Source: Engadget | Mobile game streaming service Hatch is available in the UK
- Creating a regular IP harvesting process
- Invention cataloging and scoring
- The scoring system
- Conclusion
- Iranian president warns Tehran will increase uranium enrichment ‘as much as we want’ on Sunday The Washington Post
- Several suspected U.S. spies ‘due to be’ sentenced to death, Iran says NBC News
- Iran warns Europe it ‘will take next step’ to enrich uranium to weapons-grade level if new deal isn’t reached Fox News
- Iran steps over the line on nukes — what’s the next step for Trump? | TheHill The Hill
- Trump needs a Belichick game plan for Iran The Boston Globe
- View full coverage on Google News
Blipblox is a synthesizer designed for children. The company behind it, Playtime Engineering, even calls it a toy. And it certainly looks like one. It's made out of bright, glossy, primary-colored plastic. The large knobs and buttons are cle…
Source: Engadget | Blipblox is a synth made for kids that adults will like too
The immigration process in the U.S. has become a high-stakes undertaking for employers, workers, and entrepreneurs. Predictability has eroded. Processing times have soared. And any mistake or misstep now has dire consequences.
Over the past three years, immigration policies and procedures have been in a state of flux and the process has become more unforgiving for even the smallest mistakes. Putting your best foot forward is crucial. Employers and individuals need to formulate a long-term strategy and backup options to stay protected.
The increase in Requests for Evidence and the backlog for many visa and green card categories has meant longer waiting times. What’s more, the Trump administration’s recent decision to close all USCIS’s international offices—and shift that workload back to the U.S.—is expected to compound the backlogs and delays.
We are seeing these issues affect startups every day. My law firm works with hundreds of startups every year to help them and their employers figure out their immigration paperwork. The overall piece of advice we give is to decide on a specific goal based on a deep understanding of the company and the individual and by examining the options strategically.
Then, you can figure out the right approach for a visa, green card, or citizenship application. Regardless of my personal interest in the matter, now more than ever, I recommend consulting with an experienced immigration attorney who can handle the process with integrity, creativity, compassion, and rigor.
What employers should know
The new normal for immigration means increased employee recruiting and retention costs for employers. However, hiring immigrants remains possible.
Source: Tech Crunch Startups | What everyone at a startup needs to know about immigration
Tech News
App revenue tops $39 billion in first half of 2019, up 15% from first half of last year
July 3, 2019App store spending is continuing to grow, although not as quickly as in years past. According to a new report from Sensor Tower, the iOS App Store and Google Play combined brought in $39.7 billion in worldwide app revenue in the first half of 2019 — that’s up 15.4% over the $34.4 billion seen during the first half of last year. However, at that time, the $34.4 billion was a 27.8% increase from 2017’s numbers, then a combined $26.9 billion across both stores.
Apple’s App Store continues to massively outpace Google Play on consumer spending, the report also found.
In the first half of 2019, global consumers spent $25.5 billion on the iOS App Store, up 13.2% year-over-year from the $22.6 billion spent in the first half of 2018. Last year, the growth in consumer spending was 26.8%, for comparison’s sake.
Still, Apple’s estimated $25.5 billion in the first half of 2019 is 80% higher than Google Play’s estimated gross revenue of $14.2 billion — the latter a 19.6% increase from the first half of 2018.
The major factor in the slowing growth is iOS in China, which contributed to the slowdown in total growth. However, Sensor Tower expects to see China returning to positive growth over the next 12 months, we’re told.
To a smaller extent, the downturn could be attributed to changes with one of the top-earning apps across both app stores: Netflix.
Last year, Netflix dropped in-app subscription sign-ups for Android users. Then, at the end of December 2018, it did so for iOS users, too. That doesn’t immediately drop its revenue to zero, of course — it will continue to generate revenue from existing subscribers. But the number will decline, especially as Netflix expands globally without an in-app purchase option, and as lapsed subscribers return to renew online with Netflix directly.
In the first half of 2019, Netflix was the second highest earning non-game app with consumer spending of $339 million, Sensor Tower estimates, down from $459 million in the first half of 2018. (We should point out the firm bases its estimates on a 70/30 split between Netflix and Apple’s App Store that drops to 85/15 after the first year. To account for the mix of old and new subscribers, Sensor Tower factors in a 25% cut. But Daring Fireball’s John Gruber claims Netflix had a special relationship with Apple where it had an 85/15 cut from year one.)
