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The Sonos Beam is the soundbar evolved

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The Sonos Beam is the soundbar evolved

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Beam me up, Sonos

Sonos has always gone its own way. The speaker manufacturer dedicated itself to network-connected speakers before there were home networks and they sold a tablet-like remote control before there were tablets. Their surround sound systems install quickly and run seamlessly. You can buy a few speakers, tap a few buttons and have 5.1 sound in less time than it takes to pull a traditional home audio system out of its shipping box.

This latest model is an addition to the Sonos line and is sold alongside the Playbase — a lumpen soundbar designed to sit directly underneath TVs not attached to the wall — and the Playbar, a traditionally styled soundbar that preceded the Beam. Both products had all of the Sonos highlights — great sound, amazing interfaces and easy setup — but the Base had too much surface area for more elegant installations and the Bar was too long while still sporting an aesthetic that harkened back to 2008 Crutchfield catalogs.

The $399 Beam is Sonos’ answer to that, and it is more than just a pretty box. The speaker includes Alexa — and promises Google Assistant support — and it improves your TV sound immensely. Designed as an add-on to your current TV, it can stand alone or connect with the Sonos subwoofer and a few satellite surround speakers for a true surround sound experience. It truly shines alone, however, thanks to its small size and more than acceptable audio range.

To use the Beam you bring up an iOS or Android app to display your Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and Pandora accounts (this is a small sampling; Sonos supports more). You select a song or playlist and start listening. Then, when you want to watch TV, the speaker automatically flips to TV mode — including speech enhancement features that actually work — when the TV is turned on. An included tuning system turns your phone into a scanner that improves the room audio automatically.

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The range is limited by the Beam’s size and shape and there is very little natural bass coming out of this thing. However, in terms of range, the Beam is just fine. It can play an action movie with a bit of thump and then go on to play some light jazz or pop. I’ve had some surprisingly revelatory sessions with the Beam when listening to classic rock and more modern fare and it’s very usable as a home audio center.

The Beam is two feet long and three inches tall. It comes in black or white and is very unobtrusive in any home theater setup. Interestingly, the product supports HDMI-ARC aka HDMI Audio Return Channel. This standard, introduced in TVs made in the past five years, allows the TV to automatically output audio and manage volume controls via a single HDMI cable. What this means, however, is you’re going to have a bad time if you don’t have HDMI-ARC.

Sonos includes an adapter that can also accept optical audio output, but setup requires you to turn off your TV speakers and route all the sound to the optical out. This is a bit of a mess, and if you don’t have either of those outputs — HDMI-ARC or optical — then you’re probably in need of a new TV. That said, HDMI-ARC is a bit jarring for first timers, but Sonos is sure that enough TVs support it that they can use it instead of optical-only.

The Beam doesn’t compete directly with other “smart” speakers like the HomePod. It is very specifically a consumer electronics device, even though it supports AirPlay 2 and Alexa. Sonos makes speakers, and good ones at that, and that goal has always been front and center. While other speakers may offer a more fully featured sound in a much smaller package, the Beam offers both great TV audio and great music playback for less than any other higher end soundbar. Whole room audio does get expensive — about $1,200 for a Sub and two satellites — but you can simply add on pieces as you go. One thing, however, is clear: Sonos has always been the best wireless speaker for the money and the Beam is another win for the scrappy and innovative speaker company.

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Kimber releases special edition, engraved K6s Classic Revolver

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Kimber releases special edition, engraved K6s Classic Revolver

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The engraved K6s Classic Revolver pairs rosewood grips with ornate engravings. (Photo: Kimber)

Kimber added a little spice to its K6s Classic Revolver series, launching a special edition model with ornate engravings.

Otherwise identical to its non-engraved counterparts, the gives the wheel gun a more sophisticated and custom look.

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“The K6s Classic Engraved adds a subtle elegance to the modern concealed carry revolver,” the company said in a statement on its site. “A beautiful leaf engraving over subdued brush finish provides a quite sophistication, that when paired with the polished motif rosewood grips completely transforms this contemporary revolver into a true classic.”

The double action only six-shot revolver stands 4.46-inches tall with a length of 6.62-inches and a weight tipping scales at 23 ounces unloaded. Crafted from stainless steel, the wheel gun offers white three-dot sights and a non-stacking trigger set around 9.5 to 10.5-pounds.

Available in .357 Mag, the engraved K6s Classic Revolver is available now wherever Kimber handguns are sold with a MSRP of $1,455.

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Hoodline launches a content recommendation widget that’s all about local news

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Hoodline launches a content recommendation widget that’s all about local news

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Hoodline continues to serve as a reliable source of neighborhood news for San Francisco and Oakland, but it’s also been building tools that help other publications supplement their local coverage.

Earlier this year, the company launched a news wire that automates the creation of local news stories using online data sources like Yelp and Zumper. Now it’s also releasing a content recommendation widget that’s similarly focused on local news.

We’ve all seen widgets from companies like Outbrain and Taboola, usually with celebrity-focused, gimmicky or otherwise sensationalistic headlines. COO Jes Wolfe said the Hoodline module was built in response to requests from the “hundreds” of publishers and broadcasters that the company works with — they wanted to provide content recommendations that were genuinely relevant to readers, not just “generic clickbait.”

The stories being recommended come from several different sources — the individual publisher (in fact, they can limit the recommendations to their own articles if they want), the Hoodline Local Data Wire and the broader network of publishers.

Whatever the source, CTO Shwetank Kumar said Hoodline’s Atlas platform can automatically tag articles with things like geolocation and sentiment. So when the module shows up next to an article, it can recommend other stories that are locally relevant and have a similar topic and tone.

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By limiting recommendations to local news from the Hoodline network, the company should be able to avoid most of the clickbait filling up other content widgets. In addition, Head of Product Melissa Mazman said Hoodline is trying to “strike a balance” by surfacing content that people actually want to read without prioritizing clicks at the cost of quality or other engagement metrics.

Kumar added that the location-focused approach also means that Hoodline can provide these recommendations without tracking your online behavior. Or as he put it, “We try to do personalization through localization rather than through privacy violation.”

Of course, not every neighborhood will have a rich supply of relevant stories, but Mazman said the module “keeps zooming out” to the city or even state level until it finds relevant content. (Not that going statewide is generally necessary — Mazman said pulling back to the metropolitan area is usually enough.)

Hoodline says that in the initial tests, the module resulted in an average clickthrough rate that was more than double those of existing products.You can actually judge the recommendations side-by-side with Outbrain on the websites of local ABC TV stations (Hoodline participated in the startup accelerator run by ABC’s parent company Disney). For example in this story about a taqueria fire in Houston, Outbrain’s recommendations appear on top, while Hoodline powers the “More from Houston” headlines.

