London-based ‘unhotel’ startup, onefinestay, has bagged a West Coast exec as its CTO, convincing him and his family to relocate all the way from the Valley to rainy old London. Jackson Hull, the CTO in question, has clocked up 15 years’ tech industry experience. Most recently he was leading the engineering and product teams at San Francisco-headquartered Plum District. → Read More
At Amazon’s re: Invent developer conference in Las Vegas today, the company’s chief technology officer Werner Vogels just announced that the company is launching two new large instance types for its EC2 compute service. → Read More
Apple’s iTunes 11 officially launched to the public today, after an unveiling in September at the iPhone 5 special announcement event. Originally planned for an October release, iTunes 11 required a little more time in the oven to bake. But it’s understandable that this release took a little longer than expected: it’s a significant change, one of the biggest since the introduction of iTunes. → Read More
It’s not only Groupon that is feeling the crunch among daily deal sites: LivingSocial is laying off 400 employees today. There were reports of the layoffs out yesterday from more than one source; the company confirmed the number to TechCrunch in an email just now. “I can confirm that we notified approximately 400 employees today — all but a couple dozen in the United States — that their… → Read More
Editor’s note: Tim Westergren is founder and chief strategy officer of Pandora.
As Pandora’s listenership has achieved significant scale a very exciting vision is coming into focus for how personalized radio can improve the fundamental dynamics of this industry for artists. → Read More
Sincerely, the company known for its mobile photo postcard and greeting card apps, is today expanding upon its vision to become a full-on mobile gifting service with the launch of its latest application, Sesame. The new app allows users to browse, select and send themed gift boxes from their mobile phone. → Read More
Just when you think that Republicans are developing a respectable reputation on innovation, they nominate the most reviled policymaker in the technology industry to chair House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Rep Lamar Smith (CrunchGov Grade: F), sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which sparked arguably the largest online public outcry in Internet history, will now oversee part of… → Read More
The 500 Startups-backed app analytics firm SearchMan is debuting a new tool for mobile developers looking to quickly get a sense of how discoverable their application is inside App Store Search. This metric is more important than ever, following the changes to the iOS 6 App Store in September which have impacted developer rankings by removing or moving sections around and introducing a… → Read More
Writing about billion-dollar valuations and companies flush with cash is certainly fun, entertaining, and hopefully enlightening, but it’s always fun to come across a teeny-tiny startup solving a small, but real problem for a clientele you know almost nothing about.
No better example than PerfectMenu.com and its dead-simple solution that helps eateries get their menus online and easily maintain… → Read More
Montreal-based FounderFuel, one of Canada’s leading startup accelerator programs, announced a new plan this week to provide access to free work space at Rocketspace or Plug Snd Play in SF and Silicon Valley for three teams for each of its cohorts for three months. The deal applies retroactively, too, meaning 9 graduated teams get a chance to go south for additional connections. → Read More
Klip is coming out with a new app update today that is designed to increase engagement for its users by providing better communication tools between them. The latest version of the Klip app adds two highly requested features: video replies and messaging between users. → Read More
According to multiple Internet monitoring services, Syrian authorities have cut off access to the Internet. The news comes as an uprising has shaken the country for months, with an opposition trying to get together to face president and dictator Bashar al Assad. In the capital city Damascus, mobile services and land lines are affected as well. → Read More
The folks at Microsoft have just released a clever commercial for Internet Explorer 10, the latest version of the company’s once dominant web browser which has seen great competition from Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox over the past few years. The ad puts you in the perspective of a true troll — dual-screens, a windowless room, old take-out boxes, and a penchant for spewing hate… → Read More
Koopedia, which sounds like an early edition of the Mario Brother’s Encyclopedia, is actually a daily deals site with a twist. Business owners, instead of entering into a draconian deal with the site, pay $19 per month to post as many deals as they like. They can also pay $9 for a week of deals or $199 for the year. Then, when customers buy they deal, they pay $1 to Koopedia and then pay the… → Read More
Cloud emailing service Mailjet, which competes with more established outfits like SendGrid, Postmark, MailChimp and Mailgun, has raised $3.3 million from Alven Capital and private investors, the company is announcing today. Previously, Mailjet had just $300,000 from e-Founders on hand to finance its operations. → Read More
Xbox Music, Microsoft’s streaming music competitor to Spotify and iTunes that began to roll out to Xbox and Windows-powered devices in October, today filled in one part of the picture for how it will make revenues from the free portion of the service. Triton Digital has been appointed to provide audio advertising for it. Triton will also provide audience analytics so that Microsoft can make better… → Read More