In any event, Netflix’s contribution to the app stores’ revenue is on the decline.
In the first half of last year, Netflix had been the No. 1 non-game app for revenue. This year, that spot went to Tinder, which pulled in an estimated $497 million across the iOS App Store and Google Play, combined. That’s up 32% over the first half of 2018.
But Tinder’s dominance could be a trend that doesn’t last.
According to recent data from eMarketer, dating app audiences have been growing slower than expected, causing the analyst firm to revise its user estimates downward. It now expects that 25.1 million U.S. adults will use a dating app monthly this year, down from its previous forecast of 25.4 million. It also expects that only 21% of U.S. single adults will use a dating app at all in 2019, and that will only grow to 23% by 2023.
That means Tinder’s time at the top could be overrun by newcomers in later months, especially as new streaming services get off the ground (assuming they offer in-app subscriptions); if TikTok starts taking monetization seriously; or if any other large apps from China find global audiences outside of China’s third-party app stores.
For example, Tencent Video grossed $278 million globally in the first half of 2019, outside of the third-party Chinese Android app stores. That made it the third-largest non-game app by revenue. And Chinese video platform iQIYI and YouTube were the No. 4 and No. 5 top-grossing apps, respectively.
Meanwhile, iOS app installs actually declined in the first half of the year, following the first quarter that saw a decline in downloads, Q1 2019, attributed to the downturn in China.
The App Store in the first half of 2019 accounted for 14.8 billion of the total 56.7 billion app installs.
Google Play installs in the first half of the year grew 16.4% to 41.9 billion, or about 2.8 times greater than the iOS volume.
The most downloaded apps in the first half of 2019 were the same as before: WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook led the top charts. But TikTok inched ahead of Instagram for the No. 4 spot, and it saw its installs grow around 28% to nearly 344 million worldwide.
In terms of mobile gaming specifically, spending was up 11.3% year-over-year in the first half of 2019, reaching $29.6 billion across the iOS App Store and Google Play. Thanks to the fallout of the game licensing freeze in China, App Store revenue growth for games was at $17.6 billion, or 7.8% year-over-year growth. Google Play game spending grew by 16.8% to $12 billion.
The top-grossing games, in order, were Tencent’s Honor of Kings, Fate/Grand Order, Monster Strike, Candy Crush Saga and PUBG Mobile.
Meanwhile, the most downloaded games were Color Bump 3D, Garena Free Fire and PUBG Mobile.
Image credits: Sensor Tower
Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | App revenue tops billion in first half of 2019, up 15% from first half of last year
Tech News
Reliance Jio partners with Facebook to launch literacy program for first time internet users in India
July 3, 2019Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, has enabled tens of millions of people — if not more — to come online for the first time with his disruptive telecom network. He has changed how many Indians, once thrifty about each megabyte they spent browsing the internet, consume mobile data today.
But many of these first-time internet users are increasingly struggling to grasp the nuances of the internet — in some cases, they trust everything they see online and, in extreme cases, that can cause major chaos in the nation. Ambani’s newest goal is to help these people understand the ins and outs of the digital world.
His telecom network Reliance Jio announced today a literacy program called “Digital Udaan” for first-time internet users in India. The two-and-a-half-year-old telecom network, which has amassed more than 300 million subscribers, said it has partnered with Facebook to create “the largest ever digital literacy program” that will offer audio-visual training in 10 regional languages.
As part of the Digital Udaan program, Reliance Jio will hold training sessions to help its users learn about internet safety, and how they should engage with popular services and its devices. The operator said it will hold these sessions each Saturday and also provide training videos and information brochures to users.
Reliance Jio said Facebook helped it build and curate modules that are relevant for people in cities and small towns in India. In the first phase of the program, Jio will conduct these training sessions in about 200 different locations across 13 states. It will then expand to more than 7,000 locations, where “millions of JioPhone users and other first-time internet users” live.
“Facebook is an ally in this mission, and we are delighted to partner with Jio in attracting new Internet users and creating mechanisms for them to unleash the power of that access,” Ajit Mohan, VP and MD of Facebook India, said in a statement. Facebook and WhatsApp count India, where they reach about 350 million users, as their largest and fastest growing market. There are more than 500 million internet users in India.
Akash Ambani, director of Reliance Jio, said he hopes to “help eradicate barriers of information asymmetry and provide accessibility in real time. It is a program for inclusive information, education and entertainment, where no Indian will be left out of this digital drive. Jio envisions to take this to every town and village of India, achieving 100% digital literacy in the country.”
Reliance Jio, through its free voice calls and low-data prices, has significantly helped accelerate the growth of India’s internet and smartphone ecosystem. The platform has brought the nation, now the world’s second largest internet and smartphone market, to a point that many thought would have taken more than five years to reach.
But this growth has also accompanied new sets of challenges. WhatsApp, which is the most popular app in India, continues to grapple with the spread of false information in the nation, for instance. Other social media services are facing similar challenges as well. Last year, WhatsApp began to air TV commercials in India to help users become more cautious about the messages they share on its service. It also partnered with Reliance Jio to pay for teams of performers to travel across India to hold roadshows to help people better understand the rampant rise of fake news.
Prabhakar Kumar, co-ordinator of CMS Medialab, an organization that monitors media trends in India, warned in an earlier interview with TechCrunch that the level of literacy among the users who are coming onboard now is much lower than existing internet users.
Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Reliance Jio partners with Facebook to launch literacy program for first time internet users in India
In a recent interview, Samsung CEO DJ Koh noted that the company was hard at work on Galaxy Fold fixes (he also said people won’t be using smartphones in five years, so who knows?). And now, a report from Bloomberg confirms that the company has put the finishing touches on those fixes two months after the handset was originally set to debut.
So now what? We still don’t have a date. We’ve been seeing promises that a firmer timeline for release would arrive in “coming weeks” for what seems like months now. But those “people familiar with the matter” who told the site that the phone is finally ready for prime time aren’t offering any additional info on a time frame.
Instead, it looks like the company’s plans are to — at the very least — have its first foldable available in time for the holidays. At just under $2,000, that’s a pretty hefty ask for a stocking stuffer. Given that Samsung has now officially confirmed its Note 10 event for August 7, it might well just wait for that big show to confirm the release date — especially if we’re not expecting the see it hit retail until Q4.
Samsung’s been through worse, of course. The Note 7 debacle was a bigger black eye both in terms of timing and scope. But the initial spate of problems with the handset felt like as much of an indictment of the category as Samsung’s methods. Even Huawei used it as an opportunity to put its Mate X through more rigorous testing. Whatever the case, the revolution is going to take even longer to unfold than expected.
Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Samsung’s Galaxy Fold problems are reportedly fixed — so now what?
Deciding what to patent can be a confusing process but by creating a formal process it is something that every startup can manage.
Intellectual property (IP) is one of the most valuable assets of a startup and patents are often chief among IP in terms of value. Patents allow the startup to prevent competitors from using their technology, which is a powerful feature that can grant unique advantages in the marketplace.
From a business perspective, patents can help with driving investment and acquisitions, provide protection during partnerships and business deals, and help defend itself against patent lawsuits by others.
However, startups also often have a hard time determining when and what to patent. Innovative startups are inventing new things on a regular basis, and there is a danger of slipping into a haphazard approach of patenting whatever happens to be available rather than systematically analyzing the business needs of the company and protecting the IP that moves the needle the most.
Moreover, startups must balance the need to protect IP with other areas of the business: Patents are complex documents that require an investment of time and resources to obtain. They often require specialized legal counsel to write and a lengthy examination process at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).
This article is a how-to guide for startups to make the decision on when and what to patent with a mature approach to IP strategy.
Table of Contents
Creating a regular IP harvesting process
In order to make a decision about what to patent, a startup must first know what IP it has. For very small teams, it may be possible for everyone to have a shared idea of the IP. However, once teams grow beyond a few people, it is no longer possible to have complete visibility into what everyone on the team is doing and potentially inventing. Therefore, a regular IP harvesting process must be put in place to ensure proper reporting of IP to the executive level.
