Industrial Toys Raises $5M From Accel To Build Tablet Games For Serious Players

Industrial Toys, the tablet and mobile gaming studio led by Alex Seropian (founder of Bungie Studios, creators of the enormously successful Halo franchise), is announcing that it has raised a $5 million Series A from Accel Partners. Accel's Vasant Natarajan, who's joining the Industrial Toys board, suggested that when there's "a big platform shift" in gaming, it creates new opportunities to build… Read More

Jawbone Snaps Up Playground.fm

Looks like instead of being acquired, wrist and speaker hardware company Jawbone is doing some acquiring, scooping up social and personalized music playlist app Playground.fm, according to a well-placed source. Last time we heard something about Jawbone, it had closed a new financing round of about $250 million at around a $3 billion valuation. Kara Swisher and Re/code had reported a similar… Read More

Japan to Fire Off Emails in Event of Incoming Missile

Starting April 1, Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency will send email alerts to residents' phones should North Korea start lobbing missiles. The messages would be sent using the nation's already-functional J-Alert, a free system designed to notify people about earthquakes and tsunamis. The missile-warning service is aimed specifically at those who use NTT Docomo, KDDI au and Softbank Mobile devices. Information contained in the missile messages would include the direction of the missile(s), and whether or not an evacuation is needed.

iOS App Store Prices To Increase In Australia, India, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa

Apple has sent out an email notifying customers of App Store price changes in certain countries within the next 24 hours. The company said that it will raise retail rates for the following currencies because of foreign exchange rate changes: Australian dollar, Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah, Turkish lira, and South African rand. On the other hand, retail prices for Israeli New Shekels and some… Read More

Roamer Makes It Easier To Make Calls From Foreign Climes

A month ago in Barcelona I met with one of the founders of Roamer, a clever SIM hack/app that allows you to bring your own phone number along with you around the world. The company raised £300,000 in December and is closing a £1 million with the Angel Co-fund and UK Angels. Read More

This Demake Of Legend Of Zelda Is Most Fun You Can Have With Colored Squares

It's dangerous to go alone! Go play The Legend Of Zelda, deconstructed and reduced to its component concepts! You are Link, a green square, and your mission is to kill Ganon (probably a dark block). Along the way you'll grab a sword (a brown block) and fight all sorts of monsters, from Octoroks to Moblins (represented by blinking colors). Read More

One Company Betting On Oculus Rift As The Platform For VR HR Training

The Oculus Rift and its creator Oculus VR have been purchased by Facebook, and that’s causing some including Minecraft developer Mojang to reconsider their projects for the platform. But others are doubling down on their Oculus investment, including Technology Transfer Services (TTS), a company that designs training software for workforce education. This is another story today where I had to… Read More

Microsoft Azure Matches Amazon’s Price Cuts And Introduces New “Basic” Tier

After Google's drastic price cuts for its cloud computing services, Amazon quickly matched them. Given that Microsoft always promised to match prices, it doesn't come as a surprise that the company today announced its own round of massive price cuts. Prices for compute on Microsoft Azure (previously known as Windows Azure) dropped by up to 35 percent and Microsoft cut storage prices by up to 65… Read More

OkCupid Offers Firefox Visitors Links To Alternate Browsers To Protest New Mozilla CEO

Online dating site OkCupid is presenting Firefox visitors with something other than the standard home page you’d normally encounter – instead, there’s a lengthy message apologizing for the interruption and explaining that OkCupid opposes the political views of Mozilla’s new CEO Brendan Eich, who made donations to a campaign in support of California’s anti-LGBT… Read More

Intel Pours $740M Into Cloudera In Exchange For An 18% Stake

Earlier this month, Cloudera announced that it had raised $160 million from a cadre of investors, including Google Ventures. That, as TechCrunch noted, brought its total funding to $300 million. Scratch all that: Cloudera today announced that it has picked up $740 million more from Intel. Read More

Meetups Are Coming (To Boston And LA Next Week So Buy Tickets Now!)

Brace yourselves, residents of Los Angeles and Boston, for TechCrunch arrives in less than a fortnight. The TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-off will go down in Boston on April 8, and on the even of my 26th name day, April 10, we'll hit up Los Angeles with bells on. Read More

Square Market Partners With Coinbase To Accept Bitcoin

In the sci-fi show Almost Human, everyone has a bitcoin wallet. More and more places to spend bitcoin means that could become a reality, and popular indie merchant mobile payment provider Square is the latest to accept the cryptocurrency. In an announcement today on their blog, which isn’t an April Fool’s Joke pushed early Square assures us, the company notes that bitcoin can be used… Read More

With A Focus On Big Data Startups, Data Collective Redefines Thematic Investing And Debuts Its Third Fund

You wouldn’t think that big data would be the topic of conversation on this evening, but that’s the subject that brought Data Collective founders Matt Ocko and Zack Bogue together for the first time. Both were at the club for a friend’s birthday party and, upon meeting each other, immediately began geeking out over the possibilities of data dominating the world. This conversation… Read More

Facebook’s Oculus Buy Will Force A New Social Future

Some reacted to Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR less than enthusiastically, but the announcement is one of the most exciting opportunities for the future of Social VR -- a future where virtual reality will help build stronger online interactions through more expressive communication and shared experiences. Read More

HTC One (M8) Review: The New Best Android Smartphone

There’s a new contender for Android top dog on the market, and it’s the HTC One (M8), the latest from the Taiwanese firm. This metal-clad unibody slab inherits the good looks of its predecessor, last year’s HTC One (retroactively referred to as the M7), but refines the look and adds a lot of significant software changes, too. It makes the new One a great device, and well worth a… Read More

After Launching In 135 Markets, Word For iPad Is #1 In 120 Countries

Microsoft's Office suite for iPad continues to dominate the iOS app store days after its release, retaining the top three free slots in the U.S. App Store, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint retaining the top three free slots. Read More

Microsoft's Merry-Making MS-DOS Code Caper

It's the end of another March here in the Linux blogosphere, and that can mean only one thing: the arrival of another April Fools' Day. As if on cue, Microsoft recently made an eminently Fools' Day-worthy move. "On Tuesday, we dusted off the source code for early versions of MS-DOS and Word for Windows," wrote Roy Levin, distinguished engineer and managing director for Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, in a blog post last week. "With the help of the Computer History Museum, we are making this code available to the public for the first time."

Frontback Update Adds Better User Profiles

Photo-sharing app Frontback just received an update in the App Store. The company revamped user profiles to make them a little more informative. Now, you can see an avatar, the nickname and full name, a user description and a location. You can also easily access followers and following lists. Finally, you can block someone if you don’t want this particular person to see your Frontbacks. As a… Read More

Microsoft Adds Data About 150M New Entities To Bing

Microsoft today announced that it has added data about 150 million new entities to Bing's entity engine -- the company's rough equivalent to Google's Knowledge Graph. Over the course of the last few months, Microsoft said today, it has added real estate listings, as well as information about lawyers, doctors and dentists to the service. Bing also added more data about "web actives" -- that is… Read More

Twitter Buys France’s Mesagraph And UK’s SecondSync, Inks Deal With Kantar To Ramp Up Social TV Efforts In Europe

Twitter is adding more global firepower to its ambitions to cosy up to broadcasters and TV advertisers: it is buying France's Mesagraph, and it is also acquiring SecondSync in the UK. It is also teaming with with Kantar, the market analytics firm owned by WPP who was also an investor in SecondSync, as part of its string of announcements today to further its global reach with its social TV… Read More

HHS Secretary Sebelius: HealthCare.Gov “Definitely Saw The Galifianakis Bump”

When Obamacare passed the 6 million-person sign-up mark, we pointed, with our tongues half-cheeked, to President Obama's Between Two Ferns appearance with Zach Galifianakis. Turns out we were mostly on point. Recently, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told the Huffington Post that the government "definitely saw that Galifianakis bump." Read More

Facebook Internet Project: The Skies Have It

Facebook last week announced more detailed plans to bring affordable Internet access to every person on the planet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed some fresh details about the work Facebook's Connectivity Lab is carrying out to build drones, satellites and lasers geared to providing connectivity for everyone as part of the Internet.org initiative. The lab has made strong progress, noted Zuckerberg, with projects in the Philippines and Paraguay doubling the number of people who use mobile data connections through Facebook's telecom partners.

