Apple has been ‘pulling the string’ on the Apple TV for seven years now. Think about that one for a minute, it’s had a set-top box since before the iPhone. During that time, the landscape of online video entertainment has completely changed, largely as a result of the iPhone, iPad and iTunes Store. While Apple has a long way to go in order to make the Apple TV a decent solution… → Read More
App Stores are broken. It’s virtually impossible to find the interesting apps among the thousands of low-quality offerings. If an app isn’t in the top 10 of its respective category, chances are you won’t find it. Apple’s “Genius” feature was so dumb, it was dropped in iOS 7 and replaced with an even less interesting “Apps Near Me” feature that shows… → Read More
When a semester’s worth of textbooks can add up to a couple (or three or four) hundred dollars, hitting the checkout line at the campus bookstore is a distressing experience for many students, to say the least. → Read More
The future of enterprise software is anything but boring. Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Weiss aptly predicted his guest post titled “30 New Franchises” a few weeks ago, there a massive opportunity to create new multi-billion-dollar enterprise franchises despite incumbents throwing massive amounts of money to acquire these franchises. These companies, such as Box and many others, are… → Read More
Former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun believes that in 50 years there will only be ten institutions in the world that offer higher education, and that Udacity — a startup that offers STEM-heavy free online courses — will be one of them. Thrun may be on to something: As the platforms for information distribution broaden due to the Internet, more heavily regulated legacy industries… → Read More
Hex’s tiny Airbot drone first turned heads earlier this year at China-based hardware accelerator Haxlr8r’s second demo day, and now the team behind it is finally pushing to bring the inexpensive flier to market by way of a recent-launched Kickstarter campaign. → Read More
In a nice example of how Facebook’s bounty program should work (in contrast with that mess a few weeks ago), a security researcher has unearthed a bug that would let anyone delete just about any photo from Facebook — whether the photo was yours, mine, or Zuckerberg’s — and was paid a solid chunk of cash for the discovery. → Read More
Enfojer is a photo enlarger that wants to make it (relatively) easy to translate digital photos from your smartphone into analogue black and white prints — so you can stick a few choice Instagram shots up on your wall. The photo enlarger uses the smartphone’s own LED screen as the light source to expose the photographic paper, sharpened with its own lens. → Read More
With the advent of online shopping and Amazon Prime 2-day shipping, humans are growing ever willing to pay for convenience and walk less.
In the wake of this phenomenon, Plated has risen up out of TechStars accelerator in New York to deliver perfectly proportioned ingredients direct to your home for your very own cooking pleasure. → Read More
Rakuten’s $200 million acquisition of Viki — the video streaming site where users worldwide contribute subtitles to premium content — is a clear sign of how Rakuten wants to use digital content to build out its e-commerce marketplace. But the deal didn’t happen in a vacuum. Before talks got serious between Japan’s Rakuten and Singapore-based Viki, Viki CEO and co-founder Razmig Hovaghimian… → Read More
While managing social media for different organizations and brands, I’ve spent hours scouring the web for relevant content to share on Twitter and Facebook. It takes a long time to find the right articles, schedule them accordingly and gauge social media reactions. Swayy, a content discovery tool, is launching its public beta to help brand managers and small businesses streamline the process… → Read More
Xiaomi, the break-out smartphone star of the Greater China market, is receiving lots of attention thanks to the somewhat salacious tale of ex-Android VP Hugo Barra and his recent move to the Chinese company. Xiaomi is looking to sell around 20 million smartphones by the end of 2013, and is doing so well that it’s challenging Samsung, a formerly dominant force among OEMs, at home in China.
