BlueBee is a small device that pairs wirelessly to your smartphone and clips onto anything you might loose - keys, bags, suitcase, pets...

Ever lost keys, wallet, bags, computer, camera…?

Well, sadly it happened to me more times than I would like to admit.

And each time, I wished I had a way to get my stuffs back. Unfortunately, that never happened.

But that could change with a new generation of lost-and-found services, like BlueBee and Bungee that tap the power of the ‘crowd’ to help find lost items.

Let’s face it, the current crop of wireless tracking devices – like Bikn, Stick-N-Find or Zomm – are not really designed to find your lost items but to prevent separating from them, alerting you when they get out of range of a couple hundred feet.

The first crowdsourced lost-and-found service

BlueBee is a high-tech way to solve just that. It combines a small device (the BlueBee), a wireless tag the shape of a cassette tape, that clips onto anything you might loose, like your keys, bags, pets, etc. It then communicates with an app on your smartphone (iOS or Android) using Bluetooth 4.0.

Just like previous electronic tags, if the lost object is within close range (50 meters/164 feet), it will show up on the map on the phone. The opposite scenario works too: if you have the BlueBee handy but can’t find your phone, just click on a button on the BlueBee and your smartphone will start ringing, even if it was set in vibrate mode.

All BlueBee owners are automatically enrolled in the Blue Crowd Network, helping each others find their lost stuffs

BlueBee really shines when the tag and the smartphone are miles apart, which activates the crowdsourcing feature to find the lost item. Because every BlueBee owner is automatically part of the Blue Crowd Network, any member who happens to walk within range of a lost tag will send anonymously an alert with its GPS coordinate. “It’s like having thousands of moving radar looking for your lost items,” explains co-founder Artem Rodionov.

BlueBee is available for $25 on Indiegogo.com, a price that includes a lifetime subscription to the Blue Crowd Network, which normally sells for $15/year.

‘Mid-tech’ Bungee uses text messaging to connect you to the ‘finder’

Just stick Bungee on all your valuables and hope the finder texts the serial number on the tag

At the other end of the spectrum, New-York-based startup Bungee opted for a ‘mid-tech’ solution of the problem, combining printed tags asking the finder to text a unique identification number, that you would have linked to your phone number or email address.

“Bungee only works when the person who finds whatever it is that you’ve lost takes the right action,” admits co-founder Bryan Davis who tested the idea nationwide, and found out that Americans are honest.

I, too, believe in people’s honesty so I’ve already sticked Bungee on all my valuables, including my pair of sunglasses. Besides, to paraphrase Franck Sinatra, if you can make it work in New York, you can make it anywhere!

A 1-year subscription to Bungee‘s lost-and-found service costs $10, including 11 stickers, and $25 for the lifetime coverage.

Below is a video of an interview with the Bungee founders visiting my office in San Francisco:

The Aspire R7 is a revolutionary computer that combines a touchscreen laptop, a desktop and a standalone tablet.

Welcome to the world of type and touch.

Despite an un-inspring global press conference this morning in New York City, Acer unveiled a truly revolutionary portable computer.

A versatile computer, from notebook to TV

The Taiwanese company’s Aspire R7 combines a full HD 15.6″ touchscreen Windows 8 laptop, a slate a-la Windows Surface, a large standalone tablet (5.3 lbs) and an all-in-one desktop that could also act as a small TV!

Something I haven’t seen yet from the other large PC OEMs like HP, Dell, Lenovo or even Asus with its Transformer line.

The R7 uses a similar “Ezel Hinge” than the second-generation Apple iMac which enables the screen to actually float in the air and into the different positions.

The R7 can actually be in as many modes and angles as you want depending on your position or usage (seated, standing, at a desk or on the lap).

The new Acer computer will be available May 17th for a $1,000, first exclusively at Best Buy.

Below is a short video of my quick hands-on of the Acer R7.

If Steve Jobs designed the iWatch, it could very well look like VEA’s Buddy. A thin and solid watch, with a single button, a color touchscreen display and large clear icons. A world’s away from the more geeky smart watches from Casio, Pebble, Motorola or Sony.

“The iPhone was our inspiration,” said Armand Billard, the CEO of Caiman Design, who led the VEA Buddy’s design team. “We’ve been designing smart watches for years, but with the Buddy, we started from scratch, with a user-centric approach. It had to be simple, easy to use and comfortable to wear. A smart watch for everyone, not just geeks!”

A smart watch for everyone, not geeks!

