U.K. Gov’t Aims Cash At Driverless Cars, Internet Of Things And Digital Currencies

Giving his final budget before the U.K. general election this May, and inevitable sales pitch to the U.K. electorate, Chancellor George Osborne has announced several tranches of cash for nascent technologies — including £100 million for driverless car technology; £40 million for research into the Internet of Things; and £10 million to go towards investigating the “future potential” of digital currency technology.

The budget also set out plans for a so-called ‘Google tax’ on diverted profits. So, should a Conservative (or Tory-led) government be elected to office later this year we can expect to see it taking extra money off Silicon Valley-based tech giants and putting some of that cash to work to try developing homegrown alternatives to SV tech.

There’s precious little detail about how these tech-focused cash injections will be spent at this point, beyond specifying they are intended for research initiatives. This is really about listing (and quantifying) a few tech priorities for a future Tory government.

After (fixed and mobile) broadband, which Osborne pledged £600 million for in this budget, driverless car tech comes out top of the tech priorities list. (Although he also announced £140 million for research into “infrastructures and cities of the future” — aka smart cities — which is pretty vague but will likely shake out into technology investments of some sort.)

The focus on driverless car tech is not surprising, given it’s been an area of interest for the current coalition government for some time. It named it as an infrastructure investment priority at the end of 2013, and following that up with an official robotics strategy document last summer which talked up testing autonomous vehicles in the wild.

U.K. driverless technology testing centres are also being set up and relevant regulations reviewed. Most recently a government reportgave the green light for hands-free driverless car tech to be tested on U.K. public roads. The government has also previously announced £19 million in funding to help establish driverless car testing centres around the U.K.

When it comes to the Internet of Things, Osborne didn’t put much meat on the bones of the budget funding announcement. The IoT was generally dubbed “the next stage of the information revolution”, and the Chancellor unboxed the hackneyed connected fridge cliche during the speech — albeit managing to make it make even less sense than it normally does.

“So should – to use a ridiculous example – someone have two kitchens, they will be able to control both fridges from the same mobile phone,” he said.

Urban transport and medical devices were also mentioned in relation to IoT.

Digital currencies, which are pegged for a modest investment, didn’t get any direct mention in the speech. But speaking at Disrupt London last October, Ed Vaizey, the U.K.’s minister for the digital economy, noted the government is keeping an open mind here and “looking at opportunities”.

“We want to make these e-payments faster, quicker, we want to make it as safe as possible. And we want to look at the kind of technologies that the digital currencies use to allow end systems to operate in a de-centralized way, with no intermediaries. We want to look at how the new technologies can benefit consumers and the wider economy. So that’s something the Treasury is very interested in,” Vaizey added at the time.

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PlayStation’s Vue Live Streaming Cord-Cutter TV Service Launches In The U.S.

PlayStation is officially debuting its live streaming video service in the U.S. today, launching PlayStation Vue in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia with pricing beginning at $50 per month. The on-demand and live-streaming video service includes content partners like Fox News, AMC and Turner Broadcasting and offers channels like CBS, Discovery, Animal Planet, Syfy, Food Network and many more, depending on the package you select.

Vue was originally announced late last year, and is intended to turn the PlayStation family of home consoles into a more powerful all-in-one media solution, in addition to their role as gaming devices. In addition to live broadcast and on-demand content, Vue also offers trending channels, granular personalization over the interface, cloud-stored DVR for recording tagged shows for instant storage for up to 28 days post-air date, without storage limits, and new discovery tools.

Packages don’t require any kind of commitment beyond a month, and come in three flavours at launch. Access is $50 and provides CBC, Fox and NBC as well as over 45 additional networks. Core offers all that, plus regional sports networks and more movie channels at $60 per month. An Elite offering is $70, provides access to everything in the other two packages, and also offers an additional 25 “lifestyle, music and family channels.”

It’s available on both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles, but only in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia at launch. There’s a wider launch planned for later this year, and Sony also intends to bring Vue to iPad and other devices in addition to its own hardware.

