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.
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
Security firm Lookout has detailed a clever new bit of Android Malware lurking in the Google Play store.
The good news: unless you’re downloading questionable Russian clone apps, you’re probably not affected. The bad news: that hasn’t kept it from being downloaded a few million times. → Read More
Yahoo has just released a shiny new dedicated Yahoo! Mail application for iPads and Android tablets, following up on the big Mail interface overhaul they started rolling out back in December.
While it’s your pretty standard email client at its core, it’s got a clever trick or two packed up its sleeve that definitely make it worth checking out. → Read More
While Yahoo! has quietly powered iOS’ basic built-in Weather app since the platform’s earliest days, they’ve never gotten around to launching a standalone iOS Weather app of their very own — until today.
And man, is this new Weather app pretty. → Read More
If you live in Provo, Utah: Congratulations, you just joined the fairly exclusive club of geeks who don’t have to whine about Google Fiber not coming to your city.
Google, along with Mayor John Curtis, have just announced that Provo will be the third city to hop on Google’s crazy-fast fiber optic network. → Read More
Remember the good ol’ days of the Internet? When the only fakes we had to worry about were the images and the people? Video was like a safe haven. Sure, there’d be some shakycam footage of a dude in a bigfoot costume every once in a while — but if something looked real and moved at a decent framerate, you could assume it was legit.
As this video so kindly reminds us, those days are long over. → Read More
Back in April of 2012, KDDI Web Communications (part of KDDI, Japan’s second largest telecoms company) launched boundio. Meant to allow developers to build services that ran over phone lines (like, say, a basic call center), it was sort of like a less-awesome Twilio.
One year later, the company is shuttering boundio and replacing it with… wait for it… Twilio. → Read More
With the gash left by the LucasArts shutdown still a bit raw, this one’s either going to feel like salt in the wound or a spark of hope.
Ron Gilbert, creator of LucasArts’ much-loved Monkey Island series, has published a list outlining the sequel he’d make if he could. The bad news: he swears up and down that he’s not making it. Yet. → Read More
An indie band relying on crowd-sourcing is nothing new; many a tour bus has been paid for by way of things like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. But a band asking for your mouse cursor, instead of your money? Thats a new one.
Dutch rock band lightlight has tapped the power of the crowd along with a rather impressive hack to make what might be the cleverest* music video the world has ever seen. → Read More
In a startup’s never-ending battle for new users, data is king. When the decision to put that shiny signup button down here vs. up there can mean the difference between 40% of new visitors signing up instead of 20%, good data analysis can be what puts food on the table.
YC-backed analytics service Heap wants to make analytics better. They want to help you to code less, but grow more. → Read More
During the Facebook Home launch, Zuck premiered their first Home commercial. It was… pretty bad. A guy behind me whispered “Is this real life?“, faces were palmed, and the room was pretty quiet as the lights came back up. They aimed for weird-funny, but ended up with mostly just weird.
Their second attempt is much, much better, if only because it has a goat that screams in Zuck’s face. → Read More
This week, word leaked out that Microsoft is purportedly working on a feature for the next Xbox that can automatically pause videos when it detects that your eyes are no longer on the screen. Just weeks ago, Samsung announced a similar feature for the Galaxy S4.
No. No, No, No, No.
No one in the world wants this. → Read More
Hey Marissa! Check this one out.
Sqwiggle is browser-based group video chat built with work-from-homers in mind. It’s got the office-like immediacy that Skype lacks, but without the noise of a Google Hangout. As someone who’s worked from home for much of the last 5 years, I’m kind of in love. → Read More
It’s been a while since we’ve heard about Ellen Pao, the former Kleiner Perkins partner who’d sued her