Kickstarter: TILT, The ...

Anyone who has ever used a MacBook Pro can tell you that they can get awfully toasty after a little while. Countless laptop cooling solutions have hit store shelves over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one quite as handsome as the TILT by madMINDS . Designed by Clinton and Spencer Yee, the TILT is a cooling pad designed specifically for use with the unibody Macbook Pros. To their credit, using a TILT with a Macbook Pro looks completely natural thanks to the cooling pad’s slim profile and the faux-aluminum look of the TILT’s polycarbonate body. Setup is both simple and secure — just latch your MBP into place with the TILT’s patent-pending locking mechanism, and plug a cable into your USB port. Easy peasy. There’s a lot to like about the TILT, but my favorite feature is probably the most easily overlooked. Flip the thing over and you’ll find a tiny screw hole that fits a standard tripod mount. The TILT’s locking latch is apparently robust enough to keep the whole package stable and usable even if you lash to the the top of a tripod. It’s a thoughtful if minor addition that’s sure to please videographers and fans of standing desks alike. The Kickstarter project currently has 77 backers, and those looking to get in on the ground floor need only pitch in $45 to score a TILT when they’re released. Be warned though: the brothers Yee have only seen fit to design the TILT for the 15-inch model, so 13 and 17-inch users will have to look elsewhere for their well-designed cooling fix.

iPhone 4S Battery Life ...

It hits you when you least expect it. It slips away under a mask of dormant inactivity. And it can ruin your entire day. It’s your iPhone 4S battery life, and it sucks . It’s been 17 days since the iPhone 4S was released — 19 since iOS 5 — and just like the madness that was Antennagate, complaints are churning out left and right. As Erick so clearly pointed out, the iPhone 4S is meant to offer 8 hours of talk time, or “up to 6 hours” of Internet use on 3G. For so many of us — including iPod touch and iPhone-not-4Ses running iOS 5 — that simply isn’t the case. But there may be hope. To start, there are a few possible bugs in iOS 5 that may be sucking an inordinate amount of life out of your battery: a calendar bug and a time zone bug (one of which can be summarily blamed on location services, as can most of the other battery life killers in iOS 5/iPhone 4S). The calendar bug is still somewhat unclear, but has been reported in Apple forums . Basically, when your calendar app is turned on in the Notifications Center, events are “re-ordering themselves near-constantly,” which sucks the life straight out of the phone. The only fix as of now, unfortunately, seems to be disabling the calendar app within the Notifications center. The Time Zone bug , however, seems to be solved (although again, by disabling things). Oliver Haslam over at iDownloadBlog noticed, like many of us, that iOS 5 was sucking his iPhone 4 battery dry. He realized that by going into Settings > Location Services > System Services (all the way at the bottom) > Setting Time Zone, and toggling off the location services, his battery life nearly doubled. According to Haslam, iOS 5 probably has a bug that constantly pings the servers to update location, and thus update time zone settings. When it comes down to it, iOS 5′s location services are most usually the culprit in cases of random battery life drainage for no apparent reason. It allows your apps and other services to ping for your location way more often than before, but in many cases it’s totally unnecessary (like TapTap Revenge, for example). Just head into Settings > Location Services and browse through the various apps using the phone’s location. The option to turn it off for some apps but not others is there for a reason; use it. Don’t forget to dip back into System Services (yep, all the way at the bottom), and disable anything you deem unworthy. Diagnostics & Usage should fall into that category, as it merely sends back information to Apple about the way you use your phone and where. And, any one of the services you turn off can always be turned back on. No harm done. Email, especially with certain settings, can really wear on your battery since the Mail app can be set to ping mail servers almost constantly. An easy way to help spare some green bar is to really take a look at your account(s) and what you need out of them. If most of your emails tend to be about daily deals or new book releases, do you really need them pushed immediately to your phone? Axe push if you can, and if your accounts don’t support it anyway, play with your update timings and try to find the right balance between being in the loop and being able to use your phone. Siri uses up a lot of processing power , but I wouldn’t kill her for it. Siri is one of the iPhone 4S’s best features, and other sacrifices can be made to save her. Then, of course, the basics : turn off Wifi and Bluetooth, turn down screen brightness, and keep the phone out of the sun and/or heat. Oh, and if you have such crappy service that you’re not really able to use your phone much anyway, you might as well just switch it to Airplane mode. It’ll stop the phone from working so hard to connect and maintain that connection, and should last you much longer once you’re in a place you can actually use it. The truth is there isn’t some quick fix or magical solution to this problem. It’s a question of priorities. Which apps, which notifications, which location services are worth a speedier death for your iPhone? In the end, it’s your decision. At least until Apple rolls out an update to iOS 5 and squashes a few of these issues. Crunchbase APPLE Company: Apple Website: apple.com Launch Date: January 4, 1976 IPO: November 1, 1980, NASDAQ:AAPL Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with... Learn more

Republic Wireless: An A...

