Hasta La Gadget!

Mobile gaming company Pocket Gems is taking a new approach to telling stories on smartphones with the launch of a new platform called Episode.

CEO Ben Liu hinted at this last month when he talked about the company’s growth, saying that this year would see a big launch focusing on what it means to “experience a story on mobile.” Apparently, Episode is what co-founder Daniel Terry has been working on since he stepped down as CEO and became the company’s chief creative officer at the end of 2012.

Terry told me that he saw a big opportunity in mobile storytelling. After all, stories drive many forms of entertainment media, and even at Pocket Gems, when the company added story elements to its games, he said, “Players just love it, and it really enhances engagement.” Yet stories are either minimal or nonexistent in mobile games.

With Episode, Terry and his team have taken an approach that’s really focused on stories, to the extent that some might not even consider the app to be a game at all. At points in our conversation, Terry compared the approach to an interactive, animated TV show and to a “modern, mobile-first Choose Your Own Adventure.”

The demo that he gave me was pretty simple. Two animated characters were having a conversation at a club, which the player mostly just watches, but at one point the other character offered to buy me a drink and I got to choose what kind.

More exciting than the individual story is the platform that Pocket Gems has built. Using Episode, story writers can choose their settings, customize their characters, then use a simple scripting language to determine what happens, what choices the players will face, and how those choices will affect the rest of the story. Each individual chapter should only take a few minutes to finish, but as the name implies, they’re usually just pieces of a larger narrative. Users can what chapters are available in the Episode smartphone app, which functions as a sort of library.

Pocket Gems has been testing out Episode on iOS, and the company says users have already read 10 million chapters. Today, however, marks the official launch, which includes the release of an Android app and the opening of the scripting platform to anyone who wants to use it. For now, Terry said user-generated chapters will only be shareable with friends, while the public content will still come from professional writers paid by Pocket Gems. But eventually, the company could create a tiered system and start recruiting paid writers from the broader user base.

Players can read a limited number of chapters every few hours, and will have to pay to consume more. However, Terry suggested that the business model is still very much in the experimental phase. He added that the Episode platform could potentially be used to create content for other Pocket Gems games, though there are no specific plans in that area.

In London’s accident & emergency hospital departments, among some more black-humored staffers, cyclists are colloquially known as ‘organ donors’, or so the story goes. Running the gauntlet of HGV lorries and angry four-wheeled commuters is no joke though. Many urban cyclists in the U.K. capital and elsewhere already arm themselves with helmet cameras with the aim of capturing footage of dangerous driving they encounter on their commute — a quick search for ‘cycle helmet camera‘ brings up some 346,000 results on YouTube.

But strapping on a helmet cam is generally a passive use of the technology with no clear flag for drivers that they are being filmed (unless they specifically know what to look out for). And therefore little chance of positively influencing driving behavior before the bad stuff happens — i.e. by making motorists take more care around cyclists in the first place.

One recent example of a technology startup we covered aiming to do more to flag up cyclists’ presence on the road, and therefore positively influence the behaviour of the vehicles around them, is the laser-light projecting Blaze project — which took part in TC’s CES battlefield back in January. And recently pulled in $500k in seed funding.

Well, here’s another attempt to get drivers to drive better, this time from an Australian startup that’s currently raising funds for its device, the Fly6, on Kickstarter.

The Fly6 is not using projected light to flag up the cyclist’s position to drivers, but is using flashing lights to draw attention to a prominent camera lens incorporated into a bike taillight, to let drivers know they are being filmed and therefore police their behaviour for the better (or so they hope).

The device incorporates an HD camera lens into a red taillight that attaches to the seat post of the bike and has a ring of flashing LEDs that are designed to draw the driver’s eye to the camera lens. The Fly6 philosophy: drivers that know they are being watched behave better.

Whether that ring of lights is a clear enough signal to drivers that the bike ahead of them is effectively a mobile CCTV unit remains to be seen. But the Fly6′s designers have drawn a fair amount of interest on Kickstarter, passing their $95,000 AUS funding goal, with more than $158,000 AUD raised from some 1,110 backers so far and still 20 days left of their campaign to run. Early bird price-pledges have been bagged, with the device now started at $129 AUD, with an estimated shipping schedule of May.

The Fly6 will ship with an 8GB micro SD card, to allow for two hours of continuous recording until a looping function kicks in and overwrites previously recorded footage in 15 minute chunks. If you want to be able to record for longer, a 16GB micro SD card will allow for around fours’ hours; and a 32GB card eight (although that exceeds battery run time). The Fly6′s lithium ion battery is rechargeable via USB and apparently good for 5+ hours of runtime.

Does the Fly6 accurately capture number plates? It can but it’s not guaranteed, say its makers — it’s dependent on road/weather conditions etc. But really, the primary point of the camera is to avoid the need to harvest any number plates by making drivers think twice about cutting up cyclists in the first place.

Smart home lighting is a growing field, with entrants including Philips and LIFX, but one other new contender has a different approach that might appeal more to some. The Brightup system consists of plug socket hardware and in-wall dimmers, connected to and controlled by a central hub via Z-Wave RF tech, to provide remote dimming and intelligent behavior/programming to any and all lighting systems in your house.

