It happened to me. Yes, I once uploaded a pic of my friend to Facebook from my phone, forgot to change the setting from "Public" to "Friends" and had the friend get told that day by a random person: "Hey I just saw a picture of you on Alexia from TechCrunch's...
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Tired of your friends texting on their phones while they should be getting schnockered? This clever hack is called the Offline Glass and it's designed to ensure that you and your friends don't sit at the bar checking Wikipedia for who starred in The...
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Back in August, Lift launched the first rendition of its snappy-looking iPhone app that aims to help people build healthy habits and achieve their goals. Initially incubated and seed funded by Obvious Corp., the hybrid accelerator and seed vehicle created...
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Here's a neat greentech idea currently seeking crowdfunding on Kickstarter. SunnyBot is a microcomputer-powered robot that continually tracks the position of the sun, angling its on-board mirror so that it keeps reflecting the sun's rays onto a fixed...
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For pretty much as long as long as anyone can remember, a relationship triangle, or a "love triangle" if you will, has taken shape between companies and the PR firms that represent them and the press that covers them -- existing in some sort of recursive...
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Instagram is planning to launch video functionality in two days. But don't go deleting Vine just yet. Before shoving Vine's into the deadpool, let's just calm it down a second. Vine has been declared by many as the "Instagram for Video." Instagram's...
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Adobe just reported earnings for its second financial quarter of 2013. The company reported revenue of $1.011 billion and non-GAAP operating income of $247.3 for an earnings per share of $0.36 (though diluted GAAP earnings were only $0.15). That's a...
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Waze's big exit to Google proved one thing: if companies can harness the power of the crowd to deliver real-time, granular data, big tech corporations will be watching them closely as potential acquisition targets. There's another category ripe for the...
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iZettle, the mobile payments company that has been described as a European version of Square, is today making a move that puts it one national boundary away from the U.S. mobile payment company's own backyard: iZettle is launching its iOS and Android...
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Google may have acquired Geoffrey Hinton's DNNresearch and is now using his technologies to power its Google+ photo search features, but the academic work Hinton did on deep neural networks (DNN) is now also helping Microsoft to improve its speech recognition...
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The eyesore of a Powerpoint deck that contractor Edward Snowden had leaked had globally recognized names: Microsoft. Google. Yahoo. Facebook. Apple. AOL. Skype. YouTube. The NSA had allegedly collaborated with all of these Internet giants to request...
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At first glance, the similarities between PicMix and Instagram are obvious. Both apps are photo sharing platforms with simple, square Polaroid-esque aesthetics, and display photos from friends in streaming feed. But while Instagram is figuring out how...
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This started out as a list titled Fashion Apps Actual Fashionistas Would Use, but in sifting through numerous style-centric apps, I realized that girls like Alexa Chung aren’t going to be using any of them. Outfit selfie services like Pose and Cloth...
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The week’s news has been a fear-mongering marathon between civil libertarians who are convinced we’re on the road to becoming North Korea, and security hawks who are building bunkers for the inevitable post-cyberattack hell scape. Unfortunately,...
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E3 was wild and loud, and Sony seemed to rise while Microsoft fell low. Yet it doesn't really change anything as regards the long-term future of big budget consoe games. With costs continuing to escalate and the break-even point passing 5,6 or 10 million...
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Teambox has added high-definition video conferencing, adding to a list of providers that are adding video to their collaboration platforms. The Teambox offering is of particular notice as it fully integrates video conferencing and screen sharing directly...
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Design-focused commerce company Fab has raised that round of funding we scooped a few months ago. Fab is announcing today that it has raised $150 million in the first tranche of the company's Series D round of financing. We're told that $150 million...
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Months after Hurricane Sandy left New York scrambling for power, the city is unveiling 25 solar powered charging stations in parks and public spaces throughout the five boroughs, starting today. The pilot project between AT&T and the city of New...
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As it promised it would, Google is fighting the government's gag order on releasing how many users are monitored by the National Security Agency. Unlike Facebook and Microsoft, Google and Twitter publicly rejected a government deal to disclose the total...
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More and more jobs deal in the virtual realm, and are done by people sitting down at desks at computers. Desk work can be made interesting in its own ways, but it's always fun to visit a company that's actually making physical stuff. So for this episode...
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Editor's note: Jeff Jordan is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and is on the boards of Airbnb, Belly, Fab, Circle, Crowdtilt, Lookout and Pinterest, as well as Wealthfront and Zoosk. The venture industry is awash with talk of the “Series A Crunch.”...
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Android home gaming consoles are nearly arriving for the consumer market, but one at least needs a little more time in the oven to bake. It's the GameStick, the super portable USB-stick style device that plugs into an open HDMI port on your TV to turn...
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It's that time of the year again for us nerds to infiltrate Sand Hill Road, let loose, and enjoy some good food and libations. We've been hosting the TechCrunch summer party with VC firm August Capital since 2006. This year, as in years past, we'll be...
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Hardware is so hot right now. So hot, in fact, that another European hardware startup is formulating an attack on the smartphone hardware space -- joining the likes of Finland's Jolla and Spain's Geeksphone to have a go at handset making. The newest...
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At the end of last year, Google introduced a new design for some local search results on tablets that put a carousel with the top results at the top of the page. Today, it's bringing this design to the desktop, too. This new feature can be triggered...
