Not all of us want to be locked into a long term contract with a wireless carrier. Especially when it comes to data-only devices that might not get used on a regular basis. For those that want to grab a 4G dongle or a mobile hotspot and go, without the need sign their life over, T-Mobile is launching four new pre-paid data options. The 4G passes start at $15 for 300MB over the course of a week, all the way up to 5GB for $50 over the course of a month. The plans are available on the Sonic 4G and plain ol' T-Mobile 4G mobile hotspots as well as the Rocket 3.0 laptop stick, but tablet users can also hop on the bandwagon. The Galaxy Tab 10.1, 7,0 Plus and SpringBoard are all eligible for the No Annual Contract mobile broadband passes. You can start topping off your megabytes instead of your minutes on May 20th. For more details check out the PR after the break.

Continue reading T-Mobile launches new contract-free, data-only plans

T-Mobile launches new contract-free, data-only plans originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 May 2012 12:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As the software-as-a-service market continues to mature, there are companies emerging that are targeting specific sectors within the enterprise with solutions especially tailored and priced for them: the latest of these is InsightSquared, which has announced a Series A round of $4.5 million for its a business intelligence platform aimed specifically at small and medium-sized businesses.

The round was led by Atlas Venture, with participation also from NextView Ventures and new investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce.com. This brings total funding in the company since February 2011 to $5.5 million.

As part of the news, InsightSquared is also announcing that it is integrating with Salesforce for the latter company’s visualization services to be integrated into the service.

Other services included in InsightSquared fall firmly in the category of data analysis — typically the kind used by large enterprises and now becoming more affordable and accessible to smaller businesses, by way of the SaaS business model. They include activity tracking (dashboards to track activity from employees and clients in real-time, with trending options); sales forecasts; data quality monitoring (identifying, ranking and fixing data errors); ratios and KPIs; nightly emails; employee scorecards ranking each worker against his peers; tagging and filtering and integration with other data sources (eg voice tracking with M5 Networks); financial tracking and web tracking (with Google Analytics).

These services are offered in packages that begin at $99 per month, says the company.

The basic premise of InsightSquared is that data intelligence requirements for SMBs are different to those from larger enterprises — not just in terms of the kind of data that is covered, but in how the service is priced — because, as those who work with the SMB sector know, it is one of the most price-sensitive segments of all in the enterprise market.

“The requirements for making data intelligence useful to small and mid-sized businesses are much different than that of large enterprises,” Fred Shilmover, co-founder and CEO of InsightSquared, said in a statement.  “Our product is built with usability, data integrity and simple workflow as the central focuses.  Consequently, our cost-benefit proposition for the SMB market is compelling.”

Like its investor and partner Salesforce, InsightSquared is geared mainly at productivity and services around sales teams and those that are customer-facing in their businesses. Up to now, judging from the company’s publicly-disclosed customer list, it has made some inroads, through an integration with Bullhorn, into working with companies in the recruitment sector, with companies like Hireminds, Vertek, I-Technology and Hiregy among their customers.

The end of last week's Switched On left doubt for the future of dedicated devices that tread on the turf of smartphones. After all, funding is key to every major new product initiative and, despite the vast fortunes of many Silicon Valley engineers that have been accumulated via IPOs and acquisitions, few wish to take on the risk of fronting a new consumer device themselves.(In 2007, the handheld FlipStart PC was hatched from FlipStart Labs, funded by Vulcan Ventures, the investment arm of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.)

Most venture capitalists abhor the device business; it is a rare device that makes it to the spotlight of startup debutante balls such as DEMO, TechCrunch Disrupt, or Launch. Even most of the 94 companies at CES' Eureka Park were not developing end-user devices Where, then, can a device entrepreneur go for funding and pick up some publicity in the process?

Continue reading Switched On: Big kicks, not all for starters

Switched On: Big kicks, not all for starters originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Arcade fan (and genius) Le Chuck got up one morning and thought "Why not build a perfect replica of Atari's Star Wars Arcade, at 1:6 scale?" The result is this amazing 12-inch cabinet with a fully working Atari-yoke, handmade from aluminum and a pair of potentiometers. Tucked inside the box is a modded Caanoo running MAME4all, which has been tweaked to boot straight into the game when activated. The whole project took him over 80 hours to put together, but we think it was time very well spent. If you want to see the thing in action (and sing along to the 8-bit version of the theme) then head on past the break.

