Last week, geek-focused early smartwatch player WIMM Labs was revealed to have been acquired by Google, lending strong support to earlier speculation that the search giant would enter the watch-based computing fray with a wearable device follow up to its ambitious Google Glass project. Consider it the opening bell as the race begins to own consumer wrists, and expect more targets of opportunity to… → Read More
Only this August, wine retailer NakedWines, the customer-funded online wine retailer, announced it had raised $10 million in a third round of investment from a German group of direct wine-selling companies and founder shareholders. The money will be used to expand in the U.S. and Australia from its UK base. Now it’s launching of a new bond for retail investors, The Naked Fine Wine Bond. There have… → Read More
Shutterfly has acquired R and R Images. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The company announced that it gave an inducement grant to R and R Images’ founder Rod Key. The grant consists of up to 38,492 shares of Shutterfly stock vested over three years. At the time of publication, Shutterfly’s stock was at $51.96 per share, making the total shares worth about $2 million. → Read More
If corporations can be people, why can’t people be corporations? A stealth startup called Fantex aims to allow celebrities and professional athletes to file for initial public offerings (IPOs).
Fantex describes itself as “the world’s first marketplace that lets consumers invest real money in stocks linked to the value and performance of the brands of the world’s top athletes.” → Read More
For sedentary medical patients, one of the easiest ways to reduce the time of hospital stays and decrease the risk of complications like blood clots and pressure ulcers is simply to get up and walk around. But with medical equipment like oxygens tank or IV drips in tow, it can take nurses up to 20 minutes to prepare a patient for ambulation, adding up to hundreds of hours of wasted time each… → Read More
This weekend, summer is sadly coming to a close (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least.) But all is not lost! At least we still have CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few of us TechCrunch writers together to chat about the most interesting tech news stories from the past seven days. → Read More
Returning for his fourth and final visit to the Indian offices that would grant him a coveted five-year business visa, social entrepreneur Alex Stevens* was confident his wild goose chase was almost at an end. However, facing the elusive supervisor, he was greeted with an awkward smile, a head tilt from side-to-side, and, “sorry, you can’t get your visa now, please come back in some time.” → Read More
When it comes to personalization, Amazon has been one of the pioneers in mining and using data to create a more curated e-commerce experience for consumers. But by now, nearly all e-commerce companies and marketplaces have caught on and are using more personalized recommendations to enhance the user experience when shopping and browsing. Amazon has been particularly focused over the past few years… → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — settle in for the Labor Day weekend with a tour of a busy news week. Stops along the way include iBeacon in iOS7, Twitter’s thin blue line, the politics of twerking, and devices, devices, devices.
Short takes on Bill Gates’ unlikely return, Apple’s iTrade-In offer, why Chromecast will change our… → Read More
Coinchat is a Bitcoin-incentivised browser-based chatroom where you can shoot the breeze with strangers online and earn Bitcoin in the process. Where’s the catch? Well, there isn’t really one. The Bitcoin you’re earning through chatting with other users comes from the site’s own revenue generation — funded by ads and also a transfer fee it charges when users send Bitcoin tips. → Read More
It started with an idea: How can we get our drinks more quickly at the bar? Dreamed up at 2 a.m. in Coloft, a Los Angeles coworking space, future founder Mike Townsend doodled up an iPad application mockup that he called Apptini to answer the question.
The product, later known as Flowtab, had been born. Its life became a startup story that most don’t tell: A company that didn’t make it. → Read More
Google has confirmed it acquired WIMM Labs last year, a company that previously made an Android-powered smartwatch before shuttering operations in 2012. At the time a message on its website said it had entered into an exclusive partnership without releasing further details, but it’s now clear that partner was Google, rather than Apple as some had initially speculated. → Read More
A few weeks ago we reported that Nate Richardson, the CEO and co-founder of Waywire, would be leaving the company as it makes a strategic shift from content creation to content curation. Well now we know where he’s landed: Richardson has joined our parent company AOL as the President of AOL Live, TechCrunch has learned. → Read More
Back in June, Facebook said it would be rolling out a number of features for following public conversations, and it looks like the company’s holding true to that promise.