VEA Buddy, the smart watch for everyone

The Buddy icons lets you access, in read-only mode, to key functions on your smartphone, like your text messages, emails, calendar, music, photos, Twitter or Facebook.

“The Buddy is an assistant to your Bluetooth smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows 8, Blackberry…), that you wear all the time, but not a replacement. If you want to write an email or place a call, then your smartphone is a better device. But if you want to check something quickly, like your last emails or your Facebook feed, without having to dig in your pocket or your purse, then the Buddy is the best,” adds Brigitte Bensaid, the CEO and founder of VEA.

A large 2″ color horizontal touchscreen

Instead of having a rather square screen, like most of the other smart watches, VEA chose to use a horizontal 2″ display for larger icons, texts and notifications.

“Who wants to go through menus and buttons to check your email. With the Buddy it’s just one touch away, just like the iPhone,” said Billard. “And despite its larger screen, the Buddy is even thinner than the Pebble which matters a lot when you have it on your wrist all the time.”

And unlike the Pebble, the Buddy is repairable (in less than 10 minutes!) because it’s not glued together but screwed, told me Bensaid. A beginner’s mistake that 13-years old VEA learned to avoid.

“While many startups are still learning how to make smart watches, we sold more than 10,000 already, from our Sportive, a Dick Tracy-like smartphone watch, to the simpler and cheaper Buddy”, added Bensaid.

The Buddy will be available in June and can be pre-ordered today on Indiegogo for $150, the same price than the Pebble.

At Facebook‘s mobile strategy event yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg used 2 buzz words that will certainly be gaining a lot of attention:

1. People first, not Apps, is about bringing the social aspect front-and-center on the phone i.e. seeing what your ‘friends’ are doing (news feed, notifications) and easily communicate with them through messenging (chat heads)
2. and, Mobile Best, instead of ‘Mobile First’, meaning that the primary user experience is focused on mobile devices. A subtle but strategically important change. For Zuckerberg, Facebook on mobile is now the best way to access Facebook services, period.

Cover feed
From the moment you wake up your phone you become immersed in cover feed. Cover feed replaces the lock screen and home screen. It’s a window into what’s happening with your friends – friends finishing a bike race, your family sharing a meal or an article about your favorite sports team. These are the beautiful, immersive experiences that you get through Home.

You might have missed these updates before, but now they’re a central part of the Home experience. Since Home is both your lock screen and home screen, the content comes right to you. You can flip through to see more stories, and double tap to like what you see.

Cover feed is for those in-between moments ­like waiting in line at the grocery store or between classes ­when you want to see what’s going on in your world.

Chat heads
With chat heads you can keep chatting with friends even when you’re using other apps. When friends send you messages, a chat head appears with your friend’s face, so you see exactly who you’re chatting with. Messages reach you no matter what you’re doing – whether you’re checking email, browsing the web, or listening to music.

You can move chat heads around and respond to messages. And since SMS is integrated into Facebook Messenger for Android, chat heads include Facebook messages as well as texts.

Notifications
Cover feed is great for seeing everything going on in the world. But when something happens that’s more important and directed at you, like a friend posting on your timeline, you’ll receive notifications with their profile pictures.

To open notifications, just tap them. And if you don’t want to deal with them right now, you can just swipe to hide them and keep flipping through cover feed until you want them back.

Launcher/Apps
It’s as easy to get to your apps in Home as it is on any other phone. Swipe up to see your favorite apps in the launcher. There’s also a screen containing all of your apps, and you can drag your favorite apps to the launcher.

At Facebook‘s mobile strategy event yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was surprisingly confident of Google‘s inability and unwillingness to prevent Facebook from rolling out Home on Android, because of the search engine commitment to opennness.

But when Google realizes Facebook Home is hijacking Android, drawing users to the social network’s services and ads, away from Google‘s, things might turn ugly.

Below are Zuckerberg’s comments on the matter:

Zuckerberg on the relationship with Google

Google is aware of what we are doing and we talked to them about this and all of that. But fundamentally Android is just a more open system, so we don’t have to work directly with them in order to build an experience like this. So we can even go deeper that we’re talking about today. They’ve designed Android from the ground up to support deep integration.

Can Google stop Facebook Home?

