Netflix has announced that it will begin operating in The Netherlands later this year, further expanding its European footprint. The Netherlands, Netflix’s seventh European country, is a relatively small market for the streaming video service, but in keeping with Netflix’s more cautious approach to moving into new countries after its aggressive international expansion last year lost money. → Read More
Video services provider Ooyala is setting up an R&D operations in Singapore, and is hiring researchers and data scientists for the facility. The company provides video technology to media companies and telcos, enabling them to stream their content online such as the Australian Open, or helping ESPN embed videos in tweets.It claims to have a collective viewership of about 200 million across 130… → Read More
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 note, as it fully integrates video conferencing and screen sharing directly into the collaboration platform through Zoom, a video-conferencing service. The service allows for video conferencing of up to 25 people across… → Read More
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 is the first part of a larger Series D round that Fab expects to complete over the next few months. New to this round is Chinese internet giant… → Read More
For pretty much 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 loop. Yet, while that triangle should have come to represent a symbiosis and a valuable communication network, somewhere along the way the triangle broke… → Read More
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 York is officially called AT&T Street Charge. (DUMBO firm pensa handled design, and Goal Zero provided the solar technology, AT&T handled… → Read More
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 own video product is likely already too late to squash Vine like a bug. Heck, Facebook couldn’t even get Poke and Messenger off the ground after… → Read More
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 wall!” So now I’m circumspect.
Apparently this social media disaster was happening to more people, because Facebook just fixed it — at … → Read More
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 of TechCrunch Cribs, we jetted over to New York City to check out the headquarters of Quirky, a startup founded back in 2009 with the aim of… → Read More
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 number of spying warrants for user data, which would include (but not detail) the number of requests coming from the controversial Foreign… → Read More
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.” In my short two-year tenure as a full-time investor, I’ve seen this crunch hit very hard at a number of quality, early-stage consumer… → Read More
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 it into an Android-powered gaming machine, and its release schedule is being pushed back another month until August, with a retail launch to follow… → Read More
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 Greatest American Hero and whether Tabitha will totally come out tonight oh my god she won’t she and Christian just broke up oh god she’s with Raul… → Read More
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 little bit better than most analysts expected, especially with respect to the company’s earnings per share. → Read More
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 partying on August Capital’s beautiful, sunny Sand Hill balcony on Friday, July 26. The party starts at 5:30 p.m. and goes til 9:00 p.m. → Read More
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 comer stepping in with a plan to shake up the “status quo” is called Kazam: a startup co-founded by a pair of former U.K. HTC execs. → Read More
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 picking, even if the problem being solved isn’t as apparent or immediately useful as traffic and navigation data: weather. A few apps are trying to… → Read More
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 by searches for restaurants, bars and other local places, Google says, and it’s currently rolling out in English in the U.S. and should roll out for… → Read More
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 recipients’ Facebook Timeline until their big day arrives. → Read More
The world of alternative browsers is littered with also-rans like Rockmelt, but there are also companies that have managed to make a name for themselves in the shadow of Microsoft, Mozilla and Google. One example of this is Maxthon, but another browser that’s quietly gaining a following is Torch, which the company tells us just passed 10 million monthly active users on Mac and Windows after about… → Read More
Rounds, the video chat app and Israeli startup backed by $5.5 million in funding from Verizon Investments, Rhodium and DFJ’s Tim Draper among others, has been slowly expanding across platforms. Originally built as a Facebook-centric experience, Rounds expanded to the desktop last summer, launched Mac and Windows apps to allow its users to send and receive video calls without using their browser… → Read More
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 be a standard perk yet, but they’re not an entirely new idea, either. Last fall, The New York Times wrote that in Silicon Valley, “the employee perk is moving from the office to the home,” with both Evernote and the Stanford School of… → Read More
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, understand that — but they are angling to make their “mobile last” strategy work in their favor in the long run.
It is indeed a beautiful app… → Read More
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, Google will take the drive and upload the data into a Cloud Storage bucket. This, Google says, can be “faster or less expensive than… → Read More
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 iPad or on your TV. Now it’s hired longtime digital media exec Evan Krauss as President to help with that. → Read More
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, the company is announcing a $1.8 million seed round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Highland Capital Partners. → Read More
iZettle, the mobile payments company that has been described as a European version of Square, is today making a move that places it one national boundary away from the U.S. mobile payment company’s own backyard: iZettle is launching its iOS and Android service in Mexico. This is the Swedish company’s first move outside of Europe, and comes in the wake of a $6.6 million funding round from the… → Read More
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 for Android, which will give Indiegogo supporters their first chance to actually play with the tech and see what it is they’ve helped pay for. → Read More
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 by Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone and early Twitter VP Jason Goldman, the startup added $2.5 million from Spark Capital, SV Angel… → Read More
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 crafting startup that is working with top Pinterest designers of DIY accessories, fashion and home items to Kit, market and sell their projects… → Read More
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