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Lawdingo Raises $690K More To Help You Talk To Lawyers Instantly
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
30
Y Combinator-incubated legal startup is announcing that it has raised another $690,000 in funding. The company’s goal is to make it more convenient and affordable for users to connect with a lawyer (in contrast to a service like LegalZoom, which offers legal forms rather than actual consultation with an attorney). Us...
Analytics Startup Mixpanel Expands Into Mobile Surveys
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
30
Mobile-focused analytics company is growing its offerings today with the launch of Mixpanel Surveys, a product that allows developers to integrate user surveys into their mobile apps. Currently, co-founder Suhail Doshi said the options “kind of suck” for developers who want to find out more about what their users thi...
Scringo’s Community-Builder SDK Now Lets Developers Add Stickers & Paid Sticker Packs To Any App
Natasha Lomas
2,013
10
30
Israel-based startup , which offers a cross-platform SDK to help developers add social elements such as messaging to their apps to increase user retention and boost in-app engagement, has added a new feature that taps into the consumer craze for stickers. From today, developers using Scringo’s SDK to add social featur...
Fantastical 2 Brings Deep Reminders Support, Revamped iOS 7 Look To The Best iPhone Calendar
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
30
As my default Calendar replacement app, Fantastical has been on the home screen of my iPhone since its release nearly a year ago. As one of the few pieces of productivity software that I use regularly, I was extremely nervous about how the app was going to change with its iOS 7 update. I shouldn’t have worried. , is o...
Amazon Wants To Do Good With Its Goods, Launches ‘AmazonSmile’ Charity Donation Program
Chris Velazco
2,013
10
30
At the beginning of the year, just after Amazon reported a for Q4 2012, business correspondent posited (with tongue planted in cheek) that Amazon was “a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pointedly dismissed that observati...
That Curved Display Smartphone From Samsung Is Real: Meet The Galaxy Round
Jordan Crook
2,013
10
8
Remember that from Samsung? You should, considering it popped up under our noses just a few hours ago. Well, in case you don’t, Samsung wants to remind you. The Korean firm has just sent out a press release announcing the Galaxy Round, “the world’s first curved display smartphone.” With the curved display, Samsung ...
What Really Happened At Twitter’s Pre S-1 Tea Time?
Alexia Tsotsis
2,013
10
8
“With , & at today, together, guessing the IPO/S-1 filing will probably happen tomorrow,” Om Malik last Thursday, presciently predicting the arrival of the a couple of hours — not 24 hours — later. So clearly this was planned, the world is thinking. Twitter, champion of the news cycle, doing some more skillf...
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Ingrid Lunden
2,013
10
30
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By Acquiring IndustryBrains, Adiant Aims To Bring Its ‘Content-Style’ Ads to Financial Publishers
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
8
Ad company says that it has acquired a number of assets from MarchEx, including the cost-per-click ad network formerly known as (which nearly a decade ago). Adiant CEO Ash Nashed said this should help his company’s ad network Adblade expand into financial publishing. MarchEx/IndustryBrains serves publishers, incl...
Office 365 Is Coming To The iPad, Scout’s Honor
Jordan Crook
2,013
10
8
You’ve been played before. You’re vulnerable and nervous about opening up again. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been lied to. Back in 2011 we heard rumors that the iPad would be graced with Office’s presence in 2012, and shortly thereafter of Office on an iPad. But… nothing. And then some more nothing. Until to...
AmEx And TripAdvisor Team Up To Allow Card Members To Get Credit For Travel Reviews And Access Spend Data
Leena Rao
2,013
10
8
American Express has been steadily partnering with various consumer technology companies to allow cardmembers to integrate their accounts and access new ways to spend. For example, the financial services giant debuted a earlier this year to allow cardholders to use hashtags to buy items. Today, AmEx is furthering its...
Report: Apple To Hold Event On October 22nd To Talk New iPads, OS X Mavericks And New Mac Pro
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
8
Apple will hold an invitation-only event on October 22nd to show off its new iPads, as well as the new Mac Pro and OS X Mavericks release, according to a John . That timing seems just right for the new iPads to make an appearance — last year’s event was held on October 23rd — and Apple has previously slated OS X Mav...
Twitter Updates Its Windows Phone App With In-Stream Translation To 54 Languages
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
8
Twitter updated its Windows Phone application today to include in-stream tweet translation to 54 languages, which is powered by Bing. Tweets can now be displayed on the lock screen of Windows Phone devices. This will come in handy when Nokia’s ‘Glance’ feature is released for the platform, which allows information to b...