We think that Google takes its commitment to openness in this ecosystem really seriously. These features that we are plugging into aren’t like a surface feature of Android that you can easily paper over… they’re operating system really is designed from the ground up to support these things. And it is theoretically possible that they go back on there commitment to openness but I don’t think that they will and it will take a lot of effort, a lot of really concerted effort to change the rules of something like this and make the system different. So it won’t just be some subtle thing that they choose to do. It will have to be a complete 180˚ in their philosophy and promise of openness to the community if they go back.

But what if they decide to do it?

If 20% of the time that people are spending on their phones are in [Facebook] Home or in other Facebook experiences then I really think that they’re going to have a hard time making a rational decision to do that and looking at themselves in the face and saying that they are building the best experience that they can… Every company that I know wakes up in the morning trying to build the best experience. And Google too!

The First was designed by Facebook engineers and built by HTC

Undoubtedly, HTC likes firsts.

After launching the first Android phone (G1), almost 5-years ago, the Taiwanese phone maker does it again today, unveiling the HTC First, with the Facebook “Home” user experience built-in.

For its first “Facebook Home” branded phone, the social network took a page out of Google‘s playbook and was very much involved, early on, in its design as well as the choice of the hardware components.

The First will be available in four colors (black, white, red and pale blue) and ship next week, on April 12th, for $100, with a 2-year contact commitment with AT&T. The smartphone full specifications are here.

“The HTC First is the ultimate social phone,” said HTC CEO, Peter Chou, speaking at the Facebook media event this morning. “It’s the only phone that has Facebook Home preloaded and well optimized.”

Facebook Home features include:

1. Cover Feed, a constant, fresh stream of photos and updates directly from your news feed and is always present as soon as you wake up the phone
2. Notifications that appear right on your home screen
3. Chat Heads, the mobile messenger that lets you jump in and out of conversations while you multitask
4. and, App Launcher, which lets you view your favorite apps and post right to Facebook on the same spot

Facebook Phone is not enough to save HTC

Now if history is any guide, HTC will probably not benefit from its first mover advantage, as other partners such as Alcatel Onetouch, Huawei or Sony release their own Facebook phones.

The Taiwanese company continues to struggle against falling revenues and market share. For February, HTC reported revenues down almost 44% from last year, the sixteenth consecutive month in which sales have fallen, year-on-year. And according to IDC, HTC had a 4.6% market share at the end of 2012, down from 10.3% a year earlier.

Below is the video of HTC CEO Peter Chou unveiling the First at the Facebook media event.

Bouygues Telecom's Winnovation is scouting Silicon Valley for apps that show consumers the advantage of its upcoming 4G network

Telecom operators from around the world have set up offices in Silicon Valley to ‘scout’ local innovation and bring it to their home market.

Winnovation is one of them, the scouting outpost of Bouygues Telecom, France‘s third mobile carrier.

Winnovation is looking to do about 3 deals or ‘contracts’ this year (but no direct investments), out of a deal flow of 400 startups. Ideally, the potential companies should already be working with local telcos like AT&T or Verizon.

Looking for 4G apps, video

Located in San Jose, Calif., the capital of Silicon Valley, Winnovation’s 2-person team is actively looking for mobile apps that take full advantage of the 4G network bandwidth.

“Bouygues Telecom will be the first in France with a 4G network this Fall,” explains Winnovation CEO, Stephane Allaire. “And we need apps that show consumers the benefits of 4G speeds versus our competitors’ 3G”.

To the dismay of its local competition – Orange and SFR – Bouygues Telecom was allowed to deploy its 4G network using its current frequency band (1.8GHz), allowing for a quick roll-out over its existing infrastructure.

“For months now, French consumers had 4G smartphones but no network to use it on or apps to showcase its benefits. We’re here to change that.”

Below is a short video of my interview with Allaire.

Did Andy Rubin leave Google to reinvent Android at Facebook?

I know it sounds completely crazy but anything is possible in Silicon Valley!

And he won’t be the first high-level executive to leave Google anyway.

Sheryl Sandberg left her lofty vice-president position at Google for the #2 spot at Facebook, while Marissa Mayer now leads Yahoo and co-founder Sergey Brin is at Google X, which is really his own private lab to develop products totally unrelated to Google‘s businesses.

So where’s Andy Rubin? One thing is for sure, he’s gone from Android. I heard from ex-Googlers this week that he was hard to work with, but that ultimately he was “always right!” That’s to me, the sign of a true leader a-la Steve Jobs.

From Android to Motorola, to Facebook?

Is Andy Rubin building a Facebook phone?

I’ve known Andy for years, although never worked for him, so when I learned 2-weeks ago that he left Android, it was clear to me that it was not voluntary. Android is his baby, so to speak.

