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The Creator Of Doom Is Now A Facebook Employee | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | This isn’t bizzaro world. We will soon live in a world where the maker of Doom, Quake and most of my childhood memories works for Mark Zuckerberg. John Carmack will soon be a Facebook employee. Facebook its plan to buy Oculus VR for around $2 billion in cash and stock. The company will operate independently within Fa... |
Facebook Missed Mobile Gaming, So It Bought Oculus To Own Virtual Reality For Gaming And Beyond | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | Facebook had a huge success with its web gaming canvas, but got locked out of mobile gaming revenue by platform owners Apple (iOS) and Google (Android). Facebook seems determined not to miss the next big gaming platform, as today it , maker of the Rift virtual reality headset, for $2 billion in cash and stock. And lon... |
Facebook’s Oculus Buy Signals A Hardware Land Grab, And Company Fit Isn’t A Concern | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | There’s a gold rush on, and the people striking it rich are the ones building things — not apps, not software, but honest-to-goodness hardware, like the Oculus Rift, whose creator, in cash and stock. Earlier today, Intel closed its purchase of , and for $3.2 billion. Google is also said to be nosing around wearabl... |
Facebook’s $2B Oculus Deal Happened Over The Last Five Days | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | Facebook’s deal to buy Oculus VR for $2 billion happened relatively quickly and the negotiations were hammered out over the last five days during the industry’s Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, according to sources familiar with the deal. Mark Zuckerberg had been by Oculus’s Southern California offices just ... |
Facebook To Buy Oculus VR, Maker Of The Rift Headset, For Around $2B In Cash And Stock | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | Facebook has to purchase Oculus VR, the company behind the Rift headset, for around $2 billion in cash and stock. This includes $400 million, and 23.1 million Facebook shares. An additional $300 million earnout will be paid in cash and stock if Oculus hits certain unspecified milestones. “I’m excited to announce that... |
Facebook Stock Slides In After-Hours Trading Following Acquisition Of Oculus Rift | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | Wall Street doesn’t like what it sees. Facebook’s stock price ( ) is dropping in after-hours trading after the company announced its purchase of virtual reality startup Oculus Rift. The stock, which closed up on the day, is now under its open price of $64.25, resulting in a loss of $1.5 – $1.8 billion market cap. The s... |
Y Combinator Demo Day Winter 2014, Batch 2 – The Dating Ring, Unbabel, Pushbullet, AirHelp, And More | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | Today’s Y Combinator Demo Day started a little differently. Co-founder Jessica Livingston presented YC’s former leader and her husband Paul Graham with a pair of his own shorts signed by all of this batch’s companies to commemorate Graham passing the torch on to new YC president Sam Altman. And then the pitching began.... |
Numari Offers Affordable Luxury With Custom-Fit Women’s Dresses | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | “Fast fashion” has made it easy to stay on top of trends, but drastically lowered the quality of clothing available in mass market stores. Several startups, include , , , and , are trying to reverse the trend by offering custom-made menswear. Now a new startup called wants to do the same thing for women. To purch... |
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft Is Bullish About Developer Reaction To Its New Tools | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | This morning Microsoft announced a grip of and at its Build conference in San Francisco. Crowd reaction during the lengthy keynote appeared to be mostly friendly to the stage show. I sat with Microsoft’s corporate vice president this afternoon after the dust had settled some, to get his take — report card, if you... |
T-Mobile CEO Fires Back After Losing BlackBerry Sales Arrangement | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | BlackBerry and T-Mobile executives should read . Breaking up over the Internet is rough on everyone. In a letter released this evening, T-Mobile’s outspoken CEO John Legere talked about with the wireless carrier and reassured BlackBerry customers that their devices will continue to operate on T-Mobile’s network. Ear... |
AdsNative Raises $2M To Help Publishers Manage Native Ads | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | , a startup that helps online publishers incorporate native ads, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding. The company also says that it’s expanding its technology to include a supply-side platform. In other words, instead of just focusing on native ads (such as sponsored posts) that publishers sell ... |
Why Is Facebook Page Reach Decreasing? More Competition And Limited Attention | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | wants everything they post shown to everyone. But people only read a limited amount of News Feed per day. There simply isn’t room for everything, and the competition for feed space is intensifying. The total number of Pages Liked by the typical Facebook user grew more than 50% last year — a new stat that came from a 4... |
