Software de gaming en recursos humanos introducido

Can competition among team members drive results? Detroit’s LevelEleven bets on it
Venture Beat  

LevelEleven helps kick your salesforce’s performance up a notch for those instances where you “need that extra push over the cliff.” The Software-as-a-Service company accomplishes this by introducing game-based competition to your sales team via an integration with the Salesforce CRM.

Founder Bob Marsh is no stranger to the impact game-based competition can have on an organization’s bottom line. He most recently served as a sales executive at Detroit-based Eprize, a company that facilitates online contests and promotions for companies ranging from Travelocity to Microsoft’s Xbox Live Rewards. It was at Eprize where the he first conceived of the concept for LevelEleven. Marsh worked his way from concept to paying customer in just four months to start LevelEleven.

“A fundamental flaw of most sales managers is thinking that implementing a CRM on its own is the solution. That [thinking] is like being behind the wheel of a powerful vehicle, but it’s stuck in park.” The focus, Marsh explains, should be centered around incentivizing a salesforce by rewarding the right behaviors that result in sales. Thus, LevelEleven’s current product offering, Compete, enables sales managers to structure contests and competitions around desired sales outcomes.

LevelEleven’s funding efforts were led by Detroit Venture Partners, the early-stage venture capital fund backed by mortgage magnate Dan Gilbert, and the company took up residence in Detroit’s Madison Building alongside a number of startups backed by the venture fund. The nearly century-old former theater has become a mecca for technology startups and a destination for entrepreneurs from across the country. With additional funding from Hyde Park Ventures, investor Rick Inatome, and the First Step Fund, LevelEleven altogether secured $1.5M in seed funding.

Flush with funding, the company is poised to capitalize on an $18 billion global market that grew by 12.5 percent last year. From it’s launch in October of last year, LevelEleven has scaled its subscription based, SaaS model to over 80 enterprise-level customers: garnering business from companies including 3M, OpenTable, and Comcast.

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Sobre desarrollo de negocios y asociatividad para emprendedores

3 Things You Need To Know About Entry-Level Business Development and Partnerships at Startups

Alexander Taub, Contributor - Forbes

Roles in BD and partnerships are some of the most sought after non-technical positions at startup companies. But what exactly does someone do in this department? Here are three things you need to know:

What does someone in Business Development and Partnerships do?

In my experience, BD and partnerships consists of three main things:

The first is the process of marketing, selling, and developing strategies for your company. This means doing whatever it takes to grow the business side: working on user acquisition, figuring out what is wrong (or right) with engagement, working with partners to launch an integration, and various other tasks. The person in a BD or partnership role may even be as ingrained and invested (time-wise) as the founders of the company.

The second facet of the role is to strengthen ties with existing partners and to create new ones, which helps build, grow, and maintain your network. If you need to get someone from Twitter on the phone in the next 48 hours, but don’t know anyone who either works for Twitter (shout out @ellen) or knows someone who works at Twitter (and can connect you), then you are in big trouble! Making sure you are one degree away from reaching each company is critical for BD and partnerships.

The third, and probably most important, is getting to the point of transaction and turning it into repeat occurrences. Every startup is looking to find a way to build a scalable business. In BD and partnerships, you should be looking for that moment of transaction and trying to repeat it as many times as possible. If you do that, then it turns a business development role function into a sales role, which is then passed on to a capable individual to scale out.

Difference between different types of BD

There are a few different types of business development. Phrases like B2C, B2B, B2D, B2B2C, are thrown around constantly. What do they mean?

Business To Consumer (B2C)
B2C refers to consumer-facing companies. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, and Tumblr come to mind. In this scenario, a business development and partnership role is typically taken on by a founder. There usually isn’t another business role for another 10-20 hires (typically engineers, product, and design roles are more important). On top of that, B2C companies build an API that other companies can leverage. While it doesn’t completely replace the need for BD positions, it replaces the need of a big BD/Partnership team.

Business To Business (B2B)

B2B is when you are a business selling to other businesses. Companies like Salesforce, Box, and 37 Signals are good examples. In the B2B scenario, you have a product where your target market is other businesses. Industries considered B2B are enterprise, government, and institutions. I’ve seen people doing BD/partnership (it’s typically sales though) for B2B companies make millions for and help grow their company to billions in value.