I immediately thought he could take over Motorola, at least the product side. They’re loosing it. If Motorola doesn’t come out with a great product this year, they’re gone. Maybe it was Google‘s strategy after all. Maybe not.

But today’s invite for Facebook‘s Android event, next Thursday, got me thinking again. Did Facebook make an offer Andy couldn’t refuse, to re-imagine Android for example, no strings attached, no budget. Forget about Chrome and other useless Google services. A Facebook phone perhaps. Or just a beautiful, simple, more social, mobile operating system.

And did I mention that Andy was busy on Facebook lately, with a new cover photo, a profile picture, etc?

That would give Google a run for their money, wouldn’t it? More next Thursday.

Open Garden 'bonds' several data connections to increase Internet access

You read it right, free Internet access (WiFi, 3G/4G…).

So where’s the catch? Well, you’ll have to share your data connection too. Sounds fair to me.

To start, just download and install Open Garden on your Android smartphone (Apple will not allow it on the App Store. Stupid!), Mac or Windows PC. If you’re on AT&T, you’ll have to get it directly on the Open Garden website. The carrier asked Google to hide it from its customers on Google Play. Another stupid anti-consumer move.

Seamless sharing, faster connection

Once running, the software will then automatically look for other Open Garden users. If you have already a data connection, because you’re at a Starbucks or using your 3G/4G smartphone, it’ll automatically get shared with others, although your data gets priority.

Your connection speed could also get faster as Open Garden will ‘bond’ available bandwidth from nearby community members and make it available to you.

“The user benefit is clear: free and faster Internet access for all your wireless devices, when you need it the most,” says Micha Benoliel, the CEO of Open Garden. “And no tinkering around, configuring your smartphone tethering option through Bluetooth or WiFi. It’s automatic, seamless.”

The idea of peer-to-peer Internet access sharing is obviously not new, pioneered by Spanish-based startup FON. But unlike FON, Open Garden doesn’t require to buy a proprietary hardware WiFi access point to be part of its community. It’s just software.

With it’s ‘overlay’ network, San Francisco, Calif.-based Open Garden is also competing with mobile carriers ‘HotSpot’ option, usually priced at $20/month and up, as well as HotSpots providers like Boingo or AWG.

Below is a short interview of CEO Micha Benoliel that I did earlier this month at the Launch Festival in San Francisco.

An indoor map of the Valley Fair mall in Silicon Valley from Pole Star's Mall Buddy application (Android)

Indoor location is becoming hot again.

On the heels of Apple‘s recent acqui-hire of indoor positioning startup WiFiSLAM, for an estimated $20 million, competitor Pole Star unveiled NAO Cloud, a cloud-based indoor GPS service.

The promise? Allow telecom operators, system integrators and large venues like shopping malls, airports, university campus or museums to deploy indoor location services quicker – days vs. months – and at a much lower cost.

“Apple‘s acquisition of WiFiSLAM confirms the strategic value of indoor location and its impact on the future of commerce,” explains Pole Star CEO, Christian Carle. “NAO Cloud is the next generation of indoor positioning technology. It’s entirely cloud-based for rapid deployment, leverages many wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, sensors…) and, most importantly, it’s compatible with all the major smartphones on the market today, including iPhone and Android.”

Indoor location helps navigate inside buildings, revolutionize commerce

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Pole Star has over 10-years experience developing and deploying indoor location technology Carle says, with large customers including Europe’s second largest airport (Charles De Gaulle) and many large malls across the continent.

“Unlike all the other indoor location startups that are still at the piloting phase, Pole Star has real paying customers with more than 53 million square feet covered by our technology, in 16 countries and with a 3D accuracy of 2 meters!”

With indoor location, users can get turn-by-turn directions inside buildings, just as they would outdoor with GPS. While retailers can target consumers as they get closer to their shops, sending promotions and coupons directly to their smartphone.

“Indoor location services bring real convenience for shoppers, helping them navigate inside buildings, while giving retailers the opportunity to increase sales and improve customer loyalty,” Carle adds.

Another major player in the indoor positioning market is Google with over 10,000 floor plans in 13 countries. However, indoor Google Maps only works on Android leaving Apple (WiFiSLAM), Microsoft (Bing Venue Maps), Nokia (In-Location alliance) and Blackberry looking for alternatives.

Below is a short video interview of Pole Star’s CEO I did last week, talking about the company and its technology: