Greg Kumparak is the Mobile Editor at Techcrunch. Greg has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008.
Greg was born just outside of San Jose, and now lives in the East Bay of California.
It’s Xbox day! Almost exactly 8 years after the announcement of the Xbox 360, Microsoft is back with another one.
We’re live on the ground at Microsoft’s Xbox campus in Redmond, where the company is about to show its next-generation console for the very first time. We’ll be bringing you the news as it breaks with our up-to-the-second liveblog. Join us, won’t you? → Read More
The valley has a bit of a thing for drones lately — have you noticed? Airware, which builds brains for commercial unmanned aircrafts, just raised $10.7M. Longtime Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson left his position to go full-time on his DIY drone company, having raised $5 million.
Later this week at the AngelPad demo day, another drone-centric company will make its debut: DroneDeploy. → Read More
Lets say you’ve come up with a brilliant idea for some shiny new piece of hardware. You brush up your coding chops, scratch out a design, and set out to build a prototype.
First, you’ll need a programmable chip to act as the brain. Because of the relatively gentle learning curve and friendly community, you go with the Arduino. The problem: your hardware idea requires WiFi.
Until now, that’s… → Read More
Uh oh.
Less than ten days after Bang With Friends made its mobile debut on the iOS App Store, Apple has seemingly changed its mind and given it the boot. → Read More
Larry Page thinks we are, as a population, too negative. Especially the tech community.
The solution? Amongst other things, Larry wishes the world had some sort of Burning Man-esque place for crazy builders to just be crazy. A place with less societal pressure, and without antiquated laws makin’ things sticky. → Read More
It’s that time again! After an endless series of whispers and all kinds of little leaks, it’s time for the much anticipated Google I/O 2013 Keynote.
We’re live on the scene in San Francisco to bring you all of the up-to-the second news through our realtime liveblog. Join us, won’t you? → Read More
Ready for a sky full of robo-planes?
Airware, a company that’s building the brains and guts for commercial unmanned drones, is announcing this morning that they’ve raised a big ol’ $10.7M Series A.
The round is led by Andreessen Horowitz, and backed by Google Ventures. As part of the round, Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon will be joining Airware’s board. → Read More
Tomorrow is Day 1 of Google I/O, and you know what that means: it’s keynote time!
We’re rolling out to the event in force, and will be bringing you along for the ride with our up-to-the-second liveblog and coverage beginning at 9 AM Pacific. → Read More
After weeks of teasing, endless itty-bitty leaks, and about a zillion radio plays of the one track they’d released so far, the entirety of Daft Punk’s new Random Access Memories has just hit iTunes, days before the official release.
“Why would they do this?” you might ask. “Isn’t this just giving pirates a hi-fi copy to spread around?” → Read More
Gone are the simple days of running a small business; gone is the time when a disgruntled customer’s voice had a lifespan of a few days.
We live in the future now, where reviews live forever. Where a few lil’ red stars can make or break your business.
OwnerListens is trying to give customers a more direct alternative to Yelp — and they’ve just raised over a million bucks to do it. → Read More
Games dominate the app ecosystem.
It’s easy to forget that as we all dig for the next app of the moment, but it’s the truth. 9 of the 10 highest grossing apps in the App Store last year, all games.
Combine this with the fact that Apple’s Game Center was launched 2.5 years ago, and it’s a bit strange that Google has yet to launch a Game Center-esque hub for Android. That’ll change soon, it… → Read More
I’d been hearing whispers as of late that Twilio is meeting with VCs to raise another round, and I just got the good word from a very, very solid source.
Twilio is in the process of raising a Series D, with a goal of raising around $50 million. → Read More
Today is just jam-packed full of acquisition-shutdowns. Just hours ago, word broke that Yahoo! had acquired both MileWise and GoPollGo, with plans to discontinue both. Next up on the happy-now-sad-users-later train: Clipboard, the web clipping service we covered previously here.
According to an email to its users, Clipboard has been acquired by Salesforce and will be shutdown in a bit over a… → Read More
You know, it’s been a pretty good few days for the (still mostly undercover) dudes behind Bang With Friends, the app that aims to help you do exactly what its name implies.
Just days after word trickled out that the service was approaching its millionth user and that the team is purportedly in the middle of raising a million bucks, Bang With Friends has just launched its iPhone and Android… → Read More
How much is your car worth?
It’s an easy enough question to answer. Punch in the details at Kelley Blue Book and bam — question answered, ego stoked (or not.)
But how do they know how much it’s worth? For the most part, even the tried-and-true sources like the ol’ Blue Book are kind of a black box.
PriceHub wants to make the process more transparent. → Read More
Aaaand the Google Glass jokes have officially gone mainstream.
Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update — the bit that long ago became the best reason to tune into SNL — took on Glass last night… and, well, they kind of nailed it. → Read More
If Google is worried about Google Glass being too “nerdy”, they probably wouldn’t be sending people rockin’ the Glass into the heart of the most gloriously nerdy thing in the world, the Large Hadron Collider.
Fortunately, Google doesn’t seem to care (nor should they) if their amazing little experiment gets a few knocks along the way. As a result, we get videos like this one. → Read More
If you aren’t at Disrupt NY or watchin’ the livestream back at home, you just missed something … pretty special.
Our own Josh Constine took the stage with the co-founders of Rap Genius for a conversation that quickly went from talk of metrics and browser extensions to talks of adderall, an impromptu beatboxing session, and a founder’s apology for telling Mark Zuckerberg to fellate him. → Read More
Nothing makes traveling to a new land more amazing than befriending a local or two. Meet the right person — someone outgoing, with a knowledge of the locale — and it’s like punching in a cheat code. But finding that person can be hard.
EatWith, a company presenting at Disrupt NY today, wants to make it easier. It’s like AirBNB for breaking bread with locals in their own homes. → Read More
Troy Carter is one incredibly interesting guy. As Lady Gaga’s manager, a tech company co-founder, and an investor in companies like Uber, Votizen, and Summly, he sits in a unique seat at the crossroads of Hollywood and the Silicon Valley.
Troy shared all kinds of knowledge in an interview at Disrupt this morning, largely focusing on one belief: if your product is no good, getting a celebrity… → Read More
Man. These guys are going to make so, so, so much money.
Zenefits, the free, YC-backed “set-it-and-forget-it” service thats helps small businesses worry less about employee benefits, made a pair of announcements at Disrupt NY 2013 this morning: They’ll now be able to handle payroll duties, and they’re expanding the service to New York. → Read More
Bang With Friends, the wonderfully controversial Facebook app that helps you find the people in your social circles with a mutual interest in hookin’ up, seems to be on to something.
As Bang With Friends approaches their millionth user and surpasses their 200,000th “match”, Business Insider is reporting that the company is raising a $1M seed round. → Read More
Foursquare has taken a fair amount of flack lately, as the company rolls into its fourth year in business. Some claim Foursquare’s userbase had stagnated; others claim that the company lacks a sustainable business model.
After denying the negative user base claims, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley went on clarify that they do have a business model in place — in fact, March was their biggest… → Read More
Hot damn, the Disrupt NY 2013 Hackathon was great. Even with the hackathon over and the winner declared (Way to go, Rumbler!), we keep finding more projects we want to highlight.
Built in just 24 hours, Game Of Tones is a proof-of-concept game that, with a bit of work, could teach you to play the actual guitar. → Read More
Given the fairly nutballs hype surrounding the launch of Mailbox for iPhone (and its crazy queues), you could probably assume that they’d bring the app to other devices and platforms — and you’d be right if you did.
The company recently started letting users know of their upcoming projects: an iPad app is in the works, with Android and desktop clients “on the agenda”. → Read More
Following up on their strong quarterly report earlier this week, Netflix has just released a big ol’ mission statement document to their investor relations site, and it’s jam packed with all sorts of great lil’ details.
For example: you know how every Netflix customer’s first complaint is that there’s just not enough great streaming content? They know — and they’re spending $2B a year to fix… → Read More
Oh, Flash. Remember when there was still a little reason to believe that it wasn’t a dying medium? When the angry Android masses swore up and down that the absence of Flash would be the death of iOS… only for Adobe to kill their Android effort after just a year?
The shambling corpse of Flash takes another punch to the face today, with game engine Unity announcing plans to drop support. → Read More
Way back in March of 2010, Swype launched a super private Beta of its then totally mind-blowing swipe-to-type Android keyboard. While they’ve since shipped it out-of-the-box on dozens of handsets, opened the Beta to pretty much anyone, and sold for $100M, they’ve never gotten around to ditching that Beta tag — until today.
This morning, Swype will hit the Google Play store for the first time. → Read More
So, you’ve built yourself a nice little product. Maybe you’ve raised a small friends-and-family round; maybe you’re still bootstrappin’ it solo. Either way, now you’re looking to raise at least a million dollars to help with the next steps.
While there’s no perfect formula for stuff like this, these stats from AngelList’s Ash Fontana are a solid indication of the metrics you should be aiming… → Read More
When Kera launched out of Toronto last year, their goal was to “teach the world how to use software”. Alas, it seems Kera has taught its last lesson.
In a farewell post on their blog, the company has announced that they’ll be shuttering their products in one month. → Read More
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