Airbnb Makes Good, Will...

As people become increasingly comfortable using web platforms to swap homes, cars, and everything in between (spouses?), some have said that the collaborative consumption movement has the potential to be as profound as the industrial revolution. But, before that can happen, marketplaces and platforms that deal in collaborative consumption need to recognize the importance of ensuring consumer protection, a lesson Airbnb learned the hard way last year. After multiple users’ homes were trashed last summer (and a slew of bad press followed), Airbnb apologized and offered a $50,000 guarantee against damages to hosts . The startup dropped the ball the first time around, but today it’s proving that it has learned its lesson, making good on its promises to protect users by announcing that it will now cover up to $1 million in property damages for every host. Partnering with insurance giant Lloyd’s of London, Airbnb now guarantees that every booking on its platform is covered by its “Host Guarantee,” which states that Airbnb will reimburse users for damage to their property up to $1,000,000 — at no cost to them. As it would seem, this is a fairly unprecedented move for the industry, and a very important one given Airbnb’s symbolic (and literal) position as a mediator between two parties who are inherently moving their online relationships into the real world. Nothing is more imperative than the trust of that relationship, and Airbnb’s move to renew its commitment to expanding its safeguards goes a long way towards securing that dynamic. However, it should be made clear that those seeking payment under the Host Guarantee will have to cooperate with Airbnb and its insurers, and that the Guarantee itself does not qualify as a replacement or substitution for homeowners or renters insurance. The Guarantee does NOT cover cash and securities, collectibles, rare artwork, jewelry and pets. For more, check out Airbnb’s new guarantee here .

Larry Page Spotted Wear...

There hasn’t been a whole lot of news coming out of the Google Zeitgeist event taking place in a posh hotel on the outskirts of London this week, but Google’s making some other news in England: its CEO Larry Page has been spotted wearing Google Glasses. The pictures of Page wearing the super-funky augmented reality eyewear are possibly the first — although his Google co-founder Sergey Brin has also been seen wearing them   in the wild . Today’s pictures come courtesy of Google employee Jason Mayes, who posted them — where else? — on Google + . “My life is now complete – met Larry Page today! Thank you for visiting EMEA,” he wrote alongside his pictures. Nice to Google Glass has been one of the most talked-about new projects at Google for a long time. It’s one of the company’s first big forays into cutting-edge hardware. Other products it’s been reported to be working on are integrating more Google TV functions into set-top boxes and a home-entertainment system . With the company closing the acquisition of Motorola today , we are likely to get more visibility on what Google’s plans will be for developing more hardware. That, of course, is a strength at Motorola. Hardware is also something that Page himself highlighted recently in his CEO’s letter.

Quipper Raises $3.6M Fo...

There are lots of different approaches to the amorphous market of ‘e-learning’ but only a handful ever feel much like fun. I think amongst the best of these are sites like MangaHigh which teaches Math, or Moshi Monsters which has subtle learning tasks for kids. Another which works well is Quipper , which, in a Q&A format, helps people learn things in a sort of game. Today it’s announced that it has raised $3.6m (£2.3m) of Series A funding led by Globis, the Japanese VC. The round has been two other investors: Atomico, the London-based VC firm led by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström and Benesse, a major Japanese education and publishing company. The fundraising, which seed funding from Atomico last year, will be used expand with an emphasis on increasing the amount of content on the platform Founded by Masa Watanabe, a co-founder of Japanese mobile social gaming company DeNA, Quipper’s app asks users to answer a series of questions, and they learn during that process. You can also use it to create your own quiz programmes, making the app appeal to teachers and parents but also to professional training companies. The London-based company says its 1.7 million users have answered questions on the platform 85m times in 2,000 topics since it launched in October last year. The app exists on the site and on Apple iOS and Android.

Virgin Atlantic To Laun...

Having in-flight access to WiFi is quickly becoming a standard feature on modern airliners, but (thankfully) in-flight cell phone service for voice calls is still a rarity and even outlawed in some countries, including the United States. If you’re flying Virgin Atlantic between New York and London in the near future, though, chances are that at least a few of your fellow travelers will be happily chatting away on their cell phones while you’re riding the jetstream somewhere over the Atlantic. Later this month, Virgin Atlantic is launching its cell phone service on this route and plans to expand this service to ten more routes by the end of the year. Virgin Atlantic is teaming up with Telenor subsidiary AeroMobile to bring this service to its Airbus 330 planes. AeroMobile’s technology creates a small, low-powered cell network on the plane and then routes calls from the plane through a satellite network that relays the calls to the ground. This service, of course, won’t come cheap. International calls will start at $1.29 per minute and go up from there depending on where you are calling. Travelers will be able to make voice calls, send text messages and access data (but only over a slow GPRS connection). Because virtually any phone can connect to the in-flight cell network, Virgin recommends that flyers make sure their international roaming feature is turned off to avoid extra charges. As U.S. regulations forbid cell phone usage on commercial flights, the service won’t be available within 250 miles of U.S. airspace. Phones will also have to remain off during takeoff and landing. Given the already claustrophobic nature of air travel, the idea of having the guy in the seat next to me make his sales calls from the middle of the Atlantic doesn’t sound very appealing. Hopefully, the fact that this is still a pretty costly service means that most of these calls will be brief, however, and that most users will be courteous enough to just use text messages instead of making voice calls.

Goodbye, Exynos: Benchm...

Samsung confirmed well in advance of the Galaxy S III’s official announcement that their new flagship Android handset would sport the company’s new Exynos 4 Quad chipset, but it seems even clearer now that we Stateside phone geeks may have to live without it. Droid-Life reported over the weekend that a benchmark entry for the Verizon-bound Samsung SCH-i535 appeared on Nenamark, and it seems to confirm rumors that Big Red’s Galaxy S III will indeed sport a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor. Nenamark’s site doesn’t specifically call out the Snapdragon S4 as the processor in question, but the evidence is nothing to sneeze at — the entry makes reference to the chipset’s 1.5GHz clock speed and the inclusion of the Adreno 225 GPU. That means for all the nature-inspired polish that Samsung has poured into the device’s industrial design and UI, the Verizon-bound Galaxy S III could end up sharing the same brain as the similarly-modified HTC One X on AT&T. It’s not a bad thing, per se — I’d gladly give up a bit of horsepower if it meant that I got super-fast download speeds in exchange, but not everyone will be a fan of that trade-off. Samsung Mobile head JK Shin noted onstage in London that a LTE-friendly version of the Galaxy S III would make its debut in the United States this summer, so there’s little doubt that more of these minor appearances will be discovered shortly. One also has to wonder if this same hardware change is in the works for the rest of the carrier variants coming down the pipeline. Barring any peculiar last minute decisions, AT&T’s GSIII will almost certainly feature the same chipset given their history with One X, but T-Mobile remains a bit of a mystery. Their LTE network is nowhere near completion (CEO Philipp Humm continually pointed at 2013 during the carrier’s most recent earnings call), and their version of the Galaxy S II ended up sporting a different chipset than its cousins in order to play nice with T-Mobile’s 42Mbps HSPA+ signal.