Business To Business To Consumer (B2B2C) or Business To Developer (B2D)
B2B2C or B2D typically is when a company “powers” a feature on a third-party website. They typically need to sell the product team or a developer of the company. Some people call it the “powered by” solution. Some great examples are Aviary (my old stomping ground, doing some pretty awesome things these days), Twilio, and others. The trick with B2B2C and B2D is to build a scalable product and developer portal so that interested parties can easily get what they need and integrate as quickly as possible.

Roles in BD and partnerships are some of the most sought after non-technical positions at startup companies. But what exactly does someone do in this department? Here are three things you need to know:

What does someone in Business Development and Partnerships do?

In my experience, BD and partnerships consists of three main things:

The first is the process of marketing, selling, and developing strategies for your company. This means doing whatever it takes to grow the business side: working on user acquisition, figuring out what is wrong (or right) with engagement, working with partners to launch an integration, and various other tasks. The person in a BD or partnership role may even be as ingrained and invested (time-wise) as the founders of the company.

The second facet of the role is to strengthen ties with existing partners and to create new ones, which helps build, grow, and maintain your network. If you need to get someone from Twitter on the phone in the next 48 hours, but don’t know anyone who either works for Twitter (shout out @ellen) or knows someone who works at Twitter (and can connect you), then you are in big trouble! Making sure you are one degree away from reaching each company is critical for BD and partnerships.

The third, and probably most important, is getting to the point of transaction and turning it into repeat occurrences. Every startup is looking to find a way to build a scalable business. In BD and partnerships, you should be looking for that moment of transaction and trying to repeat it as many times as possible. If you do that, then it turns a business development role function into a sales role, which is then passed on to a capable individual to scale out.

Three types Of partnerships
I have encountered three types of partnerships in my career.
The first is product partnerships, also known as integration partnerships. This is typically when one company integrates another company’s product. An example of this would be something like crowdfunding charity website, HopeMob, integrating Dwolla’s payment API to accept donations (disclaimer: I work in business development at Dwolla).

The second is brand partnerships, also known as co-branded partnerships. This is typically when two brands come to together to do big things together. An example of a brand partnership would be Bravo and Foursquare. Early on in Foursquare’s existence, Bravo was one of the first to promote them on-air.

The last is a distribution partnership, also known as a network partnership. This type of partnership happens when one side promotes the other to their userbase. A good example of a distribution partnership would be Facebook and Skype. Facebook put a lot of muscle behind the Skype partnership, one of the very few platform integrations on Facebook (typically you have to build a FB app and work on getting users).

The three topics above are just the beginning of your introduction to the BD and partnerships world. If you are interested in BD and partnerships, start reading, researching and networking in the space you are interested. Start building your network and go forth!

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Colectivos con Wi-Fi en SV

Shuttle buses taking over Silicon Valley, awesome visualization shows

If you live in San Francisco and work at a tech company in Silicon Valley, you probably take a shuttle to work.

A fantastic new map by design company Stamen Design shows just how extensive these shuttle services are.

Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook, eBay, and Electronic Arts all operate shuttles that go up and down the San Francisco Peninsula every workday. It’s a substantial employee benefit: You can live in culturally-rich San Francisco, surrounded by young, well-off techies like yourself; you get to work in the heart of Silicon Valley where the biggest and best-paying companies are located; and instead of spending hours a day driving, you pass the time in air-conditioned comfort.

Companies win, too: With Wi-Fi on these buses, employees can start working the instant they hop on the bus instead of waiting until they walk in the door an hour later.

Stamen estimates that the number of people taking these shuttles is huge: over 14,000 people per day, or 35 percent as many as train service Caltrain, which also runs between San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

That could be a sign that something is not working with public transit. If so many companies are forced to pay buses to carry workers to and fro, it’s probably a safe bet the existing train systems aren’t convenient enough.

On the other hand, at least those 14,000 people aren’t driving their own cars up and down 101 and 280, adding to traffic congestion and pollution.

The story of how Stamen assembled this visualization is pretty cool. Its researchers used a site (and open-source project) that Stamen created called Dotspotting to collect information about the locations of shuttle stops around the city (using information from Foursquare to help it ID locations). Then it sent field workers out into the city, riding bicycles and armed with data-collection forms created using another Stamen site, Field Papers, which simplifies getting field notes in the proper geographic locations. Then the notes were scanned (or camera-phoned) and imported into a database.