Freedom Of Information Requests At The NSA Are Up 1,054% Year-Over-Year
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
8
According to leaked emails, freedom of information requests at the National Security Agency (NSA) have skyrocketed more than 1,000 percent this year, following revelations from Edward Snowden that detailed the agency’s mass surveillance programs. MuckRock, which  relating to freedom of information requests, reports th...
Possible Image Surfaces Of Samsung’s Rumored Smartphone With Curved Screen
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
8
Back at the Galaxy Gear event, Samsung executives cryptically said that they had plans to “introduce a curved display smartphone in October”. Today, an image shared by reliable leak displays what could be the fruition of those plans. The device is curved across the vertical axis, producing a device that looks like it...
Luminate Health Raises $1M To Make Patient Lab Results Comprehensible
Eliza Brooke
2,013
10
8
Although blood tests are meant to tell you something about your internal state of affairs, it usually feels like you need a medical degree to decipher the results. A New York-based startup called has raised a $1 million seed round led by KEC Ventures to do just that. A of the health tech accelerator , Luminate is ...
Keen On… Clive Thompson: Could Technology Really Be Making Us Smarter?
Andrew Keen
2,013
10
8
As a feature writer for the and many other publications, is one of technology’s smartest journalists. And now Thompson has brought his considerable intelligence to book writing. In Thompson takes on Internet critics like and and argues that technology is actually making us smarter. He acknowledged the Inte...
Mobile Ad Startup Locket Hires Charity Sabater, Formerly Of Candy Crush Maker King, To Lead Sales
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
8
, a startup that runs ads in Android lockscreens and , has hired as its first vice president of national sales. Co-founder and CEO Yunha Kim told me Sabater has been brought on to bring more big brands into the program. The startup recently for Scharffen Berger chocolate, and Locket even has a page where users can...
Facebook Continues To Simplify Ad Buying With New ‘Objective-Based’ Interface
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
8
When Facebook announced in June that it planned to , it also outlined a broader vision for simplification, where the company could guide advertisers through the ad-buying process based on their objectives, eliminating any “guesswork.” Today, it sounds like Facebook is making that vision a reality. The company just a...
True&Co Raises Another $4 Million To Help You Find The Perfect Bra
Ryan Lawler
2,013
10
8
E-commerce company to apply a bit of personalization and technology to aid women in their searches for new bras. The company just raised a little bit more funding to invest more in its algorithm for matching customers with bras that not only fit well but also look good. True&Co has raised another $4 million in fund...
Docstoc Redesigns Its Site To Become The Go-To Place For Small Business Documents
Ryan Lawler
2,013
10
8
Over the past several years, has positioned itself as the go-to place for small and medium-sized businesses to find the documents they need to grow. Today, it’s taking a big step toward making it easier to do that, with the launch of a major redesign to improve the way its customers find and access its content. Docst...
Fly Or Die: Amazon Kindle Fire HDX
Jordan Crook
2,013
10
8
Amazon has been churning out LCD-based Kindle tablets for the past two years, and there’s no question that the company has improved from the original, BlackBerry PlayBook-style Kindle Fire. But with the Fire HDX, is there enough of an improvement to upgrade from the Kindle Fire HD? That’s the question John Biggs and ...
Amazon’s ‘Login and Pay with Amazon’ Service Challenges PayPal For The Web’s Payment Business
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
8
Amazon   today at that lets partner sites enable a payments button that will compete with PayPal and credit cards for customer checkout. This is a direct blow at one of the bigger third-party payment options that consumers have at checkout and an effort by Amazon to capture a huge chunk of the web’s payment business ...
Amidst Obamacare’s Marketplace Madness, The YEC Wants To Help Startups Take The Hassle Out Of Health Insurance
Rip Empson
2,013
10
1
Amid partisan shenanigans, a government shutdown and much squabbling, that will eventually allow Americans to compare the price of health insurance plans — which is now mandatory under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. While the exchange, or the Insurance Marketplace as it’s being called, did in fact go live...
Net Power & Light Launches Spin, A Fun, Tactile Video Chat App For iOS
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
1
I don’t think I’ve ever had a great video chat experience on my smartphone or tablet. Until now, I assumed that was just because I’m super-awkward, but the team behind a startup called Net Power & Light seems to think there’s a broader problem here, one that it’s trying to solve with the launch of a new app called . O...
