Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Photo: Damon Lavrinc/Wired

When the 2012 BMW M5 was launched, there was a communal chuckle from the the gearhead cognoscenti after BMW revealed it piped artificial engine noise into the cabin to maintain the sports sedan’s visceral experience. It’s an aural cheat, but a good one executed in fastidious German fashion. Unfortunately, everyone can’t afford a twin-turbocharged bahn-stormer, and if your aging Accord has more wheeze than roar, 2XL Games has a solution: the XLR8 app for iOS and Android.

Utilizing your smartphone’s built-in accelerometer and GPS, the XLR8 app gives you the burbling engine and exhaust noise of a big-bore V8, without the constant maintenance and dismal fuel economy. Even better, the audio gets plumbed into your car stereo through Bluetooth, your headphone jack or – in the case of iOS – via the 30-pin connector fitted to iPod-ready vehicles.

The concept is brilliantly silly, as long as you don’t take it too seriously.

We tested it with the “Classic V8 Muscle Car” engine tone included in the app, and after a quick and painless calibration, we were chugging along to the dulcet tones of a snorting eight-pot.

Syncing the sounds with our own acceleration and braking proved a bit difficult at first, as the accelerometer responds better to heavy throttle and brake inputs, and not putting around town at a constant speed. But flying up an on-ramp and braking heavily into a corner, the XLR8 app matched our car’s movements surprisingly well, even simulating the chirp of tires when we mashed the gas out of a corner.

Playing with the sliders in the Options menu allows you to tweak shift points, gear ratios and brake pressure, along with “drift” and “burnout” tones. And if you’re more of a supercar fan, you can purchase Ferrari and Lamborghini engine noises in the app for $2.99 a pop (automaker licensing departments on line one), or get the NASCAR engine, Ford GT40 and both Italian exotics for $4.99. All of them sound true to their inspiration – no surprise since each is pulled from recordings of actual cars 2XL uses in their racing games.

Considering all the cr-apps in the world, XLR8 stands surprisingly outside the annals of bad ideas. And if it’s good enough for BMW, it’s good enough for your dilapidated commuter.

According to a leaked memo acquired by The Verge, retailer Target is instructing its staff to remove Amazon own-branded hardware from its shelves. That means the Kindle suite.

Target’s memo says simply that it’s reviewed its product lineup and decided not to carry any further Amazon hardware. Stock will be replenished through May 13th, Mother’s Day, and the memo notes that the Kindle Touch will be in an ad campaign for the week of May 6th. Staff are instructed to follow best practices to “remerchandise” remaining stock, and to explain to customers who ask that it’s all just part of the normal flow of business, continually evaluating products they stock and so on.

A swift and decisive halt, then, carried out even as the store tries to maximize customer interest and, of course, its revenues by popping the Touch on an ad promotion just before Mother’s Day. The Internet has a pretty clear idea of why Target is doing this, and it comes from Target’s own words: The move is due to a “conflict of interest.” That conflict is Apple.

Target and Apple got all chummy with each other recently to launch some of those in-store “mini” Apple stores–also seen in other U.S. retailers and big-box vendors elsewhere around the world. No matter that Amazon’s Kindle Fire has snapped up over 50% of the Android market in the U.S., Apple products are selling like crazy right now–and for higher price tags. They also have an identifiable cachet which will attract customers to Target stores where–whadya know?–they may spend a little extra cash on other items too. That is to say: any one of the hundreds of iPhone, iPad, iPod and Mac accessories. Ironically, Target’s keeping Amazon-compatible accessories on its shelves for exactly this reason: They may be impulse purchases, ensuring stores like Target get a steady dribble of cash from low-value items sold in bulk.

Would Apple have insisted, though, that Target only sell Apple’s tablet devices (and other hardware) because Amazon is aiming squarely at Apple’s markets in tablets, music, video, and so on? It’s not beyond the pale. Apple does, after all, have a thing about controlling the market space.

As an interesting counterpoint, it’s common in Europe to see an in-store mini Apple store right alongside a shelf of rival tablet PCs from competitors, which could be a hole in this logic. But the Kindle isn’t really a presence among these devices because Amazon’s taking ages getting its international thinking straight, and while there are a ton of peer tablets, none is quite as much a “threat” as the Kindle (at least, right now).

