GigaOM » Coca-Cola

Just add robots: MIT and Coke show off a smartphone-controlled bartender

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:48:27 +0000

We could be saving the world, y’all. But instead researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab in Cambridge have worked with the The Coca-Cola Co. and Bacardi companies to deliver a smartphone-controlled mixologist that can make an infinite number of drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) with the touch of a few buttons. Which admittedly, is cool.

A device like this is both a mechanical poster-child showing what’s possible for the future of automation as well as an attempt to work out kinks on our way to personal robots that will help reduce drudgery and improve our lives. And yet, despite my love of cocktails and robots, this particular partnership rubs me the wrong way.

It’s called the Makr Shakr and the robot and smartphone app will be unveiled Wednesday at Google’s I/O conference. The apparatus has three robot arms, whose movements were modeled after those of an Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle, and access up to 100 different types of flavors (alcohols, fruit juice, syrups, etc.) You download the app and then use the app to create the mix of your choice.

MIT is making a big deal of being able to see what recipes people make and how the robot allows others to crowdsource winning combinations. For example, the release includes the following quote, which is presented without irony:

“The number of drink combinations is almost limitless,” says Yaniv Turgeman, project leader from MIT Senseable City Lab. “The magic moment will be watching the formation of a bottom-up bar culture, as we close the loop between ‘co-curating’ and ‘co-producing,’ in real time.”

To which I say, Bah humbug. Yes, a robot-dispensing bartender whose “arms” are modeled after a ballet dancer and are assigned movements by a professional choreographer (it’s Italian director and choreographer Marco Pelle if you must know) is clearly theater. But this is art used to package commerce in a form designed to appeal to the frenetic, internet-hardened consumers of today. While plenty of hackers and hipsters might feel immune to a TV spot or a billboard, they will flock to tell their friends about this robot, post videos of it online and in general look without skepticism at what the creation of this robot means.

And of course, people like me, will write articles about it. Because it is cool, and these sorts of endeavors are the future, of both the service industry and commerce. And while MIT is careful to note that this won’t replace your neighborhood bartender, that’s just idiotic.

In Austin, Briggo Coffee, is a robotic coffee-dispensing robot (it’s shaped like a giant cube) that allows you to order your cup of Joe on your smartphone on the way into work and pick it up form the cube at a set time. Let’s also not forget that in the heart of SoMa at Lemnos Labs, Momentum Machines is building a robot that makes hamburgers. And in Amazon’s warehouses robot pickers abound.

The Briggo coffee-making robot lives inside that cube.

Robots are cheaper at scale, and more efficient than people. For example, MIT boasts that Makr Shakr can not only mix drinks, but can also monitor alcohol consumption and blood alcohol levels. So while it may not wipe down glasses while listening to your troubles, the Makr Shakr has a lot going for it should anyone decide to turn it into a production robot.

So while this is whiz-bang cool it’s worth asking the tough questions such a partnership and device bring up. Is this really what we want our MIT graduates working on? And if it is, then what kinds of adjustments do we need to be making in society to prepare for the infusions of robots into the service sector. Perhaps folks can start discussing those things after they get their Makr Shakr-made drinks.

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Segway inventor Dean Kamen teams up with unlikely ally for clean water box: Coke

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:15:04 +0000

Dean Kamen — the inventor of the Segway and dozens of other futuristic devices that’ll make your jaw drop — has been working on a clean water box called the Slingshot for a good decade. The legend is that if you put any kind of liquid — from sewage to salt water — in one side of the 300-pound, compact, box, a day’s worth of drinking water will come out the other. Well, according to a report in Fortune, Kamen is getting closer to making that technology more of a real world product, and has teamed up with Coca-Cola to help get the devices into areas that need them.

The article says that Coca-Cola will help Kamen’s DEKA research group get Slingshots to entrepreneurs in developing countries that will sell the clean water as a service and will be incentivized to maintain the machines. Kamen told the reporter that Slingshots can produce water for around a penny a gallon, and he hopes that 5 million entrepreneurs can use them to run businesses by 2020.

Those are really aggressive numbers for a device that now costs $7,000 to $8,000 and has been in development for a decade (they’re looking to reduce the cost by a lot). And details of the Coke deal are few (will Coca-Cola buy and donate the machines?).

But if any company can get this type of technology to off-grid villages that don’t have regular access to clean water in India and Africa, it’d be a beverage giant like Coca-Cola. Along with cell phone giants like Nokia and telecom operators in these regions, Coke has managed to create a product that is actually widely bought and sold by regular people in developing countries. That means it has deep, deep distribution channels in many off-grid, clean-power lacking, regions.