Specifically, the company is testing a section highlighting “Trending” topics that appears alongside its desktop newsfeed. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the test, and it included a screenshot that looks pretty much… → Read More
A story published by Bloomberg floats the idea that Microsoft might spin off its Xbox business, which it calls “more likely [following current CEO Steve Ballmer's] exit.” The publication values Xbox at around $17 billion, a figure based on a comparative revenue multiple with Nintendo. This is precisely the sort of bilge that cavorts and pretends to be serious analysis. → Read More
Target’s answer to Walmart’s Vudu, Netflix, and iTunes, is preparing to launch. Employees at the Minneapolis-headquartered retailer were told this week that Target Ticket, as the service is called, will soon be offered to consumers, allowing them to rent and purchase digital copies of movies and television shows like they do on Apple’s iTunes, then play them back across all the devices they own… → Read More
In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Bessemer Venture Partners’ Ethan Kurzweil joined us in the studio. Kurzweil, who leads Bessemer’s roadmap on developer platforms and has led investments in Twilio and SendGrid, talked about the biggest changes he’s seen in developer platforms. One observation he made was that companies are tapping to separate developer platform for… → Read More
You know what’s cooler than reading TechCrunch every day? Diving into startup culture head first by attending TechCrunch Disrupt SF. We’re excited to announce that New Relic is giving away eight coveted Disrupt SF tickets. → Read More
Today Microsoft announced that it has reached a “cooperation agreement” with ValueAct Capital, an investment company that had been a thorn in its side. It was said that ValueAct wanted a seat on Microsoft’s board. Instead, Microsoft and ValueAct have come to a different agreement, in which the president of ValueAct – Mason Morfit – and Microsoft directors will meet to… → Read More
The Nintendo 2DS is just like a 3DS, except for the fact that it’s cheaper and has no 3D. Deal breaker or deal maker? Meanwhile, Matt still seems to fancy the Pebble smartwatch, while the rest of us are sick of hearing about it. And finally, the Unikey Kevo (currently available for pre-order) will make its way into homes in about a month with plenty of competition from Lockitron and others. But… → Read More
A new startup called Strike Social says its tools give YouTube publishers a way to track how their content is performing on the video site and on social networks, and at a pretty compelling price — free.
The first big piece of the Strike Social product is a number, called the Strike Score, that reflects the overall performance of your YouTube content. CEO Patrick McKenna said the company… → Read More
It’s hard to trust the cloud. With the NSA coming in one end and hackers coming in through the other, complete encryption is key. That’s what Lockbox is for. The company, founded in 2008, has accepted $2.5 million in seed funding to further roll out their Client Portal and iPad app. → Read More
Transportation tech startup Uber is continuing its aggressive expansion across Asia. As of this week, it is now live in India, starting first with a luxury car service in its tech capital, Bangalore. The subcontinent may boast a potential market of over a billion, a rising middle class and 164,000 millionaires, but these are silver linings to some possibly darker storm clouds: low credit card… → Read More
While augmented reality has been around for a while, Augment is trying to monetize it with its platform. The company just released its Business Catalog feature, targeted toward salespeople. For $30 per month and per user, you can carry around all your catalog on your iPad and show how it would look like to your client. It makes sense for furniture, merchandising displays or even art prints. → Read More
Today Nokia promised owners of its Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices that its “Amber” update will reach all phones by the end of September. The Amber upgrade is a mix of feature improvements that will improve Nokia’s handsets, further setting them apart from devices built by other smartphone OEMs.
Amber contains a photo editing tool, improved image processing, the ability to snag motion in sequence… → Read More
MoPub is releasing a new tool called the Optimizer that should allow mobile publishers to take an entirely automated, hands-off approach to managing their ad networks — and increase revenue too.
The team gave me a demo of the new feature, saying the technology uses a “waterfall” approach, moving down a list of possible networks from which to serve an ad, starting with the one that had the… → Read More
Deeplink.me, the new service from Cellogic making it possible for users to navigate through the apps on a smartphone the way you navigate the web, is today exiting from its beta period and launching an accompanying retargeting network. The network takes advantage of Deeplink.me’s knowledge of deep linking into apps to identify users who have a particular app installed on their phone, in order… → Read More
Microsoft today published a short blog post stating that it feels that recent government changes to how it reports surveillance activities are insufficient. Calling the decision by the federal government to publish more information on the quantity of consumer data requests relating to national security each year “a good start,” Microsoft claims the Constitution demands more progress. → Read More
Twitter is appointing Vijaya Gadde as its new General Counsel after current appointee Alex Macgillivray has announced his plans to move on. The news came as a post on Macgillivray’s personal site and was shortly thereafter reported on by Mike Isaac at All Things D. Techcrunch has confirmed both the departure of Macgillivray and the hire of Gadde with Twitter. Macgillivray says that he is… → Read More
Bitmonet – think “Bitcoin Monetization” rather than “Bitcoin Impressionist Painter” – is a platform for creation microtransaction-based paywalls on your blog or content portal. While most people don’t like paywalls, most people are also going to have to start expecting them and this open source service definitely makes a lot of sense. → Read More
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