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WhatsApp Was Valued At ~$1.5B In Final Round Before Sale | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | did a great job of being surreptitious while growing into a messaging monster. But as they say, the truth always comes out. In this case, the truth is that the company had three rounds of financing, with Sequoia as the sole investor. According to documents unearthed by , WhatsApp went from a $250k seed round in 200... |
Plan To Make Silicon Valley Its Own State Gets Green Light To Collect Votes | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Back when plan to break California into six different states (including one for Silicon Valley), we weren’t sure how far the unorthodox plan would go. But, just this week, Draper got the green light from the state to go ahead and collect signatures to put his plan on the California ballot. To be sure, he’ll still nee... |
Microsoft Adds 3D Imagery Of 15 New Cities To The Bing Maps Preview App For Windows 8.1 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | In December, that Microsoft had met its earlier promise to bring rich 3D imaging of several cities to Windows 8.1 through a new Bing Maps Preview application. Today, Microsoft that work to include 15 new cities. Why the gap between release and new content? The company had to go out and, well, collect the informatio... |
Ask A VC: Vegas Tech Fund’s Jen McCabe On The Next Big Hardware Opportunity | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, VegasTechFund’s Jen McCabe joined us in the studio to talk hardware, and more. As McCabe explained, she’s particularly excited about hardware that can help turn ordinary interactions into a connected experience. With some consumers in “wearable fatigue,” there are many opportunitie... |
Changers Raises $1.5M To Turn Charging Your Phone Via The Sun Into An Infectious Game | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Ever thought about what might happen if you got rewarded, not for a Foursquare check-in, but for generating electricity? , a startup that allows people to turn the creation of solar power into a game that encourages green behaviour, has closed $1.5 million in Series A financing. German government-backed fund BFB Frühp... |
Goldman Sachs Takes On Bitcoin | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | finance is finally turning towards cryptocurrency. Responding to requests from clients, Goldman Sachs has put out an early assessment of Bitcoin that says little about the bank’s official position on BTC investment. So far, the financial services firm is neutral regarding the currency and is not actively recommending ... |
Gillmor Gang Live 02.21.14 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | – John Borthwick, Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. |
See You On Monday At The TechCrunch Barcelona Meetup + Pitch-Off | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Tickets are officially sold out for the MWC Bubble Over Barcelona Meetup and we couldn’t be more pleased. If you’ve managed to snag a ticket, you’ll be able to join Mike Butcher, Natasha Lomas, Ingrid Lunden, and myself on February 24, 2014, at 10pm-midnight at the official TC MWC meet up held in cooperation with . Th... |
Navigator Campus Hopes To Put Russian Hardware Startups On The Map | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | With hardware suddenly all the rage, accelerators devoted entirely to the genre are popping up all over the place. And that includes the far-flung regions of Russia. The will be the first private hardware technology park in Russia’s Kazan region. If you’re unsure where that is, well, it’s at the confluence of the Vol... |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | null |
Facebook Investor Peter Thiel Calls Technology A “Scapegoat” For Inequality | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | In a wide-ranging discussion with MIT professor Andrew McAfee, the two duked it out about technology’s role in social ills. “I think technology has helped,” Thiel . “You have things like Facebook, like Google–technology has helped to offset some of the brutal effects of globalization”. While globalization has flooded ... |
Fitbit Issues Voluntary Recall For Fitbit Force Due To Skin Irritation, New Version Coming “Soon” | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Fitness tracking company Fitbit has just issued a recall (and stopped sales) of their popular product the Fitbit Force, a wrist-borne activity tracker that follows their Fitbit Flex but adds a display and more advanced features. The Force was a popular item according to most estimates, and was often sold out after its ... |
To Ensure Guest Safety, Airbnb Is Giving Away Safety Cards, First Aid Kits, And Smoke & CO Detectors | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Over the years, peer-to-peer lodging marketplace Airbnb has been working to increase trust and safety for guests that stay in listings on its platform. That includes , and providing insurance for hosts who make their properties available. Today, it’s taking that a step further, with an initiative that will make emerge... |
