Nerd Stalker

As a hobbyist, when does the passion turn into a business? Well, the perfect storm of events have pushed these two former hobbyists into the entrepreneurship game. Meet Timothy Reuter and TJ Johnson , co-founders of AirDroids. The young AirDroids company has a Kickstarter campaign introducing their first product - The Pocket Drone and is hot. The Pocket Drone is Go-Pro toting, personal air robot. We talk with Tim and TJ on their successful Kickstarter campaign and some of the trials and tribulations of running their own Kickstarter campaign. Check out the video!

Photo by Marie Domingo Check out the SF New Tech Post Show with #ThatTechGirl Liberty Madison and our Nerd Stalker writer Greg Viloria . SF New Tech is one of the oldest pitch events in San Francisco. Our duo talk about their favorites and not-so-favorites of the 2.19 SF New Tech Event with  MotionPortrait ,  Orbeus ,  Sortly ,  Whobert's Path , Fiverun , Reverb and Floqq with the winner going to " 6 About to Break " at the 2014 MacWorld/iWorld.

This is a great story. How many times do you put your phone on silent and miss an important call of your life? It happened to Shary Nassimi - so he created an app. Urgent Call is an app that will make sure that call makes the connection. We talk with Shary Nassimi , founder and inventor of Urgent Call, to talk about his motivation for creating the Urgent Call app. Check it out.

listen to ‘Get Your Recipes on Yummly #appsworld’ on Audioboo Nerd Stalker interview with Shelby Hollister of Yummly . In short Yummly is a recipe aggregator with powerful filtering such as holiday, cuisine, taste, diet, nutrition, allergy, cook time, technique, and more. The recommendation engine is quite good and learns by your taste, Yums (a liking feature) and searches oh and it's free. The only glaring omission is that there is no Paleo filter option, when I brought this up I was told there was a gluten free filter option, not ideal. The iOS app and it's companion web site are beautiful but honestly for any recipe solution to be a player today that is an expected commodity. Yummly is a no brainer addition to your recipe hunting solutions.

listen to ‘Shop via TV with tvbay #appsworld’ on Audioboo Nerd Stalker interviews Slovakia based tvbay at AppsWorld in San Francisco. tvbay is revisiting that old promise of buying products as you see them on television. The demo I saw allowed me to purchase an item when the commercial of a given product(s) would air between the show your watching. We were able to add the item in the commercial to a shopping cart then purchase the item. The only hurdle I see for this would be the cable companies integrating this feature with their boxes and or ad partnerships. The unit and remote looked nice as did the ui but one wonders if the masses want to interact with their tv as opposed to abstracting that shopping experience out with a mobile device instead. Either way tvbay will be one to watch in this space.

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We start a new segment on the entrepreneurs and dreamers who are on Kickstarter. Kickstarter, which is known as the " Lab for Daring Prototypes and Ingenious Products", recently won the best overall startup at this year's Crunchies. But, data recently has been exposed only 1 in 3 Kickstarter games actually deliver on the promise . Nevertheless, we interview the entrepreneurs and their stories on their Kickstarter campaign. In this episode, we interview Zach Vorhies and Murat Ozkan, founder and co-founder of Zackees the maker of the turn-signal glove about the mysteries of Kickstarter and their desire to be on the " Shark Tank " TV show.

Famo.us CEO Steve Newcomb Nerd Stalker was invited to the long awaited announcement party from the ground breaking tech startup Famo.us . The announcements are bulleted below. Will be free and open source. Available April 9. Will release a viable alternative to Phonegap that performs orders of magnitude better. Will support the major MVC's but will soon after release an MVC alternative that will "blow away" the competition, Steve Newcomb specifically called out Angular and others. Out of the box support for iOS, Android and Blackberry. They will not support Windows Phone. Within the year they will release an IDE inspired by Unity and will not be a web IDE. Will extend Chrome Dev Tools to add another Famo.us tab. Dave Fetterman Q&A Admittedly Newcomb said Famo.us was not easy nor was it for the junior javascript developer and this was confirmed by the non Famo.us develoopers we spoke with who had early access. The developers told us that very chall...

Travel interrupts our naturally scheduled programming and is an easy scapegoat for not maintaining a healthy lifestyle as well as being out of touch with our friends, families and jobs.  Gear up for 2014 with these 10 apps and gadgets to help make your travel experiences exciting and productive. We talk with Melissa Thompson , frequent coast-to-coast traveller and CEO of online counseling service - TalkSession , about her top tech ways of make traveling easier for 2014. 