By the way, I should note that Hoodline’s editorial team is led by former TechCrunch co-editor (and my longtime friend) Eric Eldon. The startup was acquired by Ripple News (now known as Pixel Labs) in 2016, and since then, Hoodline has become the brand for all of the company’s consumer-facing products.

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Taster creates restaurants for Deliveroo and UberEats

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Taster creates restaurants for Deliveroo and UberEats

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French startup Taster, formerly known as Mission Food, is building restaurants around big cities specifically for Deliveroo, UberEats and Glovo. These restaurants don’t have any tables, they’re all about serving food on online platforms.

The startup just raised a $4 million funding round led by Sunstone Capital, with Global Founders Capital, Thierry Gillier and LocalGlobe also participating. Kima Ventures and Marc Menasé participated in the previous round.

If you look at food startups, it all started with Just Eat, Grubhub and Seamless listing restaurants with delivery fleets. This way, instead of keeping a pile of flyers with phone numbers, you can find all the pizza and sushi places on one site.

But Deliveroo, UberEats, Glovo and Postmates introduced a new chunk of restaurants to deliveries. For the first time, regular restaurants could start accepting online orders. Startups could take care of the orders and deliveries.

And some restaurants have become instant hits on those platforms. But it doesn’t necessarily scale as much as they would want. They’re still constrained by the size of their kitchens, and opening a new restaurant is a big deal.

That’s why Deliveroo started investing in satellite kitchens for the most popular restaurants — these kitchens are basically containers on car parks.

Taster doesn’t want to work with existing restaurants. The company wants to create new restaurant chains instead and control the menu and the kitchens.

The name Taster might not be familiar, but you may have already ordered from a Taster virtual restaurant. The company has set up three Mission Saigon restaurants in Paris, one in Madrid and one in Lille.

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You may have also ordered from O Ke Kai’s two restaurants in Paris. More recently, Taster launched Out Fry.

As you can see, Taster has been quite aggressive when it comes to rolling out new restaurants. When you find those “restaurants” on Deliveroo or another platform, nothing tells you that it isn’t actually a restaurant but just a kitchen.

This is a smart approach, as Taster can keep the costs down. It doesn’t need to rent big spaces, it doesn’t need as much staff and it doesn’t handle deliveries. By listing its restaurants on third-party platforms, Taster can also more easily compete with full-stack startups, such as Frichti, Nestor, FoodChéri and others.

But Taster’s success might be an issue. If the startup manages to take over Deliveroo and UberEats, traditional restaurants might complain. Deliveroo and UberEats could also change their rules and delist them overnight.

Taster is highly dependent on those third-party platforms. But it shouldn’t be an issue for now, as more restaurants bring more customers for delivery companies.

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Xiaomi Teases 'Gift From Future' for June 28 Launch; Sells 1 Million Mi Band 3 Units

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Xiaomi Teases 'Gift From Future' for June 28 Launch; Sells 1 Million Mi Band 3 Units

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Xiaomi will be launching something on June 28, according to a video teaser it has posted on its website. The top speculated smartphones to launch are the Xiaomi Mi A2 or Mi Max 3, though it is possible it may be the Hatsune Miku-edition of the Xiaomi Mi 6X. The Mi A2 is expected to be the global, rebranded Android One-based version of Mi 6X launched in China back in April this year. A 20-second video clip has been posted by the Chinese phone maker that teases the launch of an announced handset. Additionally, Xiaomi also announced that the company has sold over 1 million units of the Mi Band 3 within 17 days of launch. Lastly, a Mi Band 3 Explorer Edition with transparent wrist band has been spotted online.

Let’s talk about the official teaser first. The 20-second video shows visuals of a Mi Home offline store as all lights go off. Using visual effects, an apparent box of a smartphone drops on to the shelf and the screen is filled with text that translates to “A gift from the future” followed by the June 28 reveal date.

It does appear the Hatsune Miku-edition of the Mi 6X is being launched on the day, especially when one considers the greenish-hue to the teased box in the video, as well as the tagline of gift from a future. The smartphone edition inspired by the virtual pop star was leaked in detail recently, with tipster @bang_gogo Twitter leaking the price (said to be CNY 2,099 or roughly Rs. 21,800), renders, as well as a leaked video teaser that clearly matches the box and the date. 

Leaked image of Mi 6X Hatsune Miku edition Photo Credit: Twitter/ @bang_gogo

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Considering the Mi A2 has not been confirmed by Xiaomi yet, the large form factor of the box could suggest that is the Mi Max 3 that has been part of the rumour mill for the last few weeks.

Talking about the Mi Max 3, previous reports have suggested features including MIUI 10, a massive 6.9-inch full-HD+ display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC, up to 6GB of RAM, and up to 128GB of internal storage.

The latest in Xiaomi’s range of affordable fitness wearables, Mi Band 3 was launched in China in late May. With a starting price tag of CNY 169 (roughly Rs. 1,800), the band seems to have attracted a large number of buyers as Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun took to Weibo to announce that sales for Mi Band 3 had crossed the 1 million mark within 17 days of it becoming available.

Additionally, an Explorer Edition of the Mi Band 3, with a transparent/ translucent wrist strap is said to arrive soon. However, a MyDrivers report suggests that this might not be go up for sale and instead be distributed to lucky draw winners of Xiaomi’s online contests in the future. Both variants (NFC and non-NFC) of the Mi Band 3 are currently available with Black, Orange, and Blue straps.

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Gionee S11 Lite Review

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Gionee S11 Lite Review

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Chinese smartphone maker Gionee launched the S11 Lite alongside the Gionee F205 a few months ago and we did take a first look at the two devices right after their launch. The S11 Lite is the latest addition to Gionee’s S series, and the first to sport an 18:9 aspect ratio display. It comes in a stunning blue colour, sports a dual camera setup, at the back and is exclusive to the offline market. For its asking price of Rs 13,999, can the Gionee S11 Lite compete with the current market leaders? We review to find out.

  Gionee S11 Lite design

The shiny back of the Gionee S11 Lite was the first thing to grab our attention. Gionee calls it a “curved 3D glassy body,” but it’s actually plastic and feels like it. The back is also a fingerprint magnet and you will need to wipe it constantly to keep it looking good. Even the frame feels plasticky, and the power and volume buttons have the same design, making it hard to figure out which is which without looking at them. We also found that the buttons are placed a little higher than usual, which may require you to shuffle the phone in your hand.