Continue reading Star Wars Arcade gets fan-made mini-me, weeps tears of joy (video)

Star Wars Arcade gets fan-made mini-me, weeps tears of joy (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Larry Page's tenure as Googler-in-chief has heralded the death of many ambitious experiments, but even he refuses to kill the self-driving car. His project head, Anthony Levandowski, has now asked the car makers of Detroit to sign up with Mountain View for hardware testing, saying that if driverless cars are not ready by the next decade, then it's "shame on us as engineers." There's still some way to go before the tech is road-worthy, but Google is already working with insurers to work out how your car is going to handle making that call to Geico when things go wrong.

Continue reading Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?'

Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yep, we went way out for April's Engadget Show, taking our film crew to Asia this time out, to check out the markets of Taipei, Hong Kong and Shenzhen with our very own Richard Lai. We also scored interviews with Huawei's Chief of Design, Hagen Fendler and Michelle Hsiao of the ASUS Design Center. We'll be checking out the month's latest and greatest gadgets, including the HTC One X, S and V, Nokia Lumia 900 and the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, as well as a big ole pile of KIRFs -- some more convincing than others. We've also got a couple of performances by Brooklyn indie rockers Suckers and a whole bunch more.

Gallery: The Engadget Show 32: ASUS, Huawei and a trip to China's gadget markets

Hosts: Tim Stevens, Brian Heater
Guests: Hagen Fendler (Huawei), Michelle Hsiao (ASUS), Richard Lai, Guy Streit
Producer: Guy Streit
Director: Michelle Stahl
Executive Producers: Brian Heater, Joshua Fruhlinger and Michael Rubens
Music by: Suckers

Download the Show: The Engadget Show - 032 (HD) / The Engadget Show - 032 (iPod / iPhone / Zune formatted) / The Engadget Show - 032 (Small)

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The Engadget Show 32: ASUS, Huawei and a trip to Asia's gadget markets originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft has Clippy the Office Assistant to help confused users make their way around Word, and a startup from Israel called WalkMe earlier this month launched a service that offers the equivalent for the web: an interactive, on-screen guide that helps users get around complicated web pages. And two weeks out in the market, WalkMe has announced its first round of funding, from Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners.

The exact value of the Series A investment was not disclosed but TechCrunch understands it is over $1 million.

Since going live earlier this month, WalkMe’s CEO Dan Adika says it has signed up over 1,000 sites to incorporate it into its user interface (much to the delight of the designers who toiled over the original plans).

WalkMe is aiming the product at the kinds of companies that you may have grumbled about yourself when trying to figure out where to go and what to do on a web site: target clients are those working in the realm of business software, online shopping, banking and really anything that requires web input to work. WalkMe says its service works as an overlay on top of existing designs, making implementation relatively quick and painless. That means potentially cost reductions in two areas: serving customers and site operations.

WalkMe says that it will use the funding to market the service to more sites, and well as increase the functionality of the product.

Mangrove has focused a lot of its activity in early stage investments like this one, and WalkMe is also part of the VC’s bigger strategy of investing in the SaaS space.

In this case, partner Michael Jackson, who once been the COO of Skype, says that this investment might have more immediate, cross-pollinating benefits: “We invested in WalkMe’s technology after seeing the benefits that their initial implementations already deliver to our portfolio companies.”

Continue reading Wacom Bamboo Stylus Duo lets you draw something on tablets and paper

Wacom Bamboo Stylus Duo lets you draw something on tablets and paper originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

2600 Volume 1 released as a DRM-free ebook: phreak like it's 1984 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

BMW i8 Concept Spyder takes to the road, sounds almost as gorgeous as it looks (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Harry Potter Wizard's Collection brings home all eight movies on a ridiculous 31 discs (video)

Harry Potter Wizard's Collection brings home all eight movies on a ridiculous 31 discs (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apptio, which offers enterprise SaaS for managing IT and operations to large companies looking to stay abreast of the latest advances, has raised yet more money from a familiar roster of investors. This $50 million round, their fourth, was led by “certain investment strategies” at T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., augmented by continuing investment from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Shasta Ventures.

This brings their total funding raised to $91 million since their Series A in 2007 with Greylock and Madrona.

A slight change in the lineup saw board member Tom Bogan appointed as Chairman, and the company hired over a hundred people in 2011; they now employ 250 people.