You Can Now Create Windows And Windows Phone Apps In One Go With Microsoft’s App Studio | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Microsoft’s service is fun. At launch, it so everyone could get their hands dirty and build . The service has been , and today picked up a key : The ability to create a combined Windows and Windows Phone application in one go. Here are a few slides that would help you display, in brilliant colors, the latest Tec... |
Drawbridge Says It Now Supports Video In Its Cross-Device Ad Targeting | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | , the startup that targets ads across devices, announced today that it has added support for video ads, too. It sounds like the targeting technology remains the same. Drawbridge is still looking at user behavior to suggest when multiple devices are likely being used by the same person, which in turn allows advertisers... |
Intel Releases $99 “Minnowboard Max,” An Open-Source Single-Board Computer | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Not to be outflanked by rivals, Intel has released the $99 Minnowboard Max, a tiny single-board computer that runs Linux and Android. It is completely open source – you can – and runs a 1.91GHz Atom E3845 processor. The board’s schematics are also available for download and the Intel graphics chipset has open-source ... |
The Boston And Los Angeles Meetups Are Next Week, So Get Tickets Now! | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | In our travels across the country, we’re often asked what exactly a TechCrunch Meetup is. “What is that? A meetup? Is that like a geek party?” We answer as graciously as we can. They just don’t understand yet. “Yes, it is a geek party,” I say, stepping forward. “The greatest geek party in the world.” With our and M... |
Unreal Engine 4 Gets Support For Making Linux And SteamOS Games | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Unreal Engine 4, the newest version of the game engine that powers many a AAA gaming title, just got a feature that may prove quite important in the near feature: the ability to build games . This news comes just weeks after the entry fee for . Instead of requiring weeks of licensing negotiation and hundreds of thous... |
Nest Halts Sales Of Protect Smoke Alarm Over Safety Concerns About ‘Wave To Dismiss’ Feature | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Nest CEO Tony Fadell has just users disable the Protect smoke alarm’s ‘wave to dismiss’ feature. In testing, it was discovered that people could accidentally trigger the dismiss feature, delaying a smoke alarm. Sales of the Nest Protect have also been halted. He recommends that users disable the feature for now, and ... |
Kodak Launches A Photo Book App For iPad, Makes Awful “Selfie” Joke | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | A newly launched photo book application for iPad is bringing a familiar name to mobile photography: Kodak Alaris is debuting “ ” an app that lets consumers create and order photo books, prints and enlargements using drag-and-drop on iPad. Competitor Shutterfly should not be too concerned, however. Kodak Alaris, for tho... |
Secret Shoots For Growth With New Anonymous Invites | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Want to be sure you don’t miss any juice gossip or heartwrenching tales from you friends? Now when you re-open , you’ll start where you closed the app instead of at the top of the feed so it’s easier to read comprehensively. Secret’s latest update also adds anonymous invites that could help it grow by letting you ask ... |
Monument Valley Is A Legend In The Making You Must Play Now | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | I consider myself a fan of games, but once in a while, a game comes along for which I feel something far beyond fandom; Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is , and now , a game out today by UK-based development studio and in many ways, a spiritual bedfellow to Superbrothers, is another. Don’t get me wrong, Monument... |
CitusDB Releases An Open-Source PostgreSQL Tool That Promises Better Database Performance | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | CitusDB, that is hoping to take on big boys like Oracle, today announced the release of CSTORE, a columnar store extension for PostgreSQL. The open-source tool, which the company says is the first for PostgreSQL, is available for a free download starting today. “Columnar stores bring notable benefits for analytic wor... |
null | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 3 | 25 | null |
Twitter’s Vine Introduces Direct Video Messaging | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Twitter’s Vine has that allows you to message other users directly via video. This adds both a direct messaging channel and video clips to its messages, a big addition to Twitter’s video app. There is a direct parallel to be drawn here between Instagram’s Direct image messaging feature, obviously — and it goes hand i... |