Finally, Stamen designers assembled and massaged the data until they had a good sense of the main shuttle routes and the volume of passengers on each.

The resulting visualization is on display at the ZERO1 Biennial Exhibition, “Seeking Silicon Valley,” in San Jose, through December 8.

Via Waxy.org and All Things D

Venture Beat

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CEO: De Google a Square

Former Google executive joins Square

Francoise Brougher, former vice president of SMB global sales and operations at Google, has joined Square as business lead to aid in the company’s growth operations.

Brougher, who spent eight years at Google, was most recently entrusted with leading global teams in charge of acquiring, growing, and retaining small advertisers. An MBA from Harvard business school, Brougher also served as vice president of business strategy at Charles Schwab & Co. for five years.

“Francoise is a perfect fit for Square,” said Square co­-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey. “Her accomplishments in growing and managing large, global teams, and her focus on building simple, scalable solutions that empower millions of people, will have a huge impact on our company and our customers.”

Square, maker of credit card readers for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, has hired over 200 employees, and raised over 325 million in venture capital since its launch in 2009.

As Square sets forth to establish an international footprint, with Canada being its first foray, Brougher’s global experience could come in handy.

“Simple technologies have an outsized impact when they are made available to everyone,” said Brougher in a statement. “I love helping small businesses around the world find the tools they need to grow and be successful, so I’m thrilled to join Square, which has made this its mission. I am very grateful to my colleagues and friends at Google for what we’ve achieved together.”

Bob Lee, chief technology officer at Square also came from Google.

Venture Beat 

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Facebook genera enormes ingresos por publicidad por celular

Las fuerzas impulsoras del cambio en publicidad en celulares

Por Cheryl Morris
Cheryl Morris es el director de marketing de Nanigans.

En menos de un año, Facebook se convirtió en el líder del mercado de anuncios gráficos móviles - superando a gigantes como Google y Apple para controlar aproximadamente una cuarta parte de todos los ingresos de visualización en celulares. Lo que representó el cero por ciento de los ingresos por publicidad de Facebook hace un año está en camino de ser un mercado de mil millones de dólares este año en los Estados Unidos solamente.
Facebook ampliamente lanzó su primer producto publicidad móvil pocas semanas después de su salida a bolsa. Haciendo una visualización acelerada de tres meses y los celulares representaron el 14 por ciento de su negocio. Parecía que cada dos semanas la compañía lanzaba un nuevo producto de publicidad móvil, y para el final de 2012, los móviles crecieron hasta representar el 23 por ciento de los anuncios de empresas de Facebook. Y hoy ese número ha aumentado a 30 por ciento.
¿Por qué exactamente los dólares de publicidad móvil se movieron tan rápidamente hacia Facebook? La respuesta es simple. Facebook y su ecosistema de Preferred Marketing Developer son la solución de problemas reales en nombre de los vendedores - los desafíos que se centran en los tres pilares fundamentales de cualquier campaña publicitaria de éxito:

• Orientación (Targeting)
• Creatividad
• Optimización

Combinadas, estas fuerzas impulsoras de la innovación han dado lugar a los anunciantes alcanzar de 15 a 20 veces mayor porcentaje de clics (CTR) de Facebook móvil en comparación con el escritorio y, lo más importante, se revela el verdadero retorno de la inversión de las inversiones de publicidad móvil.

