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.
Following up on their massively successful $2.4M Kickstarter campagin, Oculus VR has just locked down a gigantic $16M Series A to help them build their truly amazing virtual reality goggles, the Oculus Rift. → Read More
You know those people who put tape over their laptop’s webcam to keep digital peeping toms at bay? They’re not crazy.
A new proof of concept is making the rounds today that demonstrates how a hacker can snap pics off your webcam, right through the browser, with no consent required. → Read More
Yahoo has just quietly announced that they’ve acquired GhostBird Software, the creators of advanced iOS photography apps, KitCam and PhotoForge2.
Though details of the deal are still underwraps, Yahoo is explicitly saying that they acquired GhostBird for the sake of advancing Flickr. → Read More
While Microsoft busies itself trying to explain away a series of really bad decisions, Sony swoops in with a perfectly executed haymaker straight to the chin. → Read More
Following up on their oddly detail-light press conference a few months back, Sony used their E3 press conference to finally disclose a bunch of important details: the price, a launch window, and, at long last, what the PlayStation 4 will look like.
The PlayStation 4 will launch for $399 “this holiday season”. → Read More
It’s that time again! This morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook will take the stage at the company’s own Worldwide Developers Conference to unveil everything they’ve worked so hard to keep secret for the past many months. iOS 7! OS X 10.9! Other stuff!
We’ll be live at the keynote, bringing you all of the news as it breaks with our up-to-the-second live blog. Join us! → Read More
It was a bit of a mystery as to whether or not Apple had plans to live stream their WWDC 2013 keynote out to the Internet at large, but consider that one solved: just hours before the announcement itself, the official streaming pages have gone live.
While Darrell Etherington and I are going to be live blogging away at this morning’s Apple keynote, some people just wanna watch everything unfold… → Read More
Twilio, the company whose APIs help developers easily add SMS, voice, and VoIP functionality to their applications, has closed a Series D round of $70M dollars.
The round was led by Redpoint Ventures and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, and backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. As part of the deal, Redpoint’s Scott Raney will be joining the company’s board of directors. → Read More
While Facebook Home hasn’t proven to be a smash success so far, it picked up a handful of features today that might just coax a few more users to hop on board.
Amongst other things, the new Home allows you to pin your favorite apps to a dock — a basic feature, certainly, but something that’s been sorely missed since launch. → Read More
I’m not sure I can aptly explain just how absolutely terrible I am at getting up in the morning.
I know, I know. “BOO HOO, GARFIELD, EVERYONE HATES MORNINGS”.
No. I don’t just hate getting out of bed. It’s more like I was genetically engineered to be part of a superhuman army of soldiers that are REALLY GOOD at not sleeping, but they screwed up and got my shit all backwards.
I’ve got high… → Read More
Are you part of the lucky bunch that got offered a pair of Google Glass and had $1,500 bucks to kick down? Good news! The camera on your set just got a whole lot better.
Following up on their promise to update Google Glass every month, Google has just released a patch that brings two important photo-centric features to their robo-eyewear: HDR photography and on-the-fly photo captions. → Read More
As the dust begins to settle following yesterday’s massive, sweeping layoffs at Zynga, the extent of the damage is becoming more clear.
Remember when Zynga acquired OMGPOP last year for roughly $200M dollars? Yeah, OMGPOP essentially no longer exists. → Read More
Our community has lost a brilliant mind.
Andrew Scott Reisse, a founding member and lead engineer on the Oculus Rift VR headset project, was struck and killed by a vehicle in Santa Ana, California as its driver fled from the police. → Read More
Good news, everyone! Well, everyone who’s trying to raise capital in New York, at least.
SoftBank Capital, the investment arm of Japanese mega-carrier Softbank Corp., has just announced that they’ve raised $50 million that they plan to invest entirely into early-stage New York startups. → Read More
Stupid friggin’ Dots.
Seriously. When Dots first came out, it felt like half of my team was telling me I just had to play it. “It’s beautiful!”, they said. “It’s so addicting!”, they said.
I, being a grumpy ass gaming snob, wrote it off as the world’s billionth Bejeweled clone.
But they kept pushing.
Eventually, I gave in. Just one round. No big deal, right? → Read More
Another day, another big site hacked. 2013 really just hasn’t been a good year for web security.
This time around, the site writing the email that noone wants to write is Drupal.org, home of the popular content management platform, Drupal. Though no exact number was shared, it appears that nearly one million user accounts are affected. → Read More
Hey, aspiring filmmakers! Gumroad, the crazy simple platform for selling digital goods, is rolling out a pretty big new feature for you this morning: on-demand video streaming. You upload your video, name a price, and they’ll handle all the legwork involved with accepting payments and streaming the content.
This move pits Gumroad head-to-head with some pretty huge contenders, placing them… → Read More
Between Disney axing LucasArts and Monkey Island’s creator waxing on about the sequel he thinks he’ll never make, the last few months have been a pretty big kick to the gaming crowd’s feels.
Here’s some feel-good medicine: the creator of 90′s nostalgia-factory Earthworm Jim is getting back into gaming, and he’s turning to Kickstarter to make his new game happen. → Read More
New Arrested Development is here! Have you heard? I could probably fall back on an “Unless you’ve been living under a rock..” joke here, but I’m pretty sure they’ve got WiFi under rocks now.
Anyway — if you’re just catching the first few episodes of the new season: Yeah, you saw what you think you saw. Yeah, it’s a gag. No, you’re not the only one that it confused. → Read More
Tumblr just can’t catch a break. Yeah, yeah, they’re getting a billion dollars from Yahoo — but it’s been a torrent of criticism ever since. Angry users! Porn! Poooooorn! Know what probably won’t help? Botching the key detail of an email sent to many of your most tech-savvy users. Tumblr just sent out a big ol’ mass email to all of the users who host a Tumblr blog… → Read More
Oh, Kim Dotcom. You just never stop surprising us.
Just hours after Twitter finally rolled out its long-awaited Two-Factor authentication, the Megaupload founder is claiming to have invented the entire mechanism… and he’s got a patent to prove it. → Read More
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
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