Just thought it's funny that my startup's name and color scheme are so similar, despite the fact that the products are not even remotely related: http://www.survly.com/
Native Chinese speaker here. I just tried the same sentences from the video on Google Translate on my Android tablet and Bing Translator on my Windows Phone. The video has almost all of the words right with very few grammar errors. Quite decent tonality to boot. Bing has almost all of the words right but with weird grammar (mostly wrong word order/sentence structure), with comparable tonality to the video. Google picks up my sentences and translates quicker than the rest (might be due to Nexus 7's raw power) with great accuracy in the vocabulary. But the grammar is worse than the others. For example it butchered the sentence "I hope you enjoy the rest of the presentation today" which it translates to "我希望你享受休息的演示" which literally means "I hope you enjoy the presentation of resting." The tonality is very much robotic. I'd declare Microsoft winner here. Maybe it has something to do with Google being ousted by the Chinese government :P
One problem with Passbook right now is lack of content. A dedicated website for Passbook coupons I think makes a lot of sense, but the challenge is to educate businesses about the usefulness of Passbook. I talked to a restaurant owner yesterday and showed him Passbook (on his phone, but he had no idea what it was) and he was quite excited for the opportunity. I wonder how this could be achieved in a wider scale.
I think people tend to generalize things. I, for example, have the mentality that if I understand\learn something with little effort, then others can do the same. The truth is, the others usually don't bother to put forth that little effort, which makes me the exception to the rule. For example, I recently made a decent chunk of money by creating a simple WordPress site that was valuable enough for my client...I would've paid a fraction of what my client paid if I was him. So I definitely concur with this post.
The part about pivoting is interesting. For a musician, changing the genre of the band has to be quite difficult, because an style is likely developed and the soul to the art will have to be changed. I wonder if it's the same for entrepreneurs, who likely have an affinity to a particular field due to passion or expertise. Pivoting, by definition, shouldn't be a complete redo, but I'd imagine it's as hard of a choice for a startup to pivot drastically as it is for a band to change genre.
There's an old Chinese idiom that says "事到万难须放胆，宜于两可莫粗心" which roughly translates to "A difficult decision for an important matter requires bold action, but it's worth it to consider carefully and deliberately when the two options are equally viable."
So for a difficult situation like that I think it's always right to be steadfast and follow the heart.
As a Windows Phone user and developer, I've noticed frequent updates help promote app usage tremendously, which is confirmed by the analysis. With so many apps installed on my phone, I tend to forget about 70% of them until there's an update notification and then I'd want to check out what's new. So this is a perfect model as long as there's no shortage of content ideas. This is reminiscent of one of the most successful PC games today, League of Legends, which has had new content released every two weeks since launch couple years ago.
Devs, have you considered microtransaction for Taptitude? You did mention "coins to purchase game updates." Maybe some users prefer to pay for those updates instead? Congratulations on the success!
You are only a couch and some beer away from being the next Diggnation :P Seriously though, have you thought about instead of having a few guests talking about stories, make it open mic so everyone listening to the show could also participate, open mic style? That could be fun.
I'm also writing a tool that helps podcasters organize sound clips and coordinate broadcasting with multiple guests: https://github.com/jiakeliu/Cobra
Please excuse the svn to git transfer mess, but maybe this tool would come in handy one day.
Inspiring. I wonder how helpful YC was to them for being largely a hardware company. Mass production and distribution must be some of the biggest challenges... maybe they can be the next Apple :)
If you think this looks ugly, you should've seen our very first version. Let's just say they don't teach tailoring in an engineering curriculum :P We actually outsourced this to a seamstress, who was able to fabricate the glove from ground up with conductive threads sewn in.
I think Nintendo was kind of ahead of its time when they released the PowerGlove. I definitely see the merit of a wearable interface today with better batteries and wireless communication technologies. I think Google agrees. The challenge will be how to make it as unobtrusive as possible.
With Google's Project Glass, we are even more inspired to finish Gauntlet. One problem I see with Project Glass is complex input such as typing when voice is not an option. That's when a wearable keyboard interface could come in handy (no pun intended).
The Peregrine actually only has an USB interface, so you are essentially tethered to your computer and cannot use it with your phone\tablet or anything else. It is marketed as a gaming device, which limits the amount of possible inputs. I don't think you can replicate the entire keyboard with the Peregrine, which GAUNTLET could easily do. My hope is to have the comercial version (if pursued) of GAUNTLET to look as aesthetic as, if not better than, the Peregrine.
Since our design uses really inexpensive parts (resistor arrays) to solve a relatively complex problem, we don't need that much funding, so I'm not sure if Kickstarter would be necessary. Although I'm not entirely familiar with Kickstarter. Are there any other benefits besides the money?
We literally finished the prototype yesterday, so I can't give you a figure as to how fast we can type on it. We laid the keys out so the most used letters in the English alphabet are placed in easy to reach spots. But even after a few hours of use, I'm already remembering the keymap and was able to type with one hand without looking at the glove, which is something you can't really do with an on screen keyboard.
I can report back later when I get more used to the glove.
The way it works is actually really simple. The thumb pad is powered, and when it touches the other points, closed circuits are formed. And depending on which pad is touched, a different voltage value is read by the microcontroller, which then runs our code and translates the value to an ASCII character, which is then sent through Bluetooth to the computer/phone screen.