Apple Says Small Fraction Of iMessage Users Having Issues And It’s Working On A Fix
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
1
Over the last few days, we’ve been hearing reports of people having issues with iMessages, on both the receiving and sending ends. The complaints have grown in volume and frequency and we began inquiring about the issue yesterday. Today, Apple tells us that the issue is affecting a ‘fraction of a percent’ of iMessage u...
Three Top Microsoft Investors Allegedly Want Bill Gates To Step Down As Chairman
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
1
According , three of Microsoft’s top 20 investors are making noise that Microsoft remove its founder and former CEO Bill Gates as chairman of its board, his current role. The information is almost odd, and points to a potential blank slate for Microsoft. In the midst of a massive reorganization, current CEO Steve Ball...
Disrupt Alum Monsieur Launches Kickstarter Campaign For Its Robo-Bartender
Chris Velazco
2,013
10
1
If the prevailing wisdom of years past were any indication, we should have been up to our necks in sassy, autonomous robot servants a decade ago. While I wait for someone to develop a to cater to my every whim, the folks behind the Monsieur robotic bartender that , have just recently launched a Kickstarter campaign t...
Yiftee Opens API To Give Developers The Option Of In-App Gifting
Eliza Brooke
2,013
10
1
Yiftee, the service for sending local gifts to friends, has opened its “GiftUp” API with the hope that developers will incorporate its gift-giving capabilities into their own apps. is banking on the notion that people will be more inclined to send gifts in context. When a calendar app notifies you of a friend’s birth...
Senior Facebook, Netflix Scientist Joins Identified To Help It Fix Professional Search, Take On LinkedIn
Rip Empson
2,013
10
1
This summer, pulled back the curtain on a new artificial intelligence technology, called “SYMAN,” which it developed to help organize and clean the swaths of unstructured professional data that today lives on the Web. In doing so, the startup moved away from its original focus — a kind of Facebook data-driven “Klout ...
Apple Has 10% Of All Corporate Cash? Not Really
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
1
Reality: Apple’s foreign and domestic cash reserves, if taken in aggregate, constitute around 10 percent of U.S. corporate cash, if you discount financial corporations. So if you take all the cash reserves of an international company that happens to be headquartered in the United States, call it a U.S. company, ignore ...
The Artist Formerly Known As BlackBerry Now Approved For NATO Deployment
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
1
 today that its Enterprise Service and have been approved by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to handle  up to the level of “Restricted.” The new certification theoretically allows BlackBerry to sell its new smartphones to 28 member countries’ NATO workers. The question is whether there is demand for its hardw...
With 37M Users And Revenues At $34M, DIY Website Creation Platform Wix Files For $100M IPO On The NYSE
Rip Empson
2,013
10
1
Once upon a time, there were few places that the not-so-technically-inclined could go to secure their own slice of web real estate and build themselves a professional-looking websites. Either they had to speak Internet, or they’d have to pay someone who did a boatload. Just as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and others woul...
Yahoo To Acquire Sports-Centric Mobile Developer Hitpost
Kim-Mai Cutler
2,013
10
1
Yahoo is set to acquire Hitpost, , to beef up its own sports offerings on iOS and Android, say sources familiar with the deal. The company’s team of seven or so is heading over to join Yahoo. The company was co-founded by Aaron Krane who learned the science behind making social games at Slide. He wanted to marry that...
littleBits’ Exploration Kits Will Make You Think Differently About Building Hardware
Chris Velazco
2,013
10
1
Whole worlds have been built out of LEGO and K’Nex and Meccano and a seemingly endless supply of childhood wonder, but the world is changing and so too are our toys. That’s where an ambitious New York hardware startup comes into play — is trying to create a sort of LEGO for a new generation of tinkerers. The compan...
US Angel Investing This Year Likely Won’t Pass 2012 Levels
Mark Lennon
2,013
10
1
Angel investing in the US this year looks like it’s falling back towards 2011 levels, after a record 2012. Meanwhile, there are more Series A rounds than ever, based on our latest CrunchBase data. The much-feared “Series A Crunch” has yet to materialize. Early-stage founders and investors have been mulling the possibil...
Be Still My Beating Heart, This Might Be Logitech’s Gamepad For The iPhone
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
1
A leaked image of what appears to be Logitech’s gamepad for the iPhone has hit the Twitter wire today, via the @ . The account has been known to reliably tweet images of upcoming products from a variety of mobile companies including Samsung, Nokia and others. The gamepad looks a lot like the  from earlier this year an...
New Calls To Action In Facebook’s Mobile App Ads Can Help Publishers Reconnect With Users
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
1
The purpose of Facebook’s Mobile App Ads seems pretty clear. They’re supposed to drive installations, right? Well, , the company says its ads can now help with what comes afterward, namely, keeping users engaged and active — and in some cases encouraging them to spend money. To illustrate the challenge on the mobile s...
