Rafe's Radar

Dollar Shave Club backer: We can take on Gillette

When I first saw the video pitch for Dollar Shave Club, I thought it was a joke. The fact that the site was down for a long period didn't help.

But as we know now, this thing is for real. The YouTube video now has more than 1.6 million views. A backer I spoke with said it's all part of the strategy.

At Launch, I talked with Peter Pham, from Science Inc., the accelerator that's been working with Dollar Shave Club. Science has been working on other similar plays, like the underwear company MeUndies and the … Read more

From scooters to servers: The best of Launch, Day One

I'm an official Grand Jury judge at the Launch startup conference that's in town right now. Tomorrow I'm supposed to render my judgment on the presenting companies to help determine which ones get pieces of the $1 million in investment prizes that have been contributed to this event. Nothing says I can't talk up the products I like ahead of time, though. Here are five. And some bonus picks.

1. Space Monkey This was the favorite of most of the judging panels today, as well as my top pick. Not only is it being a potentially … Read more

Dropbox rival Space Monkey puts 'cloud' in your house

SAN FRANCISCO--I keep writing off online consumer storage as a business (see CX: Good sync product, doomed market), but there's still life left in the model. One of the most interesting new twists, Space Monkey, is a weird blend of Dropbox, BitTorrent, and Crashplan that just might work over the long haul. The product was announced today at the Launch conference.

There are three key technologies making up this cool but strange product:

1. Space Monkey is a synchronizing cloud storage provider like Dropbox. What you store on your account is automatically replicated to other computers you own. Like … Read more

Shimon Peres calls for tech to leverage infantry

SAN FRANCISCO--Shimon Peres, president of Israel, continued his high-profile swing through Silicon Valley by speaking at the Launch Conference this morning. Speaking to an audience of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, he made the case for working in Israel and appealed to the entrepreneurs to create technological goods and services that could help humanity, and Israel itself.

The country of Israel, he said, "had nothing. No water, no oil, no resources." He said that the only true resource in the country was, and is, the people. That has made for a highly technological society. Israel has more scientists per … Read more

New Android voice assistant, Robin, rides shotgun

SAN FRANCISCO--There's another new voice-response assistant that wants to date you: Robin, an Android app launching today at the Launch conference. This one is built for speed, though. Robin is designed specifically to be your in-car voice assistant.

Like Evi, and unlike Siri, Robin keeps your conversation in its head. If you ask for directions to location, and then later ask, "what's the parking like there?" it will know where "there" is. Also, it reads all information back to you, instead of displaying it and requiring you to look at the screen.

Like the … Read more

Startup Secret 43: It's not you, it's me

"Fire your worst customers."

-- Name withheld

A PR friend of mine (the flack-writer relationship isn't always adversarial) who also started her own agency and thus has startup chops, told me how liberating it was to "resign" clients and partners with whom neither she, nor anyone else in her company, enjoyed working.

"It's not beneficial to either party, if you can't work together harmoniously," she said.

A bad working relationship doesn't build value for either side. It doesn't lead to reference relationships you can use in the future. It … Read more

Rafe Recommends: Camera Awesome is what it says

When you're in a hurry to snap a pic with your iPhone, there's nothing like a quick double-jab on the home button to get into the camera app right away. But if you have a second or two to spare, you'd be better served by using an alternative camera app, specifically the new and free Camera Awesome, by SmugMug.

Camera Awesome has the requisite goofball filters that you can over-apply to destroy the color balance of your images after you take them. There are several filters included in the free app; others are available in packs for … Read more

Who the heck are these people? Highlight's social overload

South by Southwest hasn't even started yet and already the friend-finder app Highlight

is being pegged as one of the most important new mobile apps of the show. It's a little app that alerts you when friends, and friends of friends, are in the same place as you at the same time.

Unlike Foursquare or Facebook, it works without requiring check-in, which is what makes it cool. The serendipity factor is just through the roof. It'll tell you if a person you know (that is, a Facebook friend) is in the coffee shop where you are standing … Read more

Numecent makes any app a Web app

Numecent is rolling out its "cloud paging" technology today. It's an interesting way to add some client/server technology to virtual machine setups. What it really means: You'll be able to play big games over the Web more quickly than if you had to download them, and with better performance than if you're streaming the game's video (as OnLive does).

Numecent is a virtual machine technology, but instead of downloading the whole "machine" to the client (end user) computer before it can run it, it uses a network-based virtual memory manager that … Read more