At the front, this phone has a 5.7-inch display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. There is a Micro-USB port at the bottom along with a 3.5mm audio jack and a speaker grille. While the top of the phone is blank, the left has a SIM tray. The phone isn’t heavy and is comfortable to hold thanks to the curved sides and proportions. Gionee sent us only the smartphone, so we can’t say much about the box contents or the type of charger that this phone will ship with.

  Gionee S11 Lite specifications, software, and features

The Gionee S11 Lite sports a 5.7-inch display with HD+ resolution. Gionee could have opted for a full HD+ panel since that is what most of the competition offers at this price. However, it still has good contrast and the viewing angles are decent. You don’t get options to tweak the display output in the Settings app, but we were happy with the quality. The display gets bright enough to be viewable outdoors but we found it to be a little too reflective.

Powering the Gionee S11 Lite is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor clocked at 1.4GHz. The phone also has 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. You can expand storage but only at the cost of the second SIM, since the S11 Lite has a hybrid dual-SIM tray. This device supports 4G and VoLTE on either SIM, but the other one will be restricted to 3G.

The phone has a 3030mAh battery. The dual camera setup on the rear consists of a 13-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel secondary depth sensor. At the front, there’s a 16-megapixel camera for selfies and video calling.

In terms of software, the Gionee S11 Lite runs on Android 7.1 Nougat with the company’s custom Amigo 5.0 UI on top. Gionee has told Gadgets 360 that there is no timeline for an Android Oreo update for the S11 Lite, putting it at a disadvantage since most smartphones now ship with a more modern version. The phone’s security is also out of date, and a lot of bloatware comes preinstalled. Social media apps such as Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram might be useful, but there are also demo versions of games such as Bubble Bash 3, Danger Dash, N.O.V.A. 3, and Sonic Runners, plus a lot of other apps including NewsPoint, Gaana, and Amazon. Most of these apps can be uninstalled.

Amigo UI has theme support and you can completely change the way this phone’s software looks. There’s also a way to keep changing lock screen wallpapers automatically based on the category you choose. G Store is Gionee’s own app store, and Private Space lets you lock messages, call records, and apps with a fingerprint.

The Settings app is completely rearranged, and has a separate tab which lists all the custom functions the phone has, and how you can try them out. The Smart Assistant section lets you enable motion gestures to interact with the phone. There’s also a Gaming Mode, which disables popup notifications so that you can play games without distraction.

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Gionee S11 Lite performance, cameras, and battery life

The Snapdragon 430 processor powering this smartphone isn’t the most powerful available at this price point. It is the same processor that was used for last year’s Moto G5 (Review), and we have seen many models that are more powerful since then. The processor works well enough for basic tasks, but heavy apps and games will take longer to load.

  We played Clash Royale and Asphalt 8, and while the former did not have any issues, Asphalt 8 took longer than usual to load. We ran benchmarks on the S11 Lite and it scored 57,738 in AnTuTu, and 660 and 2485 respectively in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests. In the graphics benchmark 3DMark Slingshot, it managed to score 536, while delivering 24fps in GFXBench T-Rex.

In our battery loop test, the smartphone managed to clock 12 hours and 46 minutes. With our usage consisting of emails and an active WhatsApp account, the S11 Lite was able to get through one day. You will need to plug it in by the next morning. We did observe heavy battery drain when gaming.

The camera app on the S11 Lite has multiple modes that you can choose from. Apart from the usual Photo and Video modes, it has Bokeh, Face Beauty, Group Selfie, Pro, and a Card mode to help you scan business cards. The phone is slow to switch to Bokeh mode, and the Pro mode only gives you basic controls.

Tap to see full-sized Gionee S11 Lite camera samples

  Daylight photos taken with the S11 Lite were good, and you will only notice a loss of detail if you zoom in. It is quick to set the exposure and lock focus. The Auto HDR mode is quick to kick in but the effect isn’t right and shots tend to look overexposed. It is quick to focus when shooting macros and manages decent separating between the subject and the background. We found macros to be slightly oversaturated. While shooting in bokeh mode we found that it takes longer to switch to this mode. Also, photos take a longer time to process when shooting. The edge detection is mediocre for the selfie camera but is slightly better for the rear camera.

Photos taken in low light lacked detail and appeared a little soft. Zoom in to an image and you will see artefacts caused by excessive noise reduction. The 16-megapixel selfie camera on the S11 Lite takes decent selfies in natural light. You also have a beautification option which you can use to smoothen skin. Shots come out looking average if there’s an artificial light source nearby, but in low light, they lose out on detail. The screen flash is too dim to make any significant difference. Video recording maxes out at 1080p for the front as well as the rear cameras. It lacks Electronic Image Stabilisation (EIS) so you will need to keep your hand steady while recording.

Verdict The Gionee S11 Lite is the first smartphone in the S-series to sport an 18:9 aspect ratio screen. It looks nice and will grab eyeballs when you are using it. Unfortunately, the hardware isn’t the best at this price point. Smartphones such as the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 (Review) and the Realme 1 (Review) offer better hardware at lower prices. The Gionee S11 Lite is an offline exclusive smartphone, so it might work for people who want to touch and feel a phone before they buy it. If you like the way the S11 looks, you can go for it. If you want better value for your money, you should consider the lower priced options named above, or take a look at the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 (Review) and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro (Review) which perform better around the same price point.

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Gadgets and small appliances that will keep you in the kitchen

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Gadgets and small appliances that will keep you in the kitchen

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Makula Dunbar Contributor

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When life gets busy, cooking is one of the first activities that many forego to get a bit more free time. However, after a while, ordering out and eating sub-par meals gets old. Kitchen gadgets that assist in quickly preparing meals and drinks are not only helpful but essential in creating balance — and time — to conquer the day.

Whether it’s a cold brew coffee maker that saves you money or sous vide gear that’ll upgrade your chef skills, we’ve gathered some of our favorite appliances that are enjoyable to use — and that give you another reason to spend more time in the kitchen.

The OXO Good Grips Spiralizer comes with three blade attachments (from left to right): a ⅛-inch spaghetti blade, a ribbon blade, and a ¼-inch fettuccine blade. Photo: Michael Hession

Spiralizer: OXO Good Grips Spiralizer

Thinking about the steps that go into making a really good salad or vegetable dish is enough to make some grab a take-out menu. If you always jump at the opportunity to cross chopping and dicing fresh vegetables off of your agenda, a spiralizer is a simpler alternative to use when prepping food. The OXO Good Grips Spiralizer is our top recommendation; it creates noodles, ribbons and chips that can be used as garnish or a full meal. After you secure it to your countertop, choose a blade and select your vegetable (or fruit) of choice, this gadget does the majority of the work. Pile your zucchini noodles or butternut squash ribbons high and freeze them to be eaten later in the week.

