Inside a small bungalow on the street separating Kansas City, Kansas, from its sister city in Missouri, a small group of entrepreneurs are working on their ideas for the next high-tech startup, tapping Google Inc’s new super-fast Internet connection that has turned the neighborhood into an unlikely settlement dubbed “Silicon Prairie.”
The home on State Line Road is one of several startup-friendly locations that have sprouted up in Kansas City in recent months. The catalyst is Google Fiber, the search engine giant’s fiber optic network being tested in the Kansas City area that advertises speeds of up to 1 gigabyte per second — a rate that massively exceeds the average Internet speeds at homes hooked up with cable modems.
The advantage here for startups is simple: A fast Internet pipe makes it easier to handle large files and eliminates buffering problems that plague online video, live conferencing or other network-intensive tasks.
Though the Kansas City location presents challenges for startups, including the ability to raise money outside the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital scene, entrepreneurs like Synthia Payne believe it is the place to be right now for up-and-coming tech companies.
Payne is one of those entrepreneurs hoping to launch her startup dream — an Internet subscription service for musicians who want to collaborate online — on the cheap. She shares the State Line Road house, known as the “Home for Hackers,” with other startups under a deal that allows them to live rent-free while they develop their business plans.
Google’s network was attractive because her business plan “is dependent upon really good, really fast Internet,” Payne said.
“Without this on-ramp here I probably would have found it very difficult to come here,” said Payne, who last month moved from Denver, Colorado, to develop CyberJammer.
Residents were thrilled when Google announced last year that Kansas City and neighboring Kansas City, Missouri, would be its test bed for Google Fiber. The California-based company spent months and unknown sums installing optical fiber around the area. Google provides the full gigabit service for US$70 a month and its own cable-television-like service for another US$50. A slower Internet connection is free on a monthly basis after a US$300 installation fee.
The first homes were installed with fiber optics in autumn last year, with more “fiberhoods” planned in stages over the next several months. The Kansas Cities remain Google’s only fiber market, though the company has said it plans additional roll-outs.
Many in the tech industry believe Google’s move could ultimately force broadband providers to accelerate their networks to compete. Making Internet access faster would give the company more opportunities to attract traffic and sell more advertising — the main way Google makes money.
The Home for Hackers and its unique business pitch is the brainchild of local Web developer Ben Barreth, whose property was among the first wave of houses to be fiber-wired and is a block away from the Google Fiber offices. “Hackers” who pass Barreth’s application process and show a real intention to work on a viable project can live there rent-free for three months.
Since starting the home in October last year after cashing in his retirement account and putting a downpayment on the US$48,000 house, Barreth has gotten applications from nearly 60 people seeking a spot in the home.
The house has been full since the middle of last month with Payne and two others occupying rooms. Another room is reserved for “fiber tourists” who want to staty at a place where they can download anything faster than they can elsewhere for a day or two.
“The hope is that these startups will move their operations to Kansas City and this will really bless Kansas City, bring jobs and taxes and we’ll build a really cool tech scene,” Barreth said.
A few homes away from the Home for Hackers is the headquarters of the Kansas City Startup Village, which was started by local entrepreneur Matthew Marcus and where Mike Farmer, founder of mobile search app Leap2.com, has his offices.
Farmer said Google Fiber brought attention to Kansas City’s startup culture “because it sort of ignites the imagination about what you can do with that sort of bandwidth capability.”
However, despite the growth, it remains a challenge for startups to raise money from Kansas City, Farmer said. Silicon Valley venture capital groups in particular want startup entrepreneurs to be nearby in California, he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day