Talk about good timing. Over the weekend, I wrote a post pleading with Google to please, finally, bring VoIP capabilities to Google Voice — namely, with an app for Android. The app would have some major benefits: it would let you make and receive calls over your home and work Wifi networks whenever they’re available (that means fewer dropped calls at the office, even if you’re deep inside a large building). And whenever you aren’t around Wifi, you could fall back to your carrier minutes. Unfortunately, while Google was actually working on building a VoIP-powered app for Android long ago, it shelved it, likely because it was concerned about infuriating the carriers. But shortly after that post ran, I started hearing some whispers. Turns out I’m not the only one with the idea — there’s another big (albeit less well known) fish that’s about to make a splash. Get ready for Republic Wireless , a new mobile phone service from Bandwidth.com that will be launching on November 8, and could truly be the phone carrier you’ve always wanted. First, a little background. If you’ve placed a call on Twilio, Skype, Google Voice, or one of myriad other services that use VoIP, there’s a very good chance that Bandwidth.com was involved. The company’s extensive VoIP infrastructure handles much of the heavy lifting for these services, and it also offers some of its own products, like Phonebooth , a premium VoIP service for businesses. Which brings us back to  Republic Wireless , which is the latest of Bandwidth’s own products. The service will essentially be a mobile virtual network operator — in other words it’s an alternative to the likes of Verizon and AT&T. And unlike devices on those carriers, it will switch between VoIP over Wifi and a normal cellular connection, depending on where you are. The product’s homepage was recently updated with a cheeky note promising a “new kind of wireless network” on November 8th. A link at the bottom confirms that it is, indeed, made by Bandwidth.com. The rest of the site is short on details, but we have many more thanks, in part, to a slide deck the company has been showing to its internal beta testers. Here are the basics, some of which are gleaned from the slide deck, others which come from other sources: The service will use what it’s calling “Hybrid Calling” — your phone will rely primarily on Wifi, whenever it’s available. And it will fall back on cell networks when you aren’t connected to Wifi. Users will not have to manually switch between Wifi and cellular — the phone will figure it out automatically The service will require users to get a new phone. I’m unclear on whether there will be multiple models available initially, but the phone runs on Android. New phones are required because the Hybrid Calling relies on both hardware and software The first cellular network that’s available as the fallback will be Sprint. The company is either planning, or already in the process of, signing other carriers onboard as well The phone will have one phone number (no swapping between numbers for VoIP/cellular) You’ll be able to send both calls and texts via Wifi We’re hearing that pricing details are still being finalized, but they’re described as being much cheaper — perhaps around half as much — than anything else available for an Android device (i.e. a smartphone) through the traditional carriers You won’t need to sign up for a contract, so there aren’t any termination fees. No overage fees, either. In short, it sounds totally awesome, provided there aren’t any pitfalls we haven’t heard yet. I’ll keep poking around for more details. In the mean time, it’s worth checking out the Republic Wireless site — if you scroll to the right, you’ll find a long photo to likely contains hints as to what to expect come November 8. I’m wondering if the phone shown below (albeit in many pieces) is what the first device on the network will look like. View this document on Scribd

Airbnb Is Thinking Abou...

Airbnb , a marketplace that allows people to rent their homes and apartments via the web, is considering entering the car-sharing space. In a survey sent to us by an Airbnb host, the startup is asking hosts if they would rent out their cars along with their residences. As shown in the screenshots below, Airbnb asks if owners allowed a guest to use a car during a stay, and if owners would rent a car to guests if there is insurance provided. The survey also asks hosts whether they would rent a car to a guest that is not renting their home. The survey also asks hosts how concerned they would be about car theft and inconvenience when offering a car sharing service. And Airbnb asked hosts if there are any other items they would rent to guests. A customer survey does not mean Airbnb is launching a car-sharing service any time soon. But it is a logical market for Airbnb to move into. Especially with the new massive amount of money the service could be using this to expand to other verticals. Of course, this would be competition for Getaround, a car rental community recently launched (and won ) at TechCrunch Disrupt. Or Airbnb could just buy or partner with Getaround. We’ve contacted the company for confirmation. Update: Airbnb says it is thinking about partnering with existing car-sharing services and issued this response: We are in constant engagement with our users and regularly send out surveys and conduct focus groups to better serve our community. After being approached by a number of car sharing companies with potential partnership opportunities and we sent this survey to gauge the interest in car sharing services amongst our community and whether a partnership would be useful to them.