Orientación
El veinticinco por ciento de tiempo en aplicaciones móviles está en Facebook, con la red social de traer a una persona audiencia de 750 millones de móviles. Aunque este compromiso y la escala es lo suficientemente impresionante, lo que es más atractivo para los anunciantes es que (por fin) a cientos de millones de personas en el móvil tienen una identidad. Desde la demografía y psicografía a afinidades y conductas, los vendedores tienen un tesoro de selección de datos y combinaciones de aprovechar con Facebook móvil.
Una Facebook innovación dirigido lograr grandes éxitos, sostenido comienza con los datos de gestión de relaciones con los clientes conocidos de un vendedor (CRM). Con la audiencia orientación personalizada, los anunciantes pueden cargar la información de su base de datos de CRM, tales como números de teléfono y e-mail, Facebook y coincidirán estos datos con los perfiles que contengan la misma información. El público objeto de orientación creado a través de este proceso ha demostrado ser una estrategia rentable para los comerciantes de menor a juego, con resultados como el aumento del ROI de las campañas por un factor de cinco y conducir el 100 por ciento en el mismo día ROI varios días seguidos.
Publicidad móvil dirigida carecía de identidad casi por completo antes de Facebook - con la focalización de datos o bien no personales o inferido. Tome género focalización. Cuando las redes de publicidad móvil dicen los vendedores que están dirigidas a las mujeres, lo que realmente quieren decir es que están entregando impresiones sobre los sitios de los editores y aplicaciones que se adaptan a las mujeres audiencias. Sin duda, el mensaje de la comercialización podría llegar a las mujeres - pero hay una alta probabilidad de que también está llegando a los hombres. En última instancia esta falta de identidad dio lugar a una industria depender troche y moche tácticas, con los vendedores de comprar a ciegas y el pensamiento oportunista que aquellas personas que están poniendo impresiones frente se convertirá en clientes reales.

Creatividad
Cuando pensamos en los anuncios para móviles, que estamos acostumbrados a pensar en diminutas banderas (banner) feas que se sientan en las aplicaciones móviles que utilizamos y en las páginas web para móviles que navegan.
Entre a Facebook. La red social ha traído anuncios para móviles, que ocupan toda la pantalla con fuertes llamados a la acción, siempre que el enorme lienzo y la conversión sin problemas embudo la industria del marketing móvil ha estado anhelando desde hace años.
Facebook también ha traído anuncios para móviles que actúan como contenido, sentado en el News Feed con la misma apariencia del contenido que se comparte por amigos, familiares y colegas. Estos anuncios muestran el compromiso social como Me Gusta, comentarios y acciones, lo que hace aún más relevante para los consumidores finales.
Los anuncios de instalación de la aplicación móvil de Facebook son un gran ejemplo, proporciona a los anunciantes con una gran creatividad y fuerte a "Instalar ahora" llamadas a la acción y el contexto social. Todo ello ha contribuido a los resultados de campañas increíbles en Facebook móvil, los anunciantes alcanzar en promedio un 1 por ciento los porcentajes de clics (CTR).

Optimización
Facebook ya no es el marketing social. Es marketing de resultados. La razón de esto se debe a la compra de medios, seguimiento y optimización de las innovaciones desarrollada en el ecosistema de marketing de Facebook en el escritorio - que ahora están cambiando a móvil.
Los anunciantes ya no tienen que comprar en el móvil sobre la base de cifras del proxy como visitas o clics o acciones inmediatas. Ahora pueden comprar y optimizar su inversión publicitaria para el verdadero retorno de la inversión. Un breve resumen de la evolución de la compra de medios móviles es el siguiente:

• CPM (coste por impresión): costo de entregar mil anuncios vistos.
• CPC (coste por clic): el costo de generar un clic en un anuncio.
• CPA (coste por acción): el costo de conducir una acción inmediata, como la instalación de aplicaciones.
• LTV (valor de vida): Valor que gana de un cliente con el tiempo.
• ROI (retorno de la inversión), ¿cuánto más su LTV es que el CPA.

El paso de la CPM, CPC y CPA de LTV y el retorno de la inversión es importante, ya que los vendedores son capaces de comprender con precisión el verdadero retorno generados por su inversión móvil - es decir, los ingresos generados por la gente compra el anunciante llega a los anuncios para móviles.

Para entender por qué la optimización en los indicadores de proxy como CPA es peligroso para la gente de mercadeo, vamos a tomar un ejemplo básico de venta minorista. El minorista tiene dos clientes hipotéticos, Steve y María. Ambos compran remeras de $ 10 inmediatamente después de comprometerse con el anuncio del vendedor. Steve (25, soltero) cuesta $ 9 de adquirir, mientras que María (35 años, con una familia) cuesta $ 12 para adquirir. María es 33 por ciento más caro de adquirir que Steve, por lo que Steve parece representar un segmento más valioso para un anunciante.
Pero, ¿qué pasa después de que su compra inmediata? ¿Quién es el cliente más valioso durable en el tiempo?
María termina haciendo compras adicionales para su familia en las próximas semanas (50 dólares), mientras que Steve nunca regresó después de esa primera compra de remera. Mientras que María fue un 33 por ciento más cara de adquirir, ella compró un 400 por ciento más. En última instancia, este calcula a María puede generar 28 veces más alto retorno de la inversión que Steve.
La gente de mercadeo se centran en el valor de largo plazo y la optimización basada en el verdadero retorno de la inversión mediante el aprovechamiento de las curvas de madurez y predicción del comportamiento de compra a través del tiempo son los presupuestos rentable de escala a través de escritorio y móviles de hoy.

