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Users Should Be Able To Sue Tech Companies Over Spying, Says Sen. Rand Paul | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | Libertarian hero and presidential hopeful Senator Rand Paul tells me that tech companies should not be granted legal immunity from consumers suing them over government spying. The Patriot Act gave telecommunications companies immunity from being sued for allowing Intelligence agencies to tap phone and Internet lines.... |
BBM Is Coming To Gingerbread Android Phones | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | BBM will soon be available for Android phones running Gingerbread. This is a shockingly brilliant move which allows BBM to fully compete in developing countries where BBM is already an established brand, but current smartphones are still running the legacy operating system. As , despite being generations old, Android ... |
Automatic’s Smart Driving Assistant Can Now Turn Your Car Into An iBeacon | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | ‘s smart driving assistant, which combines a , was designed to provide vehicle owners with new tools to understand how they can get more out of their car’s performance. Well, it recently added iBeacon functionality, which could fundamentally change the way users and their cars interact with other things around them. i... |
Sources: Coin Is Raising More Cash | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | , a YC-backed company looking to thin down your wallet, is currently in the process of raising around $15 million in Series A funding, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Led by Kanishk Parashar and K9 investor/board member Manu Kumar, Coin offers a replacement for every credit card in your wallet. ... |
Calling All Hardware Startups In Atlanta, New Orleans, And Charleston | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | Hello, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Charleston. We’d like to meet you. After you guys shovel out your unenclosed garages and de ice your homes, please drop us a line so we can see what amazing hardware you’re working on in your cities and, in addition, get featured on our regular hardware TCTV show, . We’ve been running ... |
null | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 16 | null |
3D Printing Goes Carbon Fiber | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | Meet the . Billed as the world’s first desktop printer capable of printing composite materials. For $5,000, you too can make a carbon fiber 1:1 scale model of a banana. Named aptly for its creator, Gregory Mark, who also owns Aeromotions, this desktop printer debuted at SolidWorks World 2014 in San Diego. After seeing... |
Yahoo’s Tumblr-Based Tech And Food Sites Have Seen 10M Uniques Since Jan. 7 Launch | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | At vertical news and information sites, which feature a visual-heavy redesign that resembles Flipboard somewhat but with more of an online news site vibe. Today, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer reiterated that the sites are based on a Tumblr backend, which marks a departure from the typically personal or informal use of the ... |
Yahoo Q4 2013 Earnings Slide 6% To $1.27B On EPS Of $0.46, Display Ads Down 6% | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | Yahoo today for the fourth quarter of 2013, where it reported GAAP revenues of $1.27 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.46. Excluding traffic acquisition costs, revenues were $1.2 billion. Sales were down by 6% but EPS was up 31%. Non-GAAP income from operations was $330 million, down 3% on a year ago. Bas... |
Google Ventures’ Wesley Chan Steps Down As General Partner To Work On His Own Startup | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | Google Ventures’ is stepping down from his role as General Partner to see how the other half lives. Chan will become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Google Ventures, with the goal of eventually building his own company. An MIT CS major, Chan was one of the first couple hundred Google employees and led multiple projec... |
Nokia Revamps Its Financial Reporting Structure In Advance Of The Microsoft Deal | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Nokia today that it will restructure its financial reporting as its deal with Microsoft nears completion. If you sell off a chunk of your revenue, investors are going to notice when your top line shrinks in the next quarter. Here’s the company on its changes: After receiving shareholder approval of the pending sale o... |
FaceSubstitute Is The Coolest (And Creepiest) Thing You’ll See This Week | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Ready for your semi-regular reminder that technology is freakin’ ? FaceSubstitute is a tech demo that lets you use your webcam to try on someone else’s face (god, that was a weird sentence to type), and it’s just as creepy/awesome as it sounds. Want to be Walter White? Sure! Want to be a terrfying pseudo-Kardashian? O... |
Dropbox Closes Roughly $250M Round At $10B Valuation, WSJ Says | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Dropbox has raised a massive $250 million funding round, valuing the company at $10 billion according to the . The new funding round is led by a BlackRock fund, according to the WSJ, which cites “two people familiar with the deal” as the source of the report. This is actually the : It did so in 2011 in a round that i... |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | What’s a little biomimetics between friends? Today’s edition of we present a few exciting projects from where they’re copying animal motion in order to create more efficient robotic hunter/killers. First up we have a charming cheetah that runs 2.3 meters per second and looks like a skeletonized cat that is looking... |
Even BlackBerry Thinks Windows Phone Is Too Small | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | News is out today that BlackBerry has no intention of bringing a BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) application to Windows Phone. Comments from the company indicate that it deems Windows Phone too small to warrant the investment. TechCrunch confirmed the statements. According to TrustedReviews, BlackBerry’s David Proulx call... |
