hype, and to see if the general public really are all that interested in Apple’s first major new product line since the iPad. How is the buzz faring on the Web, and can it last?

There are already sites that are getting good amounts of Apple Watch traffic, and you can see that not all of them are tech related – some mainstream news sites are benefiting, too.

Interest in the Apple Watch has been steadily on the climb throughout the year so far. Over the last 28 days it was the 49th most popular search term for driving traffic to tech news sites. That’s an increase in share of 25 percent compared to January 2015.

That doesn’t tell the whole story though. Google Trends shows that searchers’ interest in the Apple Watch peaked the day after the March 9 launch event and has since settled down to a similar level as in the preceding weeks.

How does the Apple Watch affect Apple’s own Web traffic?

Meanwhile, over on Apple’s own website, the Watch page has risen to become the seventh most popular page over the past 28 days.

Unsurprisingly, there was a spike in desktop visits to Apple.com on March 9, the day Apple held its event to present the device to the world in detail. On this day, the quantity of visits to the company’s website was up 45 percent compared to the two previous weeks’ average, and reached slightly more than 20.2 million visits.

Impressive? Well, a maybe little – but nothing compared to when Apple unveiled the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus last year. That drove a 310 percent increase in traffic to Apple’s site when compared to the previous two weeks, and led to 46.6 million total visits.

So, is it wrong to assume that the public must be salivating over the idea of the Apple Watch? Another data point is the device’s popularity on tech news site TechCrunch.

If we look at popular pages for the past 28 days (as of March 24), we can see that the audience is more concerned about ports missing from the new MacBook, or Apple’s move to kill the right-click. The highest-place Apple Watch article is in 14th place – the site’s liveblog of the launch event.

Of course, it’s still early days. Apple has yet to get into gear with a full advertising campaign for the Watch or get it into stores for prospective customers to play with. Maybe then buzz will start to pick up, but for now it seems excitement is lagging behind that for other tech news stories, and indeed, other Apple products.

Don’t miss: Who are the biggest consumers of online porn?

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Last chance to get the KeySmart 2.0 and extender for just $17

Keys are an age-old form of security that, for the most part, still haven’t gone digital. We all walk around with this collection of oddly shaped metal objects kept together by the classic key ring, enemy to fingernails everywhere, so we can lock and unlock doors at our homes, in our cars, and out and about.

While it’s not easy to instantly make your keys disappear in favor of a digital solution, you can make them a lot more organized and convenient with one easy tool: the KeySmart 2.0. Get it now for just $17 with extender at TNW Deals, including free shipping. If you want to take advantage of this price, you’ll need to act fast – the deal ends on Wednesday at 11:59pm PT.

Collecting your keys in a Swiss-army style tool, the innovative KeySmart utilizes clever design to fit all your keys into one nifty shape. That means no more spikey ball of keys that protrudes from your pocket and pushes into your leg. No more mess trying to find the individual key you’re looking for out of the 10+ on your keychain. With the included expansion pack, you can fit up to 10 keys on the KeySmart, as well as your car key, key fob or other keychains with the included loop piece.

The frame is crafted from aircraft-grade aluminum, so it’s sure to be strong enough to hold your keys. You can also get accessories like a USB stick to add to your KeySmart. It’s normally $23, but our discount gets you this lifesaver at just $17 with free shipping. That’s a small price to pay to organize and consolidate something you carry around with you literally every day.

➤ Get this deal

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Google’s Cloud Console for Android lets you manage your App Engine projects on the go

Google has launched Cloud Console for Android, a new app for Android that lets developers manage their projects hosted on the company’s Cloud Platform from their mobile devices.

Currently in beta, Cloud Console lets you look up the status of your apps, set up and receive incident alerts, manage your Cloud Platform resources and get performance stats from Google’s Cloud Monitoring service.

You can customize the dashboard view to include all the information you need at a glance, including monitoring graphs and billing estimates.

The app also lets you tracking incidents via Cloud Monitoring, and add comments to issues so your team knows how the situation is being handled.

In addition, you can view details and graphs for App Engine and Compute Engine instances and invoke operations like starting or stopping an instance, right from the app.

Google says it will continue to add features to Cloud Console over coming months, and launch an iOS version later this year.