And the main resource Coke needs to produce its product is clean water. If it can use or learn from the Slingshot technology, it could ultimately help its own business in these regions. And it could also have a valuable marketing tool, if it had Coca-Cola sponsored entrepreneurs throughout rural villages.

Other technologies that Kamen’s DEKA research group has been working on over the years include: an LED bulb, a bionic arm, a portable dialysis machine, a self balancing wheel chair, and a stirling engine. A lot of these inventions could act as the seeds for next-generation energy technologies (Kamen is a major clean power advocate), but the issue is getting them from the lab to the store or into commercialization.

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Postcard from Denmark: The throwaway culture is over

Ucilia Wang — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 07:00:16 +0000

Jeans that purify air. Fish scales used as a plastic substitute. Golf tees made out of sugar. These are some of the ideas for using sustainable materials and reducing waste that are on display at the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen, across from the famous Tivoli Garden amusement park.

The exhibit, called “Hello Materials,” reflects a strong interest by businesses and researchers to investigate concepts and engineer products that scale back a reliance on non-renewable sources. These are concepts that could resonate with average consumers, not just the über socially and environmentally conscious types. As Nille Juul-Sorensen, CEO of the Danish Design Center, said in a video shown at the exhibit:

“Consumers are demanding sustainable products because we have reached a point in our evolution where the throwaway culture is over.”

The companies creating these concept and commercial products include some big names – Coca-Cola and Puma, for example — and their motives for investing in environmentally friendly designs may be part pragmatic and part clever marketing. Regardless, their involvement reminds us that large companies have the means and the responsibility to push for a much broader acceptance of sustainable products.

Seeing all these efforts to re-cycle materials and find renewable substitutes makes me think that we need to figure out how to simply use less stuff in our lives. While it’s good to see Coca-Cola find ways to re-use plastic bottles, it’d be even better if we all just drink less soda.

Check out the following photos and captions about the exhibit:

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Public, private or hybrid? How to move to the cloud

Barb Darrow — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:09:40 +0000

As is often discussed at GigaOM Pro, beleaguered IT pros are the ones often left to figure out which applications and data should move first and to which type of cloud. But with more and more business leaders now turning to this topic, the questions — and confusion — are multiplying. With so much to consider, we’ve broken down the cloud discussion to help companies decide which strategy is right for their business. Let’s take a look.

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Spotify partners with Coke to expand international reach

Ryan Kim — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:24:04 +0000

Spotify unveiled a global partnership with Coca Cola Wednesday that it says will greatly expand its international reach and exposure, giving it a boost similar to the way its Facebook integration has supercharged sign-ups and usage. Under the deal, Coca Cola will use Spotify to help power its international music campaigns, giving Coke fans a way to experience new content and music created and curated by the beverage company. Spotify, however, had no new information on an eagerly awaited iPad app.

The initial signs of partnership will be a Coca Cola branded app that will appear on Spotify’s desktop app, and content from that app will also appear on Coke’s Facebook page. The app was selected from a hackathon this past weekend and will be ready in time for the Summer Olympics. Coca Cola will also utilize Spotify as part of a global music campaign next year, which will include TV, digital and other marketing efforts.

The partnership doesn’t include direct payments from Coca Cola to Spotify. But Coke is expected to increase its advertising spending on Spotify as it promotes its app and expanded content. For Coke, the deal helps it better use music to get closer to its customers. It’s got music programs around the world, from live concerts to partnerships with big events like the World Cup and the Olympics. For Spotify, it means Coke will help promote it as the service moves into new markets beyond the 13 countries it currently operates in.

“If you think about our vision, it’s about the ubiquity of music, and I can’t think of a brand or company that has the same amount of ubiquity as Coke,” said Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder, at an event in New York.

It’s unclear how much this will improve Spotify’s financial situation. The company doubled its losses to $60 million last year. Even with expanded distribution, it will still be on the hook for bigger payments to labels. Getting more advertising will certainly help pay the bills, but it’s not clear how big that revenue source will be. So far, Spotify has paid more than $250 million to the labels overall. Spotify currently has 10 million users on its free ad-supported service and 3 million paying subscribers.

But clearly, Spotify is working to get closer to brands. Earlier Wednesday, Spotify founder Daniel Ek confirmed that Spotify is turning on the ability for brands like McDonalds and AT&T to make their own apps on top of Spotify’s platform, letting the them create new experiences around its catalog of 15 million songs. This follows Spotify’s move in November to open up its platform to third-party apps including apps from Rolling Stone, Last.fm, SongKick and others. The service is still limited to just apps built off of Spotify’s desktop app.