The Best From Glenn Greenwald’s AMA: The British Gov Lied, The NSA’s Vision, And What’s Coming Next
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
1
Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald  regarding the NSA, Edward Snowden, and his current work breaking news concerning both. The open-source interview is worth reading, but you are at work, so allow me to act as your guide. I have rephrased the questions asked for clarity. [sic] [Emphasis original] — That is a taste. I...
Keen On… Why MessageMe Might Be The Future Of Real-Time Communications
Andrew Keen
2,013
10
1
joined Facebook back in early 2006, when it was a 50 person startup with 4 million users and she quit at the end of 2011 when it employed 3,500 people and was closing in on a billion users. As a member of Facebook’s founding business team, she helped pioneer their mobile business, growing their mobile base from 100,...
Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Battery Ventures’ Brian O’Malley
Leena Rao
2,013
10
1
This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask a VC show, we have Battery Ventures partner Brian O’Malley in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. O’Malley leads Battery’s Seed & Early Stage practices, while focusing on investments in ...
Internet Explorer 6 Market Share Finally Falls Under 5%
Frederic Lardinois
2,013
10
1
The Internet Explorer 6 death watch continues, but the end is near. Microsoft’s ancient browser may still haunt web developers’ nightmares, but according to the , its global market share has now finally . Even Microsoft will be quite happy to see this, especially given that, for Internet Explorer as a whole, the last...
TextTeaser Lets Developers Integrate Text Summarization Into Their Apps And Sites
Catherine Shu
2,013
10
6
is a service that creates tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) summaries for lengthly online articles. Available as a Web service and , TextTeaser’s developers also want to turn it into the “ of text summarization” by making a platform for users to upload summaries of their favorite articles. The service was created by Jol...
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Leena Rao
2,013
10
8
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Nielsen Preps Its Twitter TV Report, While Facebook Extends Data Partnership To Foreign Networks
Catherine Shu
2,013
10
6
is set to publish its first report with TV rankings based on data from . The report, which comes out on Monday according , will look at the number of tweets about a show and the size of the audience that sees them. This is an important move for Twitter ahead of its IPO because it sees TV-related data as an important...
There’s Life Left In Delicious Yet
Frederic Lardinois
2,013
10
6
For a long time, the web-based social bookmarking service was a poster child for the Web 2.0 movement. It was open, collaborative and full of the tags and user-generated content that made VCs instinctively open up their checkbooks at the time. It’s been 10 years, since the service opened to the public – then still ru...
What Games Are: The Unfulfilled Promise Of Videogames
Tadhg Kelly
2,013
10
6
There are few figures in the games industry more deserving of respect than Chris Crawford. He founded GDC, has designed numerous games and written that are considered vital reading for budding game designers. Like many game makers Crawford wants gaming , at least as much as movies, ideally more. He’s not the only on...
LG’s New Nexus Phone Gets Detailed In Leaked Service Manual
Chris Velazco
2,013
10
6
There has been no shortage of leaks that claim to show off Google’s next Nexus smartphone (including this from Google itself) over the past weeks and months, but we may have just hit the mother lode this weekend. The folks at have gotten their hands on a hefty, near-final draft of a 281-page service manual for the ...
In Russia, Olympics Watch You
Gregory Ferenstein
2,013
10
6
The ever-curious Russian government is reportedly going to monitor “all communications” during the Winter 2014 Olympics. A newspaper investigation authorities are hard-wiring the game’s Black Sea resort of Sochi with pervasive surveillance. Investigators “found that major amendments have been made to telephone and ...
Seedrs Lets Armchair Investors Take A Punt On WebStart Bristol’s First Incubator Cohort
Steve O'Hear
2,013
10
6
If the premise of equity-based crowdfunding is to enable a greater range of individuals to take a punt on a startup, while oiling the wheels of investment overall, then a natural evolution of the model would be to enable armchair investors to place bets on a group of promising startups in one pool. In what it claims is...
The Already Abysmal NSA Surveillance Panel Is Now On Hold Due To The Government Shutdown
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
6
Under-promise, and then under-under-deliver is the name of this game. The panel to vet the NSA set up by President Barack Obama, and nurtured by current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is now on hiatus, its funds being frozen as part of the larger governmental shutdown. The panel, one of the president’...