And if it is an Apple dictate that Kindles don’t get sold alongside its precious tablets, then there’s one very good reason Target could be persuaded to go along with it. It’s because Apple isn’t a threat to Target’s business model in quite the same way that Amazon is. Amazon has oft been credited with the death of the physical bookstore, and nowadays sells all sorts of equipment and hardware that are typical Target stock. So much pressure on prices and convenience is exerted by Amazon that it may be one of the main factors behind Target rival Best Buy’s decision to close many big-box stores and totally alter its strategy. And while Amazon just needs efficient, low-staff distribution centers, Target needs a whole infrastructure, sales staff, and space. It can’t afford to “pile it high and sell it cheap” in the same digital way Amazon does.

Target’s just trying to avoid Best Buy’s fate. Or perhaps it also thinks e-readers aren’t the wave of the future.

Image: Flickr users Team Traveller, Tony Buser

Via Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com

When you wake up in the morning, you check your emails, probably from your phone. First thing. Yes? Why?

There’s no good answer to why. Even brain surgeons can wait until they’ve done other things before checking in on the world outside of your immediate proximity. So why do you do it? Because it’s a habit, a pattern.

Do you read the top tech and marketing blogs? Why? Why do you read this blog? Because you’re subscribed? Are you getting something from it? If no, then why are you still doing it?

Twitter and Facebook are hugely pattern-driven. They thrive off the same game dynamics as slot machines. Hit with even a small win every once in a blue moon, and you’ll reinstate that pattern incessantly. In the slot machine and gaming industry, they know that they can bleed you out of all the money you might spend with this method. They even have a term for it: “time to expire.” They look at you as a clock running down.

Breaking Patterns Is A Starting Point to Success

If you want to find great success, learn to recognize your programming, to assess whether it’s actually doing something useful for you, and then to break the pattern. This works with all things. Julien Smith asked me why I blogged daily. I said something lame and forgettable. He asked me to try blogging less than daily. Result: just as much traffic, just as much engagement, and probably better posts for you to read.

I’m moving my pride and joy, my free newsletter from Tuesdays to Sundays, because I’ve decided that I like the concept of the intimacy of being in a conversation with you on Sunday. It’s a break from my previous pattern, and I will see whether it yields better results for my goals.

Deciding to unfollow most everyone on Twitter was a huge shift and a break in my pattern. From it, I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve reclaimed some needed cycles.

What Are You Missing?

One of the biggest reasons we do a bunch of the things we do, especially online, is for fear that we’ll miss something. When eBay first came out, its explosive growth came from the ability to watch auctions spool out in real time. Twitter is like that, and so is Facebook and Google+. We love watching information roll past in real time. Further, we really love it if people reply to us, or share our stuff, or like or whatevers. We crave it.

When we are alone, we start worrying that we’re missing something. We check our phone for phantom texts. If nothing we regularly follow is updating fast enough, we might go off and scan things of lesser value, just to see something new.

But why? What’s the big value in that particular kind of “new?”

There are so many patterns you can break. Your choice of snack. Your choice of after-work activity. Your choice of online haunts. Your reading materials. Your target goals for your efforts. Your lack of planning. Your over-abundance of planning. Your reliance on the calendar. Your disregard of the calendar.

What patterns could you break? Which patterns are you missing? What are you doing on autopilot and is that serving you? How much time and opportunity can you get back by breaking some of these patterns?

Gertrude Stein once famously said of Oakland, “There is no there there.” Nancy Pfund, of the VC firm DBL Investors, makes a case for how modern Oakland is proving Stein wrong.

UNITED STATES
OF INNOVATION

New Ideas, New Markets, New Insights

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startups new options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick.

CLICK HERE to see how innovation takes many forms

Most urban centers like to describe themselves as “a city of contrasts”–but few actually clinch that description like Oakland, California. A sleepy tidal town whose redwoods were logged to build nearby San Francisco, Oakland’s fortunes accelerated in the mid-1800s, first as a supply depot for the California Gold Rush and then as the western terminal of the Transcontinental Railroad. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the city’s port fed Oakland’s immigrant boom until brisk drug trafficking rendered Oakland a violent-crime center and, more recently, the nation’s unofficial headquarters of the Occupy movement.

Now for the “city of contrasts” part: despite persistent crime and its homely sister status to the more glittering cities on the Bay, Oakland boasts world-class sports teams, rich urban culture (music acts born here include Sly and the Family Stone and Tupac Shakur), all at a sweet discount to pricy San Franicsco.

Business prospects are surprisingly rosy in Oakland, too. Home to Kaiser Permanente, Wells Fargo, and Clorox, the city ranks consistently among America’s most sustainable cities and as a result lures green-energy startups galore. Startups thriving on the East Bay include streaming-music site Pandora (whose IPO was a roaring success, even in 2011), First Solar, Sungevity, and other green-energy, tech, and life-science plays. We talked with Nancy Pfund of DBL Investors, a local VC firm with five Oakland startups in its portfolio, including Pandora. Here, she shares five things you need to know about starting a business in Oakland.