Personal Blender: NutriBullet Pro 900 Series

Most would agree that the effort it takes to make a smoothie is usually more than worth it. After researching more than 24 models, we tested 10 personal blenders and chose the NutriBullet Pro 900 Series as our top pick. Compared to other blenders we put to the test, it performed best powering through kale, frozen fruit, fresh ginger fiber and dates, as well as a mid-range full-size blender. It’s a great device to have on hand, it pays for itself and quickly produces whatever puree or smoothie you’re in the mood for. Consider an immersion blender for soups and purees that you want to cook in a pot or that call for ingredients that won’t fit in a personal blender.

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Photo: Michael Hession

Electric Pressure Cooker: Instant Pot Duo 6-Quart

Aside from being able cook a meal — or the most time-consuming components of a meal — in one pot, the biggest perk of using an electric pressure cooker is finishing the task in a fraction of the time. The Instant Pot Duo 6-Quart has three temperature settings and can be used for slow-cooking and sautéing. New cooks or those intimidated by stove-top pressure cookers can rest assured knowing that electric pressure cookers are safe, durable and easy to use. It’ll come in handy more often than not, as you can make almost anything, including stews, sushi rice, braised meat and even cake.

Photo: Tim Barribeau

Sous Vide Cooker: Anova Precision Cooker Wi-Fi

When it’s time to impress your friends or do something in the kitchen that’s cooler than the norm, breaking out a sous vide cooker will do the trick. The Anova Precision Cooker Wi-Fi is an immersion circulator, which means it simultaneously circulates and heats water in which vegetables, eggs, steak, salmon, Greek yogurt and a list of other foods can be cooked. It clips to the side of a variety of containers and pots, and although it doesn’t require Wi-Fi to work, it enables its timer and temperature to be controlled from anywhere. You’ll need to vacuum seal your food before it’s cooked — and for a finishing sear we recommend using the Bernzomatic TS8000 searing torch.

The OXO brewer makes flavorful, money-saving concentrate, looks good on a counter and is easier to use and store than any other pick. Photo: Michael Hession

Cold Brew Coffee Maker: OXO Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker

If grabbing coffee at your local café has become a routine, making it at home can be a thing, too. There’s no better time than the summer to invest in a cold brew coffee maker if waking up, getting out the door or surviving the day requires a caffeine boost. We like the OXO Good Grips Cold Brew Coffee Maker because it’s compact and has a great design. More importantly, it produced the boldest, most flavorful cup of coffee during testing — plus, its features make brewing and storing coffee easy. Cold brew machines are the best option for iced coffee that’s otherwise diluted and weaker-tasting when it’s made from refrigerated hot-brewed coffee.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

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Lenovo Ideapad 330S, Ideapad 530S Laptops, IdeaCentre AIO 730S Launched in India

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Lenovo Ideapad 330S, Ideapad 530S Laptops, IdeaCentre AIO 730S Launched in India

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Lenovo at an event held in New Delhi on Wednesday announced the launch a new range of laptops in its Ideapad portfolio. The company touts that the all-new Ideapad 330S and Ideapad 530S laptops are designed to “meet the expectations of today’s smartphone power-users.” The new laptops are a part of company’s range of ultra-slim laptops and they claim to provide better mobility, performance, and battery life. Lenovo says that the ‘S’ in the lineup stands for ‘Slim’.

In terms of pricing, the Ideapad 530S starts at Rs. 67,990, while the Ideapad 330S is available starting at Rs. 35,990. Notably, the prices vary a little based on the configurations. The new Lenovo products can be purchased at the Lenovo Exclusive stores, as well as multi-brand stores such as Croma, Reliance Digital, and Ezone. The company also showcased the IdeaCentre all-in-one (AIO) 730S at the event, and it has been priced at Rs. 77,250.

The Ideapad 530S is a premium laptop in Lenovo’s ultra-slim portfolio. It is powered by the 8th generation Intel Core i5-8250U processor clocked up to 3.40GHz, paired with 8GB DDR4 RAM and 512GB M.2 PCI SSD storage. It runs Windows 10 Home. It sports a 14-inch full-HD (1920×1080 pixels) IPS display with anti-glare.

Lenovo claims that the Ideapad 530S provides 8 hours of battery life and comes with a Rapid charge feature that provides 2 hours of usage with 15 minutes of charge. The laptop features Harman speakers with Dolby audio. Additionally, there is a fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, Wi-Fi 2×2 AC, Bluetooth 4.1, USB Type-C and USB 3.0 ports, 4-in1 card reader, and for graphics, the options go up to dedicated 2GB Nvidia MX 150.

In terms of dimensions, the Ideapad 530S measures 32.3×22.6×1.64cm, and weighs just 1.49kg. It comes with a complete metallic finish and is available only in a Copper colour variant. The laptop comes with one year onsite and one-year international warranty. Buyers will also get 1-year free McAfee Live Safe support.

Coming to the Ideapad 330S, the laptop is powered by the latest 8th generation Intel Core i7-8550U processor clocked up to 4.00GHz, paired with 8GB DDR4 RAM and 1TB 7MM 5400RPM HDD. The laptop sports a 15.6 full-HD (1920×1080 pixels) IPS display and runs Windows 10 Home. It is also available in a 14-inch display model. For graphics, the laptop supports up to 4GB dedicated graphics.

Connectivity options in the Ideapad 330S include Wi-Fi 1×1 AC, Bluetooth 4.1, USB Type-C, USB 3.0, and 4-in-1 card reader. It comes with Dolby Audio as well. In terms of dimensions, the laptop measures 24.4×35.8×1.94cm and weighs 1.87 kgs. The laptop comes with a metallic finish on the top cover and is claimed to be 24 percent lighter compared to the traditional clamshells at the same price.

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The Ideapad 330S promises up to 7 hours of battery life and it comes with a Rapid charge feature that provides 2 hours of usage with 15 minutes of charge. The laptop comes with one year onsite but there is no international warranty. Buyers will also get 1-year free McAfee Live Safe support. It is available in a Platinum Grey colour model.

Notably, the new Lenovo Ideapad portfolio is available with the Back To College offer where consumers can avail 2 years of additional warranty, 1 year of PremiumCare, 1 year of Accidental Damage Protection along with gift vouchers at breakthrough prices.