Brendan Eich Resigns As Mozilla CEO Following Criticism Of His Support For Prop 8 | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Recent Mozilla CEO pick Brendan Eich is no longer CEO, according to a new from Mozilla itself (via ). The post, penned by Mozilla’s Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker, explains that the company felt it didn’t “move fast enough” to properly address the issues the community had with Eich as they arose, and resolved t... |
The Beauty And The Danger Of The Amazon Copy Machine | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Amazon spent a lot of time talking about consumer reviews of competing devices when it , and that provides tremendous insight into its product development process. As the largest online retailer of goods in the world, the company has a unique line on shopper sentiment data – its online reviews constitute possibly the ... |
Innovative Crowdsource Insurance Startup Friendsurance Raises New Cash | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Peer-to-peer insurance startup has announced two new investors: the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing and his technology focused Horizons Ventures, plus VantageFund from Australia. The funding round was undisclosed but we understand the round is in the ‘millions of Euros’. The company already has funding from private... |
Kickstarter Funded Nearly 4,500 Projects To The Tune Of $112 Million Last Quarter | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | Kickstarter published its first quarter report yesterday – a – about its project statistics. According to CEO Yancey Strickler, the company funded 4,497 projects with pledges of $1,244,868 per day which adds up to a solid $112,038,158 total pledged in a single four month period. And they say crowdfunding is just for ... |
Vine Co-Founder Colin Kroll Steps Down From Day-To-Day Role | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | This afternoon Vine co-founder Colin Kroll , fittingly, that he has stepped back from “day-to-day” duty at the service, and that he will remain an adviser to the product. This marks the of a founder from Vine. Dom Hofmann departed the company in January. Twitter purchased Vine in late 2012 for a . The nearly conjoi... |
The 11GH/S HexFury Is The Latest In Low-Power ASIC Bitcoin Miners | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | If you’re a bitcoin nerd, you’ll know that finding cheap, low-power mining hardware is pretty hard to do. USB “thumb drive” miners are traditionally woefully underpowered – the little mining rig under my desk right now is running three and I’m essentially paying for the pleasure of mining – but this 11GH/s unit see... |
Sungevity Raises $70M To Expand Its Solar Business Globally | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | , an integrator and marketer of solar installation services, has raised $70 million in new financing as it looks to expand internationally. The round was led by Jetstream Ventures, a Nashville-based investor focused on companies that have an environmental and social benefits. Other investors included the Germany utilit... |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs… | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | In the year 2000 (well, more like 2020, at this rate), we fans will be able to ride six-wheeled robotic rovers into battle, our shorts flapping around our chicken legs, our friends hooting as we fall on our butts. But then the tides will turn and the robots will begin riding us. Their laughter, mechanical and strange... |
Human Adds M7 Support And A Daily Timeline To Its Fitness App | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | Health tracking app just added a few new features to its latest update. First, the app now supports Apple’s M7 fitness chipset if you have an iPhone 5s, while retaining compatibility with iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. The company also added a new daily summary to keep track of all your activities. With the new activity rec... |
Amazon Tests Dash Barcode Scanner For Ordering AmazonFresh Groceries | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | If you need help assembling your grocery list, it seems that Amazon has a product for you. The company is featuring something called on a new web page. Apparently it’s a Wi-Fi-connected device that allows users to build a shopping list by scanning bar codes and saying product names out loud. It connects directly with... |
#Love: When Your Lover Has Your Password | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | milestone in each significant relationship that is rarely celebrated. There’s no holiday, no dinner, and no party. It just happens – one day you’re strangers, the next you’re not. It’s the day you hand over your passwords to your SO. Everyone reaches this particular milestone differently. Some – if they’re smart or pa... |
eBay Now Allows Virtual Currency Sales | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | , owners of payment service , has quietly added a new category to their sales site, allowing users to sell virtual currency like , as well as miners, and mining contracts. The category is sparsely populated right now and the , suggesting that eBay wants buyer and seller to hash out their sale outside of the compan... |
