Considered by many to be one of the most important automotive events, the New York International Auto Show always brings us a bevy of new models, concepts and general information from world’s most popular car brands.

The 2015 New York International Auto Show kicked off earlier this week, where we had one of our friends, a highly talented automotive photographer Cristian Guamanzara, visiting the NYIAS and taking a couple of interesting shots from the event itself.

Plenty more from the 2015 New York International Auto Show is coming up later today, with detailed information about several new models and concepts being released, all covered on our site in detail.  Take a look at the media gallery below the jump and feast your eyes on some rather exciting vehicles from one of the important annual events from the automotive industry.

2015 New York International Auto Show gallery

The post 2015 New York International Auto Show Gallery appeared first on VR World.

We have seen quite a number of hardware and other creative projects launched at International CES that were backed by crowdfunding campaigns and other crowd-led initiatives. While crowdfunding does have its critics, it has become a viable source of market validation for startups and a means for jumpstarting an otherwise difficult-to-fund idea.

Who would have known that crowdsourcing is not exactly a new concept, however? In an interview with Priti Ambani, Global Media Director at Crowdsourcing Week, we learn that crowdsourcing is a social concept that is “probably as old as the human race.” Take for instance the collaborative economy of cooperatives formed by people with common causes as early as the 1930s. And who would forget the open source software initiative started in the 1980s? If anything, crowdsourcing is an effort that involves “basically harnessing collaboration to fill a need or solve a problem.”

But the term “crowdsourcing” has only recently come into limelight as a driver of growth and innovation, and one main difference today is the empowering nature of technology and connectivity highlighted by social media. These have enabled the crowd to solve large-scale problems. Ambani calls these “social productivity” and concepts like the opportunities and promise of the crowd economy will be highlighted at the 2015 Crowdsourcing Week Global conference in Singapore on April 20 to 24 this year.

VR World interviewed Ambani on the relevance of crowdsourcing, the issues surrounding this social phenomenon, and the future, especially in technology-oriented industries. Here are is an excerpt of the conversation.

Tell us more about crowd-sourcing. Is there any particular technology or infrastructure that has made crowdsourcing more accessible today than it was a few years ago?

Priti Ambani, Global Media Director, Crowdsourcing Week

Crowdsourcing is basically harnessing collaboration to fill a need or solve a problem. The practice is common and probably as old as the human race, but the terminology and frameworks have come into focus due to two main reasons: first, technology and connectivity powered by social media; second, the sheer potential of crowdsourcing to solve large-scale problems—the practice of problem-solving innovation, efficiency and finance, based on loose and open networks of both amateurs and professionals, powered by digital technologies, social media, web 2.0 applications or even analog communications. We call this social productivity.

Can you tell us any interesting origin stories of crowdsourcing from the past that may have an impact on how things are done today? I recall, for example, that in the 1980’s Sony tried to crowd-source its logo design, only to eventually settle on keeping the old logo.

One of the interesting stories back in 1938 is Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI)’s initiative on collaborative economy through a cooperative that has shared ownership and a democratic system. Through volunteerism, gear donations, education, and financial contributions, the members and community embraced lifetime outdoor adventure and responsible stewardship of the environment.

In the tech industry, crowdsourcing naturally sprung forth in 1980’s through sharing of ideas and knowledge among Net enthusiasts. These talented and motivated coders participated in open-source projects. The flow is simple: someone has an idea, he starts coding, releases it in public and invites his peers to contribute and make some tweaks on the project to develop and improve it.

Linus Torvalds’s Linux OS is an interesting origin story—he coded the program from scratch in 1991, and released the source code publicly. Hobbyists and interested programmers contributed to the development, and fast forward today, we are reaping the fruits of the crowdsourced efforts through the open-source project for having one of the world’s popular and growing OS desktop, sharing the market with Windows and Mac OS X.

WordPress is also one of the most stable CMS is an open-source project—the collaboration, talent of these coders, and their desire to create a structured personal CMS—without this platform, we’ll be publishing our content today at the backend manually with hardcore coding in HTML and CSS.

