When a mobile game pivots: Y Combinator-backed MinoMonsters, a Pokémon-inspired game from two of the incubator’s youngest founders made a bold move earlier this summer when they released version 2.0 of the iOS game. This wasn’t a minor feature release – they significantly changed the gameplay. Instead of exploring worlds and performing quests with battles in between, the game’s focus shifted to become entirely about the battles. That strategy, it seems, is working. MinoMonsters has now passed 1.5 million players, and nearly every other metric has improved as well. The team has even taken in an extra bit of funding.
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App discoverability is a constant thorn in the side of developers. It’s also an obvious annoyance for consumers who have to spent time sifting through app store chaff to find the bits of software really worth downloading. Amazon looks to be considering both sides of this problem with a new feature — called Billboards — it’s just added to the Kindle Fire and Fire HD app store. → Read More
MoPub, the Accel-backed mobile advertising startup founded by ex-AdMob and Google employees, is today announcing a $12 million round of Series B funding which the company says will be used for hiring and international expansion, including putting folks on the ground in Europe, Japan, Korea and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region. → Read More
Moment.me is a newly launched iPhone application which automatically aggregates photos, videos and tweets from social networks, and then organizes them into multimedia albums it calls “moments.” It currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+ - meaning, it sources the content from those networks to create these moments, so you don’t have to change any of your current sharing behavior.
The system works using a proprietary “smart-matching” technology to determine which pieces of content should be organized together. When an event is ongoing, a red “Live” banner appears, indicating that updates are still coming in. → Read More
One of the worst things about getting drunk far from home is having to abandon your car overnight which you then have to painfully retrieve it the following day, hangover and all. Sometimes, the car isn’t even where you left it – it’s been towed. A startup called StearClear launched earlier this spring to address that problem by offering a designated driver service that uses driver teams who drive you home in your own vehicle, with another StearClear driver following behind.
Today, the company is announcing some numbers related to its initial traction and an additional round of $600,000 in funding, bringing its total funding to date to $1.1 million. → Read More
If you’ve ever needed a better way to manage your contact lists directly on your iPhone, a new app called Ringya (yeah I know, kind of a dopey name, but stay with me here) can help. But what makes this Address Book replacement app interesting is one of the methods it supports for adding contacts to your groups: you can just take a picture of a contact list that’s printed out on paper. That may seem like a niche use case (who uses paper?!), but it’s actually surprisingly helpful. I’ve already found a handful of paper lists sitting around my house, and for business users, it’s likely even more common.
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Last week it was revealed that personal data management app Evernote would be integrating Skitch – the image-editing app it acquired last year that has now seen 10 million downloads — further into its service, grandfathering Skitch.com in the process. Today, the company showed off what that will mean, with the launch of Skitch 2.o, with new features like pixelation, instant integration with your existing Evernote account, and, for the first time, availability on iPhone and iPod touch. (That also puts it in closer quarters with Snapseed, the iPhone-based image editing app bought earlier this week by Google.)
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Munich, Germany-based company, Carpooling.com, whose ride-sharing service helps shift more than a million people around Europe each month, has launched a new Android app — adding a PayPal payment option and a push notifications messaging system, among other new features. → Read More
Just when you thought you had settled on your preferred news magazine for the iPad (be it Flipboard, Zite, Currents, or something else entirely), another new contender enters the ring. Today, the NewzSocial app is launching its own version of a social news magazine for iPad, but is offering a different take in order to stand out from the rest. In other magazines, you subscribe to read news from various sources (blogs, newspapers, online magazines, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) or you can pick from an editorially selected bundle of sources (like Flipboard offers with its sections on “Home,” “Travel,” “Photography,” “Tech,” etc.). But in NewzSocial, you, the reader, curate your own sections which can be as broad (healthy eating) or as narrow (Gluten-free recipes) as you want. And you can collaborate on these sections with friends. → Read More
When it rains, it pours. Today, Apple is rolling out the new version of its iOS 6 mobile operating system, and already we’ve come across several companies building apps poised to take advantage of one of the OS’s most notable new features: Passbook. Another new app, called PassRocket, is designed for retailers and other small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) who want to be able to quickly and easily create their own passes and loyalty cards for their customers. But the big difference with this one is that it’s free.
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Robin, a virtual assistant application for Android that’s a bit like KITT in app format, is out with its first major update since its public beta launch in June. Not meant as a Siri clone, Robin is focused primarily on assisting users while driving – that is, it helps keep their eyes on the road by offering support via its voice and gesture interface. Robin currently offers navigation, real-time traffic, parking and gas info, local search, and more, and can also narrate your tweets, Facebook posts, emails, and SMS messages. It can even tell you jokes, if that’s your thing, or play your music using a variety of apps.