Vue comes alongside other over-the-top services, including Sling TV, and ahead of a similar service from Apple reportedly launching this fall.

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With $1 Million In New Funding, Dattch Lesbian Dating App Rebrands To Her

Dattch, the Pinterest-inspired dating app for queer women, has today re-launched with a new name (Her) as well as $1 million in new funding from investors such as Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian, YC’s Garry Tan and Michael Birch.

Founder Robyn Exton said that people too often thought Dattch stood for some combination of ‘dyke’ or ‘butch’ or ‘snatch’, and that ‘Her’ more closely represents the evolution of the product. “We are all Her,” said Exton. For the record, Dattch originally stood for ‘Date Catch.’

“I actually thought it was a rather clever combination of words at the time, but almost everyone thought it stood for ‘snatch,'” said Exton.

But it’s not only the name that has been given a makeover.

Her employs more of a match-based approach to communication than the old Dattch did. In the old version of the app, users could interact with other users profiles with total freedom, liking pictures or comments or sending direct messages. Users could see every person who had visited their profile and receive notifications for every like and message.

On Her, users only enter into a conversation when both parties have liked something on that users profile.

Exton says that 75 percent of the time, that was the usual behavior they were seeing on Dattch, so the shift made sense during the re-branding.







Her also focuses a good deal of attention on editorial content, offering up cool event and activity ideas where queer women can meet and connect. Exton told TechCrunch that the team is curating the content themselves, receiving local info from event partners and working with journalists in various markets to write informative community pieces.

Her is currently available in the UK, Ireland, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Miami, with half a million matches made on the platform.

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Fradio’s New App Lets Anyone Be A DJ, Broadcast Live Radio To Friends And Fans

A new application called Fradio is officially launching today, offering a service that allows anyone to become a DJ, broadcasting their favorite tracks to their friends or fans, and even talking over the tunes with a push of a button in order to engage their audience. The app, which is backed by Australian music service Guvera, is making its debut at the SXSW music festival in Austin where a number of artists, including Steve Aoki, A-Trak, and Crookerwill, be among its first testers.

Guvera may not be a household name here in the U.S., like competitors Spotify, Beats, or Rdio may be. But that’s because the service’s focus to date has been on emerging markets. Launched in 2008, and backed by $45 fromAMMA, Guvera has largely been targeting the “rest of the world” with its service, including regions like Southeast Asia, India, and Latin America, for example.

Today, the service is live in 20 markets, but is most popular in India and Indonesia, where it has music licensing deals with both major and local labels.

In more recent months, the company has been working to expand its footprint to other regions. It signed a deal with Lenovo last year to get its app pre-installed on millions of smartphones in over 60 markets. And just this year, Guvera scooped up the U.K. music service Blinkbox when its former owner, retail giant Tesco, unloaded it alongside their TV, books, and movie-on-demand offerings.

That deal brought an additional 2.5 million customers to Guvera, which now claims a user base of nearly 9 million.

Like several of its streaming competitors, the company charges customers for access to its premium, on-demand service at $9.99 per month – the same as Spotify. However, in emerging markets, it has also experimented with different models, including day-, week- and month-long passes to the premium product.







With the new app Fradio, the idea is to give Guvera another entry point into the more fiercely competitive streaming industry in the U.S. and other developed markets, by offering a differentiated experience. Unlike apps which let users build out custom playlists, Fradio users can not only create their own playlists, but they can broadcast them live, in real-time, to listeners. And they can introduce the tracks or chat with their fans with a press of button, which softens the music in the background, allowing for a DJ-like experience.

While this may appeal to would-be DJ’s who want to share music with friends, the larger goal is to get artists on board. By using Fradio, they would have another means of engaging with their fans – and that’s something the company may also want to monetize in the future, it says, which would give the artists access to a different kind of revenue sharing deal as well.

“We see this as a real opportunity for rewarding artists,” explains Guvera CTO Damien King, speaking to us from SXSW in Austin. “There’s been a lot of talk about how music streaming services are not providing enough value to artists – so this is part of our strategy. We have a number of things we’re doing in 2015 that are trying to address payments to artists,” he says.