Most startups are best served with a simple IP harvesting process involving just three steps: (1) disclosure (2) invention review and (3) patent filing. In the disclosure stage, employees who are in IP creation roles must be trained to disclose ideas that are potentially protectable IP.
Source: Tech Crunch Startups | IP strategy: How should startups decide whether to file patents
Spacetech startup NSLComm is gearing up to put its first satellite into orbit, aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket launching this Friday at 1:42 AM ET. Not only is the launch a first for the company, but it’s also the first deployment of a new kind of satellite technology, an expandable antenna solution created by NSLComm which is the secret ingredient that will unlock a number of different lines of business for the fledgling Israeli startup.
“Satellite communication is too expensive,” explained NSLComm CEO and co-founder Raz Itzhaki in an interview. “And this is the case, because satellites are expensive. A communication satellite is basically a dish in space, you want more communication, you need a larger dish. But a larger dish requires a larger satellite, and a larger launcher, so everything becomes more expensive. This is why if you launch a geostationary communication satellite you have to launch it for 20 years, because it has an ROI of more than 10 years. It weighs tons because it needs to live for 15-20 years, and when you sell the capacity, you pay hundreds of billions per megabit per second per month, because you need to return the amount of investment in the satellite.”
What Raz and his team saw was that much of the size and weight for these high-powered communication satellites was actually due to the antennas they need to use to ensure they can achieve a good signal from space. These are either large and fixed, requiring a lot of extra launch hardware and protection as they make their way to space (which is not needed once in orbit), or, for unfolding antennas that existed previously, they require a lot of additional hardware to actually do the unfolding antenna deployment in space, adding again a bunch of bulk and weight. All of which translates to higher launch costs, the need for longer productive life spans for the satellites and higher costs for connectivity consumers.
NSLComm’s solution was to develop a new kind of antenna that can deploy on its own, without the help of any additional heavy machinery, and that can extend to the sizes needed to provide truly high-throughput connectivity on a satellite that’s small and much easier to launch, providing about 100 times faster connectivity than the fastest nano-satellites in the same size class today at about one-tenth the launch cost.
“Our approach was to develop an antenna based on SMP — that’s a shape memory polymer,” Itzhaki said. “This antenna is actually a 3D spring; it memorizes its shapes, it needs no opening mechanism, because the antenna itself is its own opening mechanism. So when you open a hatch, it jumps out like a jack-in-the-box. We have an antenna that is compacted to a volume that is so small, that it fits less than 1U [around the space of one rack in a multi-rack server configuration, or about 1.75 inches tall] for a 60 centimeter [about two feet] diameter dish. And the antenna weighs 140 grams. Well, this changes the economics of satellite communication.”
NSLComm intends to launch 30 satellites by 2021 and hundreds in total by 2023, but launching its own network is only one part of its business plan, and there are other ways it intends to generate revenue in the more immediate term. Itzhaki explained that, in fact, the startup has four primary ways of doing business, including first offering cost-effective ways for customer companies to build their constellations using the startup’s technology. Next, there’s a “turnkey” option for customers that can purchase satellite terminals and ground stations for specific use, including one client already who is using this for an IoT application. Itzhaki says there are already “many” of these types of arrangements in the pipeline.
Third, NSLComm intends to offer a “private constellation” offering, where, for example, a cruise ship operator could build, launch and operate its own network constellation for its customers at minimal cost. Finally, there’s a “constellation as a service” model, where NSLCom would launch the constellation itself, partner with an operator and sell the capacity of the network on a subscription basis.
To date, NSLComm has raised $16 million, including $12 million from VCs, including Jerusalem Venture Partners, OurCrowd, Cockpit Innovation and Liberty Technology Venture Capital. It’s also backed by the Israel Space Agency and the Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel, which provided the remaining $4 million in initial funding.
Source: Tech Crunch Startups | NSLComm’s first spring-loaded expanding antenna satellite is headed to space
Source: Engadget | Logitech G teases Blue gaming headphones on the way
World News
Iranian president warns Tehran will increase uranium enrichment ‘as much as we want’ on Sunday – The Washington Post
July 3, 2019Source: Google News | Iranian president warns Tehran will increase uranium enrichment ‘as much as we want’ on Sunday – The Washington Post