➤ Cloud Console [Android via Google Cloud Platform Blog]

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TechCrunch Disrupt Returns To London, From December 5th to 8th

Last year European startups raised more money in the first quarter than they had during the “dot-com boom”. Much of that money and startup activity was coming out of London. Why? It’s simple. European entrepreneurs are using this highly developed center as a bridge to global markets, and, often, to San Francisco and the Valley. At the same time, London remains the first beach-head for many U.S. startups looking to scale in Europe. So there are hard and fast reasons why TechCrunch today announces that it’s returning to London with the Disrupt conference.

Last year, TechCrunch Disrupt in London set off a “media atomic bomb”, with multiple media outlets covering the startups that launched on our stage. We aim to repeat, and better, that experience.

We’re coming back.

Unlike 99% of tech conferences, TechCrunch puts its journalists in front of every speaker and holds their feet to the fire. Incredibly, speakers love this and line-up for the battle that ensues. We love that process, and we know everyone else does too.

Certainly, the wider media also loves this approach. On the first day of Disrupt London last year, we saw around 100 media outlets attending, including The Financial Times, City AM, The Independent, Business Insider and CNBC; including the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight.

Disrupt it would seem, captured the imagination of the Western European press like few other tech events could.

So here is the detail.

TechCrunch Disrupt London 2015 will be held at the Copper Box Arena in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It will be open to any startup form anywhere in the world. But we are particularly encouraging startups to apply from Europe, the Middle East and Africa to join us.

The legendary Disrupt Hackathon will be held on December 5th to 6th, followed by the main conference on December 7th to 8th. Startup Alley tickets are immediately available for purchase.

You can apply for 2-for-1 tickets here. We will be releasing a limited number these in batches. So you need to apply for that access ASAP.

Best of luck and see you all there.

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Alibaba Signs Distribution Deal With BMG, Its First Music Partner Outside Of Asia

In a bid to increase its online entertainment offerings, Alibaba has struck an agreement with music publisher BMG, which gives it access to over 2.5 million tracks. The partnership is notable because it represents the first time Alibaba’s digital entertainment unit has signed with a music partner outside of Asia.

The business already has agreements with Taiwanese music companies Rock Records and HIM International Music.

The deal gives Alibaba access to BMG’s catalog, which includes tracks from Bruno Mars, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and Kylie Minogue. Music will be made available to consumers through streaming apps Xiami and TTPod, both of which are operated by Alibaba’s digital entertainment business.

It’s important to remember that Alibaba is more than just an e-commerce company. It is also one of China’s biggest mobile Internet players, competing head-to-head with Tencent, which has already struck similar arrangements with Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

Alibaba’s growth plans include selling other online services to the huge user base it has grown by operating China’s top e-commerce platforms and online payment service Alipay.

In addition to online entertainment, the company and its subsidiaries also has aspirations in healthcare management, cloud computing, and financial services like a credit scoring system that uses data from Alibaba’s family of e-commerce platforms.

Streaming music is a potential growth market for Chinese Internet companies, but only if they succeed in dealing with piracy. According to the Financial Times, China accounted for less than one percent of the $15 billion in global revenues made in 2013 by record companies, in part because pirated tracks are easy to obtain.

The government, however, has begun to crackdown on copyright infringement, and deals like the ones Alibaba and Tencent have struck with BMG, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment give music publishers more power over their IP in China.

In a statement, Alibaba said “the agreement will not only significantly boost earnings by BMG artists and writers from the world’s most populous nation, but also give them a powerful ally in hleping grow the legitimate music market in China.”

This means that Alibaba will help BMG keep an eye on pirated music and work with them to take legal action against services that are using tracks that violate BMG’s copyright.

Featured Image: Antonio Gravante/Shutterstock (IMAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED)



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This Easy Cheese 3D Printer Offers Sweet, Golden Disruption

We toss the word “disruption” around far to frivolously here but I think we’ve finally found a product that deserves to be called amazing, magical, game-changing, and – dare I say it? – disruptive. It is an Easy Cheese 3D printer, four words that have never been brought together in the English language yet that are so important to the future of mankind.

What are you watching here? The future, mostly. It’s a way to dispense sweet Easy Cheese (a cheese product extruded from a can) onto a surface. The resulting slurry can be ejected in various shapes including, but not limited to, a square. The resulting Easy Cheese objects can be eaten or thrown away.

Created by Andrew Maxwell-Parish, the project is obviously not ready for primetime but it’s an important proof-of-concept for those ready to explore the brave new world of three-dimensional dairy manufacturing. Near the end of the video, for example, we see the cheese extruder popping off the head and we also see the dreaded “cheese foof” – a gaseous outburst associated with air bubbles in the medium. Some gave all and all gave some in the slow march to this moment.