Lastly, the Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 730S is powered by the 8th generation Intel Core i7-8550U processor clocked up to 4.00GHz, paired with 16GB DDR4 RAM and 2TB (2.5-inch) 5400 RPM HDD or 128GB M.2 SSD. Additionally, there is an external USB DVD RAMBO optical drive as well. It sports a 23.8-inch full-HD (1920×1080 pixels) display with anti-glare and runs Windows 10 Home. For graphics, the AIO supports up to 2GB dedicated graphics.

Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 730S

Connectivity options in the IdeaCentre AIO 730S include Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.0, USB 3.0, USB Type-C USB, 3-in-1 card reader, and HDMI in/out port. It comes with a Fabric deco speaker bar. In terms of dimension, the AIO measures 541.6×429.64×44.05mm and weighs 4.82 kg. It comes along with a wireless mouse and a wireless keyboard. Also, it will be available in an Iron Grey colour model and will come with 3 years of onsite warranty.

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Idea Rs. 227 Pack With Unlimited Calls, 1.4GB Data per Day, Missed Call Alerts, Free Dialer Tone Launched to Take on Jio

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Idea Rs. 227 Pack With Unlimited Calls, 1.4GB Data per Day, Missed Call Alerts, Free Dialer Tone Launched to Take on Jio

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While Reliance Jio continues to maintain its position as the top telecom operator in India in terms of affordability of data consumption, Idea Cellular and the other incumbents have been coming up with plans and offers to match its prices and bundled data. However, Idea now seems to target a different set of subscribers, who like to set caller tunes on their numbers and also want to avail the missed calls alert feature. The telco has launched a new prepaid recharge pack worth Rs. 227 that offers unlimited calls, data benefits, alongside missed call alerts, and free dialer tones. Notably, the new Idea prepaid plan comes with a validity period of 28 days.

The new Rs. 227 prepaid plan from Idea provides 1.4GB 3G/ 2G data per day resulting in 39.4GB total data, and unlimited voice calls with daily and weekly FUP limit. It also offers 100 SMS messages per day. However, the key highlight of the plan is free missed call alerts subscription and unlimited dialer tones subscription. The new recharge pack is essentially similar to the Rs. 199 plan by the same telco, apart from the additional offers.

In order to activate missed call alerts on their numbers, Idea Cellular subscribers have to pay Rs. 30 per month. But under the new Rs. 227 plan, it is available for free for the entire validity period. Additionally, Idea is also offering some ‘contest’ benefits, the details of which have not been provided yet. As mentioned, the telco is offering a free dialer tone service with the plan and it comes with unlimited song change option.

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It is worth noting that the new Rs. 227 plan comes with a cap to voice calls at 250 minutes per day and 1,000 minutes per week. To check if you are eligible for the Rs. 227 Idea prepaid plan, you will need to open the My Idea app or go to the company’s website. Notably, Idea is also giving cashbacks and prizes to its prepaid users on select recharges including the Rs. 199 plan.

Interestingly, rival company Airtel has a prepaid plan worth Rs. 129 that offers free Hello Tunes alongside the data and voice calling benefits. It comes with unlimited voice calls, 1GB of 4G data, 100 SMS messages per day, and free Hello Tunes subscription. The validity of the plan is 28 days.

When it comes to offers close to Idea’s Rs. 227 plan, Jio has a recharge pack worth Rs. 198. Under the plan, Jio is currentlyoffering 2GB data per day for a validity period of 28 days. Voice calling is free in the recharge pack, and users get 100 SMS messages per day and a free subscription to the company’s proprietary apps. Also, Jio offers free caller tunes with every rechargepack.

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Facebook permanently grounds its Aquila solar-powered internet plane

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Facebook permanently grounds its Aquila solar-powered internet plane

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Facebook has announced that it will no longer pursue its dream of building a gigantic, solar-powered plane to blast internet to underserved communities via laser. Surprisingly, it’s just not practical.

In a news post on the company’s coding sub-site, Facebook’s Yael Maguire announced that “we’ve decided not to design or build our own aircraft any longer, and to close our facility in Bridgewater.” Closing the facility comes with the loss of 16 jobs specific to the development and maintenance of the aircraft, the company confirmed to TechCrunch, though plenty relating to other aspects of the project were unaffected.

The company will continue its work with partners, such as Airbus, to help advance “high altitude platform stations” (HAPS) like the Aquila.

The program has been underway since 2014 (the acquisition of Ascenta seems to have been its real start) and public since 2015, and had its first test flight in 2016 — resulting in a “structural failure,” hard landing and subsequent NTSB investigation. The second test flight was better, but far from perfect.

The craft itself, an enormous flying V that stayed aloft at extremely low power draw replenished by solar cells, seems to have worked quite well, actually, despite a few hiccups. But Facebook isn’t the only company looking to get into low-power, high-altitude communications craft.

“As we’ve worked on these efforts, it’s been exciting to see leading companies in the aerospace industry start investing in this technology too — including the design and construction of new high-altitude aircraft,” wrote Maguire.

Considering the considerable scale of investment required to build a craft like this from scratch, and the vast gap in expertise and core competencies between a social network and a veteran aerospace company, it’s not surprising that Facebook decided to cut its losses.

The decision was preceded by a report from Business Insider that the project had more or less stalled: its head and chief engineer left last month after, from reading between the lines, efforts to double down on the project with a redesign and private hangar were rejected.

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The Aquila plan, like other ambitious connectivity ideas, some still in the offing, was conceived in a period one might call “peak Facebook,” when it was at the height of its growth, before it attracted nearly the level of criticism it faces today, and when its goals were lofty in several ways.

No doubt the company plans to pursue “the next billion” in a way that isn’t quite so costly or unprecedented. Maguire does indicate that work will continue, just not in such a direct way:

Going forward, we’ll continue to work with partners like Airbus on HAPS connectivity generally, and on the other technologies needed to make this system work, like flight control computers and high-density batteries. On the policy front, we’ll be working on a proposal for 2019 World Radio Conference to get more spectrum for HAPS, and we’ll be actively participating in a number of aviation advisory boards and rule-making committees in the US and internationally.

It’s hard to fault Facebook for its ambition, though even at the time there were plenty who objected to this extremely techno-utopian idea of how internet could be delivered to isolated communities. Surely, they said, and will continue to say, that money would be better spent laying fiber or establishing basic infrastructure. We’ll see.

I asked Facebook for more information, such as what projects specifically it will be backing, and what will happen to the IP and hardware the Aquila program comprised.

