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.
The amount of stuff we trust to fly in and out of our smartphones is astounding. Just look at what happened when a couple of reporters got access to an unwitting (and rather unlucky) Apple employee’s iMessages alone — within days, they learned more about him than most people know about their closest friends.
Now, imagine all the stuff that could fly in and out of a government official’s phone, or that of a highly-ranked member of the military. Forget saucy texts and booty pictures — we’re talking about state secrets, here.
Looking to keep their secrets underwraps while on the go, the U.S government is working on a build of Android custom-tailored to meet their security requirements.
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The tale of Google Wallet’s life thus far is a bit of a weird one, but here’s the gist: Google launched it back in September, initially as an exclusive feature on Sprint’s Nexus S. We reviewed it here. Then came Google/Samsung’s new flagship Android phone, the Galaxy Nexus — and, for one reason or another, none of the Galaxy Nexuses on any of the US carriers supported Wallet. Android fans roared, and everyone involved pointed fingers everywhere else until everyone just kind of forgot about it.
Flash forward to day: without much fanfare, AT&T Galaxy Nexus owners are reporting that Google Wallet now appears to support their devices. → Read More
Man, it feels like it’s been forever since the last time we’ve seen a seemingly legit Apple leak. Maybe they’ve tightened the security around the factory lines; maybe it’s because the last two major hardware releases were mostly indistinguishable from their predecessors at a distance, and were thus rather hard to photograph properly.
Whatever the case, Chinese Apple blog Apple.pro has shots of what might be the next generation iPod Nano. It looks just like the current itty-bitty 6th generation nano, with one notable twist: it’s got a camera. → Read More
“Who Wants A Stylus?”
- Steve Jobs, MacWorld 2007
As it turns out, plenty of people do. Not for navigating around the user interface, mind you — Steve (et al.) was absolutely right about that. But for the artists of the world looking to use the iPhone or iPad as their newfangled portable glass canvas, the stylus wins over the finger any day.
And yet, the myriad iPad styluses floating about generally lack something that artists have come to expect of their digital pens: pressure sensitivity. Dubbing itself “the world’s first pressure sensitive stylus for iPad”, a successfully Kickstarted project called “Jaja” looks to change that.
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As just about everyone should know by now, the seeds of what grew into Facebook were planted at Harvard. Might there be a bunch of mini-Zucks lurking in the dorms of Cambridge? If so, a new venture capital firm — the first housed right on the Harvard campus — wants to find them. → Read More
Wuh oh, Samsung — better watch your tail. While Apple might not be seeing any impact (be it positive or negative) on iPad sales from the launch of the Kindle Fire, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab ought to be feeling the heat.
Tapping into the data provided by their app analytics platform (which they estimate has found its way onto around 90% of the Android devices out there), Flurry highlights a few surprising numbers. → Read More
Sure, your mom carried you for nine months. And yeah, she wiped your bum for years, put clothes on your back, and made sure you got a decent education so you could move to California and rock a hoodie and work somewhere where there’s always beer in the fridge and go-karts to be ridden. But can you really be expected to call her from time to time to let her know where you are? Time is money, Mom. Get on Foursquare or something.
Looking to ease the anxiety for the mothers of the world whose brats kids are too busy to call is #hashtagmom. You check-in somewhere on Foursquare with the titular #mom hashtag, and it’ll do all the talking (or texting) for you.
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After raising just shy of $23 million over the past 5 years, Skyfire today announced that they’ve raised their second biggest round of funding to date. Coming in at $8 million dollars, this Series C round is being funded by Verizon Investments (as in Verizon Communications’ venture arm) along with new investments from previous investors Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. → Read More
Modern day video editors can be daunting. While it’s better than the literal cut-and-paste practices of yesteryear, opening a new video editor can feel like stepping into the cockpit of a spaceship. Unless you’re trained to fly spaceships, in which case this analogy is broken (and also, you’re awesome.)
Looking to distill video editing down to its simplest form — a game like experience, they say — is Game Your Video, a new iOS app from Global Delight. → Read More
The guys from NimbleBit (developers of Tiny Tower, the game handpicked by Apple as iOS Game Of The Year) are on a bit of a tweeting spree tonight, blasting out two big ol’ gems of knowledge in as many hours.
First: Zynga just launched a new iOS game, and it looks a lot like Tiny Tower. Second (and this one makes that first bit all the more interesting): Zynga allegedly tried to buy NimbleBit at some point in the past, but NimbleBit turned them down. → Read More
We’re still a few minutes out from Apple’s Q1 2012 earnings call — but as is par for the course, the raw numbers have made their way out a bit early. And they.. are… insane.
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Microsoft Points are dead! Or, they’re dying. At least according to InsideMobileApps. Dead, dying, being taken to a farm, whatever — but man do I hope it’s true.
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Good news: You’ve been promoted to CEO! Bad news: Public perception of your company has tanked over the past few years, and your stockholders are looking at you to save the day. What ever you do first, just hope that you don’t give the world that sound bite that suggests you think everything is okay and that nothing at the company needs to change. Whoops!
Less than 24 hours after RIM’s executive shakeup, the company is already seeing its first “drastic change”: its stock price. → Read More
Another day, another hack. The company whose data was compromised this time? DreamHost. → Read More
While the once long list of legitimate reasons to jailbreak your iPhone has taken a hit with each new iOS release, that burning desire to “Free your device” and/or “Fight the power” and/or “Just do crazy stuff that other people can’t do” never really goes away.
3 months after the release of the iPhone 4S and 10 months after the release of the iPad 2, the ridiculously talented iOS hacking community has finally cracked the ultimate challenge for both devices: the untethered jailbreak. → Read More
“iPads And Digital Textbooks Don’t Belong In Classrooms Yet”? What a headline. Alas, it doesn’t quite do the post justice; Matt actually raises a few valid points on the potential woes of digitally assisted learning, but they’re lost under a headline that (falsely) paint him as some sort of luddite.
iPads absolutely have a place in the classroom. It’s just a matter of finding a balance. → Read More
We’re tuned in live to Google’s Q4 2011 earnings call, where they’ve just disclosed a few details they left out of this morning’s big ol’ data dump. Amongst them: a progress update on Android’s growth.
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When our friends over at The Verge got wind of a price change coming to AT&T’s data plans, AT&T responded that it was “an error. There are no changes to our data plans.” What they should’ve said was “There are no changes to our data plans… yet.”
AT&T has just announced a new set of data plans for smartphones and tablets. As you’d probably guess, they’re a bit pricier than those they replace. On the upside, they’re (ever so slightly) cheaper per megabyte. → Read More
Regardless of where you stand on the SOPA battle, you’ve got to agree: seeing what seems to be the entire Internet come together to stand against something is incredible. Each company has a different approach, but their goal is the same: make sure everyone goes to sleep knowing what SOPA is.
While I don’t want to turn today’s protests into a who-did-it-best battle (that’s not at all the point), I’ve got to highlight Turntable.fm’s approach. It’s about as simple as could be, but it just oozes with symbolism. → Read More
Oh, you thought SOPA was dead? That the riled rallying of the entire Internet, the blacking out of dozens of popular websites in protest, or the President himself coming out against the bill would be enough to kill it off?
Nope. It’ll be back — they’re just taking a little break. → Read More
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