Airport Car Rental Service Silvercar Is Headed To LAX In November
Ryan Lawler
2,013
10
6
continues to expand its tech-focused airport car rental service into new markets, and in a few weeks will be making its biggest debut yet. According to an email sent to customers late last week, Silvercar said that on November 4 it will be launching at LAX, which will soon house its largest fleet of Audi A4s. As we’ve...
Meet Piena, A Hassle-Free Baby Formula Maker Developed By Two Ex-Samsung Engineers
Leena Rao
2,013
10
6
Any parent who has used powder formula to feed their baby knows that measuring the formula, making sure the water is clean and at room temperature, and mixing the formula and water is a challenging task. Especially when it is 3 a.m., and you have a hungry, screaming baby in your arms.  is a new gadget that basically t...
Fly Or Die: iPhone 5s
Jordan Crook
2,013
10
6
What’s there to say? It’s the flagship iPhone 5s. To say that it won’t be wildly successful would be silly. We already know that Apple of the iPhone 5s, alongside the more colorful iPhone 5c, in the very first weekend of availability. That’s more than any previous generation. So instead of asking ourselves whethe...
Glass Theft Auto: Google Glass Hack Beams Grand Theft Auto’s GPS Straight To Your Eye
Greg Kumparak
2,013
10
6
You know, it’s been a while saince I’ve written up some clever Google Glass hack simply because it was awesome. Let’s fix that. Looking to test the concept of using Glass as a second screen, Android developer has managed to capture Grand Theft Auto’s oh-so-crucial in-game GPS interface, beaming it to the player’s eye...
Why Tech’s Hottest Companies Want To Hire More Female Engineers
Colleen Taylor
2,013
10
6
So TechCrunch TV took a lap around the job fair at Hopper to talk to a number of the companies there about why they’d like to see more women in their engineering ranks. Their responses made it clear that it’s not that tech companies are looking to blindly fulfill some kind of gender quota — they’re simply looking to ...
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear Ads Show A Dated Device, Not A Futuristic One
Darrell Etherington
2,013
10
6
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3qeJKax2CU&w=640&h=360] Even Samsung thinks its is anachronistic – at least if the commercials are to be believed. New ads for the new Samsung Galaxy Gear that popped up on the company’s official YouTube page this weekend are supposed to be an exercise in wish-fulfillment, but...
Student Tablet Hardware Melts, District Suspends $30 Million Amplify Program On Safety Concerns
Gregory Ferenstein
2,013
10
6
A North Carolina school district has suspended the use of 15,000 tablets after of multiple hardware issues, including the device’s charger melting at home. Guilford County Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green has suspended the $30 million program on safety concerns. The recall is a major sting for NewsCorp’s , which re...
The Future Of Mobile Taps And On-Demand Services
Semil Shah
2,013
10
6
  TechCrunch One of the hottest trends in “mobile consumer tech” is the idea where one can simply just tap their phone and receive a range of services in the form of on-demand labor. While many services are in this crowded space, there is one which exemplifies the trend: Uber. As we all know by now, launch , wait for ...
Transactional Big Data Startup ERN Raises Another $1M As It Sets Targets On Asia
Steve O'Hear
2,013
10
6
In what feels like an ever-so-slightly protracted seed round,  has raised a further $1 million in seed funding, bringing the total raised by the London-headquartered company to $5.6 million. This time the fresh injection of capital is pegged to finance its expansion into Asian markets, as ERN is also announcing that i...
My Response To Dick Costolo: Twitter Must Lead Silicon Valley On Diversity
Contributor
2,013
10
6
  Twitter has taken a lot of fire for having an all-male board, almost all-male management team, and all-male investor group. The root of this problem is arrogance and a “don’t-care” attitude. This was exemplified by a response by its CEO Dick Costolo to comments I made in a  —about Twitter’s gender imbalance. Instead ...
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Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
1
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PureVPN Hit With A Zero Day Exploit, But CEO Says Email Alleging Data Compromise Was Fake
Ingrid Lunden
2,013
10
6
Earlier today, VPN service   was dealt a double blow by malicious hackers: a zero-day exploit; and the mailing of a subsequent, fake email alleging account closure and a data compromise. Uzair Gadit, the founder of the VPN tunneling service — which assigns new IP addresses to users’ connected devices, enabling them to ...
Samsung Reports 26% Growth In Q3 Operating Profit, But Warns Of Slower Smartphone Sales
Catherine Shu
2,013
10
24
Samsung reported that its Q3 operating profit surged 26% to 10.2 trillion won (about $9.6 billion), but continued to warn that its smartphone sales will slow thanks to increased competition. Its earnings growth was driven mainly by Samsung’s chip business profit, which doubled to 2.06 trillion won, the highest in three...
