Hasta La Gadget!

Meet Pixeom, a prototype device being Kickstarted by brother and sister duo Karishma and Sam Nagar, with the aim of offering alternative cloud services that don’t require you to hand over the keys to your private data in exchange for a convenient digital service.  

Prior to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA‘s (and other governments’ security agencies‘) dragnet surveillance of everyone’s online lives, Pixeom would probably have sunk without a trace. Or not even been conceived of as a mainstream project at all.

But, post-Snowden, there’s a perfect storm of cloud-computing concerns amassing to undermine the convenience of mainstream online services. And, after a month seeking crowdfunding on Kickstarter, Pixeom has passed its funding target of $50,000 — with close to 400 backers, and still has 15 days left to run on its campaign.

In addition to the funds it’s currently raising on Kickstarter, Pixeom has also secured more than $500,000 in private funding to get this personal cloud device to market.

It’s clear that Snowden has shone a light on something very rotten lurking at the core of mainstream cloud services. Sure, web mail clients are handy — and you get a chunk of free storage — but you’re also effectively handing the keys to your inbox over to the NSA (et al) should they happen to feel like dipping into your personal correspondence one lunchtime or other.

And of course it’s a given that your personal data will be mined by the service provider; it’s a free service, so your privacy is the product. This general snooping on/data-mining of users is a routine business model for the majority of free cloud-based services and apps.

Multiple big name tech giants have built hugely lucrative businesses off of selling your likes and dislikes to advertisers in exchange for furnishing you with a platform where you can share that data in the first place. Or store the personal stuff they need to peek at to gather sellable intel on you.

Plus there’s also the sloppy security of (certain) startups that leak your personal info all over the Internets just because they’re more interested in expanding their user-base than expending effort on adequate security measures.

So it goes.

Or so it has, but — whipped up by the storm of snooping revelations — some counter-currents are (finally) emerging to challenge the accepted wisdom that accessing the convenience of cloud services necessitates giving up your personal data and abandoning any shred of privacy in the process.

Projects like Blackphone or the Dark Mail Alliance. And now Pixeom. Pixeom’s makers say they want to facilitate a new type of data exchange for Internet users which is hosted on an anti-corporate cloud that sits in your own home — i.e. not somewhere in a vast datacenter in California where giant branded spiders can crawl all over it.

One half of the Pixeom founder team, Sam Nagar, who previously worked as a software engineer at Microsoft in Mountain View, describes the device as follows:

In a nutshell: 
1. All of your cloud services in a box for a small one-time cost, we are a combination of Dropbox/Box/Facebook/Shopify with a focus on privacy. 

2. Scalable device that continues to grow as one large storage pool instead of multiple “islands” of user data.

3. An optional exchange network that anyone can browse full of public content from people’s devices that can one day rival the large datacenter based public networks.

What exactly is Pixeom? It’s a personal, encrypted cloud device that plugs into your home Internet via Ethernet and provides cloud storage for your digital content without having to go through any third party intermediaries, and with support for unlimited expansion of said storage — either by chaining together multiple Pixeoms, or by plugging in additional USB hard drives.

The device is not just focused on storage though. The Pixeom platform also offers alternative cloud apps to replace online services — name-checking the likes of Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Microsoft Sharepoint, Facebook and Amazon as services it wants to offer an alternative to — in a simpler (and potentially cheaper) way than by having to set up a NAS box or host your own server.

The three apps that will be included with Pixeom at launch are called File Exchange; Club Exchange; and Market Exchange — and they support, respectively, file-sharing & document back-up, collaboration & syncing across multiple devices; discussion boards for secure communication and digital socialising; and an interactive storefront for buying and selling, with Dwolla payment processing built-in.

Or, in other words, alternatives to stuff like Google Docs, Dropbox, Facebook, and Amazon Marketplace.

There are also no subscription fees for using Pixeom or its apps. The business model relies solely on selling the hardware itself — at least for now. Sam Nagar tells TechCrunch that it may look for additional revenues streams in future.

“While we will make more than enough money off the sales of our devices to support ourselves (we are a very lean startup with high profit margins), we will later consider monetizing off of the Pixeom Exchange Network in more non-traditional ways,” he says.

“One of our ideas is if a device owner wanted their content to be discovered more easily, they can pay to have it show up higher on the listings, similar to how Google does it with their search engine, or how Facebook allows you to ‘sponsor’ a post.”