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Last week during TC Disrupt Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff referred to how the company was planning a Box-style competitor called Chatterbox. Today, the company has officially announced it. It is name-dropping Dropbox in its promotional description, calling it “The Dropbox for the Enterprise”, as part of its bigger push into cloud services and “consumerizing” enterprise IT.
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If, one day, we really are all going to be carted around in driverless cars from the likes of Google and others, then we may as well have some apps on board to keep us occupied. Today, the Linux Foundation announced that it was throwing its hat into the car-apps ring, with the creation of the Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup. → Read More
Open Ocean, the VC fund led by former MySQL and Nokia execs, is investing $1.3 million in Stockholm, Sweden-based startup Truecaller — maker of the crowdsourced phone directory app and web white pages service that lets you look unknown phone numbers and match them with names. The Series A funding comes from Open Ocean’s Fund Three fund. → Read More
CloudMagic, the cross-platform cloud search utility, is one of those little undiscovered gems that has turned into an app that I now launch every day. The service, which started back in 2010 as a browser extension for faster Gmail search, later expanded to iOS and Android, and added support for additional services like Google Docs, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, Microsoft Exchange, and Twitter. Today, CloudMagic is getting a major overhaul with the debut of version 2.0. → Read More
Care.com, the site that helps parents and families find babysitters, nannies, childcare, and senior care professionals, is today releasing a new iPhone application called Karoo which is designed to connect parents with their child’s caregivers as well as record memories. Unlike some of the privacy-focused social networking apps that have launched in recent months, Karoo isn’t just about socializing the experience around a family’s shares, but also makes parent-to-caregiver communication a key aspect to what it’s offering. The app is a good fit for new parents, or those with very young children, given its emphasis on logging things like feedings and milestones. But its ability to record stories, photos and videos in an invite-only network means it can also work for any family looking for a more private way to share. → Read More
Outbid’s real-time mobile auctions are neat enough as is, but the company has just pushed out an iOS app update that packs a much-needed feature to make the auction experience complete: users can now hear live auctioneers hawking their goods.
But let’s back up a bit first. In case you’re not yet familiar, Outbid allows users to create fee-free auctions through which they can sell their pointless junk. A familiar concept to be sure — I still can’t quite believe eBay has been around since 1995 — but Outbid’s big draw is that it turns that auction into an interactive spectacle that’s typically over in minutes as opposed to hours or days. → Read More
Dropbox has been busy. After adding new security features in the wake of an accounts-hijacking debacle, and adding support for the Galaxy Camera and the Galaxy Note II, the company has now released an update to its iOS app.
Not too long ago, Dropbox added direct uploads to Vimeo, and this time the company is stepping it up a notch adding support for Facebook and Twitter. → Read More
The screensaver is not dead! Familiar, a startup that lets friends and families privately share photos directly to each others’ Macs, PCs, smartphones, and tablets, has been steadily gaining traction following its beta launch last winter. The company just hit a milestone of 21 million photos shared through its platform in the month of August, and is today announcing that it closed a $1.3 million round of seed funding earlier this year.
Investors in the round include Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, Acequia Capital and Allen & Company. The new additions join Familiar’s previous investors and advisors, Hadi and Ali Partovi (early advisors and investors in Facebook, Dropbox and Zappos), as well as Nat Brown, Dave Goldberg, Blake Krikorian, Emil Michael, Owen Van Natta, and others. → Read More
Square’s $200 million Series D and $3.25 billion valuation yesterday may have risen expectations massively for where mobile payments will ultimately go, but for now the vast majority of us are still pulling out our cash, cards and checks to buy things. A study from Deloitte, notes that today in the UK only 1% of mobile consumers have ever used a handset to pay for something in a retail location. However, it also provides some convincing evidence that we are at least well on our way to linking mobiles — specifically smartphones — to retail purchases anyway.
In the U.S. Deloitte says that using apps and mobile web sites while shopping accounted for a 5% bump in retail sales, equating to $159 billion in in-store sales. In the UK the proportion was slightly higher, but that the actual value was lower: mobile usage gave a 6% bump, or £15.2 billion ($24.7 billion) in sales. Deloitte notes that this puts the value of mobile influence at twice that of how much money is being processed through mobile payments at the moment in the UK.
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They’ve been hinting at it for more than a year now. Rovio has long said that the Angry Birds universe isn’t limited to the vantage point of the birds. The pigs, in fact, have a long backstory.
And this is the month where they’ll finally be able to tell it with the ‘Bad Piggies’ upcoming release on Sept. 27. The Finnish game developer, which is backed by Accel Partners, Atomico and Felicis, finally gave a sneak preview of gameplay. Not too surprisingly, it’s a physics game. But instead of launching birds into complicated structures of glass and wood, the player is tasked with building vehicles and flying aircraft so that the pigs can steal more eggs. → Read More
GREE, the $4.7 billion mobile gaming giant from Japan that’s trying to break into Western markets, just bought another American studio to bolster its first-party game development.