At present, Guvera brings in revenue through its subscription service, video and audio ads played for its free users, and through its branded channels on Guvera. These channels let companies market their own products and services in the service. For example, a Beats channel would let you browse new headphones while listening to a curated playlist. But when Guvera’s deals with music labels come up for renewal, the company wants to negotiate on different sorts of revenue share deals for artists, too – including those for the “live performances” where artists talk to their fans via Fradio.

Guvera’s licensing deals vary by market, but it has the major labels on board in most markets. In the U.S., it has longtime partner Universal’s support, as well as Sony, but Warner is still being signed.



Fradio, which has been in beta testing since the fall, is now publicly available as a free download for iOS and Android, and will offer a Guvera subscription ($9.99/mo USD) through in-app purchase. This will also allow Fradio DJ’s to re-arrange track order and take requests, among other things. Without the subscription, DJ’s can only use pre-populated playlists from Fradio instead of building their own, nor can they really engage their fans. That encourages conversions to the premium product, the company believes.

“We think radio needs to come into 2015,” says King. “The younger generation wants something more interactive…they want something where they can chat together, listen to music together, and where they can interact with their artists. We believe it’s much more compelling than existing radio.te”

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Launcher, The Banned iOS Widget That Let You Launch Other Apps, Is Back

With iOS 8, Apple introduced a way for mobile applications to add widgets to its Notification Center that offered snapshots of information, like today’s weather, stock quotes, headlines, and more. But one clever app called Launcher took advantage of the new functionality to turn its widget into a tool that allowed you to tap to launch other apps installed on your phone. Last fall, Apple booted the app from the App Store for unknown reasons. But starting today, Launcher has returned, nearly unchanged, indicating a slight relaxing of the rules on Apple’s side.

Apple, explains Launcher’s creator Greg Gardner, is “now okay with the concept,” he says of receiving permission to bring his app back to the iTunes App Store.

In case you missed it the first time around,the Launcher app itself offered little functionality beyond configuring its included widget. The idea was to offer a way for you to add shortcuts to your most-used applications and various tasks (e.g. like placing a phone call or posting a tweet) to the Notification Center in iOS 8.

For instance, you could add a button for calling your most-often-dialed FaceTime contact, or a shortcut for directions to your most-frequented routes, and more. The company also offered an upgrade to a paid version that removed the “Sponsored Launcher” spot, which served as a promotional tool to market other apps.

We theorized once that the Sponsored spot may have contributed to the App Store ban, but what it really came down to was Apple’s policies around how it intended Notification Center widgets to be used. At the time of Launcher’s ban, it seems Apple hadn’t anticipated some of the more innovative use cases for its widget technology.

That problem reared its head again when Apple rejected, then later approved,calculator widgets like the popular one from PCalc, for example.







According to Gardner, the new version of his Launcher app basically offers the same functionality as the one Apple previously rejected. It even includes the Sponsored app, which users can pay $3.99 to remove.

Gardner explains that after being banned from the App Store, he continued to test what Apple found acceptable by submitting new apps based off Launcher functionality. Most of these were also rejected, except for one called “Music Launcher” whose rejection was overturned in December and was then released in January. Apparently, this app was allowed because it didn’t actually launch other apps – it only called the MediaPlayer API to start music.

In other words, until recently, Apple still had a problem with apps that solely existed as tools to launch other apps via a widget interface.

But a few weeks ago, Gardner says he resubmitted a stripped-down version of Launcher that only allowed you to set up launchers to call, email, FaceTime and message others, which he dubbed “Contact Launcher.” It, too, was initially rejected but was later overturned after a lengthy appeals process. With that approval in hand, the developer returned to Apple and asked why Contact Launcher was allowed, but Launcher itself was not.