The Pixeom device is powered by a Raspberry Pi microcomputer — making it low power and helping to keep the cost down (early bird Kickstarter pledges for a $100 Pixeom are all gone but you can bag the device for $125). Each Pixeom has 16GB of internal storage, expandable via two USB ports to plug in your own hard drives.

Pixeom users can also choose for their device to stay private or invite trusted friends to collaborate within the secure network. There’s also an option to join a global network of Pixeom devices so that public content can be shared/advertised within that wider network.

The collaborative core of Pixeom’s platform means that a Pixeom owner can share content with anyone else (provided they have the ability to access a webpage). There’s no requirement for the content viewer to purchase Pixeom hardware or download their application, although there is a free mobile app for accessing the Pixeom Exchange Network of public content, as an alternative and richer point of entry to accessing this content via a web browser.

“The only time someone else needs to buy a Pixeom device is if they want to have their own private area that no one else can see, or if they want to start publishing their own public content on the Pixeom Exchange Network. Otherwise, a team of 25-100 people can all easily share and collaborate on one single device using their web browser,” adds Sam Nagar.

If all goes to plan Pixeom’s founders are aiming to ship to backers in May.  You can see the pair’s full Kickstarter pitch in the below video. 

How many Pixeom’s do the founders reckon they can ship in the first year? “We project selling 400,000 – 500,000 units worldwide,” says Sam Nagar. “We are currently lining up channel partners and finalizing the designs for more types of hardware that our stack can run on which will appeal to a variety of users, and after talking with many of them as well as from our own research, we feel this is a fair estimate.”

The startup also has plans to expand the apps it offers in future — with cloud games one area it’s already working on — starting with “something like a trivia game or a more traditional one like chess/checkers”.

“People could have private games with each other, or match up with each other on the exchange network, all hosted on their devices. Their scores could be published and we could even give away benefits to the top public score of the day like promoting their content within the network. We want to be regularly involved with our user base and will continue to see how we can make using Pixeom regularly to become a fulfilling experience,” adds Nagar. 

It’s also working on con conferencing and telepresence apps, everything from voice to screen sharing, he adds.

Apple is said to be working on a content delivery network (CDN) all its own, according to new information reported last night by the Wall Street Journal. Cupertino wants to build a large network capable of driving more data to its customers, for the purposes of providing improved streaming offerings for its television products.

Apple is making its way down a path that has already been walked by other major Internet content players including Google, Facebook and Netflix, each of which has invested heavily in network infrastructure in order to support the vast amount of media being streamed via their online portals and products.

The WSJ report also notes that building its own CDN will help Apple manage its growing iCloud service usage, as well as hosting and delivering content from the iTunes and App Stores, both streamed and downloaded. Apple has managed to accumulate enough bandwidth from web providers to allow it to move “hundreds of gigabits per second,” however, according to Bill Norton, CSO for the International Internet Exchange, speaking to the WSJ, and that likely means they’re laying the groundwork for much bigger plans beyond existing needs.

The biggest advantage for Apple in building its own CDN might come from improved quality and reliability of services. Apps, movies and music would all potentially download faster if Apple controlled the entire chain, for instance, since it has to spend less time dealing with third-party players outside of its corporate domain, which invariably add delays, miscommunications and possible points of failure into the mix.

WSJ also notes that Apple has been on a bit of a hiring spree when it comes to adding talent specializing in both TV content and CDN tech: Lauren Provo, a Comcast exec came on board in September; Jean-François Mulé, a former VP at a TV research and dev company is another recent hire; the company is also building a roster of CDN specialists, the report suggests.

Netflix’s decision to do the same, which was detailed by GigaOM back in June 2012, was cited as a key factor in the company’s evolution as its streaming volumes increased. It gave Netflix a more direct relationship to the Internet service providers who were the ones tasked with getting their shows to their audience, and Netflix cited YouTube as the archetypical example of how at a certain point of volume, the economic case for doing it yourself becomes overwhelming.

Apple continues to add new content channels to the Apple TV with fair frequency, which adds to its streaming media load, and recent reports suggest that there’s even more coming on the horizon, with a potential SDK for new Apple TV hardware. This WSJ report suggests that’s a very real, very immediate possibility, and offers one more hint that TV may soon be something more akin to a core product line at Apple.

Apple has received a patent from the USPTO (via AppleInsider) for a method of wireless induction charging that can perform different actions based on the orientation of the device as it’s laid on the charing mat or pad. The patent application was originally published back in September, 2012, and we covered it then, but it’s interesting to revisit in light of recent reports about Apple using induction tech in iWatch prototypes.

