SF New Tech

Have you ever had that moment where you wished you could un-send a text?

Of course you have, you live in the 21st century and own a smart phone like any other well adjust person who isn’t stuck under a rock or an Ostridge with its head in the sand.

With all the technological advancements in the world today, you’d think that the auto correct feature on smart phones would be, well, smart or at least a bit more intuitive. We’ve all sent a text (or nine) that we didn’t proof read first before sending that may or may not have ended us up in a awkward situation. If that wasn’t true we wouldn’t have funny things to post on Facebook like the ever popular blog “Damn You Auto correct”.

Ionnis, co-founder of Fleksy, a new iOS app solves this major problem and flaw of smart type technology. Frustrated with smart phone typing errors from typing on a glass keyboard and the sub par auto corrections, Ionnis and his partner, Kostas set out to create a app to make sure that nobody ever has this problem again.

Fleksy, a product of Syntellia was based off of the following idea:
When typing with a physical keyboard you don’t spend much time looking at the keys if at all. More time is spent looking at the screen to see what you typed. Now what if you were blind? It would be impossible to type out anything   correctly. Ionnis and Kostas thought if they could create a keyboard app that a blind person could use successfully, anyone could use it. That’s the idea that set the benchmark for Fleksy.

Eighteen months ago is when they started to develop such an app. Version one was released about six weeks ago to blind people only via the iOS “voice over” function. One week ago Fleksy was released to all iOS users to try for free. Use the full version of Fleksy to text and tweet or copy and paste into emails.

Currently Fleksy is iOS only, however they are working with cell phone manufacturers to have it built into keyboards on future devices. So, sadly for now all you Android and Windows phone users will have to wait.

 CrowdFlower, a leader in crowdsourcing microtasks, has created a new way to moderate images: RTFM (Real Time Foto Moderator). While it’s not quite the normal acronym that is associated with these letters (Read The F*ing Manual) it’s still rather amusing. RTFM is a crowdsourced photo moderation service provided by CrowdFlower.

The way it works is simple:

Send in your images
1. Send CrowdFlower the URL of an image via an HTTP request to their API.

Images go out to the crowd
2. RTFM sends images to CrowdFlower’s online global labor pool of more than 3.5 million workers. Moderators use an Image Wall interface that lets them efficiently screen images at scale.

Get results back
3. RTFM sends back results via web hook with an average turnaround time under 15 minutes. Each result is calculated based on the input of multiple trusted moderators.

RTFM is the first of many crowdsourcing web apps to come from CrowdFlower, a SF-based tech company founded in 2008. Since then, CrowdFlower has moderated close to 50 million photos.

Moderating photos, especially those from big social networks or sites, takes time and lots of resources. CrowdFlower recognized an opportunity to create a more efficient way to moderate these images by leveraging the crowd, and specifically targeted small app developers, community managers and/or anyone with a user base and a photo upload feature. The result was faster, more accurate and cost effective solutions.

RTFM pricing is structured on a per-image basis, however the first 500 images are FREE! Depending on which service plan you sign up for, images cost between $0.008-$0.02 per image.

Some of CrowdFlower’s clients, use RTFM to moderate 100% of photo content on their site, while others simply use it to get through the “night shift’ when their internal moderation employees go home. Some companies use it for a “first pass” scenario: anything that gets flagged on their site goes through RTFM. Then the real employees from company “X” review problematic images and decide on a course of action. This allows companies to minimize delays for photo moderation while keeping user experience positive.

And now a word from our sponsor:

Do you use crowdsourcing? Want to learn more about it? Wonder if it can help your business?
Then CrowdConf 2012 is a must attend conference for you.

CrowdConf 2012 will held on Tuesday, October 23 at Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA. Tickets are now available at www.CrowdConf12.eventbrite.com

Learn how businesses use crowdsourcing to make Big Data bite-sized, fund and launch ideas, complete tasks big and small, design content and marketing materials that get noticed, and get ahead of the competition.

Editors Note: For being a SFNT loyalist we want to give you a 25% discount to CrowdConf 2012 by using this code: FRIENDS25

Also, if you want to get in for free, you’ll have to make an extra effort on sharing this blog post in your social networks and don’t forget to mention SFNT, CrowdFlower and of course CrowdConf. The most creative tweets, posts, etc., get the free goodies. Make sure to tweet us (@SFNEWTECH), me (@JMOTA3),  and CrowdFlower (@CrowdFlower) so we can keep track of the most creative posts.

