May in Latin America: All the tech news you shouldn’t miss from the past month

May was a busy month for Latin American startup scene, with companies rushing out to close deals and roll out new services before the now-imminent FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Here’s the news you don’t want to miss: Big players A Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) is set to open in Miami in a few weeks. Located in Venture Hive‘s downtown Miami location, it will be the first of its kind in the US. As we reported, Miami was chosen partly because of its close ties to Latin America, and Microsoft says that this new MIC will serve as the gateway...



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The road to revenue: Can Pocket’s Premium subscription model work?

Build a service, grow it, and worry about where the money’s coming from later. That seems to be the general monetization mantra of the internet age, with the likes of Twitter and Facebook initially focusing on building their userbase before they paid too much attention to how they’re going to make cash via advertising. And just last week, Pocket introduced a new Premium subscription to its read-it-later service more than five years after launch, which the company said serves as its “first source of revenue”. But how willing will people be to commit cash on a regular basis to access...



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HotelTonight takes its curated same-day hotel booking service to Windows Phone

Curated same-day hotel-booking service HotelTonight has arrived for Windows Phone, more than three years after it first launched. A version geared towards Windows 8 tablets users will follow within a couple of weeks. HotelTonight launched in early 2011 kicking off with iOS, before rolling out a version for Android later that year. The service has typically been aimed at the higher-end last-minute hotel market, letting you reserve same-day hotel rooms from 9am on the day for up to 70 percent below the standard price. Back in April, we reported that HotelTonight now anticipates last-minute price for the week ahead, based...



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This Google Maps Easter egg lets you choose a dragon as your mode of transport

If you love Game of Thrones as much as we do, you’ve probably pondered what it would be like to have one of Khaleesi’s dragons at your disposal. Google appears to be on the same wavelength, after it added the mythical creature as a travel option in Google Maps. From what we can tell, it’s only available for a single journey – Snowdon to the Brecon Beacons – and is a fitting trip, given the red dragon that adorns the Welsh flag. If you’re curious, the mythical creature can whisk you between the two mountain ranges in approximately 21 minutes...



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Forget vacuum cleaners, Dyson prototyped a Google Glass-like AR headset

21 years ago and 5,127 prototypes later, James Dyson launched one of the world’s first mass-produced cyclonic vacuum cleaners. And within 18 months, it became Britain’s biggest-seller. The road to launch for the bagless miracle had been fraught with obstacles. Having failed to convince major manufacturers to take on his invention, with some concerns around its impact on the lucrative replacement dust bag market, Dyson ended up establishing his own company in Wiltshire, England, in 1993. Since then, the Dyson brand has become synonymous with innovation. The company has produced the Airblade hand-dryer, and the so-called bladeless fan. Today, Dyson...



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Windows 8.1 finally passes Windows 8 in market share, Windows 7 climbs back over 50%

May was the seventh full month of availability for Microsoft’s latest operating system version: Windows 8.1 continues to grow slowly while Windows 8 remains largely flat, allowing the former to finally pass the latter in market share. At the same time, Windows 7 has managed to climb back over the 50 percent mark, while Windows XP still has more than 25 percent of the pie, despite support for the ancient OS finally ending in April. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have gained a combined 0.40 percentage points (from 12.24 percent...



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How a mobile app for honesty can make you a better marketer

Chris Bolman is the Director of Growth at Percolate. This post originally appeared on the Percolate blog. Over the summer of 2013, David Byttow, a former Google software developer, started building a mobile app to solve a problem he had. Byttow noticed he and the engineers he worked with were bad at giving each other feedback, and he wanted a way they could comment honestly on each other’s work without professional or personal backlash for saying something negative. Byttow wanted a way to tell the truth, without revealing who said it. Eight months later, the most talked about content at...



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