Y Combinator-Backed Ambition Offers A Fantasy Football-Style Approach To Motivating Sales Teams | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | says it’s taking the process of tracking and motivating sales teams beyond white boards and gongs. The startup, which is part of the current class at incubator Y Combinator, launched its product last August, but has been “flying under the radar” in the press until now, said co-founder Travis Truett. He compared Ambiti... |
Sam Altman Taking Over As President Of Y Combinator, Replacing Paul Graham At The Helm | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | After nine years at the helm of , is stepping away from his leadership role at the famed Silicon Valley startup incubator. Taking over as Y Combinator’s president is , the entrepreneur who was part of the first YC startup class in 2005 and has worked as a part-time YC partner . The transition will be finalized next... |
Bye Bye, WhatsApp: Germans Switch To Threema For Privacy Reasons | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Swiss startup probably didn’t expect this. In 24 hours, the startup has its user base, according to . It is now sitting at the top of the paid App Store chart in Germany. Interestingly, Threema’s key feature is its true end-to-end encryption — German users probably don’t want to use a Facebook-owned app anymore. “... |
LinkedIn Finally Lets You Block Other Members | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | LinkedIn has at last added a long-requested feature with the introduction of member blocking. This adds a new privacy control to the service, which lets you restrict access to your profile, direct interactions, and network activity from any other logged-in member who you don’t want to interact with on LinkedIn. The com... |
BufferBox Ending Standalone Service, Closing Down Pick-Up Locations And Rolling Into Google | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Waterloo-based in November 2012, is shutting down its standalone service. The company sent an email to members today alerting them to the news, stating in no uncertain terms that BufferBox will cease to operate as a service distinct from Google, and that the team and tech will be rolled into Google products and effort... |
Sony Looks To The Past To Move Forward | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | The PlayStation. The Walkman. The Trinitron. The transistor radio. All icons in Sony’s storied history from an era when the Japanese giants still roamed the earth. The Sony of today is not like the Sony of yesterday. For every memorable blockbuster, there’s an infamous flub: The late embrace of MP3, losing its hold on ... |
Here’s A First Look At Mike Judge’s Hilarious Take On Silicon Valley | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Here it is. Mike Judge’s long-awaited and irreverent take on the tech scene in Silicon Valley — creatively titled — debuts April 6 on HBO. And we’ve got your first look at the show’s trailer, which debuts on the premium cable channel this weekend. The series, which was created by the along with co-conspirators ... |
Ask A VC: Storm Ventures’ Jason Lemkin On Inbound Vs. Outbound Enterprise Sales | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Storm Ventures’ managing director Jason Lemkin joined us in the studio to talk about enterprise, sales models and more. Lemkin, who sold his e-signature company EchoSign to Adobe in 2011, talked about inbound sales vs. outbound sales in an enterprise company, and which types of sal... |
Apple CEO Tim Cook Says iPhone Expansion Plans Include 50 More Carriers This Quarter | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | In an , Apple CEO explained his views on topics ranging from smartphones to cash return to shareholders. To understand how Apple will make decisions in the future, it’s important to parse his words and thoughts. Briefly below we’ll look at the financial and the strategic comments made by the technology executive. As ... |
Firefox’s Chrome-Like Australis Redesign Arrives In Aurora Release Channel | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | This has been a long time in the making, but after almost of testing in the highly experimental Firefox Nightly release channel, Firefox’s new Australis user interface has now into the . The , which the company has been working on for , gives the browser a more Chrome-like look. As in Chrome, the settings and op... |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs… | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | A merry to you and yours! This week’s installment brings you some DIY, some dangerous, and some fun. Can you guess which is which? Probably not, because all of these robots will eventually eat your eyes like lychee jellies. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M57B0iqHBpQ] First up we have this autonomous Ardiuno... |
You’d Be Surprised By What Really Motivates Users | Nir Eyal | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Earlier this month, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone unveiled his mysterious startup . The question-and-answer app was met with a mix of and . Tech-watchers asked if the world really needed another Q&A service. Skeptics questioned how it would compete with existing solutions and pointed to the rocky history of previous... |