AT&T is one of the first out of the gate with a “Surround Sounds,” app, which shows where songs were written, recorded, played or performed, so users can see the music visually on a map. Reebok has an app that creates workout playlists while Intel has an app called “Sifter” that recommends songs, bands and artists based on what they’re friends are tuning into on Facebook. The apps will show up in the coming weeks.

These branded apps are free to build but the hope is that they will help attract more advertising dollars to the platform, similar to the way Facebook pulls in advertising dollars from brands building off its social network.

Spotify released some new usage figures including the fact that since integrating into Facebook, it’s had 1.5 billion shares from Spotify to Facebook and more than 500 billion impressions on Facebook. Users have spent the equivalent of 1,500 years on Spotify’s apps since the launch of its app platform. Users have created 700 million playlists on Spotify and are listening for 100 minutes a day.

As for a dedicated Spotify iPad app, Ek said it was still in the works.

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Twitter begins larger rollout of enhanced brand pages

Colleen Taylor — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:06:17 +0000

Screenshot of Volkswagen's enhanced Twitter page (click to enlarge)

On Wednesday, Twitter switched on enhanced brand pages for accounts owned by National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, the Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, and Anobii, among others. This is the first batch of premium Twitter pages from companies other than the handful of launch partners (including Coca-Cola, the American Red Cross, and American Express) who unveiled enhanced brand pages in December.

A quick refresher: As part of the head-to-toe redesign Twitter first announced back on December 8, Twitter said it would give companies, brands, media organizations and celebrities the ability to have “enhanced” profile pages with extra design options and content feed controls. While the general redesign started rolling out to the majority of Twitter users nearly two months ago, the company took a bit more time in pushing the makeover for its first class users.

A Twitter spokesperson tells me the enhanced brand pages “will continue to roll out to advertising partners, as well as other select partners, charities, media organizations, and individuals” over the coming weeks and months. As Twitter gets more serious about generating revenue, it makes sense that it would want to create a more welcoming environment to big-name brands — the types of users who may want to buy more ads on the site after they see how nice their spruced up pages are.

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VIA Motors rolls out converted hybrid electric trucks

Ucilia Wang — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:37:37 +0000

Trotting out auto industry veteran and the former public face of Chevy Volt, Bob Lutz, as a spokesman, VIA Motors on Tuesday showed off its technology of converting conventional trucks, cargo vans and SUVs into hybrid electric vehicles and said it plans to start producing a few thousand of them this year.

VIA Motors takes new vehicles made by automakers and hires engineering firms to add an electric powertrain, including a lithium-ion battery pack, to provide up to 40 miles of range. A gasoline engine will then kick in to charge the battery to run the electric motor, Lutz said during a press conference at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The technology is similar in concept to the GM’s Chevy Volt, and Lutz previously led development of the Volt at GM. The fuel economy should be around 100 miles per gallon, noted Lutz.

The Utah company plans to start converting vehicles from GM initially, including the Silverado, Tahoe and Express van, David West, chief marketing officer of VIA Motors, told me by phone after the press conference. The company is targeting corporate customers first, such as utility PG&E, but expects to start selling its hybrid vehicles in a few years (maybe 2013).

The trucks will likely be the most popular choice because of their attractiveness with fleet owners and consumers in North America, West said. The company is using multiple lithium-ion battery suppliers, including A123 Systems and Valence Technology, he added.

Prices for the hybrids will generally cost 35 percent more than their gasoline-only equivalent, but VIA expects the prices to go down as it increases production, West said. The hybrids also should deliver fuel savings and emission-reduction benefits that will appeal to corporate customers if not also consumers, he said.

Lutz mentioned Coca-Cola and Verizon as customers, but these companies are still evaluating VIA’s technology, West said. PG&E appears to be a major customer now since the utility joined VIA executives at the press conference to tout its involvement in VIA’s technology development. PG&E began working with VIA on the hybrid technology in 2008 and has invested $400,000 in the development work. It’s been given VIA feedback on its experience with two hybrid trucks since it began test driving them last year.

The utility estimates that the demonstration vehicles it has tested could deliver annual fuel maintenance savings of $7000 per vehicle compared with conventional trucks, said Greg Pruett, senior vice president of corporate affairs at PG&E.

PG&E owns two trucks now and plans to order more trucks, which the utility describes as the “beta” version. PG&E is looking at buying 10-12 more of them in the future, but the delivery time frame has yet to be determined.