The press release also reveals that the company has passed the $100 billion mark in “IT spend under management,” which is to say the combined IT budgets of the many companies they work with. The list of companies includes such major players as Boeing, Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, and Cisco, which is an investor.

No specific use for the new money was mentioned, it is likely to be used for continued scaling, hiring, and the expansion of services being offered.

Continue reading PayPal's Digital Wallet lets you decide how you empty yours (video)

PayPal's Digital Wallet lets you decide how you empty yours (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Doug Pepper, who is a General Partner at InterWest Partners where he invests in SaaS, mobile, consumer internet and digital media companies. He blogs at dougpepper.blogspot.com.

IPOs are hot again. Naturally, the press is focused on high-profile offerings like Facebook’s. But, I think there is a more important group of companies going public: Smaller, less sexy Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startups. Think of it as the Sexy IPOs versus the SaaS-y IPOs.

They aren’t household names, but the most recent SaaS IPOs (Cornerstone, Jive, Brightcove and Bazaarvoice) are doing better in the public markets, on average, than the Sexy IPOs of LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga.

But it isn’t just their performance that matters — the recent IPOs of those cloud-based software companies (plus earlier ones from Successfactors, Netsuite, and Concur) are harbingers of several important trends:

The SaaS companies have gone public with annual revenue in the range of $50-$100M and are valued at anywhere from $500M to $1B at IPO. Several are now trading well above $1B. VCs have been waiting for 10 years for the public markets to consistently accept new issues with less than $100M in revenue. This is an important development as it means VCs can exit companies sooner in the investment cycle.

As a group, Cornerstone, Jive, Brightcove and Bazaarvoice are up 64% since their IPOs. Earlier SaaS IPOs like Concur and Netsuite are up 375% and 88%, respectively, since their debuts. Finally, don’t forget that Successfactors went public at $10/share and was recently acquired by SAP at $40/share!

Implications: The SaaS IPOs are training public market investors that they can generate strong returns when they invest in the IPOs of VC-backed companies with sub-$100M in revenue. And, these companies are being valued highly enough so that VCs who invested early can make excellent returns. In many cases, these IPOs are “fund-makers” for the early stage VCs. And when they trade up in the aftermarket, it is a win-win for both VC and public market investors.

Of course, Linkedin, Groupon, and Zynga are absolutely phenomenal for the VCs involved. I wish I had been an early stage investor in any or all of these. And, they have proved to LPs that VCs can, once again, generate serious returns for them. But, just like Google didn’t ignite a rush of IPOs starting after 2004, I don’t think the sexy IPOs will launch a huge wave of IPOs. Why not? First, there just aren’t enough companies at that scale to expect VCs to have a consistent inventory of them. Second, several of these companies have gone public too late in their growth cycles to generate good long-term returns for public investors (my opinion). So, public investors may not be clamoring for more of them.

So, why are SaaS companies so attractive to public market investors and trading up in the aftermarket? I asked that question of a friend at a hedge fund that invests in IPOs. Here is his response (I bolded what I believe are his key points):

In a nutshell, he is reiterating what Bill Gurley noted in his excellent post about what constitutes high quality revenue. In this case, SaaS companies solve critical problems for enterprises and generate sustainable and predictable recurring revenue with rapid growth.

The good news for the VC industry is that we have significant inventory of companies that fit this profile ($50-100M revenue and rapid growth). For example, companies like Demandware, Box.net, Workday, Yammer, Badgeville, GetSatisfaction and Marketo should all reach critical mass in the next 12-24 months. And, there are many others.

I know from experience because my firm, InterWest, is an early investor in several companies in this category including Marketo, GetSatisfaction, Spredfast, Varolii, Cloud9, Aria Systems and Cubetree (acquired by Successfactors). These businesses take time to build and require experienced leaders to grow them. Not incidentally, we believe they also require patient VCs that are laser focused on this business model.

Image from GetApp.com

Gallery: Apple new iPad hands-on!

Continue reading Apple new iPad hands-on (update: video!)