Newly Discovered Snapchat Weakness Could Allow Hackers To Crash Your Phone | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | With great power comes great responsibility, and as Snapchat continues to grow rapidly, security researchers grow increasingly interested in the security of the platform. Security researcher has today exposed a vulnerability within Snapchat that opens up the app to a denial-of-service attack. By overloading an inbox... |
Ephemeral And ‘Anonymish’, Wut Is About Mass-Texting Friends Without Revealing Your Identity | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Somewhere between Snapchat’s rise and the NSA spying revelations, it became en vogue to have our daily adventures and thoughts etched in stone on a timeline or profile page. Capitalizing on this trend were Whisper, Confide and then Secret. Now there’s , from one member of Square’s founding team, Paul McKellar. It’s ... |
Shutterstock Adds 4K Video | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | , the publicly traded stock photography and video site, has quietly launched . As the company tells us, it has already amassed a catalog of over 11,000 videos that are now available for anybody who needs ultra high-res images of somebody or having a . There is a very slim chance that you have a 4K screen on your de... |
Game Frame Puts Pixel Art On Display In The Coolest Possible Way | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 7 |
Displaying pixel art at larger sizes in your house can be as simple as making a large print, but that means you’re stuck with a single image. San Francisco’s Jeremy Williams wants to make something a little more dynamic, so he has created the , a square box with 256 LED lights that’s designed to make it easy to... |
Secret Hits A Hot App Milestone With Discovery Of First Security Issue | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Well that didn’t take long. The new anonymous sharing app , which has morphed into ” (and a great place to , apparently) has been hacked. Don’t worry, it’s not that serious. The hack doesn’t expose who said what – though we’re sure someone is already working on that because, hey, nothing is ever anonymous. However... |
Google Search App For Android Adds New Voice Commands, “Time To Leave,” And Olympics Google Now Cards | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Google is rolling out an update to its today, and with this, it is introducing a number of new features for Google Now as well. Google Now already tells you to leave for work so you can arrive on time, and it will now do the same thing for your trips to the airport, event and dinner reservations. Basically, any Googl... |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | null |
TheFamily Launches Koudetat+, A Saturday School For Aspiring Entrepreneurs In Paris | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Paris-based startup accelerator and fellowship recently unveiled a side-project called . From March to July, anyone can pay and attend a day-long class targeted specifically towards aspiring entrepreneurs. As TheFamily’s baseline suggests, it “nurtures entrepreneurs with education, unfair advantages & capital.” Acco... |
Russia Says Bitcoin Should Be Avoided [Updated] | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Russia doesn’t do things by halves — Bitcoin be used by individuals and legal entities according to a recent statement. If you have a Bitcoin wallet on your computer, the Government will be suspicious. The Central Bank of Russia reiterated that the official currency is the Ruble, and that it considers Bitcoin a money... |
Here’s What Would Make Google’s Smartwatch Awesome | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Google is reportedly and we couldn’t help wondering just what they’d add to the burgeoning technology. More than any other company, Google is positioned to solve the single biggest shortcoming in wearable technology: pattern recognition. What is it about our daily activities makes us fatter, more alert? What helps us... |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Sony Vaio, Samsung Galaxy S5, And Wearables? | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Sony’s is no more, with the company confirming reports that it will sell the PC division. But a will soon arrive and comfort you during this very difficult time. After all, it’s smartphone season with MWC right around the corner. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the , featuring , , , a... |
HTC Will Pay Nokia Licensing Fees As Part Of Patent Dispute Settlement | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Smartphone maker HTC will have to pay up to Nokia to continue peddling its wares (via ), as part of a patent license agreement set out by the two companies today. The settlement means that all pending litigation between the two companies is dismissed as of today, and the extent of the payments made by the Taiwanese co... |
Last Call To Apply For The ATL And NOLA Pitch-Offs | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | TechCrunch is about to roll into and . You only have a few days left to apply for each meetup’s 60-second pitch-off. If you’re a budding startup in these cities, apply below to pitch to close to a thousand of your local peers. It’s free to apply and pitch. The deadline for applications is Monday, February 10th. For ... |
