InVision, a prototyping tool for thousands of web developers and designers, has recently closed an $11.6 million Series A round from FirstMark Capital and Tiger Global.
The company launched in 2011 out of New York with a mission to make it easy for designers to share, interact with, and get feedback on their prototypes. Users can easily upload Photoshop files to the web and add interactions to form a simulation, all within a normal web browser under a single link (which can be password protected).
In February 2012, InVision raised a $1.5 million seed round with FirstMark. The startup has since focused on facilitating the conversation around these prototypes, which can now happen with a much wider range of people.
Founder Clark Valberg explained that traditionally, the communication between designers and coders about the final look and feel of a project was limited to an inner circle of people. With InVision, a wide range of people across the company can consult on the design and give their feedback asynchronously.
That might sound like data overflow, but one might also consider it a less risky alternative to launching a real product before the design department is ready. That is, after all, the argument. Some startups believe that design, in multiple drafts, should come before coding out the product, while others believe that you should push a real product out as quickly as possible to get users (and ultimately receive their feedback).


Valberg isn’t opposed to iterating based on user feedback, but believes that it’s better to get much of that initial iteration process out of the way before you “lose a lot of control” by making your product publicly available.
The new funding will allow InVision to continue picking up new customers, which currently range from small startups to huge corporations. The company is also working on “some interesting partnerships”, as well as some enhanced marketing and new features.

Hackathon and online technology challenge contest provider ChallengePost (disclosure: ChallengePost is the current service provider for TC Disrupt hackathon events) is pretty proud of its 2013 – the company awarded $7.5 million in prizes to developers and software creators this past year, topped 400,000 registered users on its platform, and hosted 130 hackathons and online competitions. That represents 100 percent growth in business compared to 2012, but already the company is turning its attention to something new: supporting the kind of innovation that happens within a confined time frame at hackathons, but on a continuing basis.
“The future of every industry is a battle to create an ecosystem that has a platform for developers, and the developers and designers themselves,” ChallengePost founder and CEO Brandon Kessler explained in an interview. “That to me is a hugely important aspect of the future and it’s already coming true, and ChallengePost sees ourself as the only platform that excels at developer marketing.”
Currently, ChallengePost powers both the kind of 24-hour in-person hackathon that we host at our Disrupt Events, as well as longer format online events they call “challenges” that could span weeks, and that generally produce much more polished and usable software. Embark, the transit app acquired by Apple earlier this year, was first built at a ChallengePost online challenge event, for example, as was Movil, the video startup acquired by Samsung to boost its smart TV platform.
“The thing I am most focused on is allowing software makers to submit their software outside of a challenge, as well as inside of a challenge, so developers can showcase their work any time,” Kessler said. “In order to best inspire developers to build and showcase software, we want to do it beyond just challenges and hackathons and allow them to do it any time. The time-constrained nature of challenges has limited our ability to respond to the intense demand to showcase software.”

“No customer has ever said ‘we only want to engage developers between the months of March and April,’ and no software maker has said ‘We only want to show our software to the world between the months of January and April,’” Kessler added. “They want to do it all year round, and that’s where we as a company are at right now.”
Of course, ChallengePost will continue to offer its platform for contests, hackathons and challenges, but the sense I get from Kessler is that they see a lot of opportunity for revenue and platform engagement left on the table dealing only with time-constrained competitions. The need to build a platform with a rich developer ecosystem doesn’t ever go away, and while a high-stakes, high profile hackathon draws a brief spike in attention from software builders, having that fizzle away after the fact because there’s no easy support system in place once the contest closes makes little sense.
Kessler is keeping mum on the specifics around how a ChallengePost product that isn’t time-constrained will work exactly, and when it’ll go live for users, but he says they’ll be back with more information soon. For now, with the company at the peak of its popularity, all that’s certain is that this is a good time for ChallengePost to capitalize on is customer interest and user engagement to take its platform to the next level.

Google Glass owners got a surprise on Tuesday when Google revealed its iOS version of MyGlass a bit too early.