Major League Baseball’s “At Bat” App Gets Updated To Support Expanded Instant Replay

It's opening day for the first Major League Baseball season to feature "expanded instant replay," a system that allows reviews of umpires' calls through video footage. And today the MLB is also releasing an update to its official app, MLB.com At Bat, that supports the new system. The league added a limited form of instant replay in 2008, for reviewing home run calls, but this will be a major… Read More

Outlook Web App For Office 365 To Get Smart Clutter Filter, OneDrive For Business Integration

Microsoft today announced a number of forthcoming updates to the Outlook Web App for Office 365 at its Exchange Conference in Austin. Jeff Teper, Microsoft's corporate vice president of its Office Service and Servers group, said that the overall strategy here is to embrace "cloud-first, mobile-first communications." Read More

Google Maps’ Pokémon Challenge Asks You To Prove You’re The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was

Do you want to be the very best? Like no one ever was? Google wants you to prove it. At least, they would in a world where April Fools jokes were real and companies weren't allowed to tug at our heart strings with pretend commercials for games that we'd actually totally play... Read More

Microsoft Promotes Scott Guthrie To Head Of Cloud, Phil Spencer To Lead Xbox, Confirms Stephen Elop Will Run Devices

This morning Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella announced that Scott Guthrie is now the executive vice president of its Cloud and Enterprise group, Phil Spencer will run its Xbox work, and that, when the Nokia acquisition closes, former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop will pick up the title of executive vice president of the Devices group. Read More

How To Play Quake (Again) On Your Raspberry Pi

A month ago, the folks at Raspberry Pi announced that they now had access, thanks to Broadcomm, to an open driver for the BCM21553 cellphone processor chip. This meant that DIYers now had complete access to the board and would be able to access the onboard Raspberry BCM2835 chip (a similar chip to the BCM21553) with an open source driver - as long as someone ported it over from the BCM21553. Read More

Twitter Poaches Googler Philippe Dauman To Lead Commerce Partnerships

Twitter has not yet officially launched commerce services but it continues to build out the systems it will need to have in place when it does. The latest development on that front is that it has hired away Philippe Dauman Jr from Google to lead commerce partnerships. Dauman, who had been at Google for the last six and a half years, announced the news himself on Twitter and also on LinkedIn. Read More

Rdio Adds Chromecast Support For TV Music Streaming

Streaming music service Rdio has added support for Google’s Chromecast media accessory, the company announced today. What that means is that you’ll be able to send your Rdio music from your iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Chrome for Mac and Chrome for Windows to your Chromecast-connected TV or HDMI display wirelessly. Using Rdio’s existing remote feature, you’ll also be able… Read More

Fly Or Die: Secret

With last week's episode focusing on Whisper, we thought it only fair to take a hard look at its biggest competitor, Secret. Welcome to another episode of Fly or Die. Read More

iPhone 6 “Air” Concept Imagines A Return To The Glass Back Design

A new take on the yet-to-be-announced iPhone 6 from an independent designer provides a look at what we might expect from a thinner, larger-screened next-generation device. This latest one is just the most recent in a spate of design takes by Martin Hajek on potential future Apple products, and this one is commissioned by French blog NWE based on recently leaked sketches, which may or may not be… Read More

With $2 Million In New Seed Funding, Classtivity Rebrands As ClassPass To Add Variety To Your Workout

ClassPass, an NY-based company focused on bringing value to athletes and local gyms, has today announced a $2 million seed round from an assortment of angel investors, including Fritz Lanman, SV Angel, Hank Vigil, Blake Krikorian, Gordy Crawford, Owen Van Natta, Vivi Nevo & Keith Nowak, Kal Vepuri, and Dave Tisch. ClassPass originally launched out of TechStars NY as Classtivity, looking to… Read More

With New AudioEngine, Findaway World Plans To Power Audiobook Stores On Mobile And The Web

Findaway World was founded back in 2006 with the aim of selling MP3 players preloaded with audiobooks. (One of its more noteworthy customers: The US Army.) Today, the company is kicking off a new digital strategy in earnest with the launch of its AudioEngine. Findaway World isn't trying to compete directly with an audiobook store like Audible, said co-founder and CEO Mitch Kroll. Instead,… Read More

PasswordBox Partnership Lets The Nymi ECG Wristband Log You In Anywhere On Mobile

The Nymi armband from Toronto-startup Bionym is edging closer to reality, and a new partnership announced today helps make it more clear how it’ll be useful to everyday consumers. Bionym is teaming up with PasswordBox to make it possible to authenticate your mobile logins using your heart rate automatically, for super fast access to sites, devices and services. PasswordBox is a login locker,… Read More

Nvidia's ECS: Some Amazing Little Companies to Watch

ECS -- Nvidia's Emerging Companies Summit -- is a place to check out some of the firms that could become the next breakout company. It didn't disappoint this year. Among the highlights: A firm that could redefine advertising connected to Web pictures and videos; a company that could put your entire desktop and gaming experience in the cloud; one that could help you actually hear that TV you see at a restaurant or bar (one of my favorites); and one that equips a little box to do a workload that typically would require a server farm.

Apple Patent Addresses Texting-Walking Risk

Texting while walking can be dangerous, but Apple could be aiming to make it less so, judging from a patent awarded Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Apple has found an innovative way to use an electronic communication device's camera to continuously capture and present video images as background within a text-messaging session, its patent application 20140085334, titled "Transparent Texting," suggests. The device's rear-facing camera could be used to make it appear the user was looking through a transparent screen.

Square Debuts New Software Partner Platform, Integrates With Xero For Seamless Merchant Accounting

After announcing a partnership with Intuit QuickBooks last Fall, Square is debuting a new integration with rival accounting software Xero. Similar to the announcement with QuickBooks, this API deal allows for the mobile payment service to feed data from transactions into their financial books on Xero. Read More

There's a New Kid on the Solar System Block

Astronomers this week reported what they believe to be the most-distant member of our solar system discovered so far. 2012 VP113, a probable dwarf planet that was found to lie beyond the known edge of the solar system, was discovered by Chadwick Trujillo, an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, using the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's new 13-foot Dark Energy Camera on the NOAO 4 meter telescope in Chile.

Healthcare.gov Crashes On The Last Day To Enroll Before The Deadline

Healthcare.gov is down for maintenance at the most inopportune time. Users are reporting not being able to access the U.S. government's healthcare marketplace on the last day before the deadline. Technical problems due to scheduled maintenance is to blame. Read More

Moto G Has Turned Motorola’s U.K. Fortunes Around, Study Finds

Turns out the 'G' in Moto G stands for 'Go!'. Motorola's well-reviewed sub-$200 Android handset has given Motorola an unexpected boost in the U.K. -- a market where the brand had gone into near-total stasis. Read More

ClearStory Raises $21M From DAG Ventures, KPCB, A16Z To Bring Data Intelligence To The Masses

ClearStory Data, a company that wants to bring data intelligence to the masses, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by DAG Ventures with Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers participating. The round brings ClearStory Data’s total funding to $31.5 million. Read More

Netagio, A ‘Cold Storage’ Bitcoin Vault, Adds The Ability To Trade BTC For Gold Bars (Or Vice Versa)

Keeping Bitcoin safe isn't easy. If the wild currency fluctuations don't get you, then it'll be the exchanges going pop in the night and taking a chunk of BTC with them, or the myriad digital wallets whose security systems failed to fend off the hacker hoards lured by all that traceless digital coin... So why not convert your Bitcoin into gold bars? Read More

Content Marketplace ScreenHits Closes $1.2M Angel Funding

UK-based ScreenHits, a marketplace for global content acquisition and ‘viewer feedback’, has closed a $1.2 million first round of funding. Investors include high net worth Angel investors, such as Rory Fleming, Lord Reay, and Flemming Lund among others, employing the SEIS and EIS funding schemes in the UK. The money will be used to focus on product, business development and audience… Read More

Russian Square Clone 2can Raises $5M To Scale Up

Russian mobile payments startups 2can similar in operation to Square and iZettle (accepts payments from Visa and MasterCard cards through a mobile card reader connected to a smartphone) has raised a $5 million Series B round of funding led by InVenture Partners with participation by Almaz Capital Partners and ESN Group. The cash will be used to integrate with leading Russian banks and accelerate… Read More

Crowdfunding Site Medifund Relaunches As Non-Profit To Help Med Students In Developing Countries

Medifund, a crowdfunding platform for medical students, has relaunched as a non-profit. The site, which is based in the Philippines but open to students around the world, was first covered by TechCrunch last year. Its mission is to increase the number of doctors in countries with a critical shortage by helping students pay for medical shortage. Read More

Bizzby Raises $10M From Hedge Fund To Take On TaskRabbit In UK

On-demand services marketplace Bizzby has raised $10 million, and claims to have reached 40,000 users its first three months of operation this year with a smartphone app resembling TaskRabbit-style services. The investors was undisclosed but sources say the investor is a US-based Hedge Fund with over $25B under management. Bizzby offers on-demand access to tradespeople such as cleaners, plumbers,… Read More

Alibaba Will Pay $692M For 35% Stake In Retail Operator Intime

Alibaba has agreed to pay $692 million for a 35% stake in Intime Retail, which operates department stores throughout China. The two companies will form a joint initiative to focus on offline-to-online retail opportunities. Read More

Nielsen And Integral Ad Science Expand Their Ad Viewability Partnership Beyond The US

Nielsen and Integral Ad Science are announcing that they're taking their partnership international. Nielsen is best-known for its TV ratings system, but it has been expanding its measurement on the web, on social media, and on mobile. Back in 2012, it announced a partnership with Integral Ad Science (then known as AdSafe) to measure ad viewability (i.e., whether an ad was actually seen by… Read More