OpenIDFA, A Solution To IDFA-Related App Store Rejections, Debuts | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | Following Apple’s crackdown on mobile apps’ usage of (Identifier for Advertisers) – that is, – Appsfire is proposing an alternative solution. Called “ ,” the technology allows for the type of tracking use cases that Apple’s ban could prevent, while still protecting end user privacy by offering built-in expiration th... |
Between, A Couples App, Pairs Up With Japanese Mobile Giant DeNA | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | Korean startup VCNC has received a strategic investment from Japanese Internet giant to turn its couples app into an open platform for third-party developers. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. DeNA (pronounced D-N-A) is . Its core business is , a social games platform, but it also offers e-commerce and ot... |
Senior International Googler Debu Purkayastha Departs To Join UK VC Octopus | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | , for the last six years a powerful force inside Google’s international business working on M&A and investments, has departed the tech giant’s warm embrace to go solo. His first port of call will be as Entrepreneur-in-Residence with , one of the UK’s better known investors which has backed companies such as Swiftkey, ... |
McGraw-Hill Buys Engrade For ~$50M As It Moves Away From Textbooks, Towards A Future Of SaaS | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | This week, put the finishing touches on an emblematic story in the world of education startups. In 2003, high school student Bri Holt decided he’d heard enough griping from classmates (and teachers) over the lack of a quick, easy way to view their grades online. So, like any budding web developer, he decided to build... |
Ray Ko Is Social+Capital Partnership’s First Growth Partner | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | We’ve seen the list of value added services offered by VC grow from recruiting to PR to marketing and more. Growth hacking isn’t necessarily something that every VC is clamoring to offer, and there’s a lot of around , who is good at it and how . But the VC firm founded by former Facebook exec is planting its st... |
Make It Sing | Devin Coldewey | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | I have a Jeep about half my own age, and despite the creaks in both our joints, we somehow manage to create a semblance of grace now and then. The vibration of the engine, transmitted through my the bones of my foot as it lies on the clutch (lightly enough not to feather it), or the degree and delta of centripetal forc... |
Rep. Peter King: Security Reforms At The NSA Will Prevent Future Snowdens | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | Following a stinging report in explaining how Edward Snowden was able to collect his trove of top-secret government documents, (R-N.Y) this morning took to the Sunday show to make the following claim ( ): “A lot that have has been changed; there is monitoring now of what goes on. Snowden would not be able to do i... |
Online Ad Company iSocket Raises $5M Round Led by Time Warner | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | , which offers tools for selling online ads, is announcing that it has raised $5 million in new funding. The round was led by Time Warner Investments, with participation from Condé Nast, R&R Venture Partners (a fund created by former Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons and Ronald Lauder), and investor Vivi Nevo. iSocket focus... |
SportPursuit, A Flash Sales Site For Sporty Types, Raises £5M Series B For European Expansion | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | As sites like Fab flash sales, with some VCs towards the longevity of the flash sales model, others remain bullish. Perhaps it’s a case of flash sales working better in some verticals than others. Today, the UK’s , a 1 million member-strong flash sales site for sports enthusiasts, is announcing a series B round of... |
My Secret Life | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | Open the app to see what’s new. Check updates that have been posted on the secrets I’ve commented on first. Click through each of them. Go into the main feed, read down to where I last left off. Scroll back to the top, pull down to refresh. Head back to updates. Lather, rinse, repeat. That’s been my life over the past ... |
bRight Switch Wants To Upgrade The Light Switches In Your Home To Android Touchscreens | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | Google’s Android OS is the dominant mobile platform , but it’s also increasingly pushing beyond portables and — including, if delivers on its promises, the boring old wall switches in your home. is a prototype project that’s within touching distance of its $115,000 Indiegogo crowdfunding goal (with less than a da... |
Gillmor Gang Live 02.09.14 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang |
TC Droidcast Episode 21: Is Flappy Bird Really Gone And Are Contextual Launchers Useful? | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | The bird is the word this week on the TechCrunch Droidcast: That pixelated fowl from has wormed its way into everyone’s hearts. We discuss the game, and the strange circumstances surrounding its creation and apparent demise. Also, we debate the usefulness and potential of . This week is also , our annual awards gal... |
Google Hopes Its Roadshows Will Help Normalize Glass | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | is still months from its public launch, but after the initial hype, most of the recent news around Glass has been negative. It seems like for every round of Glass gets, it soon gets hit by something negative soon after. Just a few days ago, for example, that the New York Police Department was testing Glass. Goo... |
How NASA Prints Trees | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | Lynn Rothschild has short brown hair and smiley eyes. She cracks jokes about biology and microscopes with ease. Diana Gentry, her decades-younger Ph.D. student, loves classic video games and vegetarian cooking. She lives near Silicon Valley. The two colleagues have a funny banter, and have spent holidays together. But ... |
Flappy Bird Is Gone From The App Store | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | Yesterday, the developer behind Flappy Bird he would be removing the remarkably/mysteriously successful game from the App Store in just 22 hours. Sure enough, the game appears to be gone. And in its spot on the #1 spot on the iOS leaderboard? A Flappy Birds clone. Flappy Bird’s developer, Dong Nguyen of Vietnam, sugg... |
How CodePath Trains Developers To Build In A Mobile World | Semil Shah | 2,014 | 2 | 9 | TechCrunch Late in 2013, I stumbled upon two bootstrapped entrepreneurs with deep backgrounds in mobile development — and — who were on very focused, technical, educational mission: To take some of the best web developers and train them to develop for mobile platforms. Everyone knows it’s impossible to find good mo... |
How To Keep Your Team And Make Your Startup Acquisition Succeed | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | As a founder, has had two successful outcomes. An expert in gaming, he cofounded , which merged with Sorrent then was renamed Glu Mobile. He also was cofounder and CEO of Playfish, which was acquired in 2009 by EA for $400 million. He is now a co-founder at , which led the seed round in Supercell among others. I ... |
null | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 2 | 7 | null |
CrunchWeek: Microsoft’s New Leader, Twitter’s Stock Tumble, And The Secrets Behind Secret | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | 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! This week, Colleen Taylor, Alex Wilhelm and I chatted about Microsoft’s , Twitter’s and , and the , the new “anonymish” sharing ap... |
Louis CK And The Hare Krishnas Can Make You A Better Entrepreneur With This One Trick | James Altucher | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | I once wanted to be a stand-up comedian but I was too afraid to even go on a stage. Then I wanted to do a TV show but kept getting rejected. So finally I switched industries and started an Internet business. Louis CK is my favorite comedian. He is the high priest of understanding our culture. I watch him every day. I w... |
Book Review: In “Different,” Finding Better Ways To Build Brands In A Noisy (And Boring) World | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | While Silicon Valley and the rest of the tech world may not be in a bubble, it sure is quite a boisterous place. There are now millions of apps in the various app stores, and it seems that every day a dozen or more companies are founded. Yet, despite the deluge of funding announcements and product releases, few startup... |
One Year Later, Unlocking Your Phone Is Still A Crime | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | . A year ago a by the Librarian of Congress that made it a crime to unlock your cellphone (changing the settings on the phone to be able to be used on a different phone carrier). When that ruling went into effect, there was public outcry across the technology community that such a basic technology was now illegal ... |
Aol Gives Us Our Full 401K Matching Back, Calls “Babies” Comment A Mistake | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | Aol has backtracked on a matching until the end of the year, a decision that could potentially cost employees like myself thousands of dollars. Thank you. Aol announced the change by sending out a company-wide memo earlier today. Note: Somehow TechCrunch only gets a hold of the positive memos. AOLers – We began our j... |
Tell SF’s City Government Where The Google Buses Should Be | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | Now that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has approved a pilot program to oversee tech commuter buses from the peninsula, they’re asking for feedback from the community. A few weeks ago, the board of the SFMTA approved a program where tech companies like Apple, Google and Facebook would have to pay $1 ... |
Flappy Bird Developer Says He’s Taking The Hit Game Down Tomorrow | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | The developer of the popular mobile game Flappy Bird just declared that he’s taking the game down tomorrow. Dong Nguyen, an indie game developer based in Hanoi, Vietnam, , “I am sorry ‘Flappy Bird’ users, 22 hours from now, I will take ‘Flappy Bird’ down. I cannot take this anymore.” He then , “It is not anything rel... |