Tiles Is An Easy-To-Use 3D Design Program That Lets You Print Your Own Objects | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | is a 3D modeling program for kids that lets the wee tykes drop blocks, walls, and pixels into an environment and then output the object for 3D printing. Designed to be dead simple, you basically create a shape in 2D and then “extrude” it into 3D, adding features as you build. The software costs $25 for an early “Found... |
Enterprises Embrace Inflexibility Instead Of Change | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | At the this week in Orlando, it struck me that companies are remarkably inflexible when it comes to adopting new technologies, but the crowd at AIIM wasn’t alone. Perhaps nothing exemplifies this better than the brouhaha over the Windows Start button, a feature which, by the way, dates back to Window 95 — as in 1995.... |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 4 | 3 | null |
MobileAppTracking Says It’s The First Platform To Support iAd Attribution | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | Earlier this month, mobile ad attribution startup spotted what seemed to be an important new feature in the latest iOS update — . Now it looks like the company was right, because it just announced it’s taken advantage of the new feature to support iAd attribution in its MobileAppTracking service. Basically, this mea... |
Gillmor Gang Live 04.04.14 | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | – John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. |
My Spiroo Can Tell Your Doctor When You’re Out Of Breath | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | Asthma sufferers use a tool called a peak flow meter to see how much air is passing out of their lungs. It is useful to assess when flare-ups are happening and what outside allergens or problems might be causing a bronchial flare-up. Until recently, all that was available to take this measurement was a very basic mecha... |
CrunchWeek: Amazon Fire TV, Mike Judge’s Debut Of Silicon Valley, And Microsoft’s New Windows Strategy | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | It’s that time of the week for CrunchWeek, in which a few of us TechCrunch writers plop down in front of a massive white table to talk about the news du jour from the past week. In this week’s episode, Ryan Lawler, Alex Wilhelm and I chatted about the announcement of Amazon’s streaming box, the upcoming debut of Mi... |
Windows Phone, Android And iOS Enjoyed A Holiday Bump In The U.S., BlackBerry Cratered | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | During the November to February period, Windows Phone, Android and iOS picked up market share in the U.S. smartphone game. Windows Phone grew the most in real percentage terms — 0.3 percent — and in terms of relative percentage growth — 9.7 percent more share compared to its previous tally of 3.1 percent. That pace of ... |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Amazon FireTV, Windows Phone 8.1, And The New Start Screen | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | Another week has come and gone, and with its close, we offer you this Friday Gadgets podcast. Today we’re talking about Microsoft’s introduction of , as well as their of the much beloved and never-forgotten Start screen. Plus, Amazon launched a brand new media console called the that includes gaming functionality.... |
5-Year Old Kid Finds A Security Exploit On The Xbox One, Gets A Researcher Credit | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | I thought I was a pretty clever kid when I was 5. Other kids ate boogers; I didn’t. Do you know how many gold stars I had? the gold stars. One thing I have, though: an acknowledgement from Microsoft for finding a security vulnerability. This kid does. In a story that is surely making day pretty crappy over at Mic... |
Study Finds Download Volume May Impact App Store Search Results | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | New research released today from mobile app marketer examines the impact that download volume has on search results in the iTunes App Store. Today, the App Store has over a million applications available, which means, more than ever, app discovery is being fueled by search as opposed to lists and top charts. Develope... |
Mike Judge’s Uncanny Silicon Valley | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | band closes out its set with a triumphant howl and pyrotechnics, and is rewarded by the pathetic applause of a couple dozen guys in hoodies. That could have described any of a dozen overwrought tech parties I’ve attended over the past few years since moving to San Francisco, but instead it’s the opening scene to Mike ... |
Egomotion Raises $750K From Android’s Co-Founder And Others To Make Your Smartphone Smarter | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | Back in November, I wrote about an Android app . Agent uses your phone’s myriad sensors to make your Android smartphone just a wee bit smarter. It’ll detect when you’re driving, and automatically respond to texts to let people know you can’t type right now. During the hours you normally sleep, it’ll auto silence your... |
Crazy Oculus Game Has One Player Defuse A Bomb While Everyone Else Shouts Instructions | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 4 | 5 | Aaaand in this weekend’s edition of “Crazy Games Made Possible By Virtual Reality”: here’s . The premise: you and everyone in the room are part of a bomb disposal team. You’ve found a bomb that is already ticking down, and you’re preparing to defuse it… but you need help. One player, wearing an Oculus Rift, is respons... |