Oakland is hella’ green.

Oakland offers unusually deep support for startups in green tech. DBL co-sponsors StartupOakland, an annual event hosted in a freshly renovated Art Deco landmark, the stunning Fox Theater. Stop Waste helps local environmentally friendly startups get funding and other support.

There’s obvious synergy to be found when your neighbors intuitively understand the green thing. Among Oakland’s companies is another DBL firm, BrightSource Energy, a solar thermal energy provider whose galloping growth recently hit a snag as it abruptly dropped its IPO plans. Other Oakland green-energy plays include Solar Millennium, biodiesel producer Sirona Fuels, and EarthSource Forest Products, a sustainable timber firm.

Pfund lists other Oakland players ready to support startups of any industry. Nonprofit Inner City Advisors offers small businesses guidance from business plan development to funding. One PacificCoast Bank is a community-development bank committed to funding Oakland-based ventures. And then, of course, you can always hop on B.A.R.T. and wow some San Francisco backers.

The City’s New Office of Economic Development is another theoretical resource, although remember: California has a famously catawampus state government, now underfunded to a record degree. Proceed with caution.

Oakland lets you rub shoulders with the world’s best engineering talent.

“UC Berkeley and CalTech are up the street from Oakland. It also isn’t very far from Stanford or UCSF in the city,” Pfund says. “Wtihin ten miles of Oakland you’ll find a lot of horsepower.”

Although a lot of recent grads flock to San Jose for tech or San Francisco for life sciences, many others stay put in the Oakland-Berkeley area. According to Pfund, Oakland is (slowly) materializing as a talent mecca.

It’s easier to get to places in San Francisco from Oakland than it is from San Francisco itself.

Oakland grew up as a transportation hub, with a bustling international airport and the nation’s fifth largest port. Its position east of San Francisco and proximity to Highway 880 are all advantages. But Oakland also kills with its frequent ferries and B.A.R.T. (cummuter train) hubs.

Pfund drops a much-cited point in Oakland’s favor: “It’s easier to get to most places in San Francisco from Oakland than it is from San Francisco itself,” she says. Not just attractive to reverse-commuters, Oakland makes sense for residents of Berkeley, Marin County, and the peninsula. Bedroom communities east of Oakland, like Piedmont and Danville, are booming with formerly fed-up commuters whose travel-times are eased by Oakland’s outstanding connectivity. “Look at Google and Facebook,” Pfund says. “They offer vans because people don’t want to live in the Valley, and they don’t want to drive and there’s no public transit. If your workers want a rich urban experience, Oakland is a great choice.”

One of DBL’s portfolio companies, Revolution Foods, makes healthy, affordable lunches for public schools. Oakland’s centrality helped them grow rapidly; today, they deliver 120,000 meals delivered daily. “Whole Foods’ distribution center is nearby, which is a great help,” Pfund adds. “It’s useful to be near a freeway to transport the meals to the schools.“ (Revolution Foods ranked among our 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World in Food in 2012.)

Now for the caveat: Oakland is a tougher sell to diehard Palo Altans and residents of San Jose. Those two original epicenters of the tech boom still attract workers who need to live and work right on top of the action. However, for more seasoned (and commute-weary) tech workers settled in areas near Oakland, locating your headquarters in Oakland may actually come as a relief to the talent.

“Affordable San Fran” isn’t an oxymoron.

The numbers don’t lie: residential real estate in San Francisco proper runs as high as $1,000 per square foot in premium spots. In Oakland prices top out at $500 to $700 per square foot. Office real estate prices follow suit–if anything, the comparison is even sweeter. Grubb & Ellis rates Oakland as the seventh best office market in the U.S. and No. 3 for industrial office space.

Buy a bike (but don’t get too attached to it).

Oakland’s manageably hilly landscape and warmer weather (it’s consistently 10 degrees hotter than San Francsico) make it “a biking mecca,” Pfund says. That said, this is a city known for sky-high crimes–No. 1 in violent crimes in California in 2011. Guard your property and person accordingly, particularly in the dicey West and East Oakland areas.

Still, if you keep your wits about you and invest in bulletproof locks, Oakland can indeed beguile. The city has some great restaurants that won’t break the bank like more famous establishments in San Francisco. “So many great restaurants in Oakland have spawned from chefs leaving Chez Panisse and others up in Berkeley,” Pfund say. Imagine savoring buttermilk fried chicken at Brown Sugar, the sun warming you up for a day of gentle biking, water views flashing from every hilltop: not too shabby a way to recharge.

