Thursday, February 6, 2020
Why Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi may mean 'trouble' for Google: Reasons and more
Deep data running wearable NURVV closes $9M Series A led by Hiro Capital
Launched at CES 2020, NURVV, a biomechanics startup, has closed a $9m Series A round, led by Hiro Capital, the sports/Esports VC fund, along with co-investment from Ian Livingstone CBE (Games Workshop co-founder) and Cherry Freeman (co-founder of LoveCrafts).
It turns out that if you can figure out how to protect a smartphone from smashing, you can also work out how high a basketball player can jump.
Jason Roberts founded Tech21, one of the world’s leading smartphone case manufacturers. He and his co-founder and wife Ulrica have now used that knowledge to launch new wearable tech product, which, when inserted into the sole of a shoe, can measure the strike of a foot on the ground, or the leap of its wearer.
The wearable uses 32 sensors fitted inside lightweight insoles to capture data from the feet at 1,000 times per second, per sensor.
The money will be used to bring NURVV’s debut product, NURVV Run, to a global market and fund further R&D.
Featured among the best lists of Wired, CNET and Gear Patrol, the wearable has also been tested by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory over the past three years,
It can measure running metrics such as cadence, step length, footstrike, pronation and balance, feeding the data into the NURVV Run coaching app to show a picture of the wearer’s running technique, and thus helping runners improve their technique and pace.
While runners are already able to collect a huge amount of data about their run, the data is always after the run. Jason Roberts, founder and CEO, says NURVV Run captures a runner’s metrics “directly from the point of action at the foot, before using live coaching to help them improve in a simple, easy-to-understand way.”
Speaking to TechCrunch, Jason Roberts told me that the technology built into the sole is more “accurate than watches for steps, strides or energy dissipated. It will even detect when you are injured.”
He said “you could even broadcast a player’s live steps. Imagine if you could see that data from basketball?”
Co-founder Ulrica Roberts (pictured) added: “We kept coming back to the same question: ‘Why is running measured from the wrist, when most of the important metrics happen at the feet?… We sought out the expertise to make it happen.”
Luke Alvarez, managing Partner of Hiro, said in a statement: “Hiro is delighted to be investing in NURVV as our Fund’s fourth deal and our first Sports tech investment. NURVV’s success comes from putting the athlete’s body at the heart of everything they do. Nurvv is based on fundamental patented sensor technologies combined with deep biomechanics and data science that have revolutionary potential across sports, gaming, VR/AR and wellness. Jason and Ulrica are extraordinary entrepreneurs and we are excited to be working with them and their team to take NURVV to the next level.”
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Appeals court declines to reconsider a ruling upholding the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules, rejecting requests from over a dozen states and tech groups (David Shepardson/Reuters)
Appeals court declines to reconsider a ruling upholding the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules, rejecting requests from over a dozen states and tech groups — (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court said late on Thursday it will not reconsider an October ruling that largely upheld the repeal …
Twitter-backed ShareChat eyes fantasy sports in India
The growing market of fantasy sports in India may soon have a new and odd entrant: ShareChat.
The local social networking app, which in August last year raised $100 million in a financing round led by Twitter, has developed a fantasy sports app and has been quietly testing it for six months, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
ShareChat’s fantasy sports app, called Jeet11, allows betting on cricket and football matches and has already amassed more than 120,000 registered users, the sources said. The app, or its website, does not disclose its association with ShareChat.
A ShareChat spokesperson confirmed the existence of the app and said the startup was testing the product.
Jeet11 is not available for download on the Google Play Store due to the Android maker’s guidelines on betting apps, so ShareChat has been distributing it through Xiaomi’s GetApps app store and the Jeet11 website, and has been promoting it on Instagram. It is also available as a web app.
Fantasy sports, a quite popular business in many markets, has gained some traction in India in recent years. Dream11, backed by gaming giant Tencent, claimed to have more than 65 million users early last year. It has raised about $100 million to date and is already valued north of $1 billion.
Bangalore-based MPL, which counts Sequoia Capital India as an investor and has raised more than $40 million, appointed Virat Kohli, the captain of the Indian cricket team, as its brand ambassador last year.
In the last two years, scores of startups have emerged to grab a slice of the market, and the vast majority of them are focused on cricket. Cricket is the most popular sport in India, just ask Disney’s Hotstar, which claimed to have more than 100 million daily active users during the cricket season last year.
Or ask Facebook, which unsuccessfully bid $600 million to secure streaming rights of the IPL cricket tournament. It has since grabbed rights to some cricket content and appointed the Hotstar chief as its India head.
So it comes as no surprise that many sports betting apps have signed cricketers as their brand ambassador. Hala-Play has roped in Hardik Pandya and Krunal Pandya, while Chennai-based Fantain Sports has appointed Suresh Raina.
But despite the growing popularity of fantasy sports apps, where users pick players and bet real money on their performances, the niche is still sketchy in many markets that consider it betting. In fact, Twitter itself restricts promotion of fantasy sports services in many markets across the world.
In India, too, several states, including Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim and Telangana, have banned fantasy sports betting. Jeet11 currently requires users to confirm that they don’t live in any of the restricted states before signing up for the service.
“It doesn’t help matters either that the fantasy sports business’ attempts at legitimacy involve trying to be seen as video games — a cursory glance at a speakers panel for any Indian video game developer event is evidence of this — rather than riding on its own merits,” said Rishi Alwani, a long-time analyst of Indian gaming market and publisher of news outlet the Mako Reactor.
An executive who works at one of the top fantasy sports startups in India, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that despite handing out cash rewards to thousands of users each day, it is still challenging to retain customers after the conclusion of any popular cricket tournament. “And that’s after you have somehow convinced them to visit your website or download the app,” he said.
For ShareChat, which has been exploring ways to monetize its 60 million-plus users and posted a loss of about $58 million on no revenue in the financial year ending March 31, that’s anything but music to the ears. In recent months, the startup, which serves users in more than a dozen local languages, has been experimenting with ads.
Google says starting with Chrome 82 in April, it will gradually start blocking "mixed content downloads", which are non-HTTPS downloads started on secure pages (Joe DeBlasio/Google Online Security Blog)
Google says starting with Chrome 82 in April, it will gradually start blocking “mixed content downloads”, which are non-HTTPS downloads started on secure pages — Today we're announcing that Chrome will gradually ensure that secure (HTTPS) pages only download secure files.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Realme's First Global Phone Launch Event Announced for MWC 2020
MWC 2020 to Go Ahead as Planned After LG Pulls Out Over Coronavirus Outbreak
Amazon launches Brand Voice, a fully managed service within Amazon Polly for letting brands work with Amazon's engineers to build custom text-to-speech voices (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
Amazon launches Brand Voice, a fully managed service within Amazon Polly for letting brands work with Amazon's engineers to build custom text-to-speech voices — If Amazon has its way, companies will soon tap Amazon Web Services (AWS) en masse to create voices tailored to their brands.
Report: 198 UK council websites found using real time bidding advertising, which is subject to numerous data protection complaints across the EU and in the UK (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)
Report: 198 UK council websites found using real time bidding advertising, which is subject to numerous data protection complaints across the EU and in the UK — On the same day that a data ethics advisor to the UK government has urged action to regulate online targeting a study conducted …
NASA Astronaut Returning to Earth After Record Space Station Mission
Qualcomm Says Coronavirus Threatens Phone Industry Disruption
Finland, Canada, the US, and other countries are testing tech for passport-free travel, including facial recognition and a "digital travel credential" (Matt Burgess/Wired)
Matt Burgess / Wired : Finland, Canada, the US, and other countries are testing tech for passport-free travel, including facial recogniti...
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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