Evolución
No hay duda de que ha habido una gran evolución en la publicidad en el móvil - todo en un tiempo increíblemente corto período de tiempo.
La orientación ya no es inferida o no personal, sino que los vendedores tienen un vasto y rico conjunto de orientación. Lo creativo ya no se limita a los anuncios de banner pequeños, en cambio, los vendedores tienen la oportunidad de aprovechar unos grandes, con la participación creativa actuando como contenido. Y compra de medios y la optimización ya no tiene que estar basada en la métrica del proxy como CPA, en su lugar, los vendedores pueden medir y predecir el valor de vida para optimizar la verdadera ROI.
Bienvenido al nuevo mundo de la publicidad móvil, con un agradecimiento al ecosistema Facebook.

Cheryl Morris es director de marketing de Nanigans, el desarrollador de la plataforma de valor de vida predictivo de marketing de resultados a gran escala. Antes de Nanigans, Morris fue parte del equipo que construyó a principios BostInnovation en una nueva compañía de medios con capital de riesgo, la publicación de cerca de 1.000 artículos sobre el ecosistema de la tecnología de Boston. Antes de esto, ella estaba en la consultoría de gestión en el mercado de plataformas Dynamics y un analista de pagos en el Banco de la Reserva Federal de Boston. Morris se graduó de Babson College con una licenciatura en administración de empresas y la concentración en la economía.

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Nuevas publicidades generan 49 veces más clics a 45% menos costo

Facebook news feed ads generate 49X more clicks at 45% less cost (study)

Social has never performed as well as search for advertisers. That looks like it could be about to change, because Facebook’s new News Feed ads are absolutely killing it.

And the metrics are, frankly, mind-blowing.

According to a new one-billion-impression ad study by retargeting giant AdRoll, news feeds ads have a massive 21 times higher click-through rates than standard web retargeting ads and an incredible 49 times the click-through rate of Facebook’s right-hand side ads.

“A year ago we were having the discussion that Facebook doesn’t work, and GM is pulling its ads,” AdRoll president Adam Berke told me this morning. “Now we’re having the conversation on whether this rivals Google!”

News Feed ads sit, as the name suggests, right within the flow of the feed of social news that Facebook users come to the site for. Sold via Facebook Ad Exchange, the ad units enable brands to target consumers who have previously visited their sites — hence “retargeting” — which enables advertisers to merge the intent graph (what people want) with a social site (Facebook). They’re larger than Facebook’s right-hand-side ads, and they’re qualitatively different in very significant way.

“Facebook hit on a winning combination from a direct response perspective by fusing two things,” Berke says. “They combined the power of programmatic advertising with Facebook’s own secret sauce — this native environment which is very engaging.”

In other words, even though News Feed ads are sold programmatically via the Facebook Ad Exchange, they’re also social entities. News Feed ads are likeable, shareable, and commentable, and as such, they’re embedded into the fabric of what makes Facebook Facebook in a way that no other ads are. They benefit from viral effects, which means great ads will get great earned reach as well as paid, and the fit into the news feed in a very natural way.

Plus, Facebook only sells one of the per user per day.

Facebook

Facebook revenues

The combination of all that adds up to crazy metrics that you just don’t see in today’s highly competitive advertising landscape. While AdWords advertisers scrape and claw for a percentage increase here and a fraction better there, News Feed ads are providing almost 50 times the clicks per ad compared to Facebook’s right-hand side ads, and 21 times the clicks of standard web retargeting ads. That translates to massively lower costs: 79 percent lower cost-per-click compared to web retargeted ads, and 54 percent less cost than Facebook’s right-hand ads.

That’s important, because Facebook needs to compete with other advertising channels such as search and email that have resulted in higher-value customers in the past.