In the end I doubt mankind is ready for true cheese extrusion but it’s an important signpost for whatever evolved species takes over after we are gone. Excelsior.

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The End Of Hardware Alley Registrations Is Nigh!

It’s almost April and Hardware Alley, our annual celebration of all things hardware, is nearly full. You need to sign up ASAP and let me know you’re coming because I want to see you and your bright, shining, robotic amazingness on our show floor.

Disrupt runs from May 4-6 and will be held at the Manhattan Center in New York City. It’s an amazing event and you can check it out here.

What is Hardware Alley? It’s a celebration of hardware startups (and other cool gear makers) featuring everything from robotic drones to 3D printers. We try to bring in an eclectic mix of amazing exhibitors and I think you’ll agree that our previous Alleys have been roaring successes.

You’ll get to exhibit on the last day of Disrupt SF, May 6, to show off your goods and get access to some of the most interesting people (and most interesting VCs) in the world.

All you need to demo is a laptop and your amazingness. TechCrunch provides you with: 30″ round cocktail table, linens, table-top sign, inclusion in program agenda and website, exhibitor WiFi, and press list.

You can reserve your spot by purchasing a Hardware Alley Exhibitor Package here.

If you are Kickstarting your project now or bootstrapping, please contact me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject line “HARDWARE ALLEY.” I will do my best to accommodate you but act quickly: I’m almost out of discounts.

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Phhhoto Tops 1 Million Users

Phhhoto, perhaps the only social network to have first launched as a physical party product aimed at the enterprise, has topped 1 million registered users over the course of the past nine months. Users have posted upwards of 10 million Phhhotos to the platform.

Phhhoto started back at SXSW in 2013 with an iPad-based photobooth, but instead of capturing the usual strip of four photos, the iPad app (hooked up to a stand with special built-in lighting) captures four frames and then strings them into a looping GIF. Users can then text themselves the Phhhoto to save to their phone and share on other social networks.

The product was called Phhhoto Pro.

For a year, the Phhhoto team built out Phhhoto Pro to offer at parties and different events for a negotiable fee, while secretly working on an app that consumers could use whenever they want from their own device.

The app launched in August of 2014 and the company has since grown to one million registered users. Notably, Phhhoto operates much like Snapchat when it comes to populating a user’s social graph, depending solely on the user’s phonebook as opposed to another network like Facebook or Twitter.

For a long time, Phhhoto Pro has been a useful user acquisition tool — the company has around 300 corporate clients and has set up the Phhhoto Pro booth at more than 1,000 different events — but cofounder Champ Bennet explained to TechCrunch that the app has now overtaken the physical product in terms of user acquisition rate.

“The cool thing about Phhhoto Pro is not just that it continues to drive user acquisition, but it offers this level of brand equity for users that makes them high-value users on the app side.”

Moving forward, the company is focusing on the content itself, with the intention to build a platform that fosters media creation from within the app, as opposed to outside content. By comparison, networks like Facebook and Twitter are built to hold and stream content from a number of different networks, while Snapchat (more akin to Phhhoto) is designed to support content created on Snapchat.

“We’re trying to build something pure, and the product has gotten to a point where the Phhhoto media type is something that our users are enthusiastic about, so now it’s about how we can loop that into new ways of communicating, and perhaps even new content types,” said Omar Elsayed.

Phhhoto has raised $225K in seed funding led by Diplo.

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Gmail for Android now lets you view all your email accounts at once, adds thread conversations for non Gmail accounts

Google is unleashing a significant update to its Android Gmail app today that should please users with several email accounts.

You can now view emails from all your different accounts in one spot with a new “All inboxes” option. This lets you respond to all of your messages without needing to manually switch between account, whether it’s a Gmail account or not.

Gmail’s conversation view makes sorting through long email threads easier, but it’s previously only been available for gmail.com addresses. Now any IMAP/POP accounts are getting the feature too, so your Outlook conversations will look just as organized as your Gmail ones.

Otherwise, there are a few minor updates. Search has been improved with smarter autocompete, while animations have been made more responsive and attachments now show a larger preview.

The updated app should be rolling out to users everywhere today. No word on the features coming to iOS yet, but we’ll update this post if we find out more.

➤ All your mail, together in one place [Gmail Blog]

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