The company acquired App Ant Studios for an undisclosed amount after working with the company on Android games. App Ant was co-founded by Brian Frederick and Paul Pierre, an artist and a UX designer who had done stints at Andreessen Horowitz-backed TinyCo, Storm8 and EA. All members of the team, including the four co-founders, are joining GREE. The iOS version of the company’s main game Dino Life was only previously published in Canada, which is a popular testing ground for game developers before they launch to a broader audience. It gives them the chance to refine and optimize a game and identify any early problems with retention. → Read More
Parking Panda, the startup that lets individuals rent out their unused parking spaces and allows garages to discount their lots during slow periods, is now available as a mobile application. The app currently supports a parking finder function in 25 cities, plus parking rentals in the service’s early markets of Baltimore and Washington D.C., as well as new additions San Francisco and Oakland. Using the mobile interface, drivers looking for a space can quickly pull up a list of nearby parking locations. (Hopefully, after having pulled over first!). Homeowners can also use the app to list their spaces’ availability, set prices, and approve rental requests. → Read More
Recently, I took a look at IK Multimedia’s iRig STOMP digital stomp box. In order to test it out, I used AmpliTube Slash — a version of the same company’s amp modeling app that’s based on the Marshall amp sounds of Slash (you know…Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators).
The app sounded quite good, so I inquired if I could ask Slash a few questions about it, how it was developed and how he uses it. He was kind enough to oblige, via phone, from his hotel room somewhere in the world while I was backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt last week. Here is our ever-so-brief conversation. → Read More
Square has announced that it has finally closed its Series D round, totalling $200 million, with investors including Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management, and Starbucks Coffee Company. It values the mobile payments company started by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey at $3.25 billion, according to AllThingsD.
Square has been hush-hush on confirming this for months, although it did announce one tranche of the funding, $25 million, at the same time as it announced a wide-ranging Starbucks partnership in August. → Read More
Apple’s gradual extrication from Google services is having a knock-on effect in international markets — and Google’s competitors elsewhere. In Russia, the local search leader Yandex is now powering Apple’s mapping service on iOS6 — and TechCrunch understands from sources close to the situation Yandex and Apple are working on an even bigger deal, in which Yandex would become the default search on the mobile version of Safari. In both the case of maps and search, Yandex is/would be replacing Google.
The appearance of Yandex as the company powering Apple’s Maps service in Russia was first discovered by Russian tech bloggers (here’s one, and here’s another). The Yandex integration is appearing in the Gold Master version of iOS6 used by developers; it will be widely available to Russian users on September 19. Yandex is not commenting on the matter.
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In March we wrote about the launch of UpTo, an iPhone app that attempts to build an event-based social network around your calendar, using the iPhone calendar API. Whether you use Google Calendars, Outlook or Yahoo, UpTo goes for agnostic and works with whatever calendar you already have synced with your phone to eliminate friction that stands in the way of sharing or adding events while you’re on the go.
The app also includes group sharing functionality so that you can add friends from Facebook, exiting contacts, put them into groups, share events from your calendar to UpTo’s feed with a couple of clicks or direct to your social networks. Users can also chat with friends in realtime, along with adding events to GCal, for example, straight from the app. In its attempt to become a GroupMe or Plancast for your calendar, today, UpTo is adding another big piece to the puzzle with a “Discover” section that makes it simple for users to find and follow Event Streams. → Read More
A database migration gone awry caused the outage and poor availability that GitHub customers experienced this week.
In a lengthy blog post today, GitHub’s Jesse Newland, apologized for the outage and said overall it was way below the company’s standards. → Read More
Mobile app Thumb, which has been asking users to provide their opinions since its original private beta launch in June 2010 as Opinionaded, today revealed to TechCrunch that it now has more than 1.2 million registered users. It marks the first time the company has talked in detail about its specific user population size.
Thumb has been vocal about engagement stats in the past, however, telling TechCrunch in December of last year that users receive on average 50 to 100 responses to questions they post on the site, which can be about anything, and which other users can comment on or thumb up and thumb down. This generates a cumulative impression of sentiment on submitted items. → Read More
The new iPhone 5 has a new screen with new dimensions, and this time, making existing apps fill that space and look good isn’t just a matter of doubling dimensions of all assets like it was with the introduction of the Retina display. This time around, the change will require more varied responses, depending on what kind of app or app element you’re working with.
I spoke to a couple of developers of varying technical expertise and experience, and picked their brains on what kinds of challenges people are facing in getting their apps ready for the iPhone 5. Existing unmodified apps will run fine in letterbox mode, with two black bars on each side, but users will be hungry for updated apps that show off the new screen, so developers are understandably trying hard to be ready on day one. → Read More