With the first approval setting a precedent of sorts, Apple re-reviewed Launcher and made the decision to allow it back in the App Store, too. While the app is officially slated to appear live in all markets on Thursday, it has popped up early in Japan, Korea, and China just before midnight their time. Because of the press attention it had previously received, the app has now been downloaded by a number of users in the regions where it’s available,prompting Gardner to have to disclose its public debut a day earlier than he anticipated.

Gardner says he doesn’t really know why Apple changed its mind, but speculates that, based on what an App Store reviewer once said, the company starts off with a more conservative stance regarding how new iOS features are to be used, and then loosens up its policies over time.

Launcher really was a handy tool for getting to your most-used apps and tasks quickly, and it will be nice to put it to use again. When Launcher goes live in your market, you’ll be able to download it from the homepagehere or directly from the iTunes App Storehere. The new version also now allows paying users to make the icons smaller and hide the labels to make the widget more compact, the company notes.

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Head-To-Head Mobile Fantasy App Draft Raises $3.5 Million Led By Upfront Ventures

We all know that fantasy sports is a huge and growing business. But when it comes to fantasy sports on mobile, most apps are just companion experiences used by fantasy sports players to track how their teams are doing. A new fantasy sports app called Drafthopes to change that, and has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding to do so.

Draft was founded by Jeremy Levine and Nicolo Giorgi, the guys who had previously built daily fantasy sports site StarStreet andsold it to Draftkings last year. After that acquisition closed in August, the two wasted no time in moving onto their next venture.

The Draft team hoped to create a real-money fantasy gaming experience that was built specifically for mobile. Levine notes that most daily fantasy players are doing their picks on a desktop with several browser windows open and spreadsheets to track the value of players each day. But that doesn’t translate very well to the smaller screen.

For Draft, the founders wanted to take all the fun of daily fantasy sports games but make it easy to enjoy on a smartphone. To make the game appealing on mobile, Levine and his team borrowed some of the mechanics of popular turn-based games and applied them to the real-money fantasy sports world.

So they drew inspiration from games like Words With Friends, Draw Something, and QuizUp, all of which rely on asynchronous turn-based gameplay between challengers. In Draft, players take turns drafting players against one another to see who can assemble the best team.

“It’s like Words With Friends, but instead of making a word, you’re drafting a team,” Levine told me.

Users can either play for free — if they’re not confident in their team — or match up to play for real money. Players can choose from different stakes and levels of payout, from a $5.50 match with a $10 prize to a $55 wager which pays out $100 to the winner.

The app launched on iOS in December, but already it’s attracted the interest of investors to the tune of $3.5 million. That funding was led by Upfront Ventures, and includes participation from Advancit Capital, David Tisch’s BoxGroup, The Chernin Group, and Nas’ QueensBridge Venture Partners. With the new capital, the founders hope to grow the team from four to nine in the coming months, mostly looking to hire iOS developers and engineers.

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Facebook Introduces Free Friend-To-Friend Payments Through Messages

When you chat with friends about settling debts or splitting the bill, Facebook doesn’t want you to have to open another app like PayPal or Venmo to send them money. So today it unveiled a new payments feature for Facebook Messenger that lets you connect your Visa or Mastercard debit card and tap a “$” button to send friends money on iOS,Android, and desktop with zero fees. Facebook Messenger payments will roll out first in the U.S. over the coming months.

Facebook And PayPal: Frenemies?

Rather than lean on a payments company like PayPal to power the feature, Facebook built it from the ground up from its experience processing over 1 million payments a day through its ads and games platforms. Transactions and payment info are encrypted, and Facebook says “These payment systems are kept in a secured environment that is separate from other parts of the Facebooknetwork and that receive additional monitoring and control,” from an anti-fraud team.

By making payments part of its oft-used messaging service rather than a standalone app, Facebook is looking to edge out dedicated P2P payment competitors like Venmo/PayPal, Google Wallet, and Square Cash, which people open less frequently. That’s the same strategy as the Square Cash-powered Snapcash feature Snapchat launched in November.

PayPal gave a statement (emphasis mine) saying:


We have had a great relationship withFacebook since 2008 and currently work closely together to deliver easy payments on a global scale for its games and ads businesses.