What Games Are: Virtual Reality, We Hardly Knew You

It might be white hot news that Facebook dropped two-bils on buying in, or that Valve's Michael Abrash has joined Oculus as chief scientist, but I suspect that this generation of virtual reality is already dead. Read More

New Kit Lets You Print Your Own 3D Skulls

Say, for example, you wanted a dog skull but did not want to remove said bone mass from a living dog. What to do? If you're the team behind Quinn, the 3D-printable posable doll, you'd make and sell a set of models that you can print out on your Makerbot or similar device. Read More

Bitcoin Slips In The Wake Of The IRS’s Tax Decision

Earlier this week, the IRS decided that Bitcoin is property, not currency, setting in place a regulatory structure that could see users of the cryptocurrency forced to keep price score in a rapidly shifting market. Bitcoin had a rough time of it last week, as GigaOm reported, losing around 17% of its value. Part of that was tied to a rumor regarding Bitcoin in China, and part, I think due to the… Read More

Microsoft Has Big Plans For Bing’s Entity Engine

Both Microsoft and Google have long worked on getting users answers without having to click through a number of websites. At Google, the current result of this is the Knowledge Graph and at Bing, it’s the Satori entity engine. Both search engines currently offer very similar experiences related to these engines. Search for “Albert Einstein” in Google and Bing, for example, and… Read More

How Dropbox Knows When You’re Sharing Copyrighted Stuff (Without Actually Looking At Your Stuff)

Late last night, a tweet was spread far and wide showing that a DMCA notice had blocked a file from being shared on a user's Dropbox account. What was going on? Was Dropbox suddenly doing something sketchy? Were they suddenly lurking around their users folders, digging for copyrighted material hiding amongst personal files? Nope. The system is neither new, nor sketchy. It's been in place for… Read More

#Love: Unfollowing Exes

One month ago, I got dumped. It was the third in a series of failed, long-term relationships over the past five years. All relationships end differently. Some exes stay friends, or fail to stay friends, or continue hooking up, or cut each other out entirely. Some exes combine any number of those things to form a symphony of chaos. But no matter how it ends, or how it evolves after it's over,… Read More

TC Droidcast Episode 24: A Couple Of Mates Talking About The HTC One M8

This week, Chris Velazco joins me, Darrell Etherington, to talk about HTC’s new One (M8) flagship smartphone, which we already like quite a bit. The new device is HTC’s big chance to make a splash in the smartphone market, and they haven’t squandered it; let’s hope consumers are willing to give it a look. We also catch up on the Nvidia Shield, the handheld Android-powered… Read More

Launched On Kickstarter, Musaic Promises Hi-Fi Music And Home Automation

Compact wireless HiFi systems are pretty common these days, but what is less common is startups thinking more deeply about how the same systems could move into home automation and the Internet of Things. That’s the implication behind a new system launched by device startup Musaic, recently launched on Kickstarter. It now plans to go up against much bigger audio-based companies, such as Bose.… Read More

Music Startup Spawnsong Wants To Be Kickstarter For Single Tracks

Holy incremental music startup, Batman! Spawnsong is a (very) new music platform startup with a strategy to elbow into the crowded digital music space by focusing on a very thin wedge: individual songs. Read More

Doing It For The Likes

We crave approval, but we already knew that. Conventional thinking would suggest we seek digital validation because it means we've impressed people and raised our social status. But what anonymous apps like Secret are highlighting is that we don't care if our name is attached to that approval. We are simply addicted to little dopamine hit we get when someone said we did well. Read More

The Resurgent, Post-Windows Microsoft

Microsoft had become an oft-ignored, behemoth to the North, despite $77 billion in revenue and $57 billion in profits. It seemed that the mobile revolution had passed it by. Although Steve Ballmer was already making many of the right moves, it took new CEO Satya Nadella to fully accept that Microsoft had to move beyond Windows into a new future of apps and cloud services. Read More

How To Run Live User Testing, Part 3: The Debrief

We've focused on getting the tests setup, which includes deciding on a specific thing to test, when and where to conduct the user study and what type of users to study. We then covered actually running the tests. This final installment will focus on taking all that amazing feedback you just gathered and parsing it into useful, actionable intelligence. Read More

Newspapers Cling to Life Despite Online News Trend

Print media is limping along and TV news has gained some strength, even though the trend toward getting news online continues to grow, Pew Research reported this week. It all boils down to economics, said Mark Jerkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center Journalism Project. Advertising revenues for newspapers have fallen about 50 percent from 2006, forcing some smaller publications to close. Others have reduced their publication schedules.

How One Cloud Enterprise Startup Decided To Sell To Microsoft

When Ursheet Parikh sold his company StorSimple in 2012 to Microsoft, it was one of the largest deals in the cloud infrastructure sector to date. But that wasn’t the only thing unusual about it. It was also a fairly large deal for which he played the “banker” and negotiated the deal. This is not unheard of, but it is an interesting example of how such a process can work in a startup… Read More

Crunchweek: Facebook’s $2B Bet On Virtual Reality, Office For iPad, And YC Demo Day

In this special “Between Two Co-Editors” edition of Crunchweek, I was joined by my fearless bosses, co-editors Matthew Panzarino and Alexia Tsotsis at the White Table. We tackled Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR, and Zuck’s aggressive acquisition strategy in 2014; Microsoft’s release of Office for the iPad, and tales from Y Combinator’s recent Demo… Read More

The Improbable Rise Of Roku

In 10 years, when we look back and think about which companies fundamentally changed the way viewers get their TV shows delivered to them, will Roku be a part of the conversation? Based on what the company has done to date, and where it’s going, it seems likely. Read More

After Stepping Aside From Y Combinator, Paul Graham Hands Over The Reins At Hacker News

As part of his departure from day-to-day operations at Y Combinator, Paul Graham announced today that he’s also handing over the reins of Hacker News, the technology and entrepreneurship-focused social news website that he built and has run through YC since 2007. In a simple and straightforward blog post, Graham announced that YC outreach director Kat Manalac and YC partner Garry Tan will be… Read More

Neil Young’s PonoPlayer Passes $5m In Kickstarter Pledges

The portable music player is alive and well. Pono Music's PonoPlayer just crossed the $5 million milestone on Kickstarter, making it the fourth most funded project in the site's history. Twelve thousand backers have pledged enough to pre-order the device. And there is still 16 days to go on its campaign. Read More

Box CEO Aaron Levie Takes To Quora About His (Sorta) Small IPO Stake: It’s All Gravy

Reporters and industry watchers go nuts when an S-1 is filed for an initial public offering because there are always a few surprises to be found while digging through the numbers. The Box IPO filing this past week was no exception. Along with the in-depth details of Box’s revenue (growing quickly) and bottom line income (still in the red), the filing revealed that Aaron Levie, Box’s… Read More

Watch How Matterport’s Camera Captured A 3D Model Of TechCrunch HQ

Historically, creating an accurate 3D model of a physical space has been a time-consuming and expensive process that cost tens of thousands of dollars and required teams of people and days, if not weeks, to complete. But a startup called Matterport has dramatically changed that, with a $4500 camera that the company says can capture fully immersive 3D models of physical objects and spaces in a… Read More

Gillmor Gang: Sign Language

The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — barely came out of the gates before John Taschek let Comcast have it, and really you need to see the visual on this one. After the salute to the internet provider, talk circled around Microsoft's release of Office for iPad. Is it important? Well, no one on the show seemed to use Office any more,… Read More

Whaling Is The New Harlem Shake

Have you whaled yet today? It's the new thing. Whale at the club. Whale at school. Whale in your cubical. Just don't whale at a funeral. That would be doing it wrong. As the Vines below show, the premise is to act like a whale breaching the water behind an unsuspecting observer. Bonus Internet points are awarded for twisting in the air. Read More

Pre-IPO Imperative: Know Your Customer

The IPO window is currently wide open. Riding the wave of strong IPO performance over the past few years (the classes of ‘12 and ‘13 IPOs have on average returned 234 percent and 78 percent, respectively, according to Deutsche Bank data), a growing number of high-growth, venture-backed companies are filing for IPOs. In fact, five venture-backed IPOs have been completed already this year, and… Read More

The 11 Memes That Define Oculus Riftbook (NSFW)

Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to have a little fun. Virtual reality itself used to be a punchline. Now, Facebook and its latest purchase of Oculus Rift is the joke. But can Facebook raise and nurture Oculus Rift into the virtual reality device of the future? As the following memes show, not everyone trusts Zuckerberg and team to raise and nurture Oculus VR into the chosen one.… Read More

The Internet Is Held Together With Bubble Gum And Baling Wire

Did you know that, to quote an angry hacker: The Internet from every angle has always been a house of cards held together with defective duct tape. It's a miracle that anything works at all. Those who understand a lot of the technology involved generally hate it, but at the same time are astounded that for end users, things seem to usually work rather well. Today I want to talk about all of… Read More