“Full Disclosure” Shutdown Raises Questions About Email Mailing Lists In The Social Media Era | Contributor | 2,014 | 4 | 5 | In the days before Twitter, Facebook and even Friendster had arrived, a great deal of social interaction on the Internet occurred via email mailing lists. The closure last week of an information security mailing list, Full Disclosure, prompted a number of InfoSec professionals to ask whether these lists still have re... |
Google Prepares To Launch Android TV (Report) | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 5 | Google has plans for another smart TV product, according to . Apparently this set top box will be less ambitious and easier to use than one of the company’s previous initiatives, . In the words of Google documents that The Verge said it has obtained, “Android TV is an entertainment interface, not a computing platform... |
U.K. Startup SkillFlick Opens Its Doors As A Marketplace For Local Services | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 4 | 5 | is a U.K. startup with the self-described aim of building an ‘Airbnb for local skills’. The site was founded two years ago, launching in beta in January 2013 and is just opening up fully to the public this month. It’s bootstrapped and is actively looking to raise a seed round now. TC last came across the startup pitch... |
Hack Your Summer | Contributor | 2,014 | 4 | 5 | Summer is just around the corner, and if you’re in college, chances are either you’ve already got your internship lined up or you’re racing to get an internship lined up. What happens if you can’t get one? Maybe it’s because you just can’t find one that is a great fit (check out Julie’s and my advice on ). Or maybe yo... |
Gillmor Gang: Blank Stairs | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 4 | 5 | The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Dan Farber, John Taschek, Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — celebrated Office for iPad’s 12 million in sales and who knows in real traction i.e. subscriptions. The Amazon Fire debuted to shouts of thin and expensive, but surely what we need is a builtin HDMI switcher. ... |
Google Street View Adds Panoramic Photos Of Angkor Wat | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Google Street View now has . The gorgeous photos were taken during sunrise at more than 100 historic sites, including Bayon Temple and the Ramayana’s Battle of Lanka bas relief carvings. Equipment used include Google’s Street View cars and Trekkers, or backpack-mounted cameras. More photos of the Cambodian landmark ar... |
Clari, A Mobile-First Predictive Sales Tool, Comes Out Of Stealth With $6M From Sequoia | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | CRM behemoths like Salesforce and Oracle, and more mature startups like Domo, have made some significant inroads into mobile and specifically apps for mobile salespeople, but a new startup believes that its streamlined, mobile-first solution can do it better. , a mobile-first sales productivity tool that leverages rea... |
When Your Carrier Becomes Your Bank | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 4 | 5 | I write to you from my vacation, meaning, this time, the dusty port town of Kaolack in sunny Senegal. (What, your vacations don’t involve long hours spent riding in–or, sometimes, on–overcrowded West African inter-city public transit? Weirdo.) The day I arrived I picked up an Orange SIM card, which cost me 1000 francs ... |
Microsoft Updates IE11 With Enterprise Mode On Desktop, Reading And Data-Saving Modes On Mobile | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | As part of its , Microsoft today also an update to its Internet Explorer 11 browser. While the changes on the desktop are mostly about enterprise users, the F12 developer tools and bringing the interface up to par with the overall Windows update, this is the first time IE11 comes to mobile. There, the changes are pr... |
Social Casino Games Are Among The Most Lucrative Mobile Gaming Categories, Says Distimo | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Though they receive much less attention than other apps, social casino games are one of the top-grossing categories in mobile gaming, says a . The report used data from Distimo AppIQ to see how much revenue different publishers are making in the iOS App Store and Google Play. Even though they don’t get the attention o... |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 4 | 4 | null |
Yahoo Bolsters Encryption Between Data Centers, Promises New, Encrypted Messenger In “Months” | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | This afternoon, Yahoo detailed progress relating to the encryption of its various web services and properties. Most importantly, Yahoo now “fully” encrypts data moving between its data centers, as of March 31. Yahoo was one of two companies that the NSA targeted with its , which tapped data cables between the foreign ... |
AwesomenessTV Buys YouTube Network Big Frame For $15 Million | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | AwesomenessTV announced today that it acquired multichannel network Big Frame in a $15 million deal that further consolidates the number of companies built around creating video content for YouTube. Big Frame is a network that focuses primarily on verticals, including beauty, fashion, fitness and music. Over time, it’s... |
