Hasta La Gadget!

Move over, software: the London and Cambridge, U.K.-based accelerator, Springboard, is launching a dedicated program for hardware startups, focusing on the Internet of Things. The new three-month accelerator bootcamp — called Springboard Internet of Things — is backed by program partners ARM, Unilever, Neul and Raspberry Pi, who will play an active role in supporting Springboard founders and providing senior mentors to participants.

Here’s how Springboard describes the new accelerator, which will be based in Cambridge

Springboard Internet of Things (“IoT”) is an accelerator program that accepts the ten best teams in any area of IoT technology — from bright idea to Series A funding.  Participating founders receive more than $150,000 of free services, seed capital and mentoring from more than 100 industry leaders around the world, in an intensive three-month bootcamp.

Springboard founder Jon Bradford said he believes the time is right for a dedicated hardware accelerator, with the rise of Internet of Things projects on crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter (now accepting U.K.-based projects), and a general sense of growing momentum and energy in the maker community. He also points to Chris Anderson’s new book Makers, which talks of a new industrial revolution powered by garage tinkerers and enthusiasts, and references a recent post by YC co-founder Paul Graham on why hardware is ‘having a moment’.

“We believe that there is a massive untapped opportunity with low power device technology — which has been demonstrated by the maker and Kickstarter community,” Bradford added in a statement.

Eben Upton, CEO and Founder of the low cost mini computer Raspberry Pi, said in a statement: “To date, the Internet of Things has been largely the playground of corporates. Dramatically falling hardware costs are shifting innovation toward smaller teams in a similar manner to how web technologies have evolved over the last 10 years.”

Springboard IoT will sit alongside Springboard’s other programs — as a supplement to the London-based Springboard web and the Springboard Mobile accelerators. Mentors for IoT include Hermann Hauser (Amadeus), Sherry Coutu, Niall Murphy (Evrythng & The Cloud), Usman Haque (Cosm & Pachube), Pilgrim Beart (AlertMe) and Brad Feld (Foundry Group & FitBit).

Entrepreneurs wanting to bag a place on the Springboard IoT program have until January 6, 2013 to compete for one of ten available slots. To apply for a place on Springboard IoT visit www.springboard.com.

One of the coolest (and most useful) features of Google’s Android Jelly Been 4.2 update is multiple user account switching, offering up the option to have several users share access to a device, while keeping their settings and content walled off from each other. It’s something we’ve been used to on PCs forever, so it’s bound to be welcomed by Android users. However, we’ve learned that the new feature will likely only apply to tablets, certainly as far as Google’s Nexus range is concerned. Phones need not apply. The reason — and this is purely an educated guess on my part — could well be that back in the day Nokia already patented the idea (via its involvement with Symbian).

Here we go again.

Update: It now appears that, contrary to my original understanding and source, the patent may have never been granted in the U.S. In contrast, it was certainly granted in the UK but may have subsequently lapsed.

The patent ‘Multi-user mobile telephone’, whose inventor is Tim Ocock, an ex-Symbian employee, is described as follows:

A mobile telephone is designed to be used by several different end-users at different times. A first end-user can alter the mobile telephone so that it operates in a manner specific to that first end-user and a subsequent end-user can alter the mobile telephone so that it operates in a manner specific to that subsequent end-user; each end-user has only to respond to prompts displayed on a screen in order to alter the mobile telephone so that it operates in a manner specific to that end-user.

In contrast, here’s how Google’s marketing material describes the new tablet-only Android feature (my emphasis):

With support for multiple users, you can give each person their own space. Everyone can have their own homescreen, background, widgets, apps and games – even individual high scores and levels! And since Android is built with multitasking at its core, it’s a snap to switch between users – no need to log in and out. Available only on tablets.

As I understand it, the use-case that Nokia had in mind was emerging markets where the prohibitive cost of a mobile phone might mean that family members shared the device. But clearly, the patent is more widespread than that. And whilst it might be a more relevant and useful feature on a post-PC tablet device, the fact that Nokia appears to hold a patent for multiple user switching on a phone, might well explain why Google is limiting the feature to tablets only and not phones.

More from that Symbian/Nokia patent:

The present invention therefore moves away from the established assumption that a mobile telephone is personal to a single end-user and instead readily allows the mobile telephone to be used by several end-users through appropriate on-screen prompts. Such a device may be especially relevant to communities where few individuals can afford the cost of their own personal telephone. More generally, it is useful for any entity to whom there are benefits from being able to easily share mobile telephones across multiple end-users (e.g. large corporation may have a pool of such mobile telephones; any employee can then simply pick up one of these telephones and be able to use it like a personal device).