While the clicks are so that high conversions are slightly down, overall that translates into 77 percent lower cost-per-action compared to web ads, and 45 percent lower cost than other Facebook ads. That’s pretty impressive data. But it’s what AdRoll was seeing right from the beginning in April when Facebook launched the new ad unit.

“It didn’t blow our mind because we had anecdotal feedback from advertisers about how they were performing,” Berke told me. “From day one our clients were telling us it was working.”

As tempting as it is, the comparison to Google might be a little unfair, however. As Berke says, News Feed doesn’t have the scale of AdWords, and advertisers will still need to use multiple advertising methods to achieve the kind of reach they need. And, if Facebook was tempted to increase the number of News Feed ads, the likelihood is that their effectiveness would diminish.

But by merging programmatic buying and social signals, Facebook has created a categorically new advertising world.

“It’s the first time we’ve seen those two big trends come together,” Berke told me. “And the fact that they came together in a very symbiotic way is really exciting.”

Now we know why Facebook put ads in the news feed. And now we have a clue how Facebook is going to monetize its massive web and mobile audience at something at least approaching Google-like levels.

Venture Beat 

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Cómo organizar reuniones de consejo super extrafalarias

How Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and other business chiefs hold ruthlessly effective meetings

By Anna Codrea‑Rado @annacod

Richard Branson preparing his conference room. AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

Why does Jeff Bezos keep a chair empty in the boardroom? Where does Richard Branson hold his meetings? And who’s always late for appointments?

Here are some of Quartz’s favorite tips for holding meetings from the some of the world’s top business leaders:

Throw out the least necessary person in the room

Steve Jobs reportedly threw people out of meetings if he didn’t feel they added any value. The Jobsian way of running meetings, much like Apple’s core design principle, is to keep everything simple. Only absolutely essential people should be present at a meeting.

Don’t use chairs

Stanford management professor, Bob Sutton, points to research that claimsmeetings held without chairs are not only just as effective as sit-down meetings, they’re significantly shorter. Sutton also says that by remaining standing, you minimise the amount of time wasted holding meetings with, let’s call them, “fools.”

And if you do use chairs, keep one empty

According to Forbes, Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, brings an empty chair to meetings to remind everyone of the omnipresence of the customer.

Take the meeting poolside

If you’re Richard Branson you have the luxury of being able to ship your staff out to a private Caribbean island, as the music-to-airlines entrepreneur suggests in his “Top 6 tips to screw business meetings as usual.” But if you’re not Branson, try to think of somewhere less exotic. Branson’s point is that getting out of the boardroom is a good way to encourage a bit of creativity.

Ban PowerPoint presentations

Another bit of advice from Branson: Kill the slide deck. At least, don’t use slides filled with text that merely reflect what you’re saying. If you need a reminder, put it on a screen in front of you. Instead, keep people’s attention with photos or short videos.

Don’t set up meetings more than a day in advance

On his blog, 37signals, Jason Fried says that investment tycoon Warren Buffett won’t schedule a meeting more than a day in advance. This way, suggests Fried, Buffett keeps his schedule “relevant instead of prescient.” Presumably this doesn’t apply to his annual shareholder meeting.

Decisions should never wait for a meeting

Shortly after Larry Page took over as Google CEO, he got it in his head that the search engine needed to go back to its roots and run more like a startup. This was especially true of meetings. The Google golden rule of meetings is that a decision should never wait for a meeting. If a meeting is vital to the decision-making process, the meeting must happen immediately.

You can get away with being late… if you’re the boss

Pretty much every standard guide to holding effective meetings will tell you to “start on time and end on time.” But Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer is apparently always late for meetings with her executives. She’ll often keep people waiting for over an hour, according to Business Insider.

Send an advance copy

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn’t like boardroom surprises. Ballmer prefers team members to send through material ahead of meetings so he’s fully prepared when he walks in and can spend less time listening and more asking questions.

If you have an international meeting, don’t wear your jacket on the plane

If you’re flying in for your meeting, don’t crease up your suit by wearing your jacket on the plane, says head of Campbell Soup, Denise Morrison.

Of course, perhaps if that international meeting happens to be on Necker Island, Branson will waive the formal dress code. One can only dream.

QZ

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Stratays compra a su competidor

Stratasys just acquired MakerBot, the one 3D printing firm that could have disrupted it

By Christopher Mims @mims

Turns out that giving people the ability to 3D print random tchotchkes is worth about $600 million.