Apple new iPad hands-on (update: video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Worlds collide as Super Mario Bros and Portal become Mari0 (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading NHTSA issues "distraction guidelines" proposal for in-vehicle electronics, MyFord Touch frets

NHTSA issues "distraction guidelines" proposal for in-vehicle electronics, MyFord Touch frets originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Barclays Pingit iOS App

Continue reading Barclays releases Pingit mobile payments app, we go hands-on

Barclays releases Pingit mobile payments app, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gallery: Nikon D800

Continue reading Nikon confirms 36.3-megapixel D800, we go hands-on

Nikon confirms 36.3-megapixel D800, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and Apple became the world’s largest PC maker, if you count iPads as PCs (as well you should).

Combined, what these numbers tell us is that the post-PC era is happening now. Right now. And maybe we need to think about how we define “PC.”

In Q4 2011, vendors shipped 158.5 million smartphones, up 57% on the 101.2 million units shipped in Q4 2010. For the year, there were 487.7 million units shipped, up 63% on the 299.7 million units shipped in 2010. Meanwhile, the global PC market grew just 15% in 2011 to 414.6 million units. The smartphones have won.

The funny thing about that PC shipments number is that, on its own, it doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of today’s PC landscape. There weren’t 414.6 million desktop, notebook and netbook computers shipped in 2011 – those were at 112.4 million, 209.6 million and 29.4 million, respectively. The 414.6 million number includes 63.2 million in “pad” shipments, Canalys’s preferred term for tablets. That means 15% of the “PC” shipments in 2011 were tablets, largely Apple’s iPad. In Q4, tablets were 22% of the total PC shipments. And the tablet segment of the market grew 274.2% year-over-year.

Also in Q4 2011, Apple became the leading worldwide “PC” vendor (if you count the iPad as a PC) with 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs shipped, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped in Q4. It overtook HP (now #2), Acer, Dell and Lenovo in the process.

Overall, the PC market grew 16% year-over-year, Canalys noted last month. Without tablets, it declined 0.4%.

Of course, there’s still the question of whether or not tablets should be broken out into their own computing category, positioned against the traditional “PCs” when tracking device shipments. For what’s it worth, I think it’s fine to count tablets as PCs – after all, PC means “personal computer,” not “machine running Windows.” The fact that we still equate the word with a desktop, monitor, keyboard and mouse combo is a testament to the empire Microsoft built, and is now losing.

Case in point: netbook shipments dropped 25.3% from 2010 to 2011. Desktops grew a paltry 2.3% and notebooks grew just 7.5%. This is end of the “PC” era in action. While the 209.6 million notebook shipments still make that the largest category of “PCs,” the growth trends here, if sustained, dictate that’s its only a matter of time before the shift to tablets becomes even more pronounced.

Think about it: what’s the first “PC” you’re going to buy for your kid, as a new member to the post-PC computing generation? If you respond “notebook,” I’d say you’re lying. That kid is getting an iPad, even if they end up stealing yours. If not an iPad, then they’re getting a phone.

And smartphones are PCs, too. The most affordable ones.

This past quarter, smartphone shipments overtook PCs, a hugely important milestone that speaks volumes about the state of modern-day computing. The computer-in-your-pocket has moved from being “a niche product segment at the high-end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition,” explains Canalys of the change.

In Q4, Apple broke records by shipping 37 million iPhones – the most ever shipped by a single vendor in a quarter. Previously, Nokia held the record with 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. What a difference a year makes.

But Canalys cautioned that it expects to see smartphone market growth slow in 2012, as vendors exercise “greater cost control and discipline” to focus on profitability. This is the only discordant note to the report. Smartphone growth slowing? No offense to the analysts, but I’ll believe that one when I see it. Just watching Apple’s sales alone, it’s clear you can’t underestimate its power to deliver record-breaking numbers. In addition, just because vendors like HTC and Motorola are going to launch fewer smartphone models in 2012, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean they’ll sell fewer overall phones. If anything, the companies are hoping that their increased focus on “hero” devices will help them increase sales.

One thing is clear, however: that post-PC era everyone’s been talking about since the day the phrase slipped off Steve Jobs’ lips has arrived. We’re living it. Anyone who wastes their time debating its existence (tablets are PCs! phones are PCs!) is arguing semantics. The shift itself, whatever you want to call it, is happening.

So perhaps “post-PC” isn’t the best terminology. If everything’s a PC, then maybe what we’ve achieved is something more akin to “PCs Everywhere.” Not as catchy, though.

Photo credit top: Lokesh Dhakar, flickr; bottom: agirregabiria, flickr