A16z Looks To Raise New $1.5B Fund, Primack Says | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Andreessen Horowitz is raising a massive new fund, . The expected total for the new fund is $1.5 billion, giving the venture group sufficient capital to pursue deals at every funding point at scale. It’s no accident that the funds are the same size, says Primack, who reports that the new fund will be “similar in struc... |
VP Of Product Michael Sippey Is Leaving Twitter | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Twitter’s Vice President of Product just announced that he’s stepping into an advisory role at the company, then moving on to, well, something else. In a company email that Sippey also , he said he realized that “it was time to move on” after discussions with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and COO Ali Rowghani. Sippey doe... |
Protect Yourself From The NSA With WireOver’s Encrypted File Sharing | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Nothing is truly NSA-proof or hacker-proof, but wants to offer you more security than Dropbox, Google Drive, or Skydrive. The Y Combinator startup just emerged from stealth with a desktop app that lets you send files of any size for free. And for $10 a month, your transfers get end-to-end encryption so only the recip... |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Lockitron, Nintendo, Google’s Smart Contacts, And Nest | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | It’s been a big week for smart things. Coming off the heels of CES, this week we learned that , Nintendo , that Google has been building and , and that our dear is leaving us. It may not be the happiest Gadgets Podcast you’ve ever heard, but at least it’s honest. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episo... |
Fantastic For iPhone Is A Smart, Social Music Player That Learns What You Like & Suggests Nearby Shows | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | , a company that had previously been working on a sort of “Google Now”-like for iOS users, is launching its latest creation called into public beta today. The new app, a smart music player for iOS devices, lets you not only play your own music, but discover new artists and tracks you may be interested in, as well a... |
Google Rolls Out In-Ad Surveys To Figure Out Why People Hate Ads | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | For about the last year and a half, Google has let you they don’t like. Just click the little [x] button and it’s gone and will never be shown to you again. That’s a pretty useful solution for noisy ads you really, really hate, despite the fact that they promise to show you that one weird trick to finally lose all yo... |
Zapier Opens Its Developer Platform, Gives The Everyday Joe A Way To Connect APIs | Alex Williams | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | , a platform for connecting apps to automate tasks, has been constrained to some extent by the limitations for integrating third-party services. That has changed with Zapier’s that the company announced this week. The change is noteworthy for, if nothing else, how it opens systems so apps can talk to each other and d... |
The 360 Fly Can Capture Your Entire World | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | A Pittsburgh-based tech company approached us on the show floor last week and asked for a bit of time to talk about their product, a small ball that can take panoramic video and is rugged enough to be strapped to a helmet or surf board. The product, , is still in beta but the company wanted to show it to us – comp... |
Apple Turns To Old iPhone Models, And Lower Prices, To Woo Users In India | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Executives at Apple in India are preparing to celebrate passing $1 billion in annual revenue in the country for the first time this financial year. But Apple today remains a small player in India, accounting for less than 2% of all mobile sales in 2013 according to one estimate. In a market where more than 90% of the 2... |
Live Streaming Startup Ustream Quietly Pivots To The Enterprise | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | has recently made moves to de-emphasize its free, live broadcasting service. But those changes are just part of a larger focus on enterprise clients. Last week, Ustream sent an email to members who had free accounts, telling them that it was making changes to the way videos were stored or archived. The email said that... |
Spark.io Hackers Make An Open-Source Nest Thermostat | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Sure it’s not made of metal, nor did it convince Google to give its creators billions of dollars, but dammit if this isn’t a cool hack. The folks at , creators of the , a unique Wi-Fi development board that allows you to add Wi-Fi controls to Arduino projects, have used their tech to create a . The team essentially ... |
Google Is Working On A “Chromoting” App For iOS Users, Too | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | A spotted on Chromium.org, home to the open source browser project Google Chrome is based on, states that a “Chromoting” application is in development for iOS devices. This would allow users to control their computers from their iPhone or iPad, for example. An Android version of this same technology has been in sin... |
Inventus Capital Raises $106M Second Fund To Back US-India Startups | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | , an early-stage investment firm based in Menlo Park, Calif. and Bangalore, is announcing that it has raised a second fund totaling $106 million. In fact, Inventus says that it has already started investing from the fund, for example with . In the funding release, co-founder and managing director John Dougery (picture... |
Obama Announces NSA Reforms | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | , President Obama has announced a partial end to the National Security Agency’s surveillance dragnet. We’re still parsing official documents and expert reaction, but here are the bullet points: Readers can review the official White House proposals below. We’ll have more analysis soon.
