Showing posts with label Google Ventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google Ventures. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Magic Leap: Magically Augmented Reality



I am impressed Google has been able to spot this company. Looks like Google has scouts that are constantly scouring through the tech startup landscape to try and find the next big things. What it can not do in-house, it hopes to invest in heavily. Good idea. Not even Google can do it all in-house. Google could kill Magic Leap if it acquired it, even Google could. And they are pretty good when it comes to innovation. They can claims to be the most innovative large company out there.

Magic Leap: Google bets big on augmented reality firm
Google is making a big bet on augmented reality, leading a $542 million investment in a shadowy startup called Magic Leap, based in Dania Beach, Florida. ..... The investment, one of the largest ever made by Google ..... Magic Leap - which superimposes animated digital imagery over what someone sees with the naked eye - ...... the little known company outlines an ambitious vision for displaying rich interactive graphics alongside what people see naturally, using what it calls a dynamic digitized lightfield signal. ..... "Magic Leap is an eclectic group of visionaries, rocket scientists, wizards, and gurus from the fields of film, robotics, visualization, software, computing, and user experience" ...... Magic Leap's chief executive, Rony Abovitz. "Magic Leap is going beyond the current perception of mobile computing, augmented reality, and virtual reality. We are transcending all three, and will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play."
Google Invests Heavily in Magic Leap’s Effort to Blend Illusion and Reality
hammerhead sharks will swim through your office, elephants will fit in the palm of your hand and dragons will fly among the birds...... landed Google as its biggest investor. ..... Valuing Magic Leap at about $2 billion, the $542 million cash infusion from Google and other investors immediately vaulted the shadowy start-up into the upper echelons of young technology companies....... Ma gic Leap’s soaring valuation is based on little more than an ambitious vision and some nascent code. Magic Leap, which is based far from Silicon Valley in the suburbs of Miami, has no revenue — and no products currently on the market....... Details about Magic Leap’s plans remain sketchy. ..... Seahorses float above children in a schoolroom. A yellow submarine hovers near an outdoor promenade. An astronaut walks through a train station. ....... an ambitious vision for displaying rich interactive graphics alongside what people see naturally, using what it calls a dynamic digitized lightfield signal. ...... “Magic Leap is going beyond the current perception of mobile computing, augmented reality and virtual reality” ..... “We are transcending all three, and will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play.” ........ augmented reality could become a new platform — one that he argued could outstrip mobile devices in popularity. He compared the potential advancements to the rise of cinema: a new way of seeing the world. In this case, the start-up’s technology allows highly realistic graphics to appear alongside real-life objects. ........ Magic Leap is better coordinated with how the human eye and brain process images, making the computer graphics feel, and move, more naturally. ......... the technology could be applied to an array of other applications, creating a real-life equivalent to the magical newspaper from the “Harry Potter” books. ....... “For a while, we thought it was technically impossible, and then financially impossible,” he said. “Now it’s technically and financially possible.” ......... With more than $60 billion in the bank, Google cannot seem to find enough ways to invest its money. Google Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm, has invested in diverse companies including Blue Bottle Coffee and Uber, the on-demand taxi service. ....... The tech giant has spent much of the last two years trying to gain entry to essentially everything with an Internet connection ....... Google and Facebook ....... “They’re willing to take risks on the belief that their business will not be around forever” ...... “an eclectic group of visionaries, rocket scientists, wizards and gurus from the fields of film, robotics, visualization, software, computing and user experience”
Magic Leap raises $542 million Series B to bring realistic augmented reality to life
It announced a $542 million Series B round today, raising its total funding to date to $592 million. ....... Magic Leap has yet to show the public a product. ..... Right now, most augmented reality involves a semi-transparent screen floating in your field of view. It doesn’t cover the entirety of what you can see, and it’s rare that it actually interacts with reality. ........ That kind of augmented reality takes some intense computing and advanced graphics. I have yet to see a headset and software demonstrated at that level from any company. ...... if it works, Magic Leap is coming for just about every industry ...... “[Magic Leap] will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play”
Google takes big leap of faith in next-gen augmented reality tech
"cinematic reality." ..... Such "reality" will supposedly produce a more realistic 3D experience than anything else created so far. The company is reportedly working on hardware and software that can deliver augmented reality, including adding computer-generated images as an overlay onto what people can already see. ...... An interesting thing to note is this funding is being led by Google and not Google Ventures or Google Capital. As such, Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google, will join the board at Magic Leap. ...... an elephant hovering in someone's hands or a submarine that is floating around in a city. ....... "It's one of the few things I've ever experienced in my life where I came out and said, 'This changes everything. This is a marker of the future.' " ...... "The space program had Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, and we're in our Apollo phase," continued Abovitz. "We know that space travel is possible. We're in the middle of full-blown product development and commercialization."

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Google And Venture Capital

Image representing HubSpot as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBaseThere is an interesting post at the blog On StartUps by Brad Coffey, an early employee at HubSpot.