Hands-On With Amazon’s New FireTV Media Player | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | It’s only been a few hours since , giving us a good chunk of time to play around with it and get familiar with the new UI and controller. Amazon hyped three big selling points for the FireTV, including speedy performance, easier search, and an open content community. , Amazon certainly delivered. We’ll get to the ... |
Google Is Reportedly Testing A Snooze Button (And More!) For Gmail | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | An email comes in. It’s important. Not like, oh-god-drop-everything-or-we’ll-all-die important, but it’s something you should probably answer. But you’ve got stuff to do right now, so you don’t. “I’ll answer this tomorrow,” you tell yourself. By tomorrow, the email has dropped down to the bottom of your inbox, replaced... |
Parsing Free Windows | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Just what the hell is Microsoft doing making Windows free for small tablets and smartphones? Buying market share. By cutting the cost of Windows for smartphones, Microsoft is sweetening its pitch towards OEMs, providing new incentives to adopt its mobile platform. OEMs, often paying a per-device fee to Microsoft to shi... |
“If We Lose, We’re Finished,” Said Aereo Investor Barry Diller | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | It’s win or go home for Aereo. “[Aereo] probably will not be able to continue,” key Aereo investor Barry Diller about the company’s Supreme Court case. He added that there might be some salvageable material. There isn’t a plan B. The issue is that broadcasters believe Aereo is stealing their signals out of the air an... |
AirPooler Is Lyft For Private Planes | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Pilots want to fly, but it’s expensive. People want to travel but it’s a hassle. brings them together on its site where pilots can sell empty seats on private plane flights. This bootstrapped startup is launching today with availability on flights out of the Bay Area and San Diego, and gave TechCrunch the exclusive f... |
Amazon Game Studios Is Packing Some Serious Talent With Experience Across All Genres | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Amazon made – it unveiled a dedicated gaming controller, but more importantly, announced the creation of original content for the platform through its Amazon Game Studios. Said studio is rife with talent, too, as BuzzFeed’s business reporter . that Amazon Game Studios has hired both key Portal designer Kim Swift an... |
SITU Scale Tallies Up The Nutritional Information Of All Your Food | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 4 | 2 |
Sure, you know what food you’re eating, but you don’t necessarily know what’s in that food you put inside you. that doesn’t just measure weight – it offers up information about the nutritional value of the stuff you’re weighing, too. The Bluetooth-enabled scale talks to your iPad, listing any and all stuff you... |
Greenpeace Dings Amazon, Hails Apple, Google And Facebook In New Green Net Report | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Environmental watchdog agency Greenpeace is looking at the ecological performance of the world’s leading Internet companies once again, and this finds that Apple, Facebook and Google are doing the most to lead the charge towards a sustainably powered Internet, while Amazon, and specifically AWS, is dragging everybody... |
Hands On With Wello, The iPhone Case That Monitors And Tracks Your Vital Signs | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | That’s the idea behind the , a smartphone case that doubles as a personal health monitoring system. Azoi, the company that makes the Wello, says that they’ve packed the capabilities of more than $2,000 worth of medical equipment in one $199 device. It’s an interesting claim, so we asked Azoi’s founder and CEO Hamis... |
Tax Day Advice From A Bitcoin Expert | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | As we approach tax day, many bitcoin fans may be wondering how to handle all of their newfound wealth. Given the , things can get kind of hairy when mining, buying, or trading your BTC. What to do? Thankfully, folks like Tyson P. Cross are around to help. The owner of , Cross handles tax returns and offers tax planni... |
Nokia Announces Three New Lumia Phones: Two Cheap, One Not-So-Cheap | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Microsoft is just this first day of its Build conference with news. ! Royalty-free Windows ! The return of ! And now? Not one, not two, but new Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia phones. With these new phones — the Lumia 630, 635, and 930 — Microsoft is trying to cover its bases at both ends of the market. On the... |
Tindie, The Gadgets Marketplace For Makers, Ramps Up | John Biggs | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | I met Emile Petrone, the raffish owner of gadget marketplace , a few weeks ago and he told me that I would like his site. It turns out I really do. Part maker community and part amazing e-shop, Tindie is where good handcrafted gadgets go to become businesses. It’s basically a cool place to find electronics projects fo... |