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Path Finally Closes That Elusive Series C | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | It’s been a bumpy road for Dave Morin’s , as manic rumors over the last year have pegged the “private” social network at once as the subject of and potential acquisitions, while at the same time raising . Today, the company’s long path to a Series C appears to finally have come to an end. Having recently revealed a... |
Meet The 13 Startups Wayra U.K. Is Accelerating In 2014 | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | Wayra U.K. is still a relative newbie to the London startup accelerator scene, back in May 2012 for its first intake. Last year’s cohort included journaling app and lesbian dating service , to name two of the 17. Today Wayra U.K. is naming its third intake that will be hothoused through the circa nine-month mentor... |
null | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 1 | 28 | null |
Qualcomm Will Bring Lytro-Style Focus Selection To Mobile Photos With New Snapdragon Chips | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Qualcomm showed off some of the magic powers of its latest mobile processors at CES this year, and many of the new features on display had to do with mobile cameras. The Qualcomm 805, announced back in November, will offer smartphone shooters some powerful new tools once it starts making its way into shipping phones ... |
Fast-Growing Zenefits Adds Commuter Benefits, Flexible Spending And 401(k) Support As It Moves To Take Over Startup HR | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Managing human resources is one of the more frustrating and time-consuming aspects of running a startup or small business. Because most can’t afford to hire an HR person, all that paperwork usually falls into the lap of founders and management. Knowing that entrepreneurs would rather spend their time growing their busi... |
Update: Alleged Dropbox Hack Is A Hoax, Website Is Back Up | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | , Popular backup service Dropbox is offline and the hacktivist contingent, Anonymous, is claiming credit. “BREAKING NEWS: We have just compromised the @Dropbox Website http://bit.ly/1cMlbvt #hacked #compromised,” tweeted an alleged Anonymous Twitter account. [tweet https://twitter.com/AnonOpsKorea/status/42182387196089... |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 17 | null |
New Tactus Case Concept Brings A Disappearing Keyboard To The iPad | Chris Velazco | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | It was about that Tactus — the company behind the amazing disappearing touchscreen keyboard — really started making a name for itself. So what does a buzzy company do to top its previous showing at the world’s biggest consumer tech show? In Tactus’ case it quietly showed off yet another potential game-changer, so w... |
Bill Gates Is Not The Next CEO Of Microsoft, But His VC Investments Are Picking Up | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Bill Gates may be one of the world’s most famous , , and , but could he be adding venture capitalist to the list? Over the past few years it seems that Gates has, in fact, been increasing his investment in . Though not as active in venture capital as , , technology billionaires, Gates is nonetheless putting toge... |
Meet Urb-E, The World’s Most Compact Electric Scooter | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | One of the more interesting discoveries at this year’s CES was the , a super compact electric scooter that folds right up in a jiffy. We interviewed co-founder Grant Delgatti and learned that the little guy is meant for commuters who need a little extra push for the last leg of their journey, whether it be the mile ... |
Martha Stewart Shops CES | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | For many of us, CES is a massive conference filled with the world’s most innovative technology. To , the world’s largest Consumer Electronics Show represents a day of gadget shopping. So what is Martha on the market for? The lifestyle guru and DIYer had a few specific products in mind when she joined TechCrunch for ... |
LuckyPennie Brings Music Discovery, Local Tastemakers To The iPhone | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | If your Spotify friends have terrible taste in music, newly launched iPhone app may be for you. This L.A.-based startup is hoping to re-imagine the way people discover music, including not only new songs available for streaming or download on iTunes, but those performed by local bands, too. The company was founded by... |
Hands On With Samsung’s New Galaxy NotePRO And TabPRO Android Tablets | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Samsung debuted a couple at CES this year, both of which are being positioned as “Pro” versions of its existing Note and Tab line of devices. The slates do indeed offer some features aimed more at enterprise users, but they also feature a UI that’s dramatically different from a stock Android experience. The Galaxy ... |