Although a Facebook representative declined to answer my specific questions, they emphasized the fact that the Aquila project was both successful and wide-ranging; although an actual aircraft will no longer be part of it (that duty falls to actual aerospace companies), there were many other advances in transmission, propulsion and so on that are still very much in active development. What exactly the company plans to do with those is still unclear, but we can probably expect news on that front over the next few months as the program adjusts focus.

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Shone wants to automate container ships

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Shone wants to automate container ships

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While everybody is focused on self-driving cars, Shone is working on autonomous technologies for container ships. The startup doesn’t want to turn those giant ships into unmanned vehicles, but it wants to help seafarers and make ships more efficient.

After attending Y Combinator, Shone recently raised a $4 million round from Alven, Liquid 2, Paul Graham, David Marcus and D. Scott Phoenix.

“The basic idea is that autonomous ships are coming. Overall, it seems unavoidable,” co-founder and CEO Ugo Vollmer told me. “And yet, there are still 25 people on the boat and it runs on Windows.”

The team spent a lot of time talking with people working in the shipping industry to understand their needs. After traveling on container ships and buying a tiny boat for prototyping, Shone is already working with a shipping company to retrofit their ships with their technology.

“Our vision is that it’s going to happen progressively,” Vollmer said. “There will be a lot of navigation assistance systems first.”

At first, it could lead to fewer people on the boat. There are around 15 people maintaining the engine and the machinery. These people won’t go away any time soon. But there are also around ten people who are keeping an eye on the radar, on the different tools and also on the sea itself. They rotate as they need to have a small team in the cabin 24/7.

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This second team could need some help, and this is where Shone shines. The startup adds a few sensors but mostly hooks their system to existing sensors. While there are a ton of sensors already, none of them communicate together.

Shone can combine all this data and analyze it to give some insights. Eventually, the startup plans to recommend different courses to save some fuel and time. Existing autopilot solutions on ships is more like cruise control in cars. You can follow a predetermined path, but you can’t say “let’s go from A to B”.

And saving fuel is key when it comes to global warning. Each ship carries a mountain of goods, so it’s quite efficient when you think about the impact of one ton of goods. But if you can make a container ship slightly more efficient, it would have a huge impact on the environment.

“If you can make a 1 percent optimization, you have a bigger impact than Tesla today,” Vollmer said. It’s hard to compare those two things as cars and ships are different beasts though.

For now, Shone is only focusing on deep sea. The crew doesn’t handle the first and last mile anyway as someone from the harbor usually comes on board to guide you to the dock.

Shone has signed a partnership with CMA CGM to collect data and add some hardware devices. It’s still early days for Shone as the company is first focusing on situational awareness before moving further into recommendations.

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Instagram Gets Video Chat, AR Camera Effects, Topic Channels on Explore, and More

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Instagram Gets Video Chat, AR Camera Effects, Topic Channels on Explore, and More

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Instagram recently said it now has over a billion active users, and from the looks of it the Facebook-owned service is not planning on slowing down the relentless pace at which it keeps adding new features. The social media giant’s latest assault on video-oriented platforms such as Snapchat and FaceTime has launched. A long time after enabling its users with the Direct message feature, Instagram is now finally enabling video calls on its platform. The feature has been a part of rumours for a quite sometime now. However, the first official information about the launch came during Facebook’s F8 Developer conference back in May. Now, on the heels of the IGTV launch, Instagram has now announced Video Chat, alongside other new features such as a new Explore tab with channel topics, and new camera effects. Instagram had announced all these features at the event last month.

First up, is the Video Chat feature in Instagram Direct. You can now video chat in Instagram Direct, either with one person or a group. The video chat feature has started rolling out in the Instagram mobile apps. You can chat with up to four friends at a time, straight from Direct, by tapping the new camera icon in the right corner. Notably, it works across Android and iOS devices.

To start a video chat, go to your Direct inbox and open the message thread of the person you wish to chat with. Tap the new camera icon in the right corner, and the video chat will ring that person’s phone. While on the video chat, you can minimise the video and multitask on Instagram, such as sending messages and images in Direct, browsing your feed, posting a story, and more.

Instagram says, that the video chat feature “is perfect for groups.” As mentioned, you can video chat with up to four people at a time, and the video will expand as more friends join. Also, if there is an active video chat in a group thread, the camera icon will turn blue. You need to tap the camera to join the conversation. Notably, there is no time limit for the video chat. To leave the video chat, tap on the red phone icon at the bottom.

It is worth noting that you can only video chat with anyone that you have an active Direct thread with. If you block a person, they will no longer be able to video chat with you. There is an option to mute a particular contact. In order to update your video chat notifications, tap the gear icon on profile and find the new video chat control in Push Notifications.

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Coming to the AR Camera Effects, they have been designed by Instagram partners, the likes of Ariana Grande, Buzzfeed, Liza Koshy, Baby Ariel, and NBA. You will have to follow any of those accounts in order to automatically see their specific effects in your Instagram camera. You can also tap to try one and then add it to your camera if you like it. Instagram users who don’t follow a participating partner will be able to find and add the effects by checking their friends’ Stories using those effects, or any direct messages including those effects.

Finally, Instagram is also rolling out one more feature promised at F8. Earlier this week, Instagram was reported to have started a rollout of a redesigned Explore tab in the app. Instagram has officially announced the rollout now, and said that the Explore page will now be segmented to show a variety of topic channels that reveal associated content below. The company said that more than 200 million people visit ‘Explore’ every day.

Instagram says that with topic channels, you can be more intentional about how you navigate posts on Explore. As reported earlier, these new topic channels range from “Sports, TV and Movies, and more.” Additionally, there is a new ‘For You’ section that features a collection of curated posts from other users, and these too are based on your interests and past behaviour. You can also remove a topic channel. To do that, press and hold the channel and select ‘Mute’ from the menu. This sends the channel to the end of the tray, giving you the option to unmute it at any time.

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TourRadar, the OTA for tour holidays, scores $50M Series C led by Silicon Valley’s TCV

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TourRadar, the OTA for tour holidays, scores $50M Series C led by Silicon Valley’s TCV

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TourRadar, the online travel agency (OTA) that targets the multi-day touring market, continues to be on a roll. The Vienna, Austria-headquartered company, which also has offices in Brisbane and Toronto, has raised $50 million in Series C funding.

Consisting mostly of primary funding, the round is led by the Silicon Valley growth VC firm TCV, with participation from existing investors Cherry Ventures, Endeit Capital, Hoxton Ventures, and Speedinvest. Notably, TCV previously backed Expedia and Airbnb and so has a very decent track record in travel.