The senior side of the population is rising and expected to double in the year 2030 of that in 2000 .  Seniors rising smartphone ownership  and increasing Tablet ownership  signal a unique opportunity.  Seniors using the internet reached the majority last year where in 2000 the adoption was only 13%. Pew Research says a lot of seniors are adopting social media  (43%) but privacy concerns and lack of interest still prevent wider adoption. Enter Tapestry . Tapestry  has a vision of enriching the lives of people of all ages, especially that of seniors, by helping them stay connected to their families, their friends and their communities. Listen to what Marcie Rogo, Head of Operations for Tapestry says about their service.

listen to ‘Petcube - The internet of things, and pets? #appsworld’ on Audioboo Nerd Stalker interview with Yaroslav Azhnyuk CEO of  Petcube . Petcube is a gadget that allows people to watch, talk and play with pets remotely, using the smartphone. It consists of a video camera, a movable laser pointer and a microcomputer, connected to via wifi. The smartphone app displays a video stream from the camera, allowing user to talk to the pet and move a laser dot – a favorite toy for cats and dogs. Withe the Petcube app one can share access with friends and family or even make the device public for a limited time. Users can take photos or short videos of gaming sessions and share it. Form Factor Cubic form (4 x 4 x 4 inches), aluminum and glass with customizable skins. Petcube uses low intensity laser which is not harmful for pet's eyes even in the case of direct contact.

Busy day in Nerd Stalker-ville yesterday. I was able to attend two different conferences at Moscone(aka Geekdom) in San Francisco yesterday - Photonics West and Apps World.  Two different worlds - New Tech and Old Tech. I consider the "old tech" approach to be a conference centered around an academic world where sharing seems guarded and the "new tech" approach to be a conference centered around the ability to share openly. But, alas, the two worlds collide. Check out my summary below.

We were lucky to attend the keynote at the 2014 Apps World North America conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. This event features talks in Development of Apps, Droid Apps, Games Development, Mobile Payments and Retail, Mobile Marketing, HTML5 and API Strategies, TV and Mulitscreen and Enterprise. Also, over 200 exhibitors had booths to display their services. The keynote was an interview of Apple co-founder  Steve Wozniak by Wired's Mat Honan . Listen to see what Steve has to say about i nnovation, security, and opportunities for app developers.

Nerd Stalker interview with Dennis List of Dutch startup Rocki , forgive the video quality (or just listen to the audio version under the video above) we were at the mercy of hotel lobby wifi. Rocki has created a very clever small and lightweight device that can jump on wireless networks and execute instructions via the web to play audio to any speaker it's connected to. Want to connect speakers all over your compound? Just connect more Rocki's and your all set. With Rocki you can have more than one phone controlling the music and create a music queue together, think dj battle. The silicon like cover comes in seven different colors and (as of this post) the device is sold for the very less than Sonos price of $49 (plus version) or $89 (play plus version). The device can fit in the palm of your hand and is extremely light. Some future plans for Rocki are to solidify some partnerships with as many music providers as possible, think Spotify and the others. Also they say...

Nerd Stalker interviews Sheldon Laube, the CEO of Artkick [www.artkick.com] -- a new Silicon Valley startup that is bringing digital art to every home in America and thus fully realizing Bill Gates' original vision. Sheldon has been the co-founder of four startups—the first a software consulting firm (CCT) in his college dorm room (with Glenn Ricart). Since then he was the first Chief Information officer of PriceWaterhouse, the Chief Technology Officer of Novell, the co-founder of USWeb, the co-founder of CenterBeam, and the Chief Innovation Officer of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Artkick brings endless art streaming free to anyone with an internet connected TV. The images you love appear on your wall easily and instantly. Information and content on the art you view is visible on your smartphone or tablet, allowing you to learn more about art every day. We downloaded the iOS versions and installed on an iPhone 5 and iPad Air then connected (via AirServer ) to our mac mini me...

Love the convenience of on-line shopping but just not sure about the fit of the item? DITTO may have a solution for you when it comes to glasses.   DITTO  makes buying glasses online easy by giving you a comprehensive selection of designer glasses and using their patent-pending proprietary technology to virtually try on glasses in 180 degree views and see which pair looks best on you.  Very cool. We talk with Kate Doerksen , CEO of DITTO on how her e-commerce site for glasses is disrupting this area.