He argues that Google might be upto disrupting the venture capital game like it has disrupted many other paradigms and industries. I don't doubt that assertion. The debate is as to what degree and in what ways and for how long.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Best Way To Increase Traffic To Your Blog


Mark Penn says in his famous Wall Street Journal article that at 100,000 unique visits per month, a blogger hits 75K in income. There is a suggestion that there is a direct correlation between how much traffic you get and how much you make as a blogger. So how do you go about increasing traffic for your blog?

There are three kinds of traffic:
  1. Search Traffic
  2. Referring Sites
  3. Direct Traffic
If you focus solely on content creation and engage in no other marketing effort, all your traffic is going to come from search engines. If you become inactive for any length of time, you are still going to get residual traffic. Most of that likely might be search engine traffic, except if you get residual traffic of the other two kinds from your previous marketing efforts.

It is fundamental that you use Google Analytics or a similar tool to see how much and what kind of traffic you are getting. The tool also tells you of the keywords people use to feed the search engines to end up at your site, and what pages they visit. This helps you discover your niche, and to create ever more content for that particular niche. For me right now that seems to be Android.
More specifically "donut android" and "cupcake android." For those two phrases my blog for now shows up on the first page of Google search results. That is prime real estate. The reason I have to hone in that niche makes sense at many levels to me.
  1. When I write new blog posts on Android, content creation and marketing are not two different activities. They are one and the same.
  2. Android is no cottage industry. It is not some sub sub sub topic. It just might end up being the top technology news for this year.
  3. Android so totally fits into my IC vision and my startup. The more I learn about Android, the better for me. I don't mind getting paid to learn. (Google's Newest Venture: Google Ventures) I plot every day to go back to working on my startup full time. Android is fundamental to the IC vision. The ground - operating system - itself has to move for the vision to become reality.
I feel lucky that the topic in technology that I find most fascinating right now is also my blog's prime niche according to Google Analytics. And I got told of that niche right after my first Android blog post. I find that amazing. My respect for Google's algorithms grew. And when Google gave me the number two spot after my first Donut Android blog post, my respect for the search engine really grew. (Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android)

Search engine traffic I think is the best kind, but working on the other two does not take away from your search engine traffic, quite the opposite, so don't ignore the other two either.

If I am a tech blogger, it makes sense that I visit TechCrunch, for example, or Mashable. And if I am going to visit anyways, why not participate in the comments sections? It takes but a few seconds. And because your name gets hyperlinked to your blog, those comments sections start sending a little traffic your way. What is there to complain?

Contrary to the stereotype, blogging is a social activity. You have to belong to blogging and online communities around your interests. You have to forge friendships in the blogosphere. And forging friendships with bloggers who are not so big name increases your chances of them putting you on their blogrolls. After traffic, those backlinks are what jack up your google rank. Those backlinks are key. And content creation alone will not do the work for you, especially during the early stages when you are still wondering how you hit 1,000 page hits a day.

Twitter is micro-blogging. And there is another: that would be the comments sections of other blogs. Got to participate.

Twitter is another great place to socialize. Don't just have a list of people you follow and followers. Got to make some time and visit their profile pages and respond to some of their tweets. These are real living, breathing people. Get to know some of them, or many of them if possible.

And there is direct traffic. Feedburner lets you put a box at your blog that gives visitors the option to subscribe to your blog with their email addresses. Seth Godin claims that mailing list is how he gets most of his traffic. But he probably became a star blogger first. But before you become famous and other people know you, when you are a small fish blogger, there are people you know. Once in a while it is okay to send out emails to people you know sharing a blog post or two with them. Look Ma, no hands!
  1. Focus on great content creation.
  2. Find your niche, and create great content for that particular niche, but also constantly be diversifying. You don't want to go out of business when one rainy day Google revised its algorithms and your blog ended up in Siberia.
  3. Blogging is a social activity. Be in a habit of visiting other blogs and participating in their comments sections in meaningful ways.
  4. Strive to generate a band of loyal visitors, people who want to lap up every blog post you put out because, oh, you are just so wonderful.
Google: Tweet Me Baby One More Time
Taking The Number 2 Spot On Google Search For Donut Android
Hitting Number 4 For Google Search Results on Cupcake Android
The Big Money Is Not In Blogging
Google Analytics Says I Am Paul Krugman Friend, Cupcake Android Expert
What Does Your Resume Look Like Today?
Content Is Queen, Marketing Is Princess
Content Is Queen
Blogging: Monkey Business?
Blogging = Learning + Teaching + Churning + Entertaining
Spamming Om Malik


Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
Blogging Several Times A Day
Blogging Tips
A Blogger Is Also An Editor
Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Sites That Pay You To Blog

On The Web

SEOmoz | 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
The Best way to increase traffic to your site
Whats the best way to increase traffic? - Authority Blogger Forum
What's the BEST way to increase traffic to your blog? // Blogging ...
Blog Traffic - 15 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic
WikiAnswers - What is the best way to drive traffic to your website
Web Site Marketing - Lead Generation and How to Increase Traffic ...
How to Use Blog Sites To Increase Traffic To Your Blog | eHow.com





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