PayPal has always taken a partnership approach to payments and we will continue to work with Facebook and many other companies on new payments experiences that make it easier for people to send and receive money on both thePayPal and Braintree platforms.



When I asked a PayPal spokesperson if the company views Facebook Messenger payments as a “competitor,” they carefully avoided that word but eventually admitted “it does have similar technology and does a similar thing to what Venmo does.” While Venmo makes transfers with most debit cards free, Facebook’s free service will undercut PayPal’s 2.9 percent plus $0.30 fee per transaction from debit cards.

“We’re not building a payments business here,” Facebook’s product manager on the feature Steve Davis tells me. Instead, Davis says the goal is to offer P2P payments for free to make Messenger “more useful, expressive and delightful.” Since Facebook makes so much money on ads, $3.59 billion in Q4, it doesn’t have to monetize payments directly. Facebook just needs to keep people locked into its platform and seeing News Feed ads by making Messenger as helpful as possible.

Payments In Messenger

TechCrunch was the first to report Facebook was building peer-to-peer payments into Messenger back in October when we attained hacked screenshots dug out of Messenger’s code by developer Andrew Aude. Since then, I’ve heard from several sources that Facebook was doing intense internal testing of the feature.

In the meantime, Facebook worked with PayPal, Braintree and Stripe to power auto-fill of billing details for e-commerce checkouts, and built a Buy button for making purchases from the News Feed.

Davis says the product evolved from a different initial but was cagey about exactly how long Facebook has been working on the feature. He did note that it was well in the works when the company poached PayPal president David Marcus to run its Messenger division.

“We wanted to test this and make sure we had really hit a high bar because money is extremely important.” Now its payments in Messenger is ready for a gradual public rollout stateside. Here’s how it works.



Once users get the feature, they’ll see a “$” button in the Messenger message composer next to the options to send a photo or sticker. When they tap it, Facebook will ask them to enter their debit card info. Users won’t have to fiddle with finding and entering bank account and routing info, making it easier than some alternatives, but they can only use Visa and Mastercard debit cards. Facebook decided against allowing credit cards because they would entail fees and it didn’t want users to get charged if they didn’t understand.

For extra security, users are prompted to set an in-app payments passcode or Apple TouchID fingerprint to confirm transfers, though they can opt out of this extra authentication in the settings. If users already have a debit card on file with Facebook from gaming, ads or donations, they can use that, too.

Once the $ button is tapped, users enter the dollar amount and hit Pay. The money is instantly taken from their debit account and delivered to the recipient’s debit account. Facebook never holds the money, though the receiver’s bank will usually take a few days to make the funds available as is standard. Both users see a confirmation message detailing the transfer status and time.

In case anything looks fishy, Facebook will ask users some extra financial security questions before a transfer goes through. Afterwards, users can see all their previous payments and funds received in the Payments History section of Messenger’s settings.

“It’s obviously not a feature you’re going to use 10 times a day,” say Davis. “But when you do need to send money, this is probably going to be the best way to do it.”

Convenience Is King

Davis explains that “conversations about money are already happening on Messenger,” as people chat about bar tabs, splitting dinner bills, and sharing the cost of an Uber. “What we want to do is make it easy to finish the conversation in the same place you started. You don’t have to switch to another app,” Davis tells me.

Now the question is whether this is the first step towards Messenger becoming a more full-featured experience. Messenger could follow the trend of monolithic chat apps of Asia like WeChat that let you make payments, e-commerce purchases, hail taxis and more. Messenger is going to have announcements at next week’s f8 developer conference, and we could see more platform ambitions from it then.

While only in the U.S. for now, if Facebook opened up Messenger payments internationally, it could help migrant workers send money home much cheaper than through high-fee remittance services. But for now, Facebook says it just wants to get friend-to-friend payments right in the States. “We’ll consider where to take it after that once we get everything nailed down,” says Davis.

When people’s money is at stake, there’s no room for bugs.

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