More people leaving Google Wallet means more founders for mobile payments startups!
Jonathan Wall, a founding engineer on Google Wallet, and Marc Freed-Finnegan, its product lead, are already heads down on their next venture Tappmo after having their last day at Google on March 5. They’re not saying too much about what it is aside from saying it’s about revolutionizing offline payments. (No… → Read More
Back in October 2010, billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban jumped into the daily deals game with a $1.5 million seed investment in gift online shopping deals startup JungleCents. Because the startup took a somewhat alternative approach to daily deals, using a lead generation model to give publishers supplemental revenue streams, today, JungleCents has seen some pretty good traction. Its deals are… → Read More
It seems that noted firebrand Mike Daisey’s story – the one about the crippled, underaged factory workers who unspooled tales of woe and torture at the hands of their evil Foxconn masters at Apple’s behest – was at least partially fabricated. He was outed as, at best, a bad journalist and at worst a fraud. To be clear, he’s a monologist and playwright and had no business telling this story (just… → Read More
Some people are surprised when they find out that Getty Images is just 17 years old — its brand name has become such an institution in the image licensing and stock photography space that many people assume it’s been around for decades longer. But starting in 1995 just at the dawn of the Internet age does make it a veteran in many ways, compared to its much younger peers in the web photo space. → Read More
I just got the new iPad in the mail, and naturally the first thing I did was load up a few of my old apps and throw some content on there. Oh god! Oh no!
One of my favorite apps, GoodReader, which opens a great variety of files and which I use to consume the enormous PDFs from Google Books, is a patchwork of pixels. My go-to Mahjong game, aliased to hell! Muji notebook – my pencil leaves a… → Read More
Happy new iPad Friday! All of the new iPads are shipping already and for those of you who ordered a new one online, you should be getting them soon (if you haven’t already). So in light of that, and also because it’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend and what better way to send you off than this — we have a brand new iPad to give away.
Thanks to our friends over at Kabam, we have a new 32GB WiFi… → Read More
If you’re reading this right now, you already know what day it is: iPad day.
We headed down to the 5th Ave. flagship store in Manhattan this morning to see just how crazy things would get, but truth be told, the mood was quiet. In fact, the media seemed to be the most raucous, while soon-to-be iPad owners simply tried to keep warm in the freezing mist. → Read More
Sometimes I feel like we of the tech community tend to get bogged down in the little stuff. Hardware specs, OS choices, rumor after endless rumor — it can be nice to just take a step back and stop sweating the small stuff.
For a bit of perspective, why not take a few minutes this fine Friday afternoon and explore the nearly 14 billion year history of the cosmos as we know it? There are plenty… → Read More
Good news, new iPad users: everyone’s favorite iPad news magazine Flipboard (OK, my favorite, but I hear the Flipboard / Zite battles get fierce) is now Retina-ready. I know, we all thought the enhanced app would be approved by tonight, but, as it turns out, the update was shipped a bit earlier. Consider this your PSA.
However, in the brief note Flipboard sent me about the update, something… → Read More
Gillmor Gang – Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recording has concluded. → Read More
There’s something interesting going on over there on Fab. The design shopping site found that some of its best customers – that is, those who convert to paying customers the quickest, those who spend the most, and those who return the most often – are mobile users.
The company has known about this data for some time, but wanted more in-depth analysis, so it hired software-as-a-service firm … → Read More
Here at TechCrunch, we live, eat, sleep and breathe startups. But sometimes we can get a little too focused on Silicon Valley and forget that there are startup scenes blossoming all over the country and the world.
Two up and coming startup states just so happen to be Michigan and Ohio, and one accelerator, Bizdom, is looking for the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The accelerator is… → Read More
Facebook has proposed several changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and is asking the public for feedback until March 22nd. The most important changes are the prohibition of extracting source code from its downloadable software, and a clear explanation that friends can share your information through applications. The changes are necessary since Facebook released its first… → Read More
Whither health insurance? A former medical advisor to the Obama Administration who happens to be the brother of former Presidential Chief of Staff predicted in the New York Times that by 2020 health insurance companies will be extinct. Nearly two years ago, I penned a piece entitled Health Insurance’s Bunker Buster. It outlined two key reasons that health insurance — as we have known it the last… → Read More
How does that old saying go again? “Everything old is new again?” That exactly how I feel about the RIM rumors that have been making the rounds today.
According to a bit of analyst chatter, Samsung has their eyes on Waterloo-based RIM, and more specifically the new mobile operating system they’ve got cooking in the oven right now. If these reports hold true, then Samsung is ultimately… → Read More
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the JOBS Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at supporting small businesses by making it easier for them to access capital. A key feature of the bill enables crowdfunding, the process by which small companies raise growth capital from a large number of individual investors.