Facebook Bought Oculus VR To Create The Metaverse, Or Why Angry Kickstarter Backers Need To Chill

There are many people out there who take a pessimistic view of Facebook. To them, Mark Zuckerberg is a huckster, out to sell us the snake oils of distraction and dopamine in exchange for our eyeballs and personal data. I take the more optimistic view. Read More

After Supporting Prop 8, New CEO Brendan Eich Comes Under Fire From Mozilla Employees

Mozilla employees across the web are calling for the removal of new CEO Brendan Eich, who previously held the position of CTO and has been with the company since its formation out of Netscape in the 90′s. In 2008, Eich donated $1,000 to support Prop 8, which was a California ballot proposition that aimed to ban gay marriage in California. In 2012, the public listing for the donation was… Read More

Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs…

Oh, hey, there TIDWRTWHUFOO fans. Thinking about going for a little dip this summer? How about you go for a swim with a one-ton crab that will smash you under its massive legs? Sounds fun? Definitely! Read More

Meet Astro Teller, Head Of Moonshots At Google’s Project X Lab

Astro Teller has your dream job, currently serving as the Captain of Moonshots at the Google[x] lab. There, he dreams and creates things like Google Glass, smart contact lenses, balloons that bring the Internet to the most remote regions, and many other seemingly impossible projects he and his team hope will one day become reality. Read More

Keen On… Scale: How To Spread Excellence From The Few To The Many

Bob Sutton is one of Silicon Valley's most influential business gurus. Read More

Tesla Strikes Deal To Keep Dealerships In New York

Tesla can keep its dealerships in the state of New York. An agreement was made between the auto maker and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that will allow Tesla to keep its five direct-to-consumer retail stores as long as it doesn’t open any more. Tesla took the deal and ran to the bank. As the WSJ reports, any new dealerships Tesla wishes to open would have to abide by a “strengthened… Read More

The Shifting IPO Market

Once the Facebook hangover had lifted, Marketo and Tableau had big openings, and Twitter smashed the world on its opening day, the door for IPOs appeared to be wide open. King Digital and Aerohive both pulled the trigger, and Box is on deck. The market reaction to Aerohive and King has been flat to negative. Even more, Aerohive mentioned that it saw a "deterioration" in the market during its… Read More

Apple Patent Addresses Texting-Walking Risk

Texting while walking can be dangerous, but Apple could be aiming to make it less so, judging from a patent awarded Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Apple has found an innovative way to use an electronic communication device's camera to continuously capture and present video images as background within a text-messaging session, its patent application 20140085334, titled "Transparent Texting," suggests. The device's rear-facing camera could be used to make it appear the user was looking through a transparent screen.

Gillmor Gang Live 03.28.14

Gillmor Gang - Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session today at 1pm Pacific. Live FriendFeed chat is here Read More

There's a New Kid on the Solar System Block

Astronomers this week reported what they believe to be the most-distant member of our solar system discovered so far. 2012 VP113, a probable dwarf planet that was found to lie beyond the known edge of the solar system, was discovered by Chadwick Trujillo, an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, using the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's new 13-foot Dark Energy Camera on the NOAO 4 meter telescope in Chile.

Zuck Nerds Out On Drones Vs Satellites For Delivering Internet

Free Space Optic lasers? Low earth orbit satellites? Solar-powered drones? Mark Zuckerberg has just penned a deep dive on how Facebook's newly revealed methods for delivering Internet to the developing world actually work. Here's are the highlights from his 3000 word progress report on Internet.org, including digs at Google's Project Loon, and how it all fits into Facebook's long-term plan. Read More

Confirmed: Dropbox Aqcui-Hires Social Reading App Readmill

As TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear predicted yesterday, Readmill just confirmed that Dropbox acquired the company and that the service will shut down. It is a pure acqui-hire as the team will join Dropbox’s team and work on its core service. “As of today, it is no longer possible to create a new account, and on July 1, 2014, the Readmill app will no longer be available,”… Read More

This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Facebook Oculus, HTC One, And Microsoft’s Glass Clone

Are you ready for the future? Facebook certainly is, considering the social giant just bought Oculus VR, which makes virtual reality gaming headsets, for a cool $2 billion. And Microsoft is joining in on the fun, with reports indicating that the company has purchased wearable computing technology similar to Google's Glass. Read More

Microsoft Will Stop Inspecting Customer Content, Will Instead Refer Cases To Law Enforcement

Microsoft has released a blog post from General Counsel and EVP – Legal & Corporate Affairs Brad Smith detailing changes to its practices stemming from a recent report detailing how it read a blogger’s email without their permission to track down a source code leak. Microsoft will not be doing that ever again, the post says, and instead they’ll refer any and all potential… Read More

Softcover Is A New Self-Publishing Platform Aimed At Technical Authors

Softcover is a startup offering what it calls a "frictionless" platform for self-publishing e-books. Co-founder Michael Hartl is an author himself, having written the Ruby on Rails Tutorial. (He's also a repeat entrepreneur, having founded Y Combinator-backed social networking startup Insoshi.) Hartl told me via email that between a publishing deal with Addison-Wesley and direct sales from the… Read More

US Judge: Free Speech Protects Baidu's Beijing-OK'd Results

A Manhattan judge ruled that a Chinese search engine's practice of restricting free speech is, wouldn't you know it, protected by free speech. Chinese Internet company Baidu won the dismissal of a U.S. lawsuit filed by activists who objected to its, shall we say, selective search results, which adhere to the government's notoriously limited view of what is and isn't acceptable. Eight New York-based writers and video producers were ticked that Baidu's search algorithms blocked U.S. users from viewing their content advocating for democracy in China.

Valve’s VR Expert Michael Abrash Joins Oculus As Chief Scientist

After Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus, many were worried that Oculus’ top talent — many of whom are industry pioneers — would leave out of spite. Seems quite the opposite is happening. Michael Abrash — the man largely responsible for leading Valve’s recent charge into Virtual Reality — has just joined Oculus as its chief scientist. Abrash outlines why… Read More

Sigfox Raises $20.6 Million To Create A Global Cellular Network For Connected Objects

French startup Sigfox raised a Series B round of $20.6 million (€15 million) from IDInvest and BPIFrance. Existing investors (Elaia Partners, Partech Ventures, Ixo and Intel Capital) also participated. As a reminder, Sigfox wants to create an alternative cellular network specifically dedicated to connected objects. Compared to traditional cellular networks, this network can cover a larger area… Read More

New Android Handsets Will Need “Powered By Android” Logo To Get Google Play, Gmail, Etc.

For better or worse, Samsung, HTC, and the rest of the Android manufacturing lot just looove to mess with the way Google’s OS looks and feels. So much so, in fact, that the OS sometimes stops looking like Android at all. Seemingly annoyed by the lack of credit where credit is due, Google has started asking manufacturers to show a “Powered By Android” logo at startup. According to… Read More

Hands On With The Ubi, A Voice-Activated “Ubiquitous Computer”

Have you ever wanted to stand on the bridge of your very own spacecraft and, in a stentorian voice, proudly declaim “Computer? What is the weather in Brooklyn tomorrow?” The Ubi, announced a few years ago and successfully funded to the tune of $229,000, was supposed to offer us this Picardian Utopia of always-on computing and, to a degree, they’ve succeeded. What does the Ubi do?… Read More

Oculus Hack Uses Cameras And Music To Mess With Your Perception

By being open to indie developers and relatively cheap, the Oculus Rift has done something that no VR headset has done before it: encouraged experimentation. This crazy augmented reality perception experiment, for example? Yeah, it probably wouldn't have happened with those old headsets. Read More

Philips Introduces Android-Powered 4K TVs Coming Later This Year

Google TV is likely going away entirely, to be replaced by a familiar face – Android. Philips has just unveiled new Ultra HD (4K, whatever you prefer) TVs (via 9to5Google) that will be running Google’s mobile OS when they hit stores in Q2 of this year. The sets seem to be coming to Europe and Russia first, but it won’t be long before the little Android bot makes its way to all of… Read More

Apple Reportedly Looking To Expand GT Advanced Sapphire Plant In Arizona

Apple is said to be exploring options to expand the facility it’s building with manufacturing partner GT Advanced Technologies in Arizona, a facility which is going to be sued to help the companies build sapphire components for future devices. The proposed expansion, reported by AppleInsider, would see the facility plans potentially double in size, and is currently seeking bids from… Read More

Japan’s New Alert System Will Warn Mobile Users Of Incoming Missiles, Terror Attacks

It’s hard to imagine a more terrifying text message than one that reads “Incoming ballistic missile detected. Please find shelter.” Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency announced this morning that their alert system — similar to the one you might’ve seen lately for broadcasting AMBER alerts to your phone in the US — will now automatically warn local… Read More

Google Naps, For When You Need A Nap Nearby

Dear Google, please don't sue the guys who built this adorable Google Maps parody. Following on today's theme of laziness, two men from the Netherlands named Kakhiel and Venour have developed a smart little tool to help you find the nearest nap. Meet, Google Naps. Read More