Gillmor Gang Live 01.10.14 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | – Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, Dan Farber, and Steve Gillmor. |
These Are The Headphones You’re Looking For | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Stormtrooper: Let me see your headphones.
Obi-Wan: [with a small wave of his hand] You don’t need to see his headphones.
Stormtrooper: We don’t need to see his headphones.
Obi-Wan: These aren’t the headphones you’re looking for.
Stormtrooper: These aren’t the headphones we’re looking for.
Obi-Wan: 50 Cent can go... |
TC Makers: A Walk Through The Pinball Hall Of Fame | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Pong, before Space Invaders there was pinball. And it was good. While we were in Las Vegas this week for we had the distinct pleasure of stopping by the , an amazing space dedicated to all things electromechanical. I spoke with Tim Arnold, Director of Things And Stuff (or, alternately, Stuff And Things) who has mad... |
Snakebyte Vyper Adds Home Theatre Features To An Android Game Console And Tablet | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Many companies are betting that people want some kind of Android-based gaming solution in their living room, from Ouya to GameStick to Nvidia. One new initiative along those lines debuted at CES 2014 called the . The Vyper is from a German startup, and the company is bringing the product the U.S. in the coming month... |
Supreme Court Will Hear Aereo Case, Settling The Broadcaster Battle Once And For All | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | , a streaming TV startup , has been embroiled in a legal battle with network broadcasters for the better part of this year. But the case has finally reached the home stretch, as the supreme court today decided to take on the issue and settle the matter once and for all. Aereo takes OTA signals out of the air through m... |
Questions Is A Video Q&A App That Wants You To Have Curious Micro-Conversations With Anyone | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | is an iOS app, pictured left, that’s using video to animate and humanise the Q&A format. Spicing up the tried-and-tested Q&A format to make it fit for a visually obsessed age is energising plenty of startups at present. The very recent (and high profile) category entrant, Biz Stone’s new startup , for instance, is no... |
Newly Launched Marketing Platform Carnival Wants Brands To Stop Treating Mobile Like A Billboard | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Just before the holidays, a new mobile marketing platform targeting brands and agencies, , quietly made its public debut. Based in New York and New Zealand, the company is aspiring to chart a course similar to what Buddy Media did for social on the web, but for mobile campaigns, engagement and retention. Mobile, of co... |
FOBO Launches In San Francisco To Become The Fastest, Easiest Way To Sell Your Consumer Electronics | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | By now you probably know that Craigslist sucks as a way to sell stuff. You have to contend with spam emails, buyers who promise to purchase your goods but flake, and people who show up then try to haggle down the price after the fact. But somehow, no one has figured out a way to make it better or provide a real alterna... |
Google Maps Mistakenly Labels Berlin Square After Hitler | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Google lets anybody suggest changes to its maps, and on January 2, an anonymous user suggested that shouldn’t be named after Germany’s first federal president but after Adolf Hitler. Google uses a small army of volunteers and its own moderators to check all submissions before they go live, and whoever checked this on... |
JayBird Bets On Intelligent Tracking For The Reign, Its First Foray Into Quantified Fitness | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | Bluetooth and sport headset company JayBird is venturing a little outside of its comfort zone with the new fitness tracking wristband, a device unveiled earlier this week at CES 2014. The JayBird Reign goes beyond most existing devices like those from Fitbit, Withings, and Jawbone, tracking different types of fitne... |
Uber And Disruption | Contributor | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | Usually an industry’s disruption happens faster than anyone anticipates. Things look like business as usual to the slow moving incumbents, who often have not faced a real market threat for a while. Then the incumbents’ business undergoes sudden, cataclysmic collapse. Uber and Lyft are in the midst of causing this patt... |
Index Leads $870K Seed Round For Resource Guru’s Cloud-Based Team Scheduling App | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | has led a $870,000 seed round into , a London-based startup that wants to disrupt companies’ use of spreadsheets to manage staff, equipment and other resources — and replace them with its cloud-based team scheduling software. “Most managers still rely on complicated spreadsheets or cumbersome software to manage their... |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 10 | null |