Gillmor Gang Live 02.09.14 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang |
One Silicon Valley, Under Libertarian Hero Senator Rand Paul | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | Internet-savvy Tea Party activists have shoved the once small-government fringes of the Republican party into the spotlight, . At the State of the Net Conference, I spoke with this new leader in the Republican party, asking about what life would be like for innovators if he and his small-government brethren continue t... |
Confessions Of A Flappy Bird Addict | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | Just a quick game. It only takes a second. I, I need to beat my high score. That stupid bird. DAMMIT! Ok this time I’ll do better. DAMMIT! Alright the ad distracted me. F*CKKKK! I was doing so good. NOOOooo! I don’t know why I want to play . Why it’s the first thing that pops into my mind during the cracks between d... |
In 3.5 Years, Most Africans Will Have Smartphones | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | I reckon it’s time to check in on one of my bolder predictions. Some 18 months ago, I wrote “ .” Let’s get this out of the way: most of the smart money thinks I’m wrong by at least three years. Worldwide, , smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales in 2013, for the first time — but Africa remains a different story... |
India’s MakeMyTrip Acquires EasyToBook In A Push To Grow Online Hotel Bookings | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 2 | 8 | Indian travel booking site, , has acquired , an Amsterdam-based hotel booking portal, for around $5 million. With this acquisition, MakeMyTrip is hoping to increase its proportion of revenue earned through online hotel bookings, and also target inbound customers traveling to Asia. “With the ETB acquisition, we are ex... |
Billionaire Jewelry King Launches TaskWorld, A Management Tool All About Performance | Alex Williams | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | Billionaire jewelry king Fred Mouawad has a different take on the world of task management. Most providers have some play on keeping a list or offer a schedule of reminders. But Mouawad, after hanging out at Stanford University to get in geek mode, has built something different. It’s called and it’s a task-management... |
Perfecting The Enterprise End User Experience | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | Everyone talks about user experience. It’s often referred to in terms of how “sticky” an app is: how easy it is to use, how engaging it is, how relevant it is to what users are doing, etc. All are elements that contribute to a compelling experience, regardless of industry or app type. But while user experience is wel... |
Bitcoin’s Emerging Price Stability | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | Earlier in January Bitcoin, as it receded as recipient of an infinite press, began to see its trading range tighten after months of wild swings. I as perhaps the start of new stability for Bitcoin, which in turn could help its platform mature, or indicate maturation thereof. There was some squawking that the time fra... |
Required Reading: The Economist’s Special Report On Tech Startups | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | It’s not every day we here at TechCrunch just point to someone else’s work and say, “Here, you should go read this.” But today’s an exception, because The Economist has put together a on the rise of technology startups around the world. The report, which is written for the magazine’s general news audience, could serv... |
Peek Is A Playful Calendar App, From An Ex-IDEO Designer, For People Who Aren’t Forever Busy | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | Peek is a new (paid) calendar that’s aiming to appeal to the social middle ground of people whose lives don’t consist of non-stop meetings from 9 ’til 9. So not a calendar app for professional calendar nerds, then. The app rethinks the calendar as a gesture-based playground, rather than a spreadsheet-esque chore. It’... |
CrunchWeek: Microsoft’s CEO Hunt Heats Up, Google Says Goodbye Moto, Facebook’s Paper App | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | That means that Ryan Lawler, Alex Wilhelm and I had a lot to catch up on in this week’s , the weekly show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to chat about the hottest stories in tech. Check out the video embedded above to hear us discuss the latest in Microsoft’s hunt for a new CEO, Google’s to Lenovo ... |
GoDaddy Updates Its User Protection Policies In Wake Of Infamous Twitter Account Extortion | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | GoDaddy has updated its account security policies in the wake of the now of a Twitter account. As TechCrunch , a hacker claimed to have gained the Twitter user’s last four credit card digits from PayPal, which was then used to convince GoDaddy to reset their account. The compromised GoDaddy account — and its requisi... |