Trouble Hiring? Create ...

Editor’s note : This guest post is by Justin Kan, cofounder of  Justin . tv  and  TwitchTV . You can follow him on Twitter  and read his  blog . Everyone knows there’s a war going on today in Silicon Valley: a war for talent. Startups are competing for a limited supply of engineering and product design labor, largely constrained by the failure of the US to invest in STEM education and a terribly restrictive immigration process for work visas. Meanwhile, big companies like Facebook and Google are paying out millions to either retain or rehire engineers through talent acquisitions. This system is under even more pressure from seed funds (Sorry: I’m a part-time partner at Y Combinator , so I’m probably contributing to the problem). Not only do you have to worry about your engineers going to your competition, you have to worry about them getting seeded to run off and start their own company. It’s often hard to compete against the “grass is greener” dream of being a founder, especially when the theoretical upside of doing your own thing is nearly infinite and there are investors ready to write you a convertible note check today. No cap necessary! If you want to attract and retain the best talent, you’re going to have to work hard at it. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned in the past couple months: 1) Have a vision When our main product was JustinTV, no one wanted to work at our company. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but few talented engineers said to themselves “Oh my god! My dream has always been to work at a general live video platform: you guys are the perfect fit!” We hired several talented people, but mostly because we were a YC company, had a few interesting technology scaling challenges and we seemed really cool. When we launched TwitchTV , a community around broadcasting and watching video gaming, everything changed. We started to get a LOT more inbound candidates: it turns out the overlap between programmers and pro-gamers is pretty high. We had a new vision to bring competitive gaming to the masses, and there are many people out there who share that vision and want to be a part of making that world a reality. By communicating a vision that harnesses the passions of a certain group of people, we tapped into a talent pool we wouldn’t otherwise have had access too. 2) Be the only option If you want a job as a programmer at a social media site, all you have to do is walk down the street in San Francisco waving your front-end engineer resume and you’ll be employed in 30 seconds. The competition to be the best social network, photo sharing platform, event discovery engine, or Facebook for X is fierce… and everyone is losing to Facebook. I remember reading an Elon Musk interview where he claimed that if you were an engineer that wanted to innovate in rocketry or electric cars, there really wasn’t anywhere else to work but Space X or Tesla. Consequently, they attract the top engineering talent in those industries. For every industry, there are some set of talented people who are passionate about innovating and solving the difficult problems. If you’re the company that happens to be innovating and solving difficult problems, then you’re going to end up the the default “Best place to work in X.” My recommendation: pick an industry where that title will be possible to achieve. 3) Create a cult The buzz over perks, salary and fancy benefits wears off. Every time you give someone a raise or new title, she feels good… for a week. Soon after, it settles in and becomes a new baseline, and worse still it becomes leverage for her to get a higher paying job somewhere else. Instead, focus on providing an environment that builds community within your company. Often heard example: provide company lunches. It isn’t just efficient, but it increases opportunities for serendipitous discussion over meal times and employees will be more likely to become friends. The more friends at a company, the more enjoyable the job and the more you want to stay where you are. My friend Matt Brezina’s company, Sincerely , creators of postcard sharing app Postagram , goes beyond that. The entire company takes week-long workcations in Mexico. They heavily recruit within social circles and when a candidate flies in for an interview they will put him up in an Airbnb in a neighborhood he would be likely to live, and the team will spend the weekend hanging out with him. By building a sense of family, you build lasting connections between your employees that will keep them motivated and around. — Your talented team is the most vital part of any startup. The way to retain the best talent is by having a clear vision, working in an area where you’re the only company and creating a place where people connect with each other. Crunchbase JUSTIN KAN Person: Justin Kan Website: Companies: Justin.TV , Kiko , Socialcam Justin Kan is an entrepreneur, Web developer, and the ‘Justin’ of Justin.tv. Justin.tv started when Justin Kan and Emmett Shear took on the challenge of broadcasting one person’s life 24/7. Being web developers, they recruited co-founders Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt to run the business and build a live streaming video camera. For investment, they spoke with Paul Graham of Y-Combinator (an investor in their previous start-up) and raised seed capital. The Justin.tv website launched in March of 2007.... Learn more