The Frustrating, Impossible Beauty Of ‘The Perfect Setup’ | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | Others with gadget addictions will know these feels: Most of my life is spent questing for the Perfect Setup. That means different things at different times to different people, of course, and especially when it comes to tech, the goal posts keep moving. But it can still happen, and when it does, it can make the whole ... |
Fly Or Die: 3D Systems Sense Scanner | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | If you followed along with , you know that one trend that emerged over the past couple years is here to stay. If you haven’t made your peace with the 3D printing revolution, you should. One company that’s taking the 3D-printed bull by the horns is 3D Systems, an incumbent in the space. The company revealed the , a ... |
Valve Expects Virtual Reality To Be Awesome Within 2 Years | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | Virtual Reality is coming. As in, actual, good, user-friendly virtual reality. The stuff sci-fi has promised us for decades. Don’t take my word for it. Valve — easily one of the most revered and admired companies in gaming — has gone deep on virtual reality R&D, and they believe that amazing, consumer-friendly virtual ... |
As Google Shoots For The Moon, Microsoft Praises The Virtues Of Open Research | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | A few days ago, Google unveiled its latest moon shot: a contact lens . As far as Google[x] projects go, the lens is right up there with flying and (though maybe not quite on the same level as self-driving cars). There is an interesting twist to this whole story, though: the researchers who are working on this proj... |
Skimlinks Says Its Affiliate Linking Technology Drove $500M+ In E-Commerce Sales Last Year | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | , a company that helps online publishers make money through affiliate links, says that it had a record year, driving more than $500 million in e-commerce sales. A spokesperson told me that three quarters of Skimlinks sales go through affiliate networks that report e-commerce sales value, and they reported $402.3 millio... |
Bitcoin’s Recent Price Stability Could Point To Growing Maturity | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | The nearly boozy Bitcoin rallies and crashes of 2013 led to endless media coverage, rising mass market knowledge of its existence, and piece by piece, the growing maturity of its underlying network. No asset that regularly loses or gains 50% in a day can be treated as anything more than a speculative tool, and an incre... |
What Games Are: Sports And Video Games | Tadhg Kelly | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | Though I was never a big fan of sports as a kid I’ve often found them to be valuable as a lens to interpret video games. Traditionally a big difference between sports and video games is that most sports are played multiplayer, but most video games are played single player. To some it’s only a matter of time before tha... |
Blinkx Founder Chandratillake Becomes Balderton Capital Partner, As Maloney Steps Back | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | The London VC community has been buzzing with rumors since the end of last year about one particular firm and its next moves. That firm is , considered one of the few, large VC firms in Europe, with more than $1.9 billion of committed capital. Balderton was one of the main beneficiaries of the $850 million exit of Beb... |
Revisiting Mobile Identity, TouchID And Beyond | Semil Shah | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | TechCrunch About three years ago, , an early product designer at Facebook and Quora, : “The first company to fully execute on embedding your identity into your phone (making a truly first class experience) wins the next decade.” The tweet was widely-circulated, and given Cox’s experience, provoked thought. A day late... |
CrunchWeek: Google’s Nest Buy, Yahoo Management Changes, And The Threats To Net Neutrality | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 1 | 19 | It’s that time of week for an episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to chat about the most fascinating stories of the past seven days in tech. In this week’s episode, Ryan Lawler, Alex Wilhelm and I talked about Google’s of connected device company Nest, the firing of and l... |
How Cryptocurrency, Crowdfunding And A Little Internet Altruism Saved Jamaica’s Hopes For Bobsled Gold | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | Just in case you missed it, a heart-warming story unfolded this week involving an unlikely combination of bobsled, Jamaica, virtual currency, crowdfunding and generosity. It has all the makings of an — er, an inspiring Disney sequel. Last Sunday, out that a two-man bobsled team from the island nation of Jamaica had... |