BlackBerry’s Device Plans Include Global Z3 Rollout, Return Of The Bold And Q20 In Q1

BlackBerry CEO John Chen discussed his company’s hardware plans for the coming year during the investor call following a disappointing, but not disastrous quarterly report card today. They didn’t reveal much in the way of new information, but they did indicate that BlackBerry isn’t afraid to go back to the well to revive old ideas in search of, well, old customers. Chen said that… Read More

Romain Jerome Releases Spacecraft Black “Undercover” Watch

It's Basel time again that means we're going to be seeing some amazing watches coming out of Switzerland that cost more than an office block in downtown Detroit. Today we're looking at the Spacecraft Black by Romain Jerome, a driver's-style watch that is covered in black PVD and featuring a unique jump-hours display on the front edge and a rotating minutes hand on the top. Read More

Facebook Messenger Adds A Dedicated Groups Tab

Facebook is gradually rolling out an update to its Facebook Messenger app for iOS and Android. Users will see a new dedicated “Groups” tab for group discussions. Instead of mixing one-on-one conversations with group discussions, you can pin permanent group discussions in a separate tab. You can also pin existing group discussions or start a new group from this screen. When you create a… Read More

Philips Makes Hue Smart Lights More Affordable, More Lazy-Friendly With Hue Lux And Hue Tap

In what seems to be the beginning of a real-life Wall-E situation, Philips has introduced an even easier way to control your home’s Hue smart lighting system. Because, you know, fishing your smartphone out of your pocket when you want to switch the lights will probably exhaust you to the point of hospitalization. Lazy factor aside, the Philips Hue Tap is actually a clever little gadget. It… Read More

Elon Musk Turns To Medium And GIFs To Reveal New Model S Fire Safety Feature

Is the company blog dead? Instead of posting on the Tesla blog, Elon Musk announced a significant new Model S feature on the personal blogging site Medium. Read More

Newspapers Cling to Life Despite Online News Trend

Print media is limping along and TV news has gained some strength, even though the trend toward getting news online continues to grow, Pew Research reported this week. It all boils down to economics, said Mark Jerkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center Journalism Project. Advertising revenues for newspapers have fallen about 50 percent from 2006, forcing some smaller publications to close. Others have reduced their publication schedules.

BlackBerry Surprises With Fourth Quarter Results

BlackBerry just posted its fiscal fourth quarter results, revealing a quarterly operating loss much smaller than analysts had feared. Shares of BlackBerry are up 6.63% (NASDAQ:BBRY) in pre-market trading. However, the revenue missed expectations and the company's cash position worsened. The company also revealed BlackBerry 10 phone sales, which were less surprising. Read More

Tapvalue Raises $2.2 Million For Its Advertising Technology For Offline Retailers

French startup Tapvalue raised $2.2 million (€1.6 million) to boost its international growth and keep iterating on the product. Tapvalue is an innovative cross-device tracking and advertising platform, but with a twist — it is specifically targeted towards offline retailers. In other words, the startup is bringing modern advertising technologies to brick and mortar store owners. “Our… Read More

Bioprinting, Part 2 - The Ethical Conundrum

Nearly 120,000 people in the United States are on the waiting list for an organ transplant that may save their lives, according to the American Transplant Foundation. "In the short term, we need many more people to register to be a potential organ donor," said Jordan Miller, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University. However, donor organs require immunosuppressive therapies, which can limit the recipient's quality of life, so over the long term, the medical community is "extremely excited" about 3D printing's potential.

Fancal Is A Calendar App That Showcases Your Photos

Fancal has such a simple but appealing concept that it's surprising there aren't more smartphone calendars like it. The iOS app showcases photos from your library, with dates laid out in an unobtrusive sidebar. Created by Dutch startup We Are Wow, Fancal is made for people who usually shy away from time management apps. In fact, it's more likely to appeal to the users of memory-keeping apps like… Read More

Y Combinator’s Top Three Startups From Winter 2014, According To Y Combinator Startups

With each class, the startups within Y Combinator vote to determine which colleagues they thought were most likely to be successful. One source sent us a list of those companies, listed in order. Read More

Multiple Pinterest Accounts Hacked, Flooded With Butt Pics

If you log onto Pinterest and see that one of your friends has suddenly developed a fixation with weight loss ads and butt pics like the ones below, don't click on the pins. Multiple accounts have been hacked over the last hour and flooded with spam. We've emailed Pinterest for comment. Read More

A Brave New Facebook

We now live in an era when Mark Zuckerberg speed-dials Obama, controls fleets of drones, brokers $19 billion acquisitions in a week, and buys whole virtual worlds. Facebook's mission has changed. While once it was soley "To make the world more open and connected", it's expanded to also "give people the power to share." And nothing is too crazy if it brings Facebook one step closer to that goal. Read More

TrueVault Raises $2.5M To Give Healthcare Apps HIPAA Compliance-As-A-Service

TrueVault, the startup that launched this week out of the most recent batch of Y Combinator with the aim of making it easier than ever for healthcare-focused apps to become compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), has closed on $2.5 million in seed funding. The money will be used to develop TrueVault’s “database as a service” that provides a… Read More

Threes’ Creators Publish An Epic Work Log To Show How Frustrating It Is To Be Cloned

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Not really. That’s just something that people like to say without really thinking about, because it sounds nice and makes them feel better. Kind of like saying “there’s no such thing as bad press.” when of-freaking-course there is. In reality, being imitated can be crushing — especially when your thing thats being… Read More

Office For iPad Is A Hit: Word Jumps To #1 In US, Excel To #3, PowerPoint To #4

Microsoft built it, and they came: Office for iPad is enjoying a big first day, with Word for iPad becoming the most popular app for the device in the United States just five hours after it went live. Data for the newly released Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps is still somewhat unfilled given the youth of the apps, but what is out there looks good. PowerPoint, for example, is the fourth most… Read More

Sony Just Launched The Most Boring Product In The World

Meet the Digital Paper, Sony's latest e-ink slate. It's part iPad, part e-reader, and must be made out of moon rocks. It's $1,100 and will be available in the States this May. But you're not going to buy it. Read More

Office For iPad Review: Surprisingly Worth The Wait

Microsoft has launched new Office for iPad software, finally, after people have been asking for it since, oh, say, the day in 2010 when the iPad originally launched. The new apps are currently available for anyone to download, so you can scratch that four-year itch, but is it worth it? Read on to find out why Microsoft’s iPad-based productivity suite will be a lifesaver for some, but… Read More

Apple Gets Its 30% Take On Office 365 Subscriptions Microsoft Sells Through Office For iPad

Microsoft is not just placating user demand with the Office for iPad apps it launched today; it’s also selling Office 365 subscriptions directly within the app. Those subs are worth a pretty penny to Microsoft, as it collects a recurring revenue stream starting at $99 per year per user from Office 365, but it turns out Apple also reaps a reward from sales made through the iPad app. Re/code… Read More

New Linux Office Suite Too Soft to Be King

The Kingsoft Office Suite holds the promise of bringing a near perfect clone of Microsoft Office to Linux desktop users. However, Kingsoft's developers still have some work to do on the Linux Alpha release to make it a beta deal. Other than OpenOffice and LibreOffice, the Linux platform lacks any full-featured office suite. Both of these more in common with each other than distinguishing features. Both flip-flop in performance, depending on which Microsoft skill they attempt to emulate. Their user interface is strictly classic old school.

Office For iPhone And Android Is Now Free

Along with a new version of Office for iPad, Microsoft made Office for iPhone and Android smartphones free today. The apps have updated in the respective app stores and can be snagged here for iPhone and here for Android. Read More

Boston And L.A. Pitch-Off Applications Close On Monday

You have exactly four days, depending on how much sleep you require, to apply to the TechCrunch startup Pitch-Offs happening in Boston and Los Angeles on April 8 and April 10, respectively. And if some part of you is blowing me off right now, thinking that this isn't a big deal, you'd be pretty seriously mistaken. Read More

Amazon Plans Free Video-Streaming Service, WSJ Reports

All signs point to Amazon announcing its streaming device at a NYC event next week. Not a lot is known about it, but a report from the WSJ today sheds a little light on Amazon's overall strategy, which will reportedly include free, ad-supported streaming service. According to this report, this service will not be limited to just Amazon Prime subscribers, but rather open to anyone willing to watch… Read More

Facebook Takes Another Crack At Read-It-Later With “Save” Button

Facebook's quest to become a newspaper has seen it launch multiple News Feeds, the standalone Paper app, trending topics, and more. But you're not always able to stop what you're doing and read what you discover, so Facebook is now testing a read-it-later Save button on feed articles that creates a section of bookmarked websites on your profile. Read More

Obamacare Passes The 6M Mark After “Between Two Ferns” Viral Bump

Today the government announced that the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, has passed the 6 million signup mark, putting it within striking distance of its original goals. The enrollment level is notable due to the law's troubled technological rollout. The catastrophic failure of Healthcare.gov is the stuff of legends now. To accelerate sign-ups and generate more attention, the Obama… Read More