While many people are debating the impact of the bill on investors, what… → Read More
At over a million digital listens, “Mr. Daisey Goes To The Apple Factory” is This American Life’s most popular episode. That’s no small feat for one of the world’s most well-known radio shows. When it aired, it set off yet another firestorm of controversy regarding the ethics of Apple (and other large tech companies) using cheap Chinese labor through major manufacturers like Foxconn. Mr Daisey… → Read More
MySocialCloud is a new, and somewhat stealthy, startup that aims to organize your online life through bookmarking, stream consolidation, filtering and auto-login capabilities. The service, which until now has only been available to users at a handful of colleges out in California, has some pretty impressive backers, too. The startup has raised “just shy of a million” from Sir Richard Branson and… → Read More
Trust me on this one. There are few people who have given trust and reputation more thought than security expert Bruce Schneier. His latest book, Liars And Outliers, asks the question of how society functions when we can’t trust each other. And Schneier has spent a lifetime thinking through the relationship between trust and reputation in our information economy. → Read More
Today Facebook released an animated infographic about its ongoing journey to sustainability, explaining “2010 marked an awakening for Facebook’s sustainability efforts”. As viewers scroll past green stats like that 47% of Facebook employees commute via alternative methods, birds flutter and bikes whiz by. Designed by digital consultancy Beyond, the new graphic also notes Facebook’s sustainable… → Read More
Here’s a crazy turn of events: Zynga no longer has the biggest game on Facebook by daily active users.
OMGPOP, the New York-based casual gaming company that has had a huge comeback in the last month, now has the top spot for daily usage with its Pictionary-like game Draw Something.
In the last couple of days, Draw Something just edged past Zynga’s Words With Friends to take the top spot… → Read More
I don’t blame Nexus S users for feeling a bit forgotten — for a device ostensibly meant to be on the cutting edge of Android updates, the Nexus S hasn;t had much luck on the Ice Cream Sandwich front.
If Engadget’s sources hold true though, that may all change very shortly. According to them, Google is once again preparing to make the Ice Cream Sandwich update available, and it’s expected to… → Read More
There are plenty of companies trying to create new forms of group texting or social networking. There are far fewer who are trying to offer a messaging service that crosses the web, email and mobile devices in a seamless way. Facebook is perhaps the most obvious example, but its utility is social — you might not want to use it for work, or for organizing your kids’ little league game, or for… → Read More
Google today announced another step in the build-out of its Google TV service: it is adding several new international channels in the form of apps to the Google TV platform, aimed at those who live in the U.S. but are missing content from home. Among them are a mix of entertainment and news services, including al-Jazeera, the Chinese-language PPTV, the IslamBox collection of channels, Yupp TV… → Read More
LifeCrowd, the first startup to emerge from the newly-formed TechStars Network member MuckerLab based in L.A., is today launching its marketplace for social activities into public beta. The company, which aims to provide a curated selection of quality events, happenings, classes and outings, is available now for users in San Francisco, San Diego, and all of Orange County, Calif., as well as in its… → Read More
We sort of saw this coming, given the fact that Ben Silbermann said so at SXSW, but Pinterest has just revamped its profile pages. Those of you familiar with the hottest new social network will know that profile pages originally displayed all of your boards, their titles, with thumbnails of each pin in every board. It got the job done to be sure, but was also pretty simple.
Today, all that… → Read More
When last I met with Craig Muth it was in lovely Columbus, Ohio and he was a down-to-earth hacker working on memorize.com, a site dedicated to making the world a better place. Clearly a useful and noble pursuit. Craig moved to San Francisco a while back, and just sent me an email with details of his latest project: a space-saving font he’s calling dotsies.
Dotsies characters are built from five… → Read More
Meet Jean.
He’s one of a few very lucky owners of the brand new iPad. And he’s thrilled. → Read More
FoundersCard, the service that brings executive-style perks to today’s entrepreneurs has just added a number of new benefits for its members, including a free TripIt pro account (typically worth $49), 15% off LegalZoom (to hire a lawyer online), 15% off and $30 of free credit at GroundLink (an on-demand and ride-later cab service), 20% off at business card maker Moo.com, and 5% off Virgin… → Read More
It only seemed like a matter of time before things got worse for LightSquared, and today the nation’s third largest wireless carrier has dealt the ailing company another significant blow. With the upstart network provider unable to land FCC approval thanks to some pesky GPS interference issues, Sprint has announced that they have chosen to officially terminate their agreement with LightSquared. → Read More
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