Popular Political Writer Ezra Klein Announces Move From Washington Post To Vox Media | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | [tweet https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/427597525302784000] The political blogosphere lit up earlier today when 29-year-old Ezra Klein he was leaving The Washington Post to build his own news site with (publishers of The Verge and SB Nation). Klein quickly rose to fame in policy circles with his explainer appro... |
PricePanda Raises $3M From German Retail Group Tengelmann | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | , the Rocket Internet-backed price comparison site, has raised $3 million in new funding from the German retail major . This new funding will be used to expand PricePanda in other South Asian markets, the company said. Rocket Internet and AB Kinnevik are among existing investors. E-commerce is booming in Asia, especia... |
Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Startup DeepMind For More Than $500M | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | Google will buy London-based artificial intelligence company . reports that the acquisition price was more than $500 million, and that Facebook was also in talks to buy the startup late last year. DeepMind confirmed the acquisition to us, but couldn’t disclose deal terms. The acquisition was . Google’s hiring of De... |
Fly Or Die: Fitbit Force | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | Personal fitness trackers and sleep trackers are officially mainstream, but deciding between the various devices out there can be tough. That said, let me direct your attention to the , the latest and most full-featured product from the quantified-self makers. The , unlike the lower-end Flex, has a nice little di... |
Kantar: Android Accounted For 70% Of Smartphone Sales In Q4, But Samsung Is Now “Under Real Pressure” | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | Android continues to be the most popular mobile platform, with its share of smartphone sales climbing in every major market in Q4 2013, now accounting for 69.5% of all sales across 12 key markets versus 23.7% for number-two Apple, according to figures out today from , a market research subsidiary of WPP. But the story... |
Microsoft’s Latest Windows Phone Update Sees Paced Uptake | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | This weekend , an advertising platform for Windows applications, that according to its tracked data, Windows Phone Update 3 is now installed on 15 percent of Windows Phone 8 handsets. Microsoft tore the wrapping off of Update 3 — also known as GDR3 — in October, detailing to the media what it would include, and prov... |
Samsung And Google Bury The Apple Hatchet, Sign 10-Year Patent Agreement | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | Some breaking news in the patent world. Samsung, the world’s biggest handset maker, has that it has signed a 10-year patent deal with Google, the maker of Android, the world’s biggest mobile operating system, covering all current and future technology patents. There are a few key reasons why this is an important pie... |
Read The Sonnet Co-Authored By Shakespeare, An MIT PhD Student & A Machine-Learning Algorithm | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | [ of authoring interface by ] Machine-learning as a technology is, without doubt, the force that will be shaping our digital world for years and years to come, making it smarter and more autonomous, and sometimes taking our breath away in the process with its apparent agency. This branch of artificial intelligence is... |
Enterprise Mobility: Devices, Security, Design, And Distribution | Semil Shah | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | TechCrunch Every Sunday for this column, I write on something to mobile. To date, it’s mostly been about consumer-facing apps, , , tactics like , and a range of other topics. However, I have yet to dig into mobile for more business-facing, enterprise-oriented users and considerations. That’s partly because I do no... |
Imaginism Studios On Building Niko And The Sword Of Light, Reimagining Digital Narrative | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | Back in February 2013, Toronto’s launched an for a new type of app that combined full-scale animation and comic books for a novel, mobile-device-oriented kind of storytelling. is the app that was built using the funds from the successful Kickstarter campaign, and it earned a featured spot on Apple’s App Store a... |
Funny, I Don’t Feel All That Fatigued With Twitter | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | In , Jenna Wortham says she’s becoming fatigued with Twitter. Basically, she uses all the Twitter discussion around Justin Bieber’s arrest as a springboard for a broader argument about how the service has become less about finding useful, relevant information and more about competing for attention. As you’d expect, th... |