Experts Found That Mt. Gox Lost A Mere 386 Bitcoin Due To Transaction Malleability

In the long, kabuki saga that is the fall of Mt. Gox, one point seemed always clear: the company lost loads of bitcoin to hackers using a bug called transaction malleability. It seems, however that this is wrong. According to a team at the ETH Zurich University, the company allegedly lost only 386 BTC or $200,000, nowhere close to the 744,408 bitcoins rumored to have been lost in the attack. Read More

Sources: Dropbox Acqui-Hiring Social Reading App ReadMill For $8 Million

TechCrunch has learned from sources that Dropbox is in talks to acqui-hire Berlin-based ReadMill, the social and shareable reading platform. Read More

Microsoft Launches Enterprise Mobility Suite

At a media event in San Francisco today, Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella announced the launch of the company's new Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS). The company says this bundle of services will make it easier for IT organizations in large businesses to manage all of the devices their employees carry with them, whether they are Windows devices, Android phone or tablets, iPads or iPhones. Read More

Andreessen Horowitz Raises Massive New $1.5 Billion Fund

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz just announced that it has closed its Fund IV. And it's a massive $1.5 billion fund for all sorts of investments from seed rounds to late-stage rounds. Previously, Andreessen Horowitz had raised $300 million in 2009 (Fund I), $650 million in 2010 (Fund II), $200 million in 2011 (Growth fund) and $1.5 billion in 2012 (Fund III). Read More

Stripe Starts Testing Bitcoin Payments

In another validation of the Bitcoin space, YC’s biggest payments company Stripe said it has started to test Bitcoin and ACH payments with a select number of users. They didn’t disclose who they’re partnering with, so it appears that they might be going their own way on this. Two of their better-known and funded competitors for processing merchant payments using Bitcoin are… Read More

Google Sees Government Requests For Information Balloon 120% Over Four Years

Google has seen a tremendous increase in requests for information made by the government, the company revealed in an update to its Transparency Report today. The updated report includes the number of requests made during the second half of 2013, and Google notes in its blog post announcing the news that total requests are up 120 percent since Google first began publishing these numbers. Google… Read More

Nomi Acquires Media Armor To Add Online Marketing Data To Its Offline Marketing Tools

Nomi, a data and marketing startup that serves brick-and-mortar retailers, is announcing that it has acquired ad startup Media Armor. CEO Marc Ferrentino said Nomi's vision is to "digitize the offline world to be on par with the online world," and the acquisition will help the company bring more digital marketing data into its platform. Read More

Foodini Is A 3D Printer That Lets You Print Dishes With Fresh Ingredients

Foodini is a 3D printer for foodstuffs. Its Florida-based makers are hoping their time-saving device becomes as ubiquitous on kitchen countertops as the microwave oven has become but also gets more people cooking with fresh ingredients, rather than reaching for that pre-processed packet. Read More

Spotify Could Be Planning An IPO For Later This Year

Music streaming service Spotify could go public at some point in the fall of 2014, according to Quartz. Rumors of an IPO have been floating around for weeks. And there are a few signs that seem to indicate that the company is getting ready for an IPO. In February, Reuters found an interesting job opening on the company’s website. Spotify was looking for an External Reporting Specialist to… Read More

YouTube Latest Site To Be Blocked In Turkey

YouTube is the latest victim in Turkey’s ongoing assault on social media. This comes one week after Turkey revoked access to Twitter within its borders. The removal of YouTube happened just hours after a leaked recording was published on YouTube that was reportedly a conversation of Turkey’s foreign minister, spy chief and a top general discussing different plans that could lead Turkey… Read More

Twitter Partners With Billboard To Help Expand The Reach Of Music Conversations

Twitter has announced one part of its new music strategy today, with a Billboard partnership that will result in the new ‘Billboard Twitter Real-Time Chart.’ The new tool will follow real-time conversation around U.S. music, monitoring mentions of artists, albums and songs being discussed both in the moment, and over time. That data will feed charts updated daily, and made… Read More

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio To Lay Out His Tech Plans At Internet Week

Bill de Blasio, who took office as the mayor of New York City at the beginning of this year, will be delivering the keynote address at the opening session of Internet Week New York on May 19. Although growing the tech industry was part of his economic platform, de Blasio's administration says this will be his "first major address to the tech community," and that he'll use the keynote to discuss… Read More

Apps Respond The Fastest In Canada And Japan, Finds New Report By Crittercism

Engaging design, marketing, and a solid user acquisition strategy are all key to making a successful app. But an app’s reliability often depends on factors beyond its developers’ control, according to a new report by Crittercism. The company, which makes an app performance management and error monitoring system, found that an app’s performance, including how often it crashes, is… Read More

UpTo Launches A Calendar App For The FOMO Generation

App developer UpTo is launching a free calendar app on iOS to give users a way to see what's going on around their lives, not just in them. The calendar is a small pivot for UpTo, which initially began as an app to integrate social events into existing calendar applications. Read More

The Jaquet Droz Signing Machine Signs Papers Mechanically So You Don’t Have To

High above a scorched Earth, in a sleek yacht tethered to the tip of the Terra Two spindle, Chancellor Herman Worthy was doing paperwork. His cleaner bots were all asleep and his assistant, a lithe android build to look like a long-dead 2000s era actress, was in her charging case. It was good to be alone. Read More

Bioprinting, Part 2 - The Ethical Conundrum

Nearly 120,000 people in the United States are on the waiting list for an organ transplant that may save their lives, according to the American Transplant Foundation. "In the short term, we need many more people to register to be a potential organ donor," said Jordan Miller, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University. However, donor organs require immunosuppressive therapies, which can limit the recipient's quality of life, so over the long term, the medical community is "extremely excited" about 3D printing's potential.

Twitter’s Sophomore Album: New Music Strategy To Focus On Conversations, Partnerships

Twitter has ditched its dedicated #Music app, the product of the acquisition of We Are Hunted, a social music discovery startup. But that doesn’t mean it’s dropping out of music altogether – the company has new plans for music tie-ins according to the Wall Street Journal, but it’s going to focus more on partnerships, conversations and supplementary content rather than on… Read More

Songza Inks Deal With Weather Company To Integrate Rain Or Shine Into Your Music Playlists

Songza, the app that brings music to you instead of forcing you to hunt for it, today announced a deal with The Weather Company to integrate weather data into the app. As it stands now, Songza uses the day, time, device type, your location, and your past behavior to deliver you expertly curated, human-made music playlists to match your mood and activity. Today, for the first time, the app will… Read More

Betaworks-Backed Tapestry Releases Update To Let You Build Stories In-App

Today Tapestry, the story-telling service out of betaworks, has released a big update to the mobile application, allowing users to create tapestries within the app for the first time ever. Originally, Tapestry was a web platform aimed at literary story-tellers. Instead of writing a bunch of text to be printed up on pages or converted quickly to an e-book, Tapestry offered authors a way to… Read More

Chromecast To Get Slingbox Support ‘Soon’

Slingbox is coming to Chromecast and it could be the little streamer’s first killer app. According to a forum posting by a Slingbox employee, Slingbox is working on supporting Chromecast and the feature will launch “soon” according to the well-placed Dave Zatz. With support for a Slingbox, a Chromecast instantly becomes distinctly more useful. A Slingbox streams a video signal to… Read More

Custom T-Shirt Design App Snaptee Launches Partnership Program

Snaptee, the iOS and Android app that lets users design and order their own custom T-shirts, has launched a new revenue-sharing program for photo-editing and design app developers. The startup's first beta partner is Manga Camera, a popular app that turns photos into comic book-like graphics. Read More

Now Samsung Has Bluetooth LED Light Bulbs, Too

Not to be outdone by LG or Philips, Samsung just introduced its own Internet-connected LED light bulb product line. Aptly called the Smart Bulb, these bulbs, available in several different styles, rock Bluetooth connectivity, allowing users to directly control the units from a smartphone or tablet. Read More

Apple Patents Smudge-Resistant Sapphire Coating, Suggesting Displays Are On The Way

Apple has filed for a patent (via AppleInsider) that adds further fuel to the fire around the possibility it will use sapphire glass for future device displays. The the new application describes how an oleophobic (oil-repelling) coating might be added to sapphire glass to make it smudge and fingerprint-resistant. So far, we’ve seen most of the evidence around Apple’s sapphire display… Read More

AngelBlocks Turns Your Ordinary Stuff Into The Ingredients For A Comprehensive Smarthome

A new Kickstarter project plans to offer smart home features to a range of devices, for connecting small apartment buildings to entire enterprises and office buildings. The AngelBlocks gadgets are open source, for easy modification, and communicate either 1,000 feet indoors or up to two miles outside, with battery life of just five years. There are different modules for different things, including… Read More

Apple Files Transparent Texting Patent To Help People Who Walk And Text

Sometimes it's the little things that matter. Like being able to carry on texting without walking into a tree. Apple apparently thinks so anyway. A patent Cupertino filed back in September 2012 has just surfaced with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office -- that shows the company thinking up ways to help people keep walking and texting without bumping into stuff. Read More