The… → Read More
Paris-based luxury marketplace Vestiaire Collective (née Vestiaire de Copines) raised $20 million Series C funding from Condé Nast, Idinvest, and previous investors Balderton and Ventech — the magazine publisher invested more than $10 million. Vestiaire Collective allows anyone to buy and sell second-hand luxury items. Compared to mainstream marketplaces such as eBay, the company’s… → Read More
Swiss startup KeyLemon, which is a spin-off of the Idiap Research Institute and provides face and speaker recognition technology for the purpose of user authentication, has raised a $1.5 million Series A round. → Read More
Handshake is a personal data marketplace startup aiming to cut out the market research middle man by building a platform where users can sign up to be approached by companies, negotiate a price for their data, and decide who to sell it to (and who not to). → Read More
Twitter is working on ways of getting more juice out of its vast trove of user content — that new “blue line” for conversation threads, for example, is a way for older conversations to resurface — so I don’t know how it is going to feel about this: a developer called Pierre Legrain, once himself a member of the Flock, has come up with Twitterspirit, a service that lets users set an expiration… → Read More
The good ship Galaxy Gear smartwatch is springing multiple leaks ahead of its official reveal this Wednesday, Sept. 4, and there are even leaks about previous leaks vying for attention. That said, there’s a lot about the device we can reliably say we know at this point, although what the device looks like probably isn’t one of those things. Here’s a quick breakdown of the latest rumors about… → Read More
TechCrunch Europe was launched in September 2007, the same week Seedcamp – the European tech startup accelerator – also launched. So we’ve been on something of a journey together. That year and for at least the next 2/3 years after it was largely the only game in town in terms of the new wave of accelerators in Europe. It’s since been joined by TechStars London (formerely Springboard), … → Read More
With the heavily-funded and U.S.-based TaskRabbit having a few teething problems, the jury is still out on how much growth there is in a reverse-marketplace for ‘tasks’. But that isn’t stopping a few UK TaskRabbit-inspired services from pressing on. Today, UK task marketplace Sooqini is announcing that it’s raised $500,000 in seed funding. → Read More
The latest smartphone sales figures are out today from Kantar WorldPanel Comtech, and in case you needed one more metric to underscore the topline trend that’s been the case for years, the WPP-owned market-research analysts are giving it to you: led by Samsung, Android accounted for 65% of all smartphone sales in the nine influential smartphone markets in the world (UK, Germany, France, Italy… → Read More
When a Kickstarter project goes well enough to inspire a sequel a few years down the road, it’s generally a positive sign. In the case of Juicies, a startup that originally built itself up on the back of a successful campaign to build 30-pin dock connector cables in a range of colours, the return to the crowdfunding site is about building cables for Apple’s new Lightning standard, as well as micro… → Read More
Yahoo China, which is operated by Chinese e-commerce and Internet services behemoth Alibaba Group, has closed its Web portal. The site now displays a good-bye message before redirecting visitors to now.taobao.com, a news site run by Alibaba Group’s Taobao. → Read More
Rakuten has confirmed that it will acquire Viki, a global video streaming platform that crowdsources translated subtitles. The Japanese e-commerce giant, which is expected to sign an agreement to buy Viki tomorrow, did not disclose financial terms, but is reportedly paying $200 million. → Read More
It’s becoming almost formulaic: An iconic game designer, backed by a legion of dedicated fans, turns to Kickstarter to allow them to break out on their own.
The latest gaming giant to turn to the crowd is Keiji Inafune, creator of Mega Man. In news that probably comes to the delight of his fans (but presumably not his former bosses), his new game looks and sounds a whole lot like Mega Man. → Read More
Internet companies represent the world’s fastest-growing markets and they cover the global economy. Every market imaginable is affected by Internet companies. They are cloud-centric by nature and come in various forms. They are SaaS companies but also have emerged as departments in big companies that derive their primary value as Internet providers. → Read More
Web Components will change how you build web apps in the near future. At its core, web components let developers create reusable custom HTML tags (think: <datepicker></datepicker>) for user interface patterns. Building them isn’t trivial, but all it takes is some knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript to get going (though knowing something about what “Shadow DOM” is all about surely… → Read More
Samsung is getting ready to pull the curtain on its curious Galaxy Gear smartwatch (well, among other things) in just a few days, but what’s a major product unveiling these days without a slew of last-minute leaks to ruin the surprise? In keeping with that theme, VentureBeat recently got what may be the first real glimpse of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear and it’s, well, pretty bizarre. → Read More
Last week’s “Dispatch From The Future” got quite a lot of attention, in part because more than a few people got very excited about the prospect of driverless cars and the impact that they can have on the way we think about transportation. Here’s what I think Google and Uber actually have in store for us. → Read More
The Moto X has caused a rift between the TechCrunch Gadgets family. Chris Velazco and I think it’s just fine, whereas Darrell Etherington and John Biggs are rather unimpressed.
But why? → Read More
Verizon and Vodafone have reached an agreement on a $130 billion deal that gives Verizon total control of Verizon Wireless, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Verizon has taken Vodafone’s 45% stake in Verizon Wireless, which was founded as a joint venture between the two companies in 2000. Verizon and Vodafone’s boards were set to vote on the deal this weekend, which Reuters… → Read More
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