What Games Are: Generation Gygax | Tadhg Kelly | 2,014 | 1 | 26 | Although I haven’t played a tabletop roleplaying game since I emigrated from Ireland in 2002, it’s no exaggeration to say that I owe my entire career to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Between them they created probably the most influential game for an entire generation of game makers, . 40 years of rolling dice, levelin... |
Tuniu.com Is The Latest IPO To Rise In The East | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | The initial public offering for Chinese online tour booking website may not carry the heft of the impending IPO juggernaut ( ), but it is a sign of investors’ continuing demand for public offerings from Chinese tech companies. The Beijing-based tour site has selected Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley to run the offer... |
Docker Raises $15M For Its Open-Source Platform That Helps Developers Build Apps In The Cloud | Alex Williams | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | The shift to scale out architectures and an app-centric culture has turned out well for and its lightweight open-source “container” technology designed for developers to quickly move code to the cloud. That’s evident in today’s news that the company has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by , with minority p... |
Snapchat Makes You “Find The Ghosts” To Keep Hackers From Stealing Your Phone Number [Update: But It Fails] | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | Snapchat now verifies new users aren’t robots by making them choose its ghost mascot within images. It’s an attempt to keep out hackers who could steal phone numbers by exploiting a leaked database of details on 4.6 million accounts. proved he could do just that by finding the number of Snapchat CTO Bobby Murphy, but... |
See Twitter’s Founders As Nesting Dolls By The Creator Of Fail Whale | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/recklessabandon/nesting-twitter-a-startup-story-told-through-nesti width=640] Remember Fail Whale? It might be hard to recall now that Twitter is a public company with a $34.7 billion market cap, but a few years ago, the site had frequent outages as it struggled to s... |
Forbes: “Should Microsoft Acquire Yahoo For $53 Billion?” | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | null |
IBM’s Shares Slip After Its Q4 Revenue Falls On Weak Hardware Performance | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | This fine Tuesday, IBM reported its and was greeted with raspberries from investors with period revenue of $27.7 billion and earnings per share excluding items of $6.13. Using GAAP, IBM earned $6.2 billion, or $5.73. Off nearly a percent in regular trading, IBM eased another 2.5 percent in after-hours trading. Invest... |
SF Approves Tech Bus Pilot Program Despite Public Dissent | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | The shuttles, often referred to as ‘Google Buses,’ have become frontline in an increasingly bitter argument between the younger, newer and wealthier technology workers that call San Francisco home, and long-time residents concerned about the balkanization of the city’s less well off. Toss in a still weak job market for... |
HiddenRadio Hits The Crowdfunding Path To Make Beautiful Music | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | HiddenRadio was one of the first crowdfunding successes. The nearly hit $1 million on Kickstarter in 2012 and spawned legions of fans. The creators, John Van Den Nieuwenhuizen and Vitor Santa Maria, built a small Bluetooth speaker that offered excellent frequency response and acceptable bass with a very cool design a... |
Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Comcast Ventures’ Dave Zilberman | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask A VC show, Comcast Ventures’ is joining us in the studio to talk about enterprise IT investing and more. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. Zilberman, who joined Comcast Ventures in 2006, focuses... |
Apple Sends Out iPhone Survey, Seeks Feedback On Android, Touch ID And More | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | Apple has reached out to us to let us know that there’s nothing new about these surveys, and that they’ve been running them since the launch of the first iPhone. The nature of the questions change depending on what’s new in each generation, but that’s the only difference in terms of their content. The story below has ... |
Why Warren Buffett’s Billion-Dollar Prize To Predict The Perfect NCAA Bracket Matters | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | By this time next year, the world could see one more geeky billionaire. Investment mogul Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway company is backing a billion-dollar prize to predict the perfect NCAA tournament bracket. “We’ve seen a lot of contests offering a million dollars for putting together a good bracket, which got u... |