Ron Conway Asks Tech CEOs To Step Up For Ellis Act Reform, Stop Evictions | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | Ron Conway, the widely influential angel investor, is asking tech CEOs across San Francisco to support Ellis Act reform, which will help slow no-fault evictions of long-time residents as rents across the city skyrocket. The non-profit Conway started, , sent a letter out to its hundreds of member companies earlier tod... |
Tesla Drivers Are Using Their In-Dash Browser To Keep Up With The News, Quantcast Says | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | What are Tesla owners actually doing with their in-car web browsers? That’s the question that ad measurement and targeting company tried to answer with some just-released data. Apparently, the Tesla Model S (of which there are now ) includes , and yes, it works when you’re driving. To see the kind of browsing that ... |
Supahands Offers Multilingual Virtual Assistants For Clients In Asia | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | Southeast Asia is the in the world, but a new company called wants to help locals by bringing virtual assistants to the region. Based in Malaysia and Singapore, the startup plans to expand to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Bangkok, and Australia. Co-founder Mark Koh first thought of launching a virtual assistant startup for As... |
Square And Google Were Not In Acquisition Talks | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | The WSJ that payments company Square was in acquisition talks with Google. We’re hearing from multiple sources close to both companies that these talks did not in fact take place in any serious capacity. Co-founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Square has raised over $300 million in funding from top tier investo... |
FIO Is A Simple, Attractive Time Zone Tracker | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | One of the things I love about working with people all around the world is that I feel like an . Unfortunately, by “mystery” I mean time zones and my propensity for mixing them up, especially since I live in a country that does not participate in daylight saving time. Missing phone appointments or calling people obsce... |
What Games Are: Worrying About Indie Games | Tadhg Kelly | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | Of the many changes that have happened to the gaming market since 2008, none is more welcome than the liberation of indie game developers. 2008 was the year that Xbox Live published , as well as the year that Apple launched the App Store on iPhone. It was also around that time that Steam really started to take off, th... |
Airbnb And NY Attorney General Prepare To Meet In Court This Week | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | Airbnb will finally have its day in court in New York this week, as the first oral arguments related to a subpoena filed by the state’s Attorney General are expected to be heard on Tuesday. Last fall, the Attorney General related to hosts in New York in an effort to identify bad actors and illegal activity on the pl... |
AI Experts On The Reality Behind The Sci-Fi Thriller “Transcendence” | Peter Barnum | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | An ambitious blend of fact and fiction, “ ” is Hollywood’s latest dystopian-edged take on the implications of artificial intelligence. The movie presents the tale of the wildly brilliant researcher, Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp), and his team as they perform a radical experiment in uploading a human mind to a computer.... |
President Obama Will Headline DNC Fundraiser Hosted By YC’s Sam Altman And Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | This May 8th, Y Combinator’s and Yahoo CEO will hold a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee headlined by President Obama. The fête will take place at Y Combinator’s offices in Mountain View. This is certainly not the first time technology types have dived into political waters, and it’s a sort of thing ... |
#Love: I’m Single, Therefore I Tinder | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | of , you win or you get bored and give up. That is pretty much standard operating procedure for anyone with a smartphone and a libido. But what if you’re bad at Tinder? Naturally, I can’t solve all your problems. But experts from across the country, as well as Tinder’s own , have hooked us up with some solid advice.... |
Hands On With Facebook Nearby Friends [Video]: No More Checkins | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | is based around broadcasting how far you are from friends, not your exact coordinates, and that’s why it could succeed where other location apps have failed. But while we might be comfortable sharing proximity, that doesn’t mean we’re comfortable doing it on Facebook. Functionally, Facebook struck upon a smart innovat... |
Cognoa’s App Will Evaluate Children’s Risk For Autism From Videos And Other Data | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | There are life-changing technologies that are being developed at the intersection of health evaluation and diagnosis. For example, Neurotrack has developed a cognitive test to the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. And a new startup, , is launching to help evaluate children’s risk for Autism. As CEO Brent Vaughan explain... |