Apple.com Now Selling $20 OS X Mountain Lion And Lion Redemption Codes For Older Macs
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
24
Apple has begun selling redemption codes  for $20 each. Lion was previously available for purchase directly from Apple over the phone, but the company has decided to make it easier to purchase either version of the older OS X vintages directly online. The codes that you purchase can be redeemed on the Mac App Store ...
The Surprisingly Small Decline In Microsoft’s OEM Revenue In Its Fiscal Q1
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
24
In Microsoft’s fiscal first quarter of 2014, Windows revenue from OEM partners . That’s a noticeable decline, given that Windows revenue from third-party hardware partners is the most ‘Microsoft’ income that the company has. The decline, however, is somewhat blunted compared to what Microsoft anticipated. Here’s what ...
Tweetbot 3 Makes The Case For 3rd-Party Twitter Apps With Bones-Deep iOS 7 Rewrite
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
24
Today marks the launch of the full rewrite of . The app is a paid upgrade, which is available for $2.99 at launch and will go up to $4.99 after the initial sale. As one of the most popular third-party clients available for Twitter, the app has become the poster child for what outside developers brought to the Twitter ...
Breather Aims To Launch Its Network Of On-Demand Rooms In New York In Early 2014
Chris Velazco
2,013
10
24
There’s no denying that New York is full of coffee shops and coworking spaces where a person can hunker down and get things done, but there’s something to be said about a little privacy. And that’s the gist of a buzzy startup called . It wants to offer up an on-demand batch of stylish, carefully curated rooms for peop...
Apple, Microsoft And Free Software
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
24
that it will make its iWork suite of productivity applications free on new OS X and iOS devices. The company also made the Mavericks update to OS X . Microsoft recently to Windows 8 for free, has begun to bundle its Office set of products with Windows RT, and now sells Office as a service through its Office 365 pro...
Zynga’s Shares Pop Nearly 12% On Lower-Than-Expected Losses
Kim-Mai Cutler
2,013
10
24
Zynga’s shares rose nearly 12 percent in after-hours trading on lower-than-estimated losses. Zynga posted a net loss of $68,000 on about $203 million of revenue, so they managed to stay roughly break-even. Their top line revenues are down 36 percent year-over-year as Zynga deals with disastrous losses in its user base ...
Microsoft Surface Unit Volume Doubled In Most Recent Quarter
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
24
Microsoft today reported that its Surface line of tablets had revenue of $400 million in the most recent quarter. On its earnings call, the company stated that in the most recent quarter (fiscal Q1, 2014), Surface unit volume doubled from the prior quarter (fiscal Q4, 2013). I confirmed the fact with Microsoft directly...
Amazon Reports Q3 Sales Of $17.09B, Up 24%, But Records Second Straight Loss
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
24
Amazon in its third quarter, with net sales of $17.09 billion, and a per-share loss of $0.09, or $41 million. The street Amazon to lose $0.10 per share on sales of $16.8 billion. In after-hours trading, Amazon is up a strong 7 percent. Investors are clearly heartened by what they see. As , however, this is Amazon’...
Zynga Poaches DeNA’s Clive Downie As New COO
Kim-Mai Cutler
2,013
10
24
The management shuffle at Zynga continues as new CEO Don Mattrick fills the executive ranks with longtime colleagues and friends from the industry. He’s poached Clive Downie from Japan’s DeNA to be the company’s new COO. Downie has been in the gaming industry for more than 20 years, with 15 years of experience at Elec...
Microsoft Crushes FQ1 Expectations With Revenue of $18.5B, EPS Of $0.62, $400M In Surface Top Line
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
24
Microsoft , with revenue of $18.53 billion and earnings per share of $0.62. Analysts the first quarter of Microsoft’s fiscal 2014 to generated revenue of $17.8 billion and earnings per share of $0.54. Microsoft’s net income was $5.24 billion, and its operating income was $6.33 billion. Microsoft ended the quarter wi...
Twitter Announces NBC’s Vivian Schiller As Head Of News Partnerships
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
24
In a tweet today, Twitter Chief Digital Officer of NBC Vivian Schiller as head of its News Partnerships. Schiller will be leaving NBC News at year’s end and joining Twitter in January. Schiller had been rumored as the choice for Twitter’s head of news for some time, including a report from this month that she was a...