Devices Shipments To Grow 6.9% Globally This Year, Says Gartner, As PC Decline Softens

Analyst Gartner has just put out its latest worldwide devices forecast, predicting a growth rate of 6.9% for shipments of traditional PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones this year. That’s up on the 4.8% growth achieved last year. Collectively, 2.5 billion devices are expected to ship in 2014. Phones will make up 1.9 billion of that pie, a 4.9% increase on last year. Growth in phones… Read More

LinkedIn Adds Trending Content List And A Score For Companies’ Content Marketing Efforts

LinkedIn is introducing some new tools for businesses hoping to attract a following with their LinkedIn content. First up, there's a content marketing score, which measures the total effectiveness of a businesses' LinkedIn content. It's calculated by taking the total number of unique LinkedIn members who engaged with a companies' Sponsored Updates, Company Pages, LinkedIn Groups, employee… Read More

Lithium To Acquire Social Influence Scoring Site Klout For $200M

Social customer service company Lithium Technologies will announce on Thursday morning that it has acquired Klout for almost $200 million in cash and private stock, says Fortune. Read More

Aereo Says A Win For Broadcasters Would Have “Chilling” Consequences To Cloud Computing

Aereo has today filed its response brief with the Supreme Court in a case that will make or break the streaming TV startup. So far, we're in the preliminary stages of this particular case, with the broadcasters filing their initial briefing in March, arguing that Aereo violates Copyrights by retransmitting broadcast signals as a "public performance." Read More

Yo Instacart, Can I Get Some Shareable Grocery Lists?

I suck at grocery shopping, at least compared to some of my friends. One knows exactly what vegetables go into a killer get-the-hell-out-of-bed smoothie. A gymrat buddy can suggest a healthier alternative to every food. And my favorite drunk has the cocktail bar essentials memorized. Some of them already use grocery delivery service Instacart. Now I want them to be able to do the shopping for me. Read More

Box Unveils First Standalone Product And New API Pricing At Inaugural Dev Conference

Today at its Box Dev developer event in north San Francisco, Box, a cloud file storage and enterprise collaboration company, announced a number of product changes, new pricing schemes, and some new code. Especially in light of its impending IPO, understanding what Box is up to matters. Let’s dig in. Pricing And Growth Financial quibbles aside, Box has grown quickly in terms of product usage.… Read More

With Revenue Up 2.4X In The Past Two Months, Instacart Lands In NYC

Instacart, the grocery delivery service popular in Chicago, San Francisco and other locations, landed in New York City today. I spoke to Instacart this morning about the New York City addition, which it described as something of an evolution. Each city is unique in its makeup, design, weather and so forth, but it seems that New York City is more unique than other municipalities. To serve the… Read More

Bioprinting, Part 1: The Promise and the Pitfalls

It's long been the dream of humans to be able to regenerate body parts. Scientists have been researching this possibility for years, but the subject is complex, and they are just beginning to get to a glimmer of understanding as to what's required. "There are different layers of complexity in developing tissue-engineered products, so the easiest thing is to make it something that's one single type of cell and is a flat sheet," said Charlie Whelan, healthcare and life science director of consulting at Frost & Sullivan.

Digital Ad Company CPXi Raises $30M In Its First Outside Funding

Digital media holding company CPXi is announcing that it has raised $30 million in new funding. Founded in 2000, CPXi apparently raised no outside capital before this. The current round was a mix of debt and equity, and the money comes from the Business Development Corporation of America. Read More

Using Analytics, Bloomberg Beta Seeks Out Startup Founders

By now 350 employees at companies across the country might just be rethinking their day jobs, thanks to an email sent this morning by venture investment firm Bloomberg Beta. The early-stage investor, whose sole backer is Bloomberg LP, tapped those 350 people as the candidates most likely to become founders of startup companies. Bloomberg Beta constructed the list using analytical tools and… Read More

Online Engagement Ring Buyer Beware

Buying an engagement ring online feels like a strange thing to do. It’s up there with buying a car you’ve never test driven or renting a house you’ve never seen in person. But in these technological times, instead of going from large retail chain to local jewelry store to look at sparkly rings, the engaged-to-be create Pinterest boards. Some do this voluntarily because they dream… Read More

Microsoft And Dell Sign Patent Royalty Agreement For Android And Chrome OS Devices

Today Dell and Microsoft announced that they have signed an agreement relating to intellectual property, which will see the two companies "license each company’s applicable" patents regarding Android and Chrome OS devices, as well as Xbox consoles. Read More

Inside India’s E-commerce Boom: Growing Base Of Mobile Internet Users, Women Shoppers And Several Infrastructure Bottlenecks

Among everything else that’s driving e-commerce growth in India, the ease of buying things sitting inside homes, avoiding the hazards of traffic snarls, worsening air pollution and finding a parking slot, will easily rank at the top, no matter how simplistic it sounds. India’s e-commerce industry has seen its most action-packed period over past few months — several hundreds of… Read More

Twitter Tests More Inviting Profile Designs On Mobile

Twitter has been testing designs furiously all winter, including a tile-like format for tweets and a Facebook-style profile page on the web. But TNW has spotted an update in the Twitter app (which is being partially rolled out as a test, considering my version of the app doesn't show the change) that brings the same profile look to mobile. Read More

Is Google Thwarting Android-x86 Development?

Has Google been spreading FUD to discourage computer makers from using an Android OS retooled to run on legacy computers? The maintainer of the Android-x86 Project has suggested that the Justice Department should investigate whether Google has been interfering with adoption of the open source code his community is developing. The release of the latest version of an open source Android OS to run as an alternative Linux distro may stall without Google's support.

Twitter Bolsters Image Support With People Tagging And Multiple Photos Per Tweet

Twitter has announced a couple of additions to its image offerings today, including the ability to tag up to 10 people in a photo without using any precious characters up. You’ll also now be able to attach up to 4 photos to a tweet, and Twitter will automatically craft a collage for you. These new features will be available in the Android and iOS apps first. More to follow… Read More

Timehop Brings Its Mobile Time Machine To Android

Timehop, the mobile app offering a way to recall your past one day at a time by displaying your old photos and posts from Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter, is now launching its service on Android. The app, for those unfamiliar, is a simple service that lets you look back on what happened on this day last year, and the year prior, and so on. It’s a “this day in history”… Read More

King Falls 15% On Its IPO Day, Erasing $1.1B In Market Cap

Today King went public, and immediately was given a raspberry by investors who sent its stock price down throughout the day, hammering the company to the tune of more than 15 percent and $1.1 billion in value. A good flotation this was not. In fact, it was the worst so far this year. Read More

Google’s I/O Registration Lottery Happens April 8 – 10: May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

Google is doing something different with registration for its 2014 I/O Developer Conference this year. The company isn’t doing first come, first serve this time around, which has resulted in a crazy scrum and a lot of server errors in the past, but instead will open a full two-day window during which anyone can sign up, after which Google will choose randomly from the entire pool of… Read More

Vice Media’s Shane Smith To Join Us At TechCrunch Disrupt NY

After years of stagnation, the media industry is in full-fledged evolution mode. Consumption is changing, creation is changing, and even the act of reporting is transforming right before our eyes. And few people seem to have a clearer view of the future of news than Shane Smith, co-founder of Vice Media. Read More

Build Your Own Makerbot-Inspired Robotic Tattoo Machine

I actually checked to see if today was April Fool's but, seeing as how it wasn't and seeing as how it would be quite simple to recreate this cool piece of hardware, I figured we could check it out. Basically it's a DIY tattoo machine that uses a Makerbot base with a needle attached to the extruder. To use it you simply strap your arm to the platform (!!!) and wait for the robot to blow some Sailor… Read More

BlackBerry Sued An Executive Who Defected To Apple

The story goes BlackBerry senior vice-president for software Sebastian Marineau-Mes resigned from his post in late December 2013 after Apple offered him a position as vice president of Core OS. But BlackBerry wouldn’t let him go and sued for breach of contact. Marineau-Mes alleged his contract is not a valid and enforceable contract. The Guardian reports that a court sided with BlackBerry… Read More

A Brief History Of Oculus

Less than two years ago, Oculus raised 2.5 million dollars on Kickstarter. Yesterday, they were acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. Oculus has definitely generated its fair share of buzz in its short lifespan — yet many people are hearing about them for the first time this week. For them, and for those who might've missed some details along the way, here's Oculus' story so far. Read More

HTC Flips Switch on One M8 Buzz Machine

Ask the Internet. That's the pitch in HTC's TV ads for its new flagship smartphone, the HTC One M8. It's a pitch that hopes to acquire by word of mouth what HTC was unable to get for its predecessor: consumer mindshare. "The challenge for any vendor outside of Samsung and Apple in the North American market is to get on the radar screen," said Gartner analyst Van L. Baker. "HTC did that once in the past, but faded rapidly, which points to the challenges of staying on top of the market if you're not a Samsung or Apple."