You can’t 3D print money, but Stratasys just did the next best thing in buying MakerBot, the one company with the potential to disrupt Stratasys’s 3D-printing business.

The deal will be transacted entirely in Stratasys stock, and the initial acquisition price is 4.76 million shares (worth $403 million today). Depending on MakerBot’s performance, an additional 2.38 million shares could be exchanged as part of the acquisition, yielding a total acquisition value of $604 million. Stratasys is up 3.3% in after-hours trading.

MakerBot’s revenue was $11.5 million in the first quarter of 2013, so a valuation of $604 million represents an impressive multiple. But it’s not an outrageous price considering that MakerBot, with its relatively inexpensive but capable 3D printers, was already eating into Stratasys’s existing business, and in time could have represented a significant disruptive threat.

“MakerBot is giving Z Corp and Stratasys a run for their money,” said Will Gibbs, founder of manufacturing automation firm Corvus and Columba and a 9-year veteran of the 3D printing industry. “They can’t sell their $50,000 machines anymore that are equivalent to MakerBot’s” in their capabilities.

Indeed, side-by-side comparisons of MakerBot’s Replicator and Replicator 2 printers and Stratasys’s cheapest 3D printer, the Mojo, show the Replicator coming out ahead by all measures, despite the fact that the Mojo costs $10,000 and the Replicator is just $2,200. This has led some veterans of the 3D printing industry to wonder, perhaps hyperbolically, how Stratasys would survive in a world full of MakerBot Repilcators and the vast open-source community that supports them.

In acquiring MakerBot, Stratasys isn’t merely capitalizing on all the hype that MakerBot and its charismatic founder, Bre Pettis, have managed to generate for 3D printing. MakerBot managed to make itself an attractive, even necessary, acquisition by following a script familiar to many disruptive 21st-century technology companies: Start with an inexpensive system and refine it over generations until it competes with higher-end technology, but at a much lower price.

http://qz.com/96109

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Análisis de la tablet Ainol Novo 10 Hero

Ainol Novo 10 Hero: Análisis y experiencia de uso en un precio muy contenido

Quiero que, para leer el siguiente párrafo, os remontéis a los últimos días de 2012. Llegaba de una mañana un tanto aburrida a casa, y Papá Noel personificado en cartero se presentó en la puerta con un paquete para mi.
Que casi no me pilla es otra historia…

Después de esta introducción un tanto navideña
cuando ya está muy pasado, toca hablar de los Android Chinos, unos grandes desconocidos e infravalorados. Muchas veces a la hora de escoger un Android ni los tenemos en cuenta, cuando se pueden encontrar verdaderas maravillas si buscamos bien. Hoy os traemos una Tablet china de gama media que cumple, aunque con altibajos.

Lo que hoy os presentamos es la Ainol Novo 10 Hero, una Tablet de 10 pulgadas y cuerpo metálico que procede de una empresa completamente china.  Bajo esa pantalla IPS con una resolución de 1280×800 píxeles esconde un procesador AMLogic AML8726-M6 a 1.5GHz, una GPU Mali-400 y 1GB de RAM.

Exterior

Cuando la cogemos por primera vez, nos viene una idea a la mente: robusta. El cuerpo de metal se hace notar (y también su peso), además de que da la impresión de estar muy bien construida. Los bordes son redondeados, lo que ayuda a agarrarla con las manos, y se hace cómoda de sostener. Un detalle es que los altavoces están situados a ambos lados del exterior, lo que mejora mucho la recepción.

Si nos vamos al papel, veremos que su peso es de 620 gramos y tiene un grosor de 9.9 milímetros, un poco por encima de la media. Aun así no se hace pesada ni de usar ni de transportar con nosotros.

A un lado de la Tablet tenemos todas las entradas: auriculares, microUSB, miniHDMI, microSD, micrófono/reset y entrada de alimentación. El no usar un estandar para la carga es a la vez una ventaja y una desventaja: no puedes usar el mismo cable que con otros Android, aunque deja el puerto libre para usar el adaptador USB OTG o lo que queramos.

Sólo encuentro dos contras al exterior de la Tablet: los botones están situados en una posición un tanto extraña, que se nota sobretodo al usarla en vertical, y la pantalla parece mancharse con solo mirarla (aunque esto es un problema de cualquier pantalla táctil).

