James Robinson is a staff writer for PandoDaily covering hardware, advertising technology and the Internet of Things… among many other general goings on. Follow him on Twitter: @jalrobinson.
-
To counter growing vulnerabilities, publicity shy Fitbit launches eight-figure marketing blitz
As I wrote here on Pando at the end of last month, the various splutterings of the wearables market combined with the emergence of the Apple Watch have represented the end of a golden age for Fitbit, one where it only had to show up and take home massive swaths of market share. As solid evidence that Fitbit itself feels this pinch, the notoriously marketing shy company has unveiled its first ever global advertising campaign and its first advertising campaign of… -
Five technology lessons I learned from my own foray into small business
In July, as I wrote here on Pando, I self-published an actual, real book based on a blog I used to write. It came on the back of a $15,000 Kickstarter haul in November 2013. The book is out now, rewards have been shipped, and I have closed the book on the slog of production and shipping rewards. But now I’m three months into the next phase of this project: sales, marketing, doing my own PR, and… -
Google is the biggest corporate lobbyist in America now, says new Public Citizen report
I’ve been in Boston all week. I had to tell my mother where I was, but not Google. Its seamlessness in switching up my Google ad results, changing its suggestions to me of places to visit and ads to click on, was instantaneous. Google knew where I was going, as I was making the trip. We’re used to this by now. It’s justified under the umbrella of modern convenience. But should it be? This morning, a new Public Citizen report,
As banner ads turn 20, Sharethrough wants you to accept the inevitability of native advertising
As far as ad tech beefing goes, last Thursday was a doozy. Farhad Manjoo’s “Fall of the Banner Ad: The Monster That Swallowed The Web” hit the front page of the New York Times. Among other crimes, Manjoo accused the ruinous economics of banner ads of perverting content online. The choicest quote came from Andreessen Horowitz’ Chris Dixon, “It’s almost like a prank that was played by the technology industry on the media industry 20 years ago.” Before the…
For Keen Home, the exploding smart home market is an opportunity and a puzzle
Oh, the smart home and the chaos of an exploding space. Everything home-based is smart now, or threatening to be. Thermostats, toothbrushes, teddy bears, security cameras, showers, windows, motion sensors, TVs, appliances, and pot plants. We’ve got genuinely great new technology bumping up against undercooked, overhyped new tools in a space that hasn’t figured itself out entirely. And to confuse the senses, as if the whole thing wasn’t spinning fast enough, there’s an acquisition frenzy. Google bought Nest, which…
Autodesk take aim at the disappointment of 3D printing
Last September, Autodesk opened a large two-story workshop on Pier 9 on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, a luxuriant facility with the indulgent goal of bringing its employees closer to the machines they were making software for. “People said, ‘A workshop? On the water? In downtown San Francisco? From Autodesk? Why?” Autodesk’s Vice President of Consumer Products Samir Hanna says at an event this morning held to celebrate the building’s first anniversary. The 27,000 square foot Pier 9 building is an architectural…
Thanks to the Apple Watch, 2014 is the year that Fitbit moved quickly back into the pack
Fitbit was a rare beast in 2007 when it was founded: an actual hardware startup in a time when such a thing was laughed at, taking the humble pedometer and giving it a huge software upgrade. The company took a big retailer first approach, slowly building out a network of 30,000 stores in 28 countries, staying relatively under the radar. It’s held big time competition from Nike’s FuelBand at bay and laps Jawbone’s UP band in sales. Last Christmas it…
Inventables’ new 3D carver wants to give the maker movement new life
The last time I spoke to Inventables CEO Zach Kaplan he’d launched the company’s new Easel software platform at SXS, a program designed to take the prohibitively inaccessible complexities of 3D design more manageable. When I reach him this week, Kaplan is laughing. Inventables Kickstarter campaign for its Carvey machine, a tabletop 3D carving machine has shattered its $50,000 target, sitting close to $300,000. As I write, it’s sitting above $400,000. Inventables popular Shapeoko CNC mills were kits that users…
Let’s stop focusing on why wearables might change the world and deal with market reality
As far as 50-page existential ponderings on the current state and future direction of wearable technology go, The Wearable Future — a new report released Tuesday as part of PwC’s consumer intelligence series — is a doozy. It is filled with talk about wearables needing to move toward more “human-centered design,” reshaping the market around user experience in order to meet its destiny of reshaping every industry you could possibly think of: medicine, retail, human resources… For the dystopian…
TellSpec’s recent PR offensive only highlights just how great a scam it really was
As Pando has covered, Toronto-based TellSpec panhandled on Indiegogo to the tune of almost $400,000 last October, pretending that its small handheld food scanner, that could tell you the nutritional values of your food, was production-ready. The ‘real demonstration’ in the video turned out to be for show. And TellSpec has since admitted that it actually couldn’t make the device. But now, a year later and already two months late in delivering promised Indiegogo rewards to its 1,765 backers, TellSpec finally has a beta…More articles »