Travelling by car these days can be a bit much to deal with because everyone is always on the go (traffic) and gas prices aren’t quite so friendly on your pocketbook. Waze, a very intuitive, free app for your smartphone (iOS and Android) helps you get from point A to B in several different ways.

First and foremost, Waze has always been saving you time by being a fun, community-based GPS traffic and navigation app. Currently, with its latest update (3.2), you’re now able to save money by making it easy to save on gas, and who doesn’t want that? Waze helps you find the cheapist gas around you, or along your route. It also has specials at select gas stations. Simply redeem your digital coupon when you arive at the participation station and save. All the pricing, much like everything at Waze is updated by you, the community.

Another new feature is adding a stop along your “route”. You can choose through multiple “Search by Category” features. This feature is kind of like Foursquare’s explore option that they just added, however you get realtime ETA to both your stop and final destination.

Download your free app today and start saving time and money in the coolest waze possible.

Another amazing SF New Tech in the books. There were free tacos, a packed house with hundreds of great connections being made. Along with the usual amount of triple digit connections, came the cards, oh lord, the stacks of cards. We love meeting you all, and your cards are great, we just don’t like the amount of time it takes to log all that info associated with them. Not to mention all the trees (“Mommy what are trees?”) it takes to make said products.

Enter CardFlick, a SF New Tech vet that solves the above mentioned headache/conundrum. “CardFlick is a team of Designers/Hackers/hustlers who believe in the power of design”.  Currently, Cardflick is only available in the ever so popular iOS format (Android coming soon, shhh), and with it, you can create a beautiful digital business card from your Instagram and Facebook photos with their freshly released “InstaCards”.

The InstaCards feature is great in that in just a few simple steps (background, design, colors, image, and info), you will have successfully created a personal business card for you to share or “Flick” with all your connections, regardless if they are CardFlick users or not (more on this a bit) . Once you get to this point, “Flicking” is, well, just what it sounds like. You Flick your card out into the room and anyone in the area who has the app can see and receive it. Now however, you can flick your card to specific users in the room, you know, just in case you don’t want everyone around to have all your info.

Of course, CardFlick works best if both parties have the app, which is currently free (during beta only). And if you flick your card, it instantly shows up on our phone. There have been several other apps that share info, BUMP would be the only one worth mentioning, but what makes CardFlick better is the ease of use. It’s just so simple to create amazing, free, cards to exchange on the spot. Also, there are plenty of great themes, and plenty more on the way.

Now, for all the people out there who don’t want to join another site/service amongst the endless sea that are already out there, don’t worry, we can still take your card and flick ours straight to your email if you prefer. Either way, when next we meet, “Lets Flick”.

As we gear up for what is going to be the 4th SF New Tech Japan Night on April 25th, one of the Japan Night alums caught the eye of many at SxSW. What Americans think of Japanese culture is quite interesting. From Sumo wrestlers, Sony Playstations and Samurais, our view of the Japanese come from books, games and movies.

So, on flip side, it is interesting to see how the Japanese App makers want to market themselves here in the US.

Read more…

It’s a wrap! Hey, Thanks to everyone who participated in-person and on-line at the SF New Tech Japan Night III. Here is the summary of presenters and some of their thoughts on presenting on our stage. See you at the next Japan Night and of course see you on USTREAM live!

Read the full article here.

AT&T, a Friend of SF New Tech, and the global nonprofit One Economy recently launched Applications for Good, a unique contest that challenges developers to design public-purpose mobile applications to help low-income users improve their lives. AT&T and One Economy are offering a total of $50,000 in prizes to software developers who design applications in the following categories: Jobs, Health, Education and Banking. The contest began on March 14 and will run through May 16, 2011. Enter the contest and view more details at www.applicationsforgood.org.

Photo Courtesy of Julie Blaustein

Our friends @ btrax posted a Part 2 summary of our Social Data Revolution’s panel’s discussion on how to design ways of interacting with people and how to construct metrics for using social data. Read it here http://ht.ly/46xue

Photo courtesy of Julie Blaustein

On Wednesday night, we had a different kind of event which brought our “crib” out of our “start-up” comfort zone to the delight of our 300 loyal SF New Tech fans in the audience.  Andreas Weigend moderated a panel discussion about an interesting inflection point in our web world – the Social Data Revolution.  Our friends @ btrax in a Part 1 summary of the captured some of the magic around the panel’s discussion on how to design ways of interacting with people and how to construct metrics for using social data.  Read it here http://ht.ly/43vOS