Guide CEO Freddie Laker: Total Recall and Minority Report TV interactions coming in next five years
Guide is a Miami-based startup that wants to accelerate and improve the way in which video content is produced by journalists and consumed by audiences.
By combining the latest text-to-speech and avatar technology, the team has discovered a way to create automated videos covering users’ favorite news articles, blogs and social streams.
Guide was selected as the winner of the Microsoft Bizspark Startup Rally second round at The Next Web Conference. The team will now advance to the finals, joining Swipe from round one and wildcard winner PayLane.
Freddie Laker, CEO and founder of Guide joined TNW’s Paul Sawers and startup rally judge Mark Voernmans, an emerging business manager at Microsoft, to talk about the product and its future.
“I believe with every fibre of my being that in the next three to five years, we are going to enter the stage that we were promised in science fiction, which is this moment that you can walk up to your TV, like in Total Recall and Minority Report and interact and talk to the TV and be generating TV in real-time,” Laker said.
“That’s our ambition and I think we’re at the beginning of the journey to get there. If we can crack it, I think we’ve got a billion dollar idea on our hands.”
Keep up with all our #TNW2013 coverage
Image Credit: Julia Deboer/Flickr
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Announcing The TC Disrupt NY Hackathon API Workshop Schedule, Prizes & More
We’re now just a few days away from the Disrupt NY Hackathon this weekend, and we’ve got some exciting news to share. As well as scoring a free ticket to the main TechCrunch Disrupt NY conference, this weekend’s hackers will share in almost $50,000 worth of prizes.
A few tickets are still available. Coders should register here and designers should register here.
Below you’ll find all the information on the prizes as well as the schedule for our hands on API workshops. The API sponsors are providing some of their top talent to give coders a crash course in their product.
API Workshop Schedule
One of the best things about the Disrupt Hackathons is that we attract the best developers at the best tech companies to share their insights, answer questions and help short circuit the process of building killer apps with powerful APIs.
Here’s the line-up for our API workshops:
- 2:00pm – Facebook
- 2:30pm – Box
- 3:00pm – Evernote
- 3:30pm – Foursquare
- 4:00pm – Amazon Web Services
- 4:30pm – New York Times
- 5:00pm – Microsoft BizSpark
New API Workshop
Microsoft BizSpark will be presenting an in-depth review of developing for the Windows 8 operating system as well as Windows Phone app development basics.
Hackathon Prizes
Appery.io
With the limited time available during hackathons, speed is even more important than ever. That’s why the team from Appery.io is going to be at Disrupt with $5,000 in cash plus promotion and free product for the best apps built using their browser-based development environment for iOS, Android, Windows Mobile and the mobile web. With pre-built API plugins – including those of some of our other prize sponsors – you could end up being a winner multiple times over – and get your app from concept to demo in 24 hours – with Appery.io. To find out more ahead of time, check out appery.io/tc13.
AT&T
Want to hack your way to a better world? AT&T is here to help. In NYC the AT&T Developer Program, AT&T Foundation and the Environmental Defense Fund are issuing a challenge to developers participating in TechCrunch Disrupt to build app that helps drive water consumption awareness for buildings. For the most creative as well as comprehensive app, AT&T will be offering a $5k grand prize, followed by a $2k ‘most creative’ prize. The challenge is straight forward: build an app that estimates building water consumption. On a high level, the app has three sections: Building Survey, leaderboard, and building / building manager profile. Find out more about the challenge and its specs here.
CrunchBase
What’s better than Disrupt NY? How about Disrupt Berlin! Build something amazing, cool, and insightful with the CrunchBase API and you could be the winner of a trip for two to Berlin for the next TechCrunch conference! Disrupt Berlin is October 26 – 29 and the winner will receive two conference passes, two airline tickets, and of course a place to stay near the conference. Danke!
General Motors
General Motors is offering the opportunity to explore what’s possible with in-vehicle apps by inviting developers to utilize its SDK and new set of in-vehicle APIs to develop an application for vehicles. GM will award a cash prize of $2,000 to the top 2 uses of its in-vehicle SDK – a pretty cool bonus for building something that integrates with the worlds largest manufacturer of cars.
Microsoft Bizspark
The team from Microsoft Bizspark is actually running two competitions and prizes at the Disrupt NY Hackathon this year. To capitalize on the new Windows 8 platform, Microsoft will be giving away a new Windows Surface RT as well as $800 in cash. The best app best app developed on Windows Phone 8 Platform will also receive an RT and $800 to put over your favorite NY bar. To make sure there’s an even greater chance to bring home the greenbacks, Microsoft will also be handing out $100 runner-up prizes to the 10 best apps developed on any Microsoft platform (including Yammer).
Microsoft Skydrive
The team from Skydrive will also be joining us, helping developers make the most of their API and handing out hundreds of GBs of free storage (and perhaps a few bonus toys they’ve got tucked up their sleeves).
NewAer
Want to win prizes and save your users’ battery life? If you’re building a mobile geo app, you should check out NewAer, who are giving out $2k in Apple gift certificates as prizes. Walk away with the fruit loot, you need to be the best at using the NewAer machine to machine discovery platform instead of power-hungry GPS in their Android or iOS applications on smartphones or tablets. SDK is available at http://www.proximityplatform.com
Pearson
Pearson, the worlds leading learning company is offering $500 worth of Amazon gift cards for the best use of the Pearson APIs – giving you access to a world of structured, quality travel, cooking, language and reference content.
Samsung
The Samsung Developer crew will be at Disrupt and offering the brand new Samsung Galaxy S4 or $250 in cash (just in case you don’t need the world’s most awesome new smartphone) for the team that develops the most compelling hack using the S Pen SDK or Allshare Framework. Find out more about both at http://developer.samsung.com along. The Samsung Developers team will be on site for the duration of the event with loaner devices and hands on support.