Sometimes it just all about engagement. Even if Sony did not adopt the crowdsourced logo, an exercise in crowdsourcing is critical for continuous brand engagement. And this real success story extends beyond brands to governments and social enterprises — democratic governments need to be close to the pulse of its citizens.

What is your opinion on crowdfunding as a means of financing startups? Does crowdfunding crowd out institutional investments? What can you say about the accountability of the owner of the crowd-funding campaign?

With donation-based crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, IndieGogo, and GoFundMe, these sites make it easier  for startups to raise money; these are effective channels to target potential customers who are really interested to pledge financial donations in exchange for products/services. Crowdfunding can be a form of equity-based or donation-based, the former have people to contribute funds or acquire shares within the company, while the latter (like Kickstarter) is experiencing significant growth from the past couple of years. I believe that crowdfunding is here to stay, disrupting the traditional process of raising capital, which NGOs would definitely benefit from this economy, as well as startups and for-profit orgs. It is catalyzing a transformative shift across finance, business, marketing, government and more.

Among institutional and angel investors, I think there are numerable benefits of a hybrid model. For example, in Israel there are more than 500 venture financed startups and more than 1000 angel investors, and sites like OurCrowd does have strict accreditation criteria built within their system. These obviously build safeguards for potential investors. Crowdfunding is surely a risky proposition, hence education on startup finance, risks and returns is being circulated widely. Even donation-based platforms rely on trust and validation — as social reputation is at stake and is an added incentive for owners to be honest and proactive. With the growing number of startup companies, both types of investors aren’t just limited to investing in public stocks; they can help fund fast-growing companies as well.

Are there any inherent challenges in crowdsourcing? For instance, how do we ensure quality of crowdsourced information like Wikipedia? Or how do we resolve differences among open-source developers?

With crowdsourcing, the inherent challenges may include cultural, political and socio-economic diversity, and also that cultural gap between the way things are executed in the east and west. Other challenges I could think of include ethical and legal risks in creative crowdsourcing.

Motivated contributors create these Wikipedia articles and they are then curated, edited, corrected, and improved over time by the community itself like writers, editors, readers, and admins. On the backend the technological platform and the curator team try to ensure articles are factual and don’t violate copyrights. While anyone can contribute, there are admins who also control the quality and documents and modifications.

To mitigate the conflicts and resolve differences among open source developers, communication plays a vital role to finish the tasks—there must be a streamlined system of recorded logs of activities and settings, and discussions of task decomposition (dividing the work in smaller pieces) and coordination in their workload on a daily basis.

Above everything else there is the crowd! Mature crowd communities like the one on Wikipedia have the potential to  organically self-sustain and resolve conflicts. The onus on creating conditions favorable for a robust and fair community lies on the platform creators  / admins or curators.

Also, how do we ensure that companies that run crowd-sourced design contests don’t exploit the participants? It could be a cheap way of getting a lot of good designs, whilst only paying for one or two. How are these challenges resolved?

In the creative crowdsourcing ecosystem, the participants must be aware of the requirements or rules before submitting their designs to companies. Many a time, one can provide a working drawing with minimal use of time and resources. It’s advisable to choose to work on briefs from companies that provide a transparent contract on the allocation of ownership/IP rights. Crowdsourced design platforms provide dual rating systems and this is a great resource for potential designers to choose who they want to work for.  Like I mentioned earlier, the wonderful thing about crowdsourcing communities is the transparency and social reputation. This online trust is increasingly important to individuals and companies — and they are willing to work to earn and maintain it. The system also weeds out the bad actors.

Exploitation happens if there’s ignorance on both sides—participants and hosting companies should do “the right thing” and as these options of freelancing and platform work become more prevalent, we will see less exploitation and more opportunity. At Crowdsourcing Week, we want to educate both sides to come up with win-win solutions for healthy collaboration in all aspects.

The post Crowdsourcing Week: The Rise of the Crowd Economy appeared first on VR World.

On Wednesday, November 26th, Coins.PH sponsored Bitcoin 102, a small event keynoted by speakers from the cryptocurrency community, in Makati City. Attended by a mix that included startup founders, developers, finance professionals, Bitcoin users and folks curious with the technology, the talk was kenoyted by Coinspeaker editor Daniel Harrison and 37Coins co-founder Johann Barbie.