Harvey Keitel, CEO, Or How To Pull Off The Impossible | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | In many of the old war movies, every elite unit has at least one member that has the critical talent to make something out of nothing: . You know this guy: when everyone is out of rations or ammunition and the truck is broken down, he quietly heads out. The next day, when all hope of completing the mission seems los... |
Boombotix Raises $4M For Its Wearable Action Speakers And Audio Sync Software | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | Kickstarter funding will often lead to the more traditional kind, and in the case of Boombotix, that’s exactly what happened. The California startup raised $17,000 for its music syncing app, which allows people to synchronize playback of music across multiple devices using mobile networks, and nearly $130,000 for its B... |
Developer Behind “Flappy Bird,” The Impossible Game Blowing Up The App Store, Says He Just Got Lucky | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | , a game you can barely play for more than a few seconds without throwing your phone across the room in frustration, is dominating the App Store and . In an App Store first, an indie game developer from Hanoi, Vietnam, Nguyen Ha Dong, has 3 apps in the top 10 rankings right now, which is not only odd because the publi... |
Gillmor Gang: Brand Royalty | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — seem perfectly willing to predict the futility of the next Microsoft CEO, and even perhaps the next Bill Gates. But we can only successor-surf so long before returning to the more heady war of the social stream. You can dec... |
Watch More Crazy First-Person Footage Of Felix Baumgartner’s Space Jump | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | There’s more eye-candy footage of Felix Baumgartner’s epic space jump. Sports video camera hardware startup, , released a 30-second Superbowl spot of first and third-person perspective of Baumgartner’s free fall from the stratosphere. Just to manage expectations, it’s not the full first-person perspective of his entir... |
BuzzFeed Is The Future (Whether It Lives Or Dies) | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | It’s time for a little inside baseball! Be still your beating hearts. But admit it: secretly you want to know about the success/failure of the myriad news sources whose stories flit disconnectedly across your Facebook and Twitter feeds from time to time, if only so you can tell your friends that you already knew who wa... |
Mt. Gox Temporarily Pauses Bitcoin Withdrawals | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Mt. Gox has temporarily suspended Bitcoin withdrawals in order to resolve a technical issue, the . The statement posted on Mt. Gox, one of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges, reads: During our efforts to resolve the issue being encountered by some bitcoin withdrawals it was determined that the increase in withdrawa... |
Updated: Google Didn’t Pay $750M For A 5.94% Stake In Lenovo | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | [Updated: As , Google does not yet own Lenovo shares. Instead, the shows the number of shares Google own after its agreement with Lenovo to purchase Motorola goes through.] Google in Lenovo Group on Jan. 30, according to a disclosure on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The filing was made on the same day after Googl... |
Adobe, WPP, Among Companies In Talks To Acquire Indian Social Analytics Startup Simplify360 | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | Indian digital media circles have been being looked at in the social media analytics space by Twitter, Adobe and even WPP, the world’s biggest advertising company. The latest to join the list of potential targets is , a Bangalore-based social media analytics startup that counts over 100 paying customers including bi... |
Meet The Eight Startups From StartX’s Fall 2013 Class | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | , the non-profit accelerator for Stanford-affiliated entrepreneurs, introduced the most recent eight companies to have gone through its program at a demo day held at Box headquarters in Los Altos, Calif. today. Those companies included everything from a non-profit dance program to a mobile tool for helping to treat aut... |
Google’s Latest Doodle Shows Support For LGBT Olympians Heading To Sochi | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Hours before the 2014 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony is set to kick off, Google is putting some of its most valuable real estate — their logo — to good use: to show their support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender olympians on their way to Sochi. As pictured above, the standard logo has been replaced wit... |
To Succeed, Growth Hacking Has To Focus More On Product Development Than Marketing | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 1 | I can’t think of a buzzier phrase in the tech industry these days than “growth hacking,” and in some ways I also can’t think of a more dangerous trend to glom onto. Sure, growth is good. But only if it’s real growth. If it’s a marketing campaign that goes viral and wins you a bunch of one-time “users,” it can actually ... |