Twilio
Want to phone a friend? Follow in the footsteps of the team from GroupMe who built an awesome phone enabled app using Twilio. The winner will receive one of three Das Keyboards for the best implementation of the Twilio API.
Visa
Visa will be joining us in New York, and as you’d expect from a company that handles more of our money than anyone else, they’ll be coming with a great cash prize. As part of their initiatives to help the regular person be more smart and secure with technology, Visa will be awarding $5,000 to the grand prize winner who develops the best web or mobile based security eLearning application, or security eLearning game application that makes security fun and engaging. The first runner-up will receive $3,500 – so you can help people keep their money safe from scammers and bank some prize money at the same time.
Wrigley (Alerta)
OK, so everyone else is looking for best. But what about first? The team from Alerta will be awarding a mystery prize for the winners of the Alert A-Game Award – which will be won by the team that uploads their hack to the server first, verified by timestamp.
Yammer
The team at Yammer wants to make sure you’re not all work and no play. The best hack utilizing Yammer’s extensive enterprise social API will walk away with a Surface Pro with touch keyboard, an Xbox 360 and a Jambox – that should irritate the neighbors enough to get a visit from the thin blue line.
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TechCrunch Giveaway: A Parrot AR Drone 2.0 And A Ticket To Disrupt NY
Spring has arrived in New York City. The sun is out (besides today). The snow is finally gone. It’s time to shed the winter layers and head outside. And in the spirit of spring, we want to give one of our readers a ticket to Disrupt NY and the ultimate outdoor toy: A Parrot AR Drone 2.0.
Disrupt NY kicks off later this month. The lineup is stellar and we have a new venue. The hackathon and conference will be housed in the Manhattan Center, located conveniently in midtown with plenty of access to public transit. Tickets are still available but we’re giving you a chance to win one right here.
The winner of this giveaway will walk away with one ticket to Disrupt NY (valued at $2,995) and one Parrot AR Drone 2.0 ($299.95).
Want a shot to win? Follow the steps below.
1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:
2) Then do one of the following:
- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag), or
- Leave us a comment below telling us something fun – anything!
The contest will start now and ends April 22nd at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet or comment once, or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner once the giveaway is over. Please note the winner will only receive one (1) free Disrupt ticket, and it does not include airfare or hotel.
Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.
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Giveaway: New Relic Has Four Free Disrupt NY Tickets Plus Free RC Helicopters #Nerdlife
Disrupt NY is less than a month away. Tickets are still available at the early bird discount, but only for one more week. Or you can save some cash and win a ticket here thanks to our partner New Relic.
Fresh off of raising $80 million at a near-billion dollar valuation and announcing its mobile app monitoring offering, New Relic is footing the bill for four lucky winners this week. If that wasn’t enough, New Relic is also giving away free RC Helicopters to any developer who sets up their web or mobile monitoring on their applications.
Want in? Here’s all you have to do to enter.
To win a free ticket to Disrupt NY:
1) Retweet this post making sure to include the #Nerdlife hashtag in the tweet. We will post the winners at the bottom of this post on Monday after 7:30pm PT.
Please only tweet once, or you will be disqualified. New Relic will make sure you follow the step above and choose the four winners once the giveaway is over. Please note the free Disrupt tickets are for one ticket per winner only and do not include airfare or hotel.
To get a free Remote Control Helicopter from New Relic:
1) Follow this link and try New Relic’s Web Monitoring service or their newer Mobile Monitoring service (some basic dev skills required). You’ll get data on your web apps with your New Relic account and 14 days of their best PRO level of service for free. No worries, no obligation to buy whatsoever.
About New Relic: New Relic is a fast-growing SF SaaS company that serves over 300,000 developers worldwide and collects over 100 billion metrics every day for sites like Groupon, Wanelo, Kickstarter, Nike and Comcast. They also are the first nerdy systems management company to get over 300,000 views on a rap video celebrating the #nerdlife. Watch it below. MC Frontalot FTW.
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High-tech payphone concept with free Wi-Fi wins NYC design challenge
The people of New York have spoken. They’ve chosen a spiffy new payphone design with free Wi-Fi access and interactive advertising as the winner of a Reinvent Payphones design challenge.
Sadly, the People’s Choice award doesn’t guarantee that this design, dubbed NYFi, will ever see the light of day. The city has said that the concepts from the design contest will “help shape the future of New York City payphones.”
The proposed NYFi design comes in two models, one for commercial districts and a smaller version for residential and historic areas. It would be based on an open software platform with modular hardware that could replace bus tickets machines, Muni Meters, MetroCard machines, assistance kiosks and bicycle share stations.
NYC put out a call for designs to its public phone system late last year. 15 submissions were chosen as semi-finalists to demo their prototypes at at a Demo Day last week and then the popular choice winner was decided by the all-important Facebook page vote.
NYFi originally won the award for Best Connectivity. Other designs won for Best Visual Design, Best in Creativity, Best Functionality and Best Community Impact.
I think the moral of the story here is that if you offer anyone free Wi-Fi, they’ll vote for you (though, to be fair, some of the other designs did too). It’s kind of like that kid in elementary school who always won the class president election by promising free soda in the cafeteria.
In all seriousness, though, there’s some great work across these winning designs. Some of them might take a bit of work to implement in real-world situations, but they’re definitely working to reimagine the payphone’s role in the city.
With just about everyone carrying around a cell phone these days, the usefulness of traditional payphones is winding down. There’s plenty of room for disruption here, and we’re grateful to the designers that are imagining how to improve them.
Images via iStockphoto, NYCDigital
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