Erik Blachford, a venture partner at TCV and already an angel investor in TourRadar, has joined the company’s supervisory board. Blachford was previously President and CEO of IAC Travel, managing all of IAC’s travel assets including Expedia and Hotels.com. Again, a very good fit for TourRadar as it looks to scale up going forward.

In a call, TourRadar co-founder and CEO Travis Pittman — who founded the company with his brother — told me he was glad to have finally got Blachford on his board. The pair first met at a conference a few years back when Pittman heard the ex-Expedia CEO wax lyrical about the need for an OTA that serviced the group multi-day tour industry. He approached him afterwards to say that TourRadar wanted to be that company.

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Not to be confused with something like GetYourGuide, which focuses more on travel experiences that take up part or all of a single day, TourRadar is a place to book a multi-day tour in the same way you might book a package holiday. To deliver this, the company works with more than 600 large and small local tour operators across Europe, Asia, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. These include well-known operators such as G Adventures, Contiki, and Collette, and hundreds of specialty operators that otherwise would rely purely on local agents and word of mouth. In total, TourRadar offers more than 25,000 tours in 200 countries.

In fact, Pittman says TourRadar’s main competitor is large incumbent tour package companies, and that multi-day tours are one of the last areas of the travel industry that has not fully moved online. Another interesting tidbit regards TourRadar’s potential for growth: the company so far only targets english speaking consumers. Next on the roadmap is a lot more localisation, says the TourRadar CEO, with Germany, for example, a huge travel market.

To that end, TourRadar says it intends to use the funding to expand its team globally and to invest in the technology platform “to provide a personalized user experience for customers in new and existing source markets across the globe”. One area of focus will be developing a proper TourRadar mobile app — yes, really! — as Pittman reckons mobile, thus so far neglected, is a great platform for inspiration and discovery when deciding where to book your next tour.

More broadly, the platform supports operator partners in various ways, including offering instant bookings and tour review functionality, but there is room to go a lot further. This could include re-introducing community features to enable people who are planning to be in the same tour cohort to get in touch with one another before, during and after a tour.

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Watch Rocket Lab’s first commercial launch, ‘It’s Business Time’ [Update: Postponed]

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Watch Rocket Lab’s first commercial launch, ‘It’s Business Time’ [Update: Postponed]

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Rocket Lab, the New Zealand-based rocket company that is looking to further amplify the commercial space frenzy, is launching its first fully paid payload atop an Electron rocket tonight — technically tomorrow morning at the launch site. If successful, it will mark a significant new development in the highly competitive world of commercial launches.

Update: Sorry folks but not today. The company said it will announce a new target soon, while the launch window remains July 6.

Liftoff is planned for 2:10 in the morning local time in New Zealand, or 7:10 Pacific time in the U.S.; the live stream will start about 20 minutes before that.

The Electron rocket is a far smaller one than the Falcon 9s we see so frequently these days, with a nominal payload of 150 kilograms, just a fraction of the many tons that we see sent up by SpaceX. But that’s the whole point, Rocket Lab’s founder, CEO and chief engineer Peter Beck told me recently.

“You can go buy a spot on a big launch vehicle, but they’re not very frequent. With a small rocket you can choose your orbit and choose your schedule,” he said. “That’s what we’re driving at here: regular and reliable access to space.”

An Electron rocket launching during a previous test

Just like not every car on the road has to be a big rig, not every rocket needs to be a Saturn V; 150 kilos is more than enough to fill with paying customers and cover the cost of launch. And Beck told me there is no shortage whatsoever of paying customers.

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“The most important part of the mission is the timing in which we manifested it,” he explained (manifesting meaning having a payload added to the manifest). “We went from nothing manifested to a full payload in about 12 weeks.”

For comparison, some missions or payloads will wait literally years before there’s an opportunity to get to the orbit they need. Loading up just a few weeks ahead of time is unusual, to say the least.

Today’s launch will carry satellites from Spire, Tyvak/GeoOptics, students at UC Irvine and High Performance Space Structure Systems; you can see the specifics of these on the manifest (PDF). It’s not the first time an Electron has taken a paid payload to orbit, but it is the first fully commercialized launch.

Rocket Lab has no ambitions for interplanetary travel, sending people to space or anything like that. It just wants to take 150 kilograms to orbit as often as it can, as inexpensively as it can.

“We’re not interested in building a bigger rocket, we’re interested in building more of this one,” Beck said. “The vehicle is fully dialed in; we started from day one with this vehicle designed from a production approach. We’re fully vertically integrated, we don’t have any contractors, we do everything in-house. We’ve been scaling up the factories enormously.”

“We’re looking for a one-a-month cadence this year, then next year one every two weeks,” he continued. “Frequency is the key — it’s the choke point in space right now.”

Ultimately the plan is to get a rocket lifting off every few days. And if you think that will be enough to meet demand, just wait a couple years.

[gta-5-cheats]

Watch Rocket Lab’s first commercial launch, ‘It’s Business Time’

New Post has been published on http://secondcovers.com/watch-rocket-labs-first-commercial-launch-its-business-time/

Watch Rocket Lab’s first commercial launch, ‘It’s Business Time’

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Rocket Lab, the New Zealand-based rocket company that is looking to further amplify the commercial space frenzy, is launching its first fully paid payload atop an Electron rocket tonight — technically tomorrow morning at the launch site. If successful, it will mark a significant new development in the highly competitive world of commercial launches.

Liftoff is planned for 2:10 in the morning local time in New Zealand, or 7:10 Pacific time in the U.S.; the live stream will start about 20 minutes before that.

The Electron rocket is a far smaller one than the Falcon 9s we see so frequently these days, with a nominal payload of 150 kilograms, just a fraction of the many tons that we see sent up by SpaceX. But that’s the whole point, Rocket Lab’s founder, CEO and chief engineer Peter Beck told me recently.

“You can go buy a spot on a big launch vehicle, but they’re not very frequent. With a small rocket you can choose your orbit and choose your schedule,” he said. “That’s what we’re driving at here: regular and reliable access to space.”

An Electron rocket launching during a previous test

Just like not every car on the road has to be a big rig, not every rocket needs to be a Saturn V; 150 kilos is more than enough to fill with paying customers and cover the cost of launch. And Beck told me there is no shortage whatsoever of paying customers.

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“The most important part of the mission is the timing in which we manifested it,” he explained (manifesting meaning having a payload added to the manifest). “We went from nothing manifested to a full payload in about 12 weeks.”

For comparison, some missions or payloads will wait literally years before there’s an opportunity to get to the orbit they need. Loading up just a few weeks ahead of time is unusual, to say the least.