Twitter To Offer 70M Shares Priced At $17-$20 Per Share To Raise Up To $1.4B In IPO
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
24
Twitter will offer 70 million shares in its initial public offering, and will price them at $17-$20 per share, . Twitter’s IPO pricing range was rumored to drop today, several weeks after it announced plans to go public. The $20 pricing indicates that Twitter could raise as much as $1.4 billion with this IPO or $1.6 b...
This Is What Instagram Ads Look Like
Josh Constine
2,013
10
24
has the first image of an Instagram ad. Last month the Sponsored Photos and Sponsored Videos would begin appearing in people’s feeds from brands they don’t follow, promising something beautiful and engaging. This “sneak peek” is a picture of a guy at a desk. So what do you think? The ads will be labeled “Sponsored...
Tesla Snags Apple VP Of Mac Hardware To Lead New Vehicle Development
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
24
Apple VP of Product Design is leaving the company for Tesla according to a . Field will head programs that will drive the development of new vehicles for the electric car maker. The hire was first . “Doug has demonstrated the leadership and technical talent to develop and deliver outstanding products, including what...
Pricing Engine Data Shows Lower Costs For Businesses That Advertise On Bing
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
24
, a company that guides small businesses through the process of buying online ads, is presenting its first report today (at the Street Fight Summit New York) on data from its customers. That data is already an important part of its business, because Pricing Engine (which CEO Jeremy Kagan demonstrated for me last week) ...
Messaging App Line To Go Public In 2014 On The Tokyo Exchange, Report Says
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
24
According , Line, a popular messaging and call service, intends to go public in 2014 on the Tokyo stock exchange. The company is expected to go public at a valuation between $8 billion and $10 billion USD. According , Line has 270 million registered users. It isn’t clear what percentage of that user base is active on...
Viber Releases Update To BlackBerry App To Catch Up With iOS And Android
Jordan Crook
2,013
10
23
If you’re a BlackBerry fan, it may feel a bit like you can’t catch a break. But today Viber wants to change all that, delivering an updated version of the free calling and messaging app to the BlackBerry platform. The update marks the first big upgrade that BlackBerry-flavored Viber has seen since . BlackBerry has bee...
Tumblr Rebuilds Search Feature To Be More Powerful, Filter NSFW Tags Better As It Passes 65B Posts
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
24
Tumblr has completely to make it more user friendly and powerful. Among the updates are the ability to use multiple tags in one query, easier access to the explicit content filter and filtering by post type. In the post announcing the search changes, Tumblr also notes that it has posts, making a more powerful searc...
Mobile Payments Provider Fortumo Launches Program To Help Chinese Developers Expand Into New Markets
Catherine Shu
2,013
10
23
Mobile payments provider has launched a program that will serve as a “one-stop shop” for Chinese developers that want to distribute their apps in other countries. Called , the program offers Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 developers access to the Estonia/U.S.-based company’s network of mobile carriers in 80 co...
Cruise.me Makes Booking A Cruise Social And Not Horrendously Difficult
Eliza Brooke
2,013
10
23
Although the founders of SF-based Blueseed have garnered some attention recently for their desire to turn a cruise ship into a for foreign entrepreneurs, booking floating vacations for everyday folks remains a surprisingly untouched area of the travel startup scene. Enter . With the understanding that cruising is in...
UK Peer-To-Peer Lending Platform Funding Circle Raises $37M, Targets U.S. SMBs In Merger With Endurance Lending Network
Ingrid Lunden
2,013
10
23
Small businesses have been called the lifeblood of our economy, and today a financial services startup has picked up a significant round of funding to help it circulate better. , a UK-based peer-to-peer lending platform that lets individuals and institutions loan money to small businesses, has picked up a $37 million ...
Pinterest Raises Massive $225 Million Series E, Valuing The Firm At $3.8 Billion
Sarah Perez
2,013
10
23
According to sources at  (which TechCrunch now confirms) Pinterest has closed on a significant new round of financing: $225 million in new funding, with Fidelity Investments in the lead. TechCrunch sources are now confirming the full AllThingsD report. The funding values Pinterest at $3.8 billion, an exceptionally ric...
Healthcare.gov Ignores Birthdates, Dramatically Underestimates Prices
Gregory Ferenstein
2,013
10
23
Healthcare.gov’s newest feature is presenting consumers with disturbingly misleading health insurance prices. CBS how the beleaguered federal insurance marketplace website is underestimating the actual cost of insurance by 50% or more, because–and I’m not making this up–it forgets to ask users their birth date. CBS f...