In Digital Health, Does Nike Have A Path To Victory After Fuelband? | Semil Shah | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | TechCrunch This past week, reports about Nike leaked, suggesting either or outright abandonment of its high-profile Fuelband line. For those focused on the intersection of digital health, wellness, mobile startups, and wearable technologies, a move by Nike, one of the world’s most brands and visible companies, wi... |
The 3D Printing Landfill Of Opportunity | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | There are lots of reasons to love 3D printing. It democratizes manufacturing, putting consumers in granular control of the things they own — rather than requiring them to choose from a finite pre-made selection. The additive manufacturing technology also extrudes a bridge linking creativity and utility. You can turn a ... |
Who Gets Into Accelerators? Persistent Men With SaaS Apps, Says Study | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | What kind of startups get into Accelerators? Well, according to new research, it’s startups with around 2-3 founders, most male, often SaaS platforms and ones who are persistent, applying for at least two programs. And on average, less than 4% of applicants ever make it in. Those are the findings of new research from ... |
null | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 4 | 2 | null |
The Not-So-Secret Language Of The Misfit Shine | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 20 | Here’s a random tidbit about the , the activity tracker from . I ran into CEO Sonny Vu about a week ago, and when he pulled a Misfit Shine out of his bag, he pointed out something that no one seems to have noticed. Or if they noticed it, they didn’t say anything about it online. It’s been there since , on the back o... |
Nike Is Said To Be Killing Off The FuelBand | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 4 | 18 | Bad news, Fuel fans: Nike is purportedly killing off their wearable hardware efforts, including the FuelBand. Just a few days ago, folks started whispering about shakeup in Fuelband land after the : Now, sure enough, they’ve got a person-in-the-know confirming that the majority of the 70-person FuelBand team has bee... |
Counterforce Protests Tech Using Tech | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 4 | 18 |
Rising income inequality is quickly becoming the most prevalent issue of our century, “the defining challenge of our time,” to President Obama. Nowhere is this more acute than in San Francisco, where rents the national average are squeezing out the lower and middle classes in favor of tech workers who can pa... |
CrunchWeek: Airbnb’s $500M Funding, Twitter Gobbles Up Gnip, Instagram’s Swapped Username Scandal | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 4 | 18 | In today’s show, , and I huddled around the big white table to talk about the confirmation that in a massive new funding round, Twitter’s of its longtime partner for social data “firehose” aggregation Gnip, and the scandal around Instagram to one of its own employees. |
214 Technologies Is Crowdfunding A Smart Doorbell Called Chui | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 4 | 18 | “What the heck is a smart doorbell?” That’s what my friends asked me any time I mentioned that I’d be meeting with Nezare Chafni and Shaun Moore, co-founders of 214 Technologies. They’ve developed a product called , which they describe as “the world’s most intelligent doorbell.” Chafni and Moore brought a Chui proto... |
Ask A VC: Next World Capital’s Ben Fu On Engineer Recruiting Challenges | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 4 | 18 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, we hosted Next World Capital’s Ben Fu in the studio to talk about big data, recruiting and more. Fu, who has backed Datameer, Datastax, and Good Data among others, talked about the talent crunch, and the challenges founders face when recruiting engineers, especially in the enterpri... |
Raise Now: VC Funding For Startups At Highest Point In More Than A Decade | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 4 | 18 | There is a reason it feels like everyone and anyone is raising money to build a company: They are. According to two studies, capital raised from venture capitalists by growing, private companies is at its highest point since 2001. A pegs the total sum raised in the first quarter at $9.47 billion. By its number, that ... |
Gillmor Gang Live 04.18.14 | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 4 | 18 | – Danny Sullivan, Dan Farber, Semil Shah, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. |
Canary Smart Home Security Shows Off Its Smartphone App For The First Time | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 4 | 18 | Canary has had a big year. After and picking up an extra , the company is nearly ready to ship its home security product. Due to a couple of hurdles, Canary units won’t arrive until “this summer,” but to tide us over, the team has given us our first real look at the complementary smartphone application. So, when you... |
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