The discussions revolved around the ever-changing value of Bitcoin, and how stakeholders can address the volatility — particularly whether this can be considered a sound financial instrument. Barbie, likewise, in his capacity as co-founder and developer at crypto wallet service 37Coins, highlights how his team has explored partnerships with stakeholders in various countries and jurisdictions, in order to come at a cost-effective and multi-platform approach to wallets: by using SMS.

It’s a Cartel

One interesting thing pointed out during the discussions was that Bitcoin is rooted in a lot of ideal scenarios, but the reality is far different from how the designer originally intended it. The Blockchain supposedly democratized transactions as these are now more transparent, secure and accessible. However, the stark reality is that there the vast majority of Bitcoin and related resources are controlled by only a few. Barbie even characterizes it as effectively a cartel behavior, especially amongst those who have the resources to mine Bitcoin, and those who already have significant holdings.

According to Barbie, the people who benefit most from the upsurge in Bitcoin value are the ones who already have a lot of it in the first place.

The discussion led to startups that offered wallet services, Coins.ph and 37Coins actually being part of the group. Whilst it’s easy to dismiss these companies as part of the yet-another-bitcoin-wallet startup crowd, the fact is that these are bringing Bitcoin to the masses by offering localized services like bank transfers. 37Coins is bringing it one step further by addressing the needs of the unbanked, by enabling transfers to those who may not necessarily have savings accounts, credit/debit cards or even ordinary cash cards.

Meanwhile, in this author’s discussion with Harrison, we delved deeper into the value of Bitcoin. Harrison says that Bitcoin does not have intrinsic value as a currency. Unlike fiat currency, the value of which is usually determined by monetary authorities, “ownership” of Bitcoin means having partaken of the Blockchain and the value is determined by whatever the market dictates it. You essentially own a piece of it, but that doesn’t mean the particular piece should have a value in itself, except perhaps for the speculative value and the value determined by demand.

In the end, Harrison says Bitcoin can still be an effective instrument for investment, as part of fund managers’ portfolio, perhaps in hedging their investments. He highlights that the most loss one could get from acquiring Bitcoins is losing 100% of the acquisition cost. But the potential return can be hundredfold. And what is the best driver of upsurges in Bitcoin’s value? It’s when there is good news that precedes it, such as governments warming up to crpytocurrencies in general.

Beyond finance

The beauty of Bitcoin, from the discussions presented by the two speakers, is in how it has brought logic to finance. While Bitcoin is more popularly known as a means of virtual monetary exchange, the bigger value is in what can be done with the exchange of data and not just money. For example, money intended to finance a certain project can be earmarked for such, and other parties (such as government government or corrupt individuals) will be unable to touch it.

Bitcoin is definitely here to stay. But Harrison gives a hypothetical situation in which someone develops an altogether new version of  the Blockchain — and not just building upon the Blockchain or other existing iterations — as something that could be the end of Bitcoin. This, however, is highly unlikely, at least in the short term.

The post Bitcoin, Value and the Future of Cryptocurrencies appeared first on VR World.

Social media is increasingly supplanting more traditional avenues of marketing and advertising, as evident with targeted campaigns run on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Businesses are likewise increasingly adopting a mobile-first approach to content, marketing and scale. VR World sat down with Hanna Andrzejewska, Marketing Manager at email marketing firm GetResponse, which is gearing up for expansion into the ASEAN region, kicking off the GetResponse Asia Tour in Singapore on September 23rd, with two other cities in the region to follow.

Self-service marketing and advertising are not exactly new, with both enterprises and small businesses starting to eschew the old-world approach to running campaigns via PR and advertising firms at the turn of the century. When Google AdSense first popularized contextual advertising, for example, companies could run campaigns for as cheap as a few dozen dollars, compared to the millions one would have to spend for a TV spot or sponsorship.

Today, social media allows for targeted campaigns, and messages are being pushed based on interest, connections and context. With the ubiquity of mobile devices, businesses can even reach consumers based on proximity, thereby highlighting the power of the incidental sale, impulse buy and on-site promotions. In terms of marketing, it pays to be responsive and even adaptive in reaching out to one’s audience.