The New York Times said earlier this week that Apple is working on versions of the iWatch that use induction charging to power up, so that users won’t have to plug them in. The idea is likely that charging yet another digital device has to be as easy as possible for consumers, who already have to deal with keeping their phones, tablets and computers juiced up and ready to go.

Apple has a number of patents related to this tech, which is already in use among various Android OEMs as well as Nokia in its Lumia line. Apple has yet to release a device that makes use of the tech, however. An iWatch is a good candidate because of its specific battery challenges, and this positional function switching could potentially apply to a smartwatch, too. You could see triggering an alarm or sleep mode by docking an iWatch in a certain way for overnight charging, for instance, or maintaining an active state for mounting when you’re at your desk and working.

Induction charging is far from a lock for a wearable for Apple (nor is the Apple wearable itself, in fact), but Apple is definitely investing in R&D around the tech. And however it addresses it, power management will be a key differentiating factor for any Apple smartwatch, I’d guess, so turning it into a value-add feature with orientation-based actions is an idea with a lot of potential.

Pebble started shipping its new Pebble Steel hardware last week, but until today, the version of the companion app available to the general public didn’t contain any of the version 2.0 goodness that granted access to the Pebble appstore. The new appstore is being billed as the “first open platform for sharing apps optimized for wearables” by Pebble, and as of today, it’s available to the general Pebble-wearing public, so long as you’ve got an iOS device.

The Pebble appstore works with any Pebble running OS version 2.0, which you’ll be prompted to install on your device when you download and install the updated Pebble app. You’ll also get a completely new interface for managing your Pebble and the new apps you can install on it from within the software. As you can see in our review, the update introduces an app and watchface management tray that lets you see what’s already on your Pebble (each smartwatch supports a maximum of 8 third-party apps and faces).

Pebble’s new appstore features apps updated to work with SDK 2.0, and is divided into either apps or watchfaces, with subdivisions within each. The apps section features categories, including fitness apps and remotes, for example, and the watchface category can be organized by popularity, recency or staff picks. In my review, I noted that it struck me as a bit rudimentary, but it’s perfectly functional for a version 1 release, and sort of resembles the early days of Apple’s iOS App Store.

I’ve already got some favourites picked out from the inaugural batch of Pebble apps: Both Yelp and Foursquare’s official software never leave my wrist, and the third-party Huebble app is arguably a better Philips Hue remote than the iOS app itself in many ways. The PipBoy 100 Pebble watchface also provides some great utility, including battery indicator, connectivity loss alarm when you venture too far from your phone, and what amounts to a loose step counter via an XP display and level up system. And if my life was exciting enough that I owned a GoPro, I’d definitely use the remote app for that gadget.

Already, Pebble’s app ecosystem offers up a number of software titles that can replace entire gadgets, with software for tracking daily activity and progress towards a goal, as well as stuff that turns your Pebble into a hardware remote for controlling your smartphone camera’s shutter.

Grab the updated Pebble app now if you want access to all that appstore goodness. Even if you aren’t one of the few pre-orderers lucky enough to have a Pebble Steel, you’re going to feel like you’ve got a brand new device with this update. Android users, Pebble promises you don’t have to wait long – they haven’t put a specific timeline on when the appstore makes it to Google’s mobile OS, but it should arrive “very, very soon” according to the company.

Apple didn’t do a Super Bowl ad, as some had suggested it might, but today it debuted a video designed to capture the spotlight all its own. The spot, which is a little over a minute long, is shot entirely on iPhone devices during one 24 hour period, by 15 camera crews. It was then edited on Macs back in LA, paring down over 70 hours of video into the final spot you see above.

The point? To demonstrate that you can do in one day using Apple’s iPhone devices what it once took months and millions of dollars’ worth of equipment to create. It also captures tons of people doing lots of creative things with Apple products, including building fully articulate robotic prosthetics controlled by an iPod touch, to a symphonic performance analyzed and monitored using an iMac.

The spot was edited by Angus Wall, a Hollywood editor who worked on Fight Club, Zodiac, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network to name a few, and longtime Apple ad man Lee Clow served as creative director. Clow, who was behind the famous ’1984′ Super Bowl ad spot that borrowed themes from the dystopian sci-fi novel of the same name, tweeted this during last night’s game:

Ok so it wasn't a great Super Bowl. Tomorrow's another day.—
Lee Clow (@_clow) February 03, 2014

Apple may not have had a Super Bowl ad this year, but this post-game spot is arguably better, and definitely more in line with the company’s vision of itself as apart from the crowd.