Watch A Scrabble-Bot Learn To Interact With And Insult Its Opponents

Robots will soon live among us - helping us out of bed, monitoring us, and assisting us in countless ways - but what if we just want to play a game of Scrabble? Victor is a Scrabble-playing robot created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University Quality Of Life Technology center to show how robots can interact with us on a daily basis, becoming friendly parts of our lives rather than cold metal… Read More

Second Life Founder’s Startup High Fidelity Raises $2.5M From True Ventures

High Fidelity, a new startup from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, has raised $2.5 million in new funding from True Ventures, we’ve learned. The funding was also noted in an SEC filing. The company debuted last year but still hasn’t formally launched. We don’t know a lot about what High Fidelity is developing but what we do know is that the company is prototyping the… Read More

FileThis Comes To iOS To Automatically Gather And Organize Your Personal Documents

FileThis, the cloud-based document filing service which works something like Mint.com, in that it automatically logs into your online accounts then gathers data on your behalf, is now taking its service mobile with the introduction of the FileThis iOS application. The service, for those unfamiliar, was first announced at MacWorld in 2012. Today, FileThis can access your documents saved online,… Read More

Last.fm Shuts Down Its Streaming Service To Focus On Scrobbling

Music discovery company Last.fm just announced that it will end its subscription radio streaming service on April 28th. The radio service is currently available in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany with a freemium model. For $3/€3/£3, users can access Last.fm radio on their phones and get an ad-free experience. The streaming service is also available in Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and… Read More

Three Classes In, Boost.vc Is Raising A New Fund With Plans To Incubate 100 Bitcoin Startups By 2016

Adam Draper and Brayton Williams launched Boost.vc in 2012 at a time when the accelerator market was beginning to burst at the seams with new entrants — some would say it was nearing saturation. In an effort to differentiate their approach and attract quality startups amidst the growing noise in Accelerator Land, the Boost founders decided to put a premium on experimentation. For the… Read More

Education Technology Startups Raised Nearly Half A Billion Dollars In Q1

Education technology-focused startups raised over $488 million already in the first quarter of 2014, marking the single biggest quarter for capital committed to the sector in the past five years. What began as a trickle in 2009, with 17 companies raising $63.9 million at the beginning of the year, is now a flood as funding leapt to $488.8 million in 84 venture-backed startups, according to… Read More

Rocket the Vote! NASA Asks People to Vote on New Space Threads

NASA is asking people to vote on their favorite design for the outer shell of the new Z-2 spacesuit. While the Z-2 models may descend from their Apollo 13-style ancestors, there are some decidedly 21st Century twists. The "Biomimicry" design, for example, has a reptilian flare; "Trends in Society" has a more everyday look -- at least, as far as spacesuits go; and "Technology" has electroluminescent wire and exposed rotating bearings, among other features.

AppGyver Raises $2.5M Funding Round To Expand Its App Development Platform

AppGyver, an HTML5-centric development platform for quickly building mobile apps, today announced that it has raised a $2.5 million funding round led by Initial Capital, an early investor in companies like Supercell, with participation by Finnish VC firm Open Ocean Capital, which was established by the founders of MySQL. Read More

Twitter Files For Lawsuits In Turkish Courts To Challenge The Country’s Access Ban

Twitter has just announced that it has formally joined the cause of those defending use of its service in Turkey, by filing petitions for lawsuits in a number of Turkish courts after working with its Turkish attorney over the course of the past few days. The petitions ask that the ban be lifted formally, and join the existing chorus of Turkish legal community members, citizens and journalists who… Read More

Scribd’s Subscription E-Book Service Moves Into Travel With The Full Lonely Planet Library

Subscription e-book startup Scribd is announcing a deal with famed travel publisher Lonely Planet. Scribd started out as a service where users could share different types of written content (writers at TechCrunch still use it to share documents that we want to embed in our posts), but last year the company announced its intentions to become a Netflix-style style subscription service, where… Read More

Lemnos Labs Raises $20M, Opens 8,000 Sq. Ft. Warehouse To Support Early-Stage Hardware Startups

Hardware continues to be a hot sector in the startup community, with a number of investment firms backing startups that make physical goods to change the way we live. Lemnos Labs is one of those firms, and it has raised a $20 million fund and opened up a huge new warehouse space to exclusively support early-stage hardware startups. Read More

Bioprinting, Part 1: The Promise and the Pitfalls

It's long been the dream of humans to be able to regenerate body parts. Scientists have been researching this possibility for years, but the subject is complex, and they are just beginning to get to a glimmer of understanding as to what's required. "There are different layers of complexity in developing tissue-engineered products, so the easiest thing is to make it something that's one single type of cell and is a flat sheet," said Charlie Whelan, healthcare and life science director of consulting at Frost & Sullivan.

Blowback From The Rift

Sour grapes. In the era of multi-billion dollar acquisitions and high expectations, it's easy to have them. But what has driven the mass outrage against Oculus and their sale to Facebook for a cool $2 billion? The endless fear of the sellout, the group or person or brand that catered to one market and then, sensing the end of the road, turned to the wide world and re-rigged itself for mass… Read More

Producteev Adds iPad And Outlook Apps Following Jive Acquisition

Task management tool Producteev just launched a new iPad app and a native Outlook plugin. Now part of Jive, the company also launched a new pro plan. For $99 per month, you get the Outlook plugin, custom branding and premium support for up to 100 employees. “There is a big market opportunity with people who use Outlook,” Producteev co-founder Ilan Abehassera told me in a phone… Read More

Opening Consumer Products To Crowdsourced Investment, CircleUp Raises $14 Million

Technology's ability to harness the wisdom of crowds has created massive new businesses that support entrepreneurship around arts, craftsmanship, and technology while simultaneously re-shaping the market for personal lending. With its new $14 million financing, CircleUp wants to change the development of consumer products with equity crowdfunding. Read More

Monument Valley, ustwo’s Sumptuous Escher-Inspired iOS Game, Launches Globally On April 3 — For $3.99

Monument Valley, the much anticipated iPad and mobile game from London app & design studio ustwo (maker of the late lamented antisocial photo-sharing app Rando), will be launching globally on April 3 -- priced at $3.99/£2.49, TechCrunch can confirm. Read More

iFixit Confirms Why The HTC One M8 Ships With A Stellar Warranty

John Biggs said it best yesterday: "Come For The Styling, Stay For The Warranty". Perhaps one of the best reasons to buy the new HTC One is the screen warranty, which iFixit just confirmed by awarding the new smartphone with a 2 out of 10 on its repairability scale. Read More

Twitter Recovered Most Of The Tweets That Vanished, Including Ellen’s Oscar Selfie

Tuesday evening, for the third time in a month, Twitter experienced technical difficulties. It wasn't an outage from high traffic or developmental testing — it was missing celebrity tweets. It sounds flippant, but celebrity presence is a big part of what makes Twitter so popular. Yesterday, for at least twelve hours, several highly trafficked tweets from stars like Lady Gaga, Justin… Read More

New NYT Now App Marks The Grey Lady’s First Step Into Native Ads On Mobile, Dedicated Mobile Editors

"All the News That's Fit to Print" was a viable business model for many years for the New York Times, but these days, as newspaper costs rise and readers look elsewhere for their information, the Grey Lady is focused on stepping up its digital game. Read More

LG Sheds Light on Internet of Things

LG Electronics on Monday unveiled a light bulb designed to illuminate consumers lives in a more intelligent way. The Smart Lamp, which can be controlled by an iOS or Android device over Bluetooth or WiFi, debuted in LG's home market of South Korea. The 10W LED bulb is 80 percent more energy-efficient than other incandescent bulbs, LG claimed, and will last for up to 10 years when used for around five hours per day. Users can alter the lighting in their homes according to a range of preferences.

Turkish Court Halts The Government’s Application To Ban Twitter

Breaking: A Turkish court has granted a motion for stay of execution of the Turkish government’s application to block Twitter in the country. The decision was taken following appeals to courts by by the Turkish Bar Association, Journalists’ Association of Turkey and some politicians, reports local tech blog Webrazzi. Lawyers argued that the Telecommunications Authority of Turkey,… Read More

Tencent Acquires 28% Stake In South Korea’s CJ Games For $500M

Tencent, the maker of WeChat, has announced that it will pay $500 million for a 28% stake in CJ Games. The transaction will make Tencent the third-largest investor in the South Korean gaming company and help it expand its mobile gaming business worldwide. Tencent is currently China's largest integrated online game company. Read More

Spacious Wants To Help London Startups Find Office Space — Counts Former PM Advisor Rohan Silva As Chair

Spacious, founded by Tushar Agarwal and Tom Watson last November as part of the Entrepreneur First programme, is an online marketplace for startup office space, initially targeting companies in London. Read More

Rocket Internet’s PricePanda Launches In Thailand

Rocket Internet has launched its price comparison site PricePanda in Thailand. The site, which is also backed by Tengelmann Group and AB Kinnevik, already operates in eight countries throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia. Read More