“Pressure-Free” Car Buying Service CarWoo! Shuts Down | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | Today is the day for shutdowns, it seems. Joining and as the latest to dive into the Deadpool is CarWoo, a service that aimed to make buying a car “pressure-free”. CarWoo allowed would-be car buyers to work with auto dealers semi-anonymously, theoretically freeing them from high-pressure deals by allowing the buyer... |
Hands-On With The New Basis Sleep Tracker | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | One of the most popular wrist health trackers, the , has added sleep cycles to variables it automatically tracks. I got my hands on an early beta version (which is now publicly available) and have been comparing it for the last week to other popular sleep trackers on the market. The upshot: of all the consumer-grade s... |
Think Software Keyboards Don’t Work On Smartwatches? Check Out Minuum’s New Video | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA6ey1SzHdM&w=1168&h=657] As smartwatches become a device category that most major hardware makers are turning their attention to, there’s a question of how much smartphone utility we’ll be able to translate to the wrist. One big convenience hurdle is making it possible to reply ... |
Yahoo Acquires Mobile Marketing Startup Sparq | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | Mobile marketing company announced on its site today that it has been acquired by Yahoo. The company did not disclose the purchase price. Yahoo declined to illustrate the deal’s financial details. Sparq’s team will be joining Yahoo’s Sunnyvale campus. Before it was acquired, Sparq raised a total of over several sma... |
Game Maker Kabam Doubles Its Annual Revenues To $360M | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | , the San Francisco-based social and mobile game maker , said it doubled its . That gives another revenue benchmark for top-grossing game makers. Kabam, which made a hard pivot from Facebook to mobile a few years ago, has two games in the top grossing 50 on the iPhone in the U.S. For comparison, other top mobile game... |
Nexmo Locks Up $18M At $100M+ Valuation As It Forecasts 100% Revenue Growth In 2014 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | , a quickly growing telco API firm that provides SMS and voice services, has locked down $18 million in fresh capital in a Series C round of funding that values the company at more than $100 million. The new capital was led by Sorenson Capital, with participation from previous investors, including Intel Capital on a pr... |
Outbox Shuts Down Its Mail Digitizing Service | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | Mail startup just that it’s shutting down its current service. The company has one of those ideas that’s both intriguing and slightly crazy sounding — it sent people by your home to pick up your physical mail, then it digitized that mail, all for $4.99 a month. After a pilot program in Austin, a year ago, and it ... |
Google Launches AdSense Direct, A New Tool For Direct Ad Sales | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | Google today AdSense Direct, a new tool for publishers who – as the name implies – want to sell ads directly and aren’t large enough to make dealing with the complexities of worth their while. This puts it into direct competition with , and other services that make it easier for smaller publishers to sell ads di... |
Yahoo Girds Its Loins For The Battle Over Your Home Screen | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 1 | 7 | The home screen as it stands cannot last. In reality, what we’re looking at is the end times for the traditional grid of icons that we’ve become so familiar with since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. There is simply too much context available via the sensors, camera, radios and other inputs we carry around in our po... |
Algolia Provides ‘Spotlight’ For The Web With Its Turbocharged Real-Time Search API | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 1 | 21 | French startup provides a real-time search API that makes the search function on your website sexy. Now Y Combinator-backed, it’s faster than anything you’ve seen before — everything happens in real time, and results change with each keystroke. “We first started with an offline search engine that would work well on m... |
Apple Beefs Up Its Retail Presence In China With A New Store On Alibaba’s Tmall | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 1 | 7 | Apple has set up , the marketplace operated by e-commerce behemoth Alibaba. Tmall is currently the world’s second largest online retailer and is set to overtake Amazon’s top position by 2015, says . The Cupertino, California-based company already has 10 Apple retail stores in four Chinese cities and its own , but us... |
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