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #USInnovation.

Image: Flickr user Jeff Rosen

It’s not too difficult to find locally grown fruits and vegetables in most markets — but start searching for beef, chicken or pork and your food’s origins become a lot more murky. That’s what the Kansas City-based startup AgLocal aims to change.

The mobile-based app functions as a network to benefit three sides of the carnivorous human food chain. Consumers will be able to browse for local farms to order meat, which independent distributors will deliver to grocery stores, where individual buyers will claim their order.

Farmers won’t be forced into the false choice between scaling up to provide for huge conglomerates such as Monsanto, or the inefficient farmers’ market route. Distributors will be connected to their markets and not have to work with huge competitors that hurt their margins. Consumers will know where their meat comes from and have more transparent freedom of choice.

AgLocal co-founder and CEO Naithan Jones, who comes from a family of chefs and farmers, says the startup’s concept came from his own frustration as a meat-loving, health-conscious consumer.

“I’m always so conscious about what I put in my body,” he told Mashable earlier this year. “There are a lot of services out there for vegetarians and vegans, but not for meat eaters.”

Pitching the company to potential investors and other entrepreneurs Wednesday in San Francisco at the startup accelerator NewMe‘s demo day, Jones described his ambition to “change the way meat is bought and sold all over the world” for a marketplace wallowing behind the broader curve of innovation.

The $200 billion global meat business, he said, is an “antiquated, old industry powered by just a few corporate partners that have consolidated power and cut you out of the loop, which has created this problem of sustainability.”

But the company will need to make money to do that. How? Jones says AgLocal will charge wholesale fees when distributors buy from farms and farms from distributors.

AgLocal is currently wrapping up the 12-week NewMe program, where co-founder Jacob McDaniel says it made important connections, learned from mentors and fine tuned its business strategy. McDaniel declined to provide funding numbers but says the company has had no trouble attracting buzz and interested investors.

A small group of consumers, probably in the San Francisco and New York City areas, will be able to order meat from farmers in an alpha lunch within a few months, and McDaniels says AgLocal plans to expand to about 30 major American cities in the next one to two years. Eventually, however, the goal is to connect meat eaters and farmers worldwide.

Is AgLocal a service you would use? Do you think it can change the meat industry and become a success in the process? Let us know in the comments.

A few weeks ago, Ishac Bertran wanted to pluck some articles from his web browser and slip them into his Kindle to read later (and more comfortably), but he was so daunted by the labyrinthine process of transferring data, he decided to skip it altogether. We’ve all been there in our own way.

“Our devices are well connected virtually, through services like DropBox or iCloud,” Bertran, an interaction designer, tells Co.Design in an email. “Those offer wireless synchronization for data, but the devices that contain this data still miss a tangible connection. I thought that a representation of a physical connection would facilitate a more intuitive interaction based on traditional mental models from the physical world.”

In other words: Transferring data really isn’t all that complicated. It’s just a few swipes or clicks of the mouse. But because it takes place behind the scenes–that is, we don’t see our files physically move from one device to the next–it feels difficult.

So Bertran tried to imagine a more natural interface, one that would help demystify the whole process by giving it a visual and tactile component.

As he conceptualizes it, users would hold their devices next to each other, and a half moon would materialize on each screen, together forming a full moon. That moon visualizes the link between your hardware; it says, quite simply, “Your devices are now connected. Transfer away.”

Then to share a file, you’d drag it from one half moon to the other, using the swipes and pinches with which we’ve all grown familiar on iPads and iPhones. Here’s a nice animation of the idea:

Easy-peasy, right?

Bertran was inspired by spatially aware devices such as Sifteo Cubes, which turn user commands into jolts, tilts, and clicks, thus giving tactile form to invisible computational processes.

Of course, for Bertran’s moon concept to become a reality, the Apples and Amazons of the world would have to seriously revise their devices. As it stands, you can’t just hold your Kindle up to your MacBook and start swiping willy-nilly.

But Betran insists that new hardware wouldn’t be terribly hard to integrate: “Sifteo cubes use IrDA transceivers to detect other cubes,” he says. “Something similar could be placed in forthcoming devices to create this tangible connection. For the proposed interaction there is no need to detect other devices all around a device frame. It’s enough to have a particular position in which the devices physically recognize each other to enable more fluent and intuitive interactions.”

Images courtesy of Ishac Bertran