Inside A Google Ventures Design Sprint
Leena Rao
2,013
10
23
Design isn’t something you would normally associate with a VC firm. But as more firms are adding value-added services, Google Ventures has created an all-star team of designers from Google, Mozilla and more to help portfolio startups create beautiful and easy-to-use products. In particular, Google offers its portfolio ...
German Chancellor Merkel Less Than Pleased That U.S. Likely Tapped Her Phone, Calls Pres. Obama In Protest
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
23
Earlier today the  reported that that country’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, likely had her cell phone tapped by the United States intelligence apparatus. Germany is a key ally of the United States, both economically and politically. According to Spiegel, the Chancellor called United States President Barack Obama in pro...
About.me Launches Collections, A Pinterest For People
Alexia Tsotsis
2,013
10
23
have been busy since it spun out of Aol. A spin-out often puts the wind back in your sails, and the team, led by and has not been content to idle. Instead they are iterating on product, today launching Users can now find About.me Collections in the drop-down menu on their home page. Clicking on the link will brin...
Apple Crosses Its Hardware Rubicon
Matthew Panzarino
2,013
10
23
According to legend, a vision delivered by the gods caused Julius Caesar to commit the ultimate act of insurrection by crossing the Rubicon. Splashing through this minor river dividing Caesar’s province from Italy proper committed him to an inevitable armed conflict with the Roman Senate. Though Apple hasn’t set about ...
Microsoft Confirms That The Desktop Start Screen Tile Is No Longer The Default In Windows RT 8.1
Alex Wilhelm
2,013
10
23
Microsoft today confirmed with TechCrunch that it has made the desktop Start Screen tile non-default in Windows RT 8.1. You can return the tile to the Start Screen in any size if you wish. It also exists in the “all app view” that is new to Windows 8.1, if you don’t want it on your Start Screen at all. Yesterday I note...
Yahoo Acquires Startup LookFlow To Work On Flickr And ‘Deep Learning’
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
23
LookFlow, a startup that describes itself as “an entirely new way to explore images you love,” just announced that it has been acquired by Yahoo and will be joining the Flickr team. The company , “Fret not, LookFlow fans. Keep an eye out for our product in future versions of Flickr — with many more wonderful photos an...
Hulu Finally Brings Free Videos To Mobile – But It’s Just Clips, And Only Works In The Browser (For Now?)
Sarah Perez
2,013
10
23
Days after , Fox Networks Group president Mike Hopkins, Hulu has finally free video content for mobile users. But don’t get too excited – it’s just clips, not full-length episodes. And they’re only available for now in the mobile browser, not within the Hulu Plus mobile application. According to a blog post penned b...
LinkedIn Launches Intro That Embeds Rapportive Info Into The iOS Mail App, Plus An iPad Redesign
Josh Constine
2,013
10
23
LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner says the barrier to his vision is scale, so it’s beefing up its mobile experience with , an integration adding LinkedIn and Rapportive info to the iOS Mail app, and a . Intro Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Aol Mail, iCloud, and Google Apps, and inserting LinkedIn profile photos and job titles below the T...
Pulse Will Become A One-Stop Content Shop For LinkedIn, Using LinkedIn Profile Logins For Curated Content
Ingrid Lunden
2,013
10
23
, the social network for the working world now with over 238 million members globally, is presenting an update on its mobile strategy today. As part of that, its parted the curtain a bit to show us how its planning to integrate one of its recent acquisitions, Pulse. , the news aggregation and news reading app, will be...
Keen IO Raises $2.35M For Its Custom Analytics Platform
Anthony Ha
2,013
10
23
There are lots of analytics services out there, but what if they don’t give you the exact information that you’re looking for? Well, you could build your own system from the ground up — or you could use , a startup that recently raised $2.35 million in new funding. The company describes itself as “the API for custom a...
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Anthony Ha
2,013
10
24
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YouTube Network Maker Studios Introduces Its Platform For Managing Videos And Engaging With Fans
Ryan Lawler
2,013
10
23
Over the past several years, has turned its talent-focused media haven for YouTube stars into a huge business, attracting tens of thousands of channels to its network, which in turn have attracted hundreds of millions of subscribers and billions of views per month. One thing Maker doesn’t usually talk about is the te...
LinkedIn Hits 38% Of Unique Visits From Mobile, Up From 8% In Q1 2011
Josh Constine
2,013
10
23
is making the shift to mobile. It now sees of unique visits from mobile, which is up from 8 percent in the first quarter of 2011, and users who access via mobile are 2.5x as active as desktop-only users. At an event in San Francisco this morning, CEO Jeff Weiner said LinkedIn will release a slew of new mobile apps. ...