Today’s launch will carry satellites from Spire, Tyvak/GeoOptics, students at UC Irvine and High Performance Space Structure Systems; you can see the specifics of these on the manifest (PDF). It’s not the first time an Electron has taken a paid payload to orbit, but it is the first fully commercialized launch.

Rocket Lab has no ambitions for interplanetary travel, sending people to space or anything like that. It just wants to take 150 kilograms to orbit as often as it can, as inexpensively as it can.

“We’re not interested in building a bigger rocket, we’re interested in building more of this one,” Beck said. “The vehicle is fully dialed in; we started from day one with this vehicle designed from a production approach. We’re fully vertically integrated, we don’t have any contractors, we do everything in-house. We’ve been scaling up the factories enormously.”

“We’re looking for a one-a-month cadence this year, then next year one every two weeks,” he continued. “Frequency is the key — it’s the choke point in space right now.”

Ultimately the plan is to get a rocket lifting off every few days. And if you think that will be enough to meet demand, just wait a couple years.

[gta-5-cheats]

EveryTeam raises $3M to create a living internal company lexicon

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EveryTeam raises $3M to create a living internal company lexicon

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As companies get bigger and bigger, all the critical information about a company — even its mission and culture statements — can get lost in a massive pile of Google Docs or files strewn across dozens of collaboration tools, making it nearly impossible to find. That’s where the team behind EveryTeam hopes to step in and clean things up.

EveryTeam serves as a sort of hub for all of the documents and core information about a company — a kind of living library that adapts over time and can easily suck in new information as it comes about. The idea is that employees might not necessarily be going to the same internal portal for that information, or might not be updating that portal, and the information continues to sit across multiple different buckets within a company. The company came about from former GitHubbers Todd Berman, Connor Sears, and Scott Goldman, which are looking to bring that same level of collaboration and simplicity to access to internal employee information. The startup said it has raised $3 million in a seed round from Harrison Metal, Upside Partnership, Index Ventures and Greylock Partners.

“People end up creating content in them but struggling to maintain content in these [internal communications] tools,” CEO Todd Berman said. “Whether they’re using a combination of Google Docs, or Dropbox Paper, or Confluence, there’s tons of people trying to do a lot of different things here. A lot of these tools are focused on the creation, where people felt there was a lot of opportunity. But for our potential customers, the issue is that their content is all over the place. it’s not in one spot.”

EveryTeam works to surface up those kinds of critical employee documents that are probably fine to just exist in some Google Drive somewhere very early on — which might include the information for the WiFi or the schedule for office snacks. But as more and more docs flow in, EveryTeam has to parse through all of those and ensure that the right important ones are surfaced up in front of everyone, especially as they become more and more important over time. For larger and large companies, that content management can get out of control and devolve into a lot of messages across the organization just to find a single document. EveryTeam integrates with GitHub, Google Drive, Dropbox, Figma, and Airtable among others.

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“It ends up looking in a lot of cases like how GitHub works — GitHub is a tool to maintain, curate and publish software. You’re publishing source code, but a lot of the workflows feel very natural and feel very similar. Ultimately, where we ended up from a product perspective is, it’s more about being a layer on top of these services [like Box] to provide a plane of organization.”

EveryTeam isn’t the only startup looking to rethink the internal employee wiki. Slite, another startup looking to create an intelligent internal notes tool that can serve as a hub of information for employees, also said it raised $4.4 million earlier this year. The idea there is to bring the Slack-like simplicity that has become popular among employees — at least, at the startup level — to a variety of different areas that haven’t changed in a while. Internal note-taking, and that Wiki functionality, is one. EveryTeam decided to work with the idea that content is just going to exist all over the place anyway, and try to fit into the employee workflow that way.

“You want to curate and expose content that exists in ten to 12 different tools you use every day,” Berman said. “Ultimately, that’s part of my day-to-day flow. I’m usually in four to five web apps. When [some tools] take the Slack model they often get very focused on recency, and that determines an arbiter of value.[You have to think], what is the desire path for a document that becomes load-bearing in the company. It starts off a little weird, people edit it, it ideates and matures, and it stands the test of time. How do you create an application that helps that happen.”

[gta-5-cheats]

Celonis scores $50M Series B on $1B valuation

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Celonis scores $50M Series B on $1B valuation

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In the age of digital transformation, it’s important to understand your business processes and find improvements quickly, but it’s not always easy to do without bringing in expensive consultants to help. Celonis, a New York City enterprise startup, created a sophisticated software solution to help solve this problem, and today it announced a $50 million Series B investment from Accel and 83North on a $1 billion valuation.

It’s not typical for an enterprise startup to have such a lofty valuation so early in its funding cycle, but Celonis is not a typical enterprise startup. It launched in 2011 in Munich with this idea of helping companies understand their processes, which they call process mining.

“Celonis is an intelligent system using logs created by IT systems such as SAP, Salesforce, Oracle and Netsuite, and automatically understands how these processes work and then recommends intelligently how they can be improved,” Celonis CEO and co-founder Alexander Rinke explained.

The software isn’t magic, but helps customers visualize each business process, and then looks at different ways of shifting how and where humans interact with the process or bringing in technology like robotics process automation (RPA) when it makes sense.

Celonis process flow. Photo: Celonis

Rinke says the software doesn’t simply find a solution and that’s the end of the story. It’s a continuous process loop of searching for ways to help customers operate more efficiently. This doesn’t have to be a big change, but often involves lots incremental ones.

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“We tell them there are lots of answers. We don’t think there is one solution. All these little things don’t execute well. We point out these things. Typically we find it’s easy to implement, ” he said.

Screenshot: Celonis

It seems to be working. Customers include the likes of Exxon-Mobile, 3M, Merck, Lockheed-Martin and Uber. Rinke reports deals are often seven figures. The company has grown an astonishing 5,000 percent in the past 4 years and 300 percent in the past year alone. What’s more, it has been profitable every year since it started. (How many enterprise startups can say that?)

The company currently has 400 employees, but unlike most Series B investments, they aren’t looking at this money to grow operationally. They wanted to have the money for strategic purposes, so if the opportunity came along to make an acquisition or expand into a new market, they would be in a position to do that.

“I see the funding as a confirmation and commitment, a sign from our investors and an indicator about what we’ve built and the traction we have. But for us it’s more important, and our investors share this, what they really invested in was the future of the company,” Rinke said. He’s sees an on-going commitment to help his customers as far more important than a billion valuation.

But that doesn’t hurt either as it moves rapidly forward.