Software y Rendimiento

Charmeleon Launcher es el Launcher de las capturas. La Tablet es completamente AOSP, como explico más abajo.

Aquí nos encontramos con Android 4.1 Jelly Bean sin ninguna capa de personalización: la única personalización que encuentras es varias aplicaciones chinas (que se pueden inhabilitar perfectamente) y multimedia en la memoria interna. Android en general va rápido, sin notarse ningún signo de resentimiento o lag, y con todo lo que trae Jelly Bean a Android.

El tema de la estética ya va según gustos: Holo es un diseño bastante bueno, y que no hace falta detallar. El rendimiento entra dentro de la media, y la contra viene si nos vamos a tareas más exigentes como juegos potentes, porque vamos a percibir en ocasiones el ya famoso lag. La reproducción de multimedia va sin problemas, ya sea por medios internos o externos (tarjetas microSD y USB). También lee sin ningún problema formatos no tan comunes, y la pantalla se ve estupendamente.

Pero hay tres pegas en el apartado del software (que haya podido encontrar). La primera es quelos valores que nos da el sistema sobre la batería son muy inestables y erróneos (desconozco si será un error de software o hardware). La segunda es que no sólo me ha pasado una vez que la Tablet se quedara completamente congelada, sin opción a hacer nada. Solo podemos o esperar a que se agote la batería o coger un alfiler y pulsar el minúsculo botón de Reset que hay en el orificio del micrófono. Y la tercera es que, sin saber muy bien por que, hay aplicaciones que no son compatibles en Google Play, y no te deja instalar (lo raro es cuando metes la .apk por tu cuenta y va estupendamente, pero eso es otra historia).

Sin embargo, a pesar de los errores en la medición, la batería rinde estupendamente. Con un uso de música, vídeos en alta definición y juegos, no tendremos que cargarla todos los días, como si pasa con la mayoría de Android. También cabe mencionar que utiliza un conector propio en vez del estándar (como he aclarado antes). Y hablando de Benchmarks, en AnTuTu Benchmark obtiene una nota de 9594, mientras que en Quadrant saca 2953 puntos.

Para terminar con esta sección, hablaremos de la conectividad: incluye un adaptador USB OTG, que nos permite utilizar memorias y otros accesorios que funcionen vía USB, y cumple su función perfectamente: desde memorias hasta periféricos. Incluye también otras funciones como WiFi o Bluetooth que funcionan como deberían, sin más.

Cámara y sonido

Si volvemos al papel, podemos leer que tenemos dos cámaras en el conjunto: trasera de 5MP y delantera de 2MP. Y si nos vamos al uso real, nos damos cuenta de que la cámara es uno de los puntos más flojos de todo el conjunto: cumple, pero deja muchísimo que desear cuando la iluminación no es la idónea. Las fotos de exteriores son normales, aunque no le veo el punto a sacar fotos de exteriores con una Tablet de 10 pulgadas
(además de que te mirarán raro por la calle). Y si pasamos a las fotos de interiores no encontramos resultados mucho mejores. Respecto a videoconferecias y usar la cámara delantera, cumple su función.

Los altavoces, colocados en una posición idónea como he mencionado antes, tienen mucha potencia y nitidez, por lo que no tendremos problemas al ver una película o escuchar música sin auriculares. También se incluyen auriculares, que se quedan en la media (que es baja, para ser exactos), y el micrófono funciona como debe.

Conclusiones

En el uso diario esta Tablet cumple perfectamente: hace todo lo que tiene que hacer un Android sin ningún problema. No tiene nada que envidiar a otras Tablets de ese segmento. Lo que tenemos entre manos es una Tablet de gama media, y cumple su función perfectamente, aunque sus fallos pueden ser suficientes para degradar la experiencia de uso diaria.

La Ainol Novo 10 Her0 es un Tablet ideal para el que quiera empezar en el mundillo de las Tablets Android de 10 pulgadas o simplemente quiera una con un precio bajo. Y si te tira hacia detrás que provenga de China, con eliminar o deshabilitar las aplicaciones de fábrica que incorpora sobra: es lo más chino que pueda incluir. Está disponible al público por, alrededor de los 200$ (que se quedan en unos 150€ al cambio) en tiendas online como Ainol-Store oPandawill (creo que en estos últimos está mas barata).

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