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Stealing a page right out of a startup called Aggregift's playbook, Amazon today launched a new feature called "Amazon Birthday Gift," which allows a group of Facebook friends to go in on an Amazon.com Gift Card together. That gift isn't posted to the...
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The world of alternative browsers is littered with also-rans like Rockmelt, but there also companies that have managed to make a name for themselves in the shadow of Microsoft, Mozilla and Google. One example for this is Maxthon, but another browser...
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As startups compete for the best talent, Homejoy is announcing a way for companies to offer employees an additional perk — a clean home. Home cleanings may not a standard perk yet, but they're not an entirely new idea, either — last fall, The New...
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Filepicker.io, the Y Combinator-backed "filesystem as a service," is today rebranding itself as "Ink File Picker," a name which, explains CEO Brett van Zuiden, stands for something much larger than the former, more product-focused title. In addition,...
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Second screen startup GetGlue just keeps on trucking. Originally launched as an app for checking in to your favorite TV shows and collecting stickers, the company has been steadily expanding its business to include content discovery for shows on the...
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Google just added a new service to Google Cloud Storage that will allow developers to send their hard drives to Google to import very large data sets that would otherwise be too expensive and time-consuming to import. For a flat fee of $80 per hard drive,...
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The mobile wave has been cresting for several years now, so when a decade-old web company is only now debuting its first ever native mobile app, it's a little late to the game. The folks at TheLadders, which is launching its first iOS app this morning,...
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Toronto-based Whirlscape attracted plenty of attention when it first debuted its innovative Minuum software keyboard, and sought funding for the project on Indiegogo. Now, the project is moving forward with the launch of the Minuum keyboard beta app...
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There's some interesting news coming out of London today in the form of VC musical chairs. DFJ Esprit, the European VC firm that is also part of Silicon Valley's DFJ Global Network, has announced that Associate Scott Sage has been promoted to full VC...
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FiftyThree, the startup behind the wildly popular drawing app Paper, has closed a Series A round of financing from Andreessen Horowitz, we've learned. The investment was led by Chris Dixon, and could help the company to expand with new products for its...
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While Pinterest has become a go-to destination for crafting ideas for accessories, parties, home design and more; the pinning giant (and Pinners) doesn't provide the instructions on how to actually make these creations. Enter DarbySmart, a do-it-yourself...
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Samsung President Shin Jong Kyun this week to discuss how the two companies might work together to help Facebook reap more revenue from advertising sales targeted at mobile devices, according to Bloomberg. Kyun and...
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There's plenty of information swirling about the HTC One Mini thus far, especially considering it's not an officially announced handset by any means. Still, we've seen pictures, learned about rumored specs, and today it would appear that we're one step...
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Following a bit of backlash arising from the loss of popular Viacom-owned children's TV shows, Netflix today launched Netflix Families, which is essentially just a destination website designed to promote Netflix's family fare. The site includes rows...
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Dobro utro, zdravo, and pozdravi, friends! In an effort to spread the good word about TC to the rest of Europe, I will be rolling through Sofia, Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana at the beginning of July for a series of informal meet-ups. If you're in...
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Welcome to the era of the round, shiny in-home automation system. While Nest led the charge early on, a new device, called Goji, is taking up the mantle. The Goji is an automatic deadbolt that looks like HAL 2000's eye and can take pictures of folks...
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Yandex, referred to as the “Google of Russia” for its dominance in search and subsequent extension into cloud-based services like maps, online storage and apps, today is unveiling another service that will give it a stronger foothold in the fast-growing...
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Ayannah, a gift-remittance startup in the Philippines, just received $1 million in its first angel round. The company’s service is called Sendah, and allows Filipinos working overseas to pay for products and services back home for their families through...
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Elon Musk took to Twitter early this morning (via Verge) to promote an event coming this Thursday that promises to show off new tech that allows quick swapping of Tesla battery packs for extended trips, without requiring a Supercharger stop. The move...
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Adafruit Industries has put together a weekend project for people worried the NSA is watching how many reruns of Seinfeld they watch on their tablet. The Onion Pi Tor Proxy is a weekend project that uses the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, along with a USB...
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WPP, the advertising giant, is taking another step into the world of startup investments, this time specifically in mobile and social media. It is taking a stake in Muzy, a Pinterest-style social media platform that lets users incorporate links to images,...
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Welcome to the Summer of 2013. Welcome to the summer when you’re not quite sure which of your Internet activities are being tracked. When you want to start Snapchatting everyone because at least then data “disappears.” Except when it doesn’t....
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Popular exercise- and nutrition-tracking service MyFitnessPal is making its first significant effort to reach an international audience. Co-founder Mike Lee said that MyFitnessPal now has "well north of" 40 million registered users. That already includes...
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Yahoo! is now the latest tech company to disclose the number of government requests for data it has received over the past 18 months, prompted by the fallout from the NSA spying scandal. In a statement co-signed by CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo! general...
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Yahoo is offering to purchase social email startup Xobni for $30 million to $40 million, according to AllThingsD's sources. If the deal goes through, Xobni would be the latest acquisition by Yahoo as CEO Marissa Meyer seeks to boost the company's talent...
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