The Raspberry Pi mini computer that’s become popular with the maker community but was originally conceived as a device to help kids learn how to code has had the lightweight TinyBASIC programming language ported to it.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation noted the development in a blog post – explaining how it’s received lots of emails from parents who haven’t done any programming since their school days but still have books on BASIC, and want to be able to share the programming language with their kids

The good news for those people, and for anyone else who wants to learn BASIC from scratch or revisit an old friend, is that TinyBASIC is now available for the Raspberry Pi. Andrew Lack has ported this very lightweight editor, interpreter and graphics package to the Pi, and we think it’s great.

The Foundation says it’s considering bundling TinyBASIC “as part of the standard Raspbian image” — but it wants to test the waters first to see how popular the language turns out to be.

The blog post also notes that while the GOTO function is included in the most basic version of the TinyBASIC port (called vanilla) — to allow for beginners to take their programming baby steps — the function can be disabled in another version (called raspberry) to ensure budding programmers are given the chance to learn structured programming.

The TinyBASIC port consists of an editor, called TinyBASIC One, which allows programs to be inputed, edited and run; the BASIC interpreter — including support for language features such as PRINT, REM, LET, STOP and GOTO — and in the raspberry flavour additional features include WHILE/WEND and REPEAT/UNTIL loops (but not GOTO).

The port also includes support for drawing basic shapes, via the DRAW function.

In a curious move by smartphone maker HTC, it’s announced it’ll be launching a new coupon service called “Best Deals.” The app / widget combo will aggregate offers from 12 pushers, including familiar names like LivingSocial and Trip Advisor, although HTC hopes to add more categories in the future with further partnerships. The service will show you local deals tailored to your tastes, as well as exclusive offers on HTC products, which you can sort, review, bookmark and share from within the app. Discount-hunters from the UK, Italy, Germany, France and Spain will get first access to a catalogue of 1,700 initial deals on the 8X / 8S Windows phones and Android One X+. OG One X and One S owners will find themselves that little bit richer shortly after, snagging the app via a software update. There’s no word on plans to bring the deal aggregator to North American shores, but for Europeans, it’s time to start thinking about which spa treatment you want first.

Continue reading HTC to launch Best Deals coupon app for discount-chasing Europeans

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HTC to launch Best Deals coupon app for discount-chasing Europeans originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Oct 2012 11:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Europe is a key market for Apple. Last quarter it remained the second-highest revenue generating region after the U.S. Yet it’s an increasingly challenging market, yielding the lowest growth of any region for Cupertino in its Q3. And for smartphones at least, it’s also a market firmly in thrall to Google’s Android OS (not that Apple would put it that way). In its Q4 earnings today, Apple reported total revenues of $8,023 billion in Europe for Q4, down three percent on the previous quarter. Total revenues in the region were up eight percent year-on-year, but sales of Macs were down three percent.

The iPhone 5 launched in the U.S. during Apple’s Q4 — but Apple does not break out iPhone (or iPad) sales by region. Cook also noted that: ”We launched iPhone 5 in the US during the quarter, and while we launched in some international countries in the bulk of the world we did not launch in and so I would have expect to have seen more significant growth in the US vs the rest of the world.”

In contrast to tough times in Europe, Cook lauded a “really phenomenal” quarter in China during the Q4 earnings call, with full year revenue $22.8bn — up over $10bn year-on-year. He said Greater China “now represents about 15 percent of Apple for the fiscal year”.

In its Q3 earnings, Cupertino blamed the tough macro-economic situation in Europe for softening demand for its products and leading to “essentially flat” sales — indeed, it blamed the region for a rare miss against Wall Street expectations in Q3, along with speculation about forthcoming products (ie the iPhone 5). France, Greece and Italy were singled out as being “particularly poor” during the quarter, while Germany saw “only single digital positive growth” in Q3. The U.K. bucked the trend, delivering “solid” 13 percent growth.

Google’s Android OS is making life increasingly difficult for Apple in Europe. In its most recent report from September, market research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech (KWC), which tracks 12-week smartphone buying patterns, reported that Android had increased its share in Europe by a fifth (20.2 percent) in the past year — to gain more than two-thirds of the smartphone market. Android OEMs such as Samsung have driven sales by building phones with larger screen sizes than the iPhone, such as the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy SIII. KWC noted that 29 percent of the Android devices sold in the 12 weeks prior to its report had a screen size of more than 4.5 inches.

During its fiscal Q4 Apple launched an iPhone with a larger screen — 4 inches vs 3.5 inches — and announced a smaller version of its iPad tablet as it seeks to squeeze demand for Android phablets.

In additional European Apple news, the company appears to have quietly raised the price of App Store apps in select European countries. TheNextWeb is reporting it has shifted the base price of apps from €0.79 to €0.89 in countries including Belgium, Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the price rise and will update this story with any response.

[Image: C.G.P. Grey]