uBeam Nabs $10 Million In Funding From Upfront Ventures To Make Wireless Charging A Reality

Wireless power seems like one of those things everyone always dreams about. I mean, how great would it be to have your phone just charge while it’s sitting in your pocket with no need to plug it in? That’s the premise uBeam is setting out to deliver on, and to do so, it’s raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Upfront Ventures.

The investment brings total capital raised to about $12 million, with other investors that include Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, CrunchFund*, Ludlow Ventures, Marissa Mayer, Zappos co-founder Tony Hsieh, Troy Carter, Shawn Fanning and Mark Cuban. With the new funding, Upfront managing partner Mark Suster will join the uBeam board.

uBeam is just one among a large number of companies we’ve seen over the years that have sought to solve the problem of charging your devices without having to plug them in. So far most seem to have been focused on magnetic resonance charging, which still requires devices to be close to the charger.

By contrast uBeam wants to enable users to charge their phones without plugging in, and they’re looking to do that through the use of ultrasonic sound waves. Those waves can’t be heard by human ears, but can be converted to energy through the technology that uBeam has developed.

To start, the company is looking to offer up a consumer-facing product that would resemble any protective phone case but have the side benefit of being able to charge a device while in range of a uBeam transmitter. Unlike Mophie battery packs, uBeam wants to make its product as light and unobtrusive as possible — there will be no big battery sitting on the back of its case.

It’s filed a number of patents related to its technology, and founder and CEO Meredith Perry — seen above with a VERY early prototype — says uBeam has a working prototype of the product and hopes to have product in customers’ hands within the next two years. That might seem like a long time, especially for technology that the company has already been working on for a while.

The funding should help accelerate things, as the company has hired 11 new employees recently and is getting ready to actually move into production. The startup graveyard is littered with wireless charging companies, as the technology always sounds great but takes a good deal to get going.

With so much capital raised, hopefully uBeam won’t meet the same fate as those that came before it, because yeah, I’d like to just charge my phone while it’s in my pocket.

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document? That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...

Fun Tools to Translate Your Name into Japanese Calligraphy

Japanese calligraphy is an artistic writing style of the Japanese language. Its Chinese origins can be traced back to the twenty-eighth century BCE. Calligraphy found its way into Japanese culture in 600 CE and is known as the karayo tradition. For Westerners, calligraphy is forever fascinating. However, it takes years to learn how to properly draw the signs. Two basic principles must be known to understand Japanese writing: there are different writing styles and different alphabets. Kaisho for example, is a writing style most commonly used in print media. Tensho on the other hand is used in signatures. Other writing styles are Reisho, Gyosho and Sousho. The alphabets include Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana. Katakana is used for writing foreign words. It can also serve to highlight words, in analogy to capital letters as we know them from the Roman / Latin alphabet (Romaji in Japanese). Each Kanji character has a meaning of its own, while Hiragana or Katakana characters merely repres...

Kiran Upadhyay

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