There was no shortage of bold words uttered by Lutz and Alan Perriton, chief operating officer of VIA Motors, during the unveiling.

“This is not just a truck, a SUV or a van. It’s a series of products that redefine transportation,” said Perriton, who also worked at GM for years

VIA executives are marketing their hybrids as power supplies as well. Companies who won these cars could use the battery power for running tools while on a worksite, for example. A utility could even use the vehicles for dealing with power outages, PG&E said.

The hybrids can provide power for “work crews, caterers … outdoor parties, outdoor weddings, outdoor concerts,” Lutz said. “Think of a 3-day camping trip where you have unlimited power with the car you drive into the woods with.”

VIA expects to convert 2,000 to 3,000 of GM vehicles this year and hopes to bump up production to 10,000 units next year and 20,000 after that, West said. It’s hired companies such as Roush Engineering to do the conversion work, he added.

Photo courtesy of PG&E

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The future of mobile advertising, 2011 – 2016

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:21:37 +0000

Spending in the mobile advertising space will be approximately $4 billion worldwide this year, so despite perceptions to the contrary, we can safely assume it’s an area to watch in the coming years. To get a clearer picture of mobile advertising’s future, it helps to first explore the current landscape — the key drivers and players involved today. With these as a backdrop, a five-year outlook such as this comes into greater focus and leads to a discussion of the major players to watch as 2016 approaches. Companies mentioned in this report include Foursquare, LivingSocial and Zynga. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 07:01:22 +0000

As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile.

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Hara Raises $25M From GE, NRG, ConocoPhillips, Itochu

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:24:52 +0000

Getting ahead in the race to be the leading resource and carbon management software company will take cash to scale. On Wednesday morning, energy software startup Hara plans to announce it has raised another $25 million in a Series C round from new strategic investors including the collaboration of GE, NRG Energy and ConocoPhillips (called Energy Technology Ventures), as well as the investing arm of Japanese conglomerate Itochu, called Itochu Technology Ventures. Focus Ventures and Navitas Capital were also new investors in the round.

Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, JAFCO and Nth Power also joined the financing, and this latest round brings Hara’s funds to $45 million. In addition to the funding, Hara said Kleiner’s Ray Lane has become Chairman of the Board.

Hara officially launched back in May 2009, when the energy, carbon and resource management space was a little less crowded, though the company was already a year and a half old then. Hara’s Software-as-a-Service product gives companies and municipalities the ability to itemize and track all of the inputs (water, electricity, chemicals) and outputs (the product, greenhouse gases, wastewater) that make up their business processes. By identifying both the inputs and outputs, Hara can then suggest how to optimize the overall system, enabling the customer to save a substantial amount of money and reduce waste.

For an average midsize company, Hara’s Environmental and Energy Management software tracks about 1,000 objects (like a truck or a machine) with an accompanying 26,000 lines of data on things like time the item is used, and the fuel source used, etc. The pricing of the software is based on how many objects are tracked, and the software is supposed to deliver a customer a return on investment in three to 12 months via savings from cutting energy, fuel and other resources. Three types of organizations are really good targets for Hara’s tool: power companies (oil, natural gas, etc.) spending millions on energy, companies with deep supply chains like Walmart, and public sectors and cities looking to meet and implement mandates.

Hara says it has more than 50 large customers for its software, including News Corp., Coca-Cola and content distribution company Akamai, and Hara’s strategic investors can no doubt open many more doors for the company.

Hara needed this type of investment and help from these large players to stay ahead in a market that is filled with software giants like SAP and power companies like Avista Corp. and its subsidiary Advantage IQ. Two years ago, massive software company SAP bought two-year-old startup Clear Standards, which sold software to manage carbon emissions, energy consumption, and water use. Since then, Advantage IQ acquired Building Knowledge Networks and The Loyalton Group, and demand response player EnerNOC bought eQuilibrium Solutions.

The barrier to entry in this market isn’t that high (anyone can build software and sell it), but it’s more about convincing customers that the product actually works and can save them money. Seems like Hara has been successful on this front, and earlier this year, Groom Energy released a report on the top 10 carbon software players in the market, and named Hara as one of the few startups on the list.

As Groom Energy noted in its report, the resource software market has been maturing and has seen fewer acquisitions and venture fundings in recent months. A lot of these companies started to emerge or beef up their software in 2008, as many thought the U.S. would finally enact carbon legislation. But despite the lack of federal carbon legislation, the market for energy and carbon software has grown 400 percent over 2010 and is predicted to grow 300 percent in 2011, says Groom Energy.

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