Snippit Launches An App To Add (Brief) Soundtracks To Your Photos | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | is a just-launched app offering a twist on photo-sharing. The idea is pretty straightforward — instead of sharing a photo on its own, Snippit allows users to add a 4-to-10-second clip of their favorite song. The song can be something that’s downloaded on their phone, or they can select from the 30-second song previews... |
PressFriendly Launches To Teach Startups How To Stop Sending Me Stupid Pitches | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Today in software eating the world: Software eating PR! As you might expect, I receive a ginormous number of stupid PR pitches each day, most of which come from people who are specifically paid to send me those pitches. But some of them are from well-meaning entrepreneurs who want coverage but just don’t know how to pi... |
Twitter Lost 12.14 Instagrams In Value Today | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Twitter had a day yesterday, reporting strong financial results but weak user growth. Some investors immediately . The company lost nearly $16 per share today following the news, or dollars in market capitalization. Let’s look at this another way. Facebook offered a deal once upon a time. But when that deal clos... |
Dear AOL, Get Off My Lawn | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | [Obligatory warning: There’s no tech news to see here.] It’s 4:56 here at AOL headquarters and the keg is a-flowin’, “ ” is a-bumpin’, and I’m filing this story. My corporate overlord has . There’re new products a-launchin, , and all around things are lookin pretty rosy for the media magnates in charge … Well, except... |
In Russia, Bathroom Mirror Watches You! | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | In Russia, spying on visitors is so pervasive, authorities don’t even seem realize that watching someone shower is cause for alarm. During a press meeting on the Winter Olympics, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak claimed that Western journalists were deliberately sabotaging the hotel facilities. As evidence, he said a... |
Google’s $3.2 Billion Acquisition Of Nest Gets The FTC Green Light | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today officially for Google to acquire Nest, the connected devices company best known for making a smart home thermostat. Google first announced its plan to acquire Nest for $3.2 billion in cash . Sources tell TechCrunch that Google Nest’s technology and team as its... |
OpenTable Buys Ness For $17.3M To Beef Up Mobile And Restaurant Recommendations | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Restaurant reservation platform today quarterly earnings of $52.3 million and used the day to put out some other news: the company has , makers of the personalized restaurant recommendations app Ness. It’s an all-cash transaction that OpenTable says is worth $17.3 million, although it comes with cash in Ness’s c... |
Apple Said To Have Acquired Sapphire Display Manufacturing Components, Diamond Cutting Tools | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Apple is preparing for a big push in sapphire crystal display manufacturing, according to some new information unearthed by and told to TechCrunch via a source familiar with the company’s plans. 9to5Mac, with the help of analyst Matt Margolis, has obtained documents that report Apple placing an order with partner GT A... |
LinkedIn Snatches Up Data Savvy Job Search Startup Bright.com For $120M, In Its Largest Acquisition To Date | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Today, in which it beat Wall Street estimates yet again, LinkedIn announced its intentions to acquire data-savvy job search startup, Bright.com, for $120 million. The deal, which was 70 percent stock and 30 percent cash the company said, will be completed during the first quarter of this year. In a statement today, L... |
LinkedIn Beats In Q4 With Revenue Of $447.2M, But Growth Concerns Dampen After Hours Trading | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | Today, following the close of regular trading, LinkedIn reported its fourth-quarter financial performance, including revenue of $447.2 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.39 . Analysts had the company to report non-GAAP profit of $0.38 per share on revenue of $437.84 million. In regular trading, LinkedIn wa... |
OpenTable Now Piloting Mobile Payments In San Francisco Restaurants | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | OpenTable is taking its restaurant reservations service into a new vertical today, the company says: mobile payments. According to a on the OpenTable blog, a pilot program is currently underway in San Francisco which allows diners to not just book a table, but also pay for their meal right in the OpenTable iPhone app... |
That Secret App Is Becoming Silicon Valley’s New Blind Item | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 6 | “I work at Evernote and we’re about to get acquired… Watch this space” That could be the to have found its way onto , the new “ ” sharing app . But it won’t be the last. (FWIW, Evernote CEO Phil Libin . And claims he’s the one .) Forget about the that have found their way onto the app for a second. The real f... |
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