We’re starting with pictures, but just think about what else is possible. Imagine a day where you’re riding in the back of a cab and you just wink at the meter to pay. You wink at a pair of shoes in a shop window and your size is shipped to your door. You wink at a cookbook recipe and the instructions appear right in front of you –- hands-free, no mess, no fuss. Pretty cool, right?

Google made its MyGlass app for Google Glass available for Apple’s iOS on Tuesday — however, just minutes after going live, its App Store page mysteriously disappeared.

Great news iPhone fans, the iOS app is ready, but we need you to have this month’s Glass update first before it will work. We know we spilled the beans a bit too soon, but we’ll let you know when it’s available for download later this week.

Apple users who own the $1,500 wearable computing device have been asking for an iOS version of the MyGlass app for some time. Google’s long-awaited launch of a dedicated iOS app for Glass would have moved the device from a very expensive Bluetooth accessory for iOS users into a fully functioning smart device that lets iPhone users in on the complete functionality of Google Glass.

Yahoo’s new direction under Marissa Mayer is still coming together, but one thing they’ve unquestionably done right is the weather app for iPhone they debuted earlier this year. The iPad version has just been released, and it’s about as close to a native iPad weather app as you can get, given the similarity in design choices between Apple’s native iPhone weather app and that of Yahoo’s third-party version.
It feels at home on the iPad, but it also probably exceeds whatever Apple would’ve done, taking the two iPhone weather apps from either party as a point of reference. The app uses your device’s location to find imagery from Flickr to populate the background, and more often than not, those reflect actual current conditions on the ground. Then you can scroll up to get a detailed forecast, including hourly and daily predictions, details, wind speed, precipitation and maps, all of which is presented in a beautiful, cleverly animated but easy-to-read interface.
The app is simple enough in terms of how it works, but it does everything it needs to, and doesn’t clutter things up with too much else. It’s a perfect companion to the iPhone version, and comes as a universal update for the existing free app. Apple provides extremely limited weather information on the iPad, both in the “Today” tab on the new iOS 7 notifications screen, and in the Clock app, but these are limited essentially to current temps or the predicted high for the day. Yahoo’s offering is leaps and bounds better, completely free, and an actual visual treat thanks to the Flickr-sourced imagery.
I still wonder about some of Yahoo’s recent decisions, like a logo design that pretty much ushered Yahoo into the early 1990s, and mail outages that span impossible multiple-day gaps, but the Weather app has been a rock solid product reinvention for them, and the iPad version doesn’t do anything to debate that.

The Simplest Way to Secure Your Webcam Without Any Software

Let’s start with the bad news: Your webcam is vulnerable. It can be remotely activated and you won’t even know it’s on. A report this month in the Washington Post revealed that the FBI figured out how to do this years ago.
Now for the good news: You can protect your webcam privacy with a bit of MacGyver-esque ingenuity. All you need is a Post-it note.
Start with your standard 2x2-inch Post-it Note in the color of your choice (we don't recommend the super-sticky variety). A piece of notepaper will work just as well. A piece of black tape would be a more permanent solution, but you will probably want to use that webcam someday. Tape, black or otherwise, could leave glue residue on the webcam lens or tiny illumination light, rendering it useless.
No writing on the Post-it is required. Simply fold the paper into approximate thirds; the placement of the folds will depend on where the webcam rests on your laptop. The goal is to fold the note so the sticky portion adheres to the back of your laptop screen (the computer’s cover), a third sits on top of the upper edge and the remaining third covers your webcam. The last third shouldn't be so large that it reaches and obscures a portion of your screen.
You can press the Post-it Note’s sticky portion onto the back of your screen, but we recommend leaving it free so you can slide away the DIY cover when you want to use your webcam.
Our Vine video takes you through each step
Now, even if someone can access your webcam, he will only see your Post-it Note, not your unknowing face.
It’s also worth noting that before any hacker can gain access to your computer, he still needs your help. Most of the software used to activate webcams is malware, born on the back of phishing emails. If you never open or act on these messages, your likelihood of protection from hackers is much higher.
Of course, this is just one solution. You can add privacy to your webcam in other crafty ways — even with some 3D-printed options for less than $15. Share your preferred method in the comments below.