The Brightup offers remote control of your lights, but that’s just the beginning. It also has geofencing so that lights can be set to turn on or off when you enter or leave the house; there’s an ambient light detector that can tell when you turn on the TV to automatically dim your lights for improved viewing conditions; the same ambient light sensor detects fading natural light and can tell when the sun comes up in the morning to control light levels. Random scheduling will simulate being home even when you’re away, and you can use lights to let you know a timer has gone off, which is handy for cooking, for instance.

The system’s components are nicely designed, and the project creators say you shouldn’t need outside help for installation. Brightup also measures and records energy usage, and provides remote access that you can share with family members and friends. The in-wall modules look a little more complex in terms of installation, but they should work in your existing receptacles behind the light switches you already have according to Brightup, which means no new holes required.

The Hamburg-based company is looking to raise €130,000 ($178,000 U.S.) on Indiegogo over the next 46 days to build Brightup, with starter packs including a central unit and three in-wall or socket connectors for €199 ($272 U.S.). The cost is considerable; A Philips Hue starter set runs $199 and includes three bulbs plus the central control hub, but Brightup works with lighting other than what comes in the package, and Hue is really an entirely different kind of product.

As the connected home and home automation space gets more crowded, it’s interesting to see the different approaches companies are taking to solve essentially the same problems. Brightup’s system has plenty of merit, but it’s competing with some heavy hitters already in the mainstream market including Belkin’s WeMo line. With Z-Wave and an open API, it does seem one of the more extensible and future-proof options out there, however, so that may play a role in getting customers on board.

As the wearable tech space hits a boiling point, Jawbone is pressing onward and upward with a new $250 million investment led by Rizvi Traverse Management on the horizon, according to a report.

The maker of the Up wristband, a fitness tracker that pairs to a user’s smartphone, is looking to secure the nine-digit round at a $3.3 billion valuation.

According to Re/Code, general partner Suhail Rizvi may join the Jawbone board as a part of the deal, which would put him in good company. Jawbone’s board members include Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Ben Horowitz, and superstar designer Yves Behar.

Jawbone’s growth has exploded alongside the ever-booming wearables vertical, but that’s not the only thing the company brings to the table.

Jawbone has been successfully offering Bluetooth products to consumers for years, including adorable little Jambox speaker systems and various Bluetooth headsets.

Thus far, Jawbone has raised more than $275 million in venture capital (not including this deal, which has yet to close), along with $100 million in debt and equity financing.

Bitcoin traders are having a roller coaster ride everywhere, and India is no exception. After initial momentum that saw several Bitcoin exchanges emerge in India, the Reserve Bank of India issued a warning that sent many traders into a tizzy last year.

Now, Raghuram Rajan, the RBI’s new governor, has reiterated the central bank’s concerns about the credibility of Bitcoin. Addressing a technology conference in Mumbai earlier today, Rajan said there are ambiguities about who controls the value of Bitcoin.

“As a currency, I do worry a little bit when the underlying (value) fluctuates tremendously. One of the values of a currency is stability and the extent (to which) a currency is target of speculation as opposed to primarily a means of exchange,” he said, addressing a conference organized by technology industry body Nasscom.

I do think we have to understand the role of virtual currencies and how they will interact with the paper currency that you have…There are questions that need to be asked, one of them being, who will maintain value? Can we have confidence in unseen, unknown centres who maintain the value of the currency, or an algorithm that will maintain the value of the currency – we need more credibility there

But Bitcoin traders in India are not giving up yet. Last month, Highkart became the first (and the only) e-commerce site in India to start accepting payment in Bitcoin. Its co-founder Amit Kumar told me that one of the challenges facing growth of Bitcoin in India is that many early adopters are still hoarding the currency and not trading them. Highkart sold a pair of shoes from Provogue in exchange for Bitcoin as its first transaction. It has currently 150 products, and the startup does not charge anything extra for shipping the products.

“There’s nothing illegal in accepting Bitcoin — the RBI will take more time to come up with clarity,” Kumar added. Highkart and other Bitcoin traders in India say they are following all banking regulations prescribed by the RBI, leaving no room for any illegal activities.

Benson Samuel, a Bitcoin developer and consultant, said nothing much has changed for Bitcoin in India since the last time RBI issued the warning. Last month, an Indian lawyer even sent a legal notice to RBI asking for clarity on Bitcoin trading in India. 

A major concern for policymakers and regulators about Bitcoin is that it could be used for money laundering and other illegal activities. The Bitcoin traders, however, say that such concerns apply to any currency.

For its part, the RBI is not ruling out a future for Bitcoin in India yet.

“I don’t want to say that there is no future for these virtual currencies. I think it’s a process of evolution, but for now all we’ve done is express the kinds of concerns we have about it, without determining in any which way what we intend to do,” Rajan said earlier today.

Even as countries such as India and Russia think of Bitcoin as “potentially suspicious”, the virtual currency is mainstream now. Bitcoin was named the best Technology Achievement of 2013 at the Crunchies yesterday.