Design that adapts to users’ needs

“With the increase in use of mobile devices to access the web for research, entertainment and commerce, responsive design ensures that the user experience across thousands of varied devices is predictable, intuitive and native as possible to the user’s expectations and needs,” Andrzejewska tells VR World. “Adaptive design particularly has a few advantages over general responsive design for the end user’s experience. It allows businesses to accomplish differentiated experiences for users based on the specific intent of the mobile user, therefore, focusing more on the user’s behavior and specific needs rather than delivering a standard fluid layout designed solely to ‘fit’ in the user’s screen.”

“Adaptive design takes into account usage patterns and user behavior to deliver content specially design to convert and fill the need of the user and device,” Andrzejewska adds. “Whereas responsive design will tend to always present similar content and experiences across all devices ignoring the fact that intent and needs are inherently different based on the user’s medium. Adaptive design clearly has the advantage here for businesses will the goal of high conversion via intuitive user experience.”

An increasingly mobile audience

“Marketing has always been about being active where viewers spend most of their time, and this attention is diminishing in traditional media, and is moving towards new media,” Andrzejewska says. In this regard, she stressed the need to refocus marketing efforts in addressing an increasingly mobile audience. “Mobile web adoption is growing eight times faster than web adoption did in the 1990s and early 2000s, which means it’s becoming a more integral part of our daily lives.”

Andrzejewska advises that the mobile-first approach that many startups take today should not be taken lightly. Citing a study by Smart Insights that finds users spending 89% of their time on mobile apps vis-a-vis 11% on mobile web pages, she says businesses should have a presence where customers are. “Mobile-first means that businesses are meeting their customers and prospects via a medium with which they’re most intimate. Failure to do this ignores the user’s expectation and demand for enjoyable experiences tailored for them, and in return the customer ignores the brand. Which translates into less opportunities for sales and growth.”

Opportunities for growth

With the diversity of potential audiences, however, a cookie-cutter approach may not exactly be appropriate. Andrzejewska cites the case of Android rising fast in emerging economies, and Google actually addressing the demand for inexpensive but decently-powered devices meant for these markets. “One powerful example of the nature of business in many parts of the Asia Pacific market is the recent entrance of Google’s Android One in India,” she says.

“With only 10% of India’s 1.2 billion population owning a smartphone, Google has realized that India and other Asian countries are less likely to spend $600+ dollars to purchase phones due to less spending power,” adds Andrzejewska. “In response, they have reengineered the Android operating system to take greater advantage of lower-end hardware, thus creating quality smartphone products that could potentially sell for less than $100 per unit. This strategy will tap into a market that other premium companies like Apple, whose growth and market share is plateauing, cannot enter due to a high price point and lack of understanding of the market.”

Here’s where the ASEAN market comes in. GetResponse’s founders consider the region to be a potentially high-growth market. While the Delaware-headquartered company has been availably in global markets, including Asia, its regional offices are located in Canada and Europe. The company has “recently noticed increased demand in the localized version of the platform” from clients in Asia, particularly in the user interface, mobile application and communication templates.

Building up in Asia

“We decided to officially launch and emphasize our presence in the ASEAN markets because growing customer demand and comparatively few native email marketing alternatives, for one,” says Andrzejewska. In addition, the company wants to capitalize on the “fast-growing Asian technology markets, especially with a focus on online marketing.”

She notes that the rise of technology startups in the region has “generated a huge demand for complex, complete solutions that meet expectations of marketers,” and that a platform like GetResponse will “help enable regional businesses to tap into global solutions in reaching out to their audience both locally and globally.”

For Andrzejewska, the plan is for the company’s Asian operation to “go beyond serving our current customers.” In this regard, the company plans to expand marketing activities, “including event marketing, affiliate relations, and dedicated partnership programs for re-sellers.” The plan is to eventually open a general office in the region as part of its strategic roadmap.

The post GetResponse Talks Adaptive Design, Mobile-First Approach, and Expansion to Asia appeared first on VR World.