For Quantified Self devotees, data hounds and fitness enthusiasts, it’s a good time to be alive. Recent improvements in sensor technology, battery life and connectivity (and lower costs) have given rise to a slew of wearable gadgets and apps that make it easy to track and make sense of our health data. Yet, as the space heats up and gets noisier, some have begun to ask: Do we really need another… → Read More
Poznan, Poland-based startup Zapstreak has just brought its AirPlay-style media streaming solution for Android out of beta, making the SDK it provides available to developers worldwide after a six-month extended testing period. The company’s tech allows Android developers to build music, video or picture-streaming right into their app. But will new options change Zapstreak’s chances at success? → Read More
Wello makes personal fitness easy and affordable, by providing low-cost training session by video over the Internet. Now it’s raised a $1 million seed round of financing from investors in healthcare incubator Rock Health, such as Kleiner Perkins, Mohr Davidow, Aberdare Ventures, and Mayo Ventures. Others include Morado Ventures, S-Cubed Capital, PhilQuo Ventures, and other angels. → Read More
Seattle-based Wavii, the news aggregation startup that finally launched into public beta this April after years of stealth mode, is today unveiling an entirely new product with today’s debut of Wavii 2.0 for iPhone. The app has been completely rebuilt from the ground-up, and now introduces a number of new and improved elements, including better news feeds, social interactions, an improved… → Read More
Literary retailer Barnes and Noble reported its fiscal Q2 2013 earnings this morning, and they’re just a bit stronger than some had forecasted in the days leading up to the release.
The company reported a loss of $0.04 per share on quarterly revenues of $1.9 billion (down 0.4% from the year-ago quarter) — analysts on the other hand expected to see losses of about $0.09 per share on revenues… → Read More
Designer marketplace Etsy has not been an early mover when it comes to mobile, only releasing an iPhone app last year. Despite the late arrival, Etsy has picked up a strong following anyway, with 3.5 million downloads to date. Now it is looking to capitalize on that with a new iPad app. → Read More
Social video chat app Rounds has reason to be proud: the company has raised a total of $5 million in funding and now has more than six million users across the breadth of its platform, which includes Facebook, Chrome, and desktop. Today, however, the company is launching a brand new mobile app for the first time called Rounds Video Chat Hangout.
Along with facilitating a standard video chat… → Read More
It was a year ago that Scanadu first came on the scene after raising some $2 million for a very interesting idea: Bringing the ability to monitor and track your body’s vital signs to a portable and inexpensive device that connects to your smartphone. The idea is that Scanadu will let you own and control your own health data in the same way that you monitor other aspects of your life — to “check… → Read More
The iPhone’s Calendar app is pretty good overall, and that’s something that even Fantastical creator and Flexibits co-founder Michael Simmons admitted to in an interview regarding the launch of Fantastical for iPhone today. But “pretty good” also means there’s plenty of room for improvement, and that’s where Simmons and co-founder Kent Sutherland saw opportunity. → Read More
Microsoft earlier this week made a point of noting that there have been 40 million downloads of Windows 8 since it launched a month ago, putting it ahead of where Windows 7 was at the same point in its sales cycle. But according to figures out today from NPD, in the midst of an overall slowdown in PC sales, this is not translating into robust hardware sales in the influential U.S. market. → Read More
CapLinked, a startup offering online workspaces for managing business deals, says that it has raised $1.6 million in Series A funding.
The funding comes from FF Angel (the seed-stage fund operated by Founders Fund), Siemer Ventures, 500 Startups, PayPal co-founder and Founders Fund managing partner Peter Thiel, former Bertelsmann executive Andrej Henkler, and Alexsis de Raadt-St. James… → Read More
Acquia, the company that makes a suite of software tools for the open source web development and content management system Drupal, has secured $30 million in a fresh new round of funding.
The round, which serves as Acquia’s Series E, was led by Investor Growth Capital → Read More
Instead of anxiously searching Google or WebMD, people would rather turn to a real human being for answers to their pressing health questions — preferably one who’s been to school for 10 years. The problem is, of course, that visits to the doctor’s office cost money. Plus, you need an appointment and you’ll probably sit in a waiting room. Wellsphere’s Ron Gutman founded HealthTap in 2010 to give… → Read More
Things seem to be on track for the iPhone 5 to meet its December release timeline in Greater China, since the device has now received approval for the final piece in the regulatory puzzle required for it to go on sale. The Wall Street Journal reports that it has now obtained its “network access” license, and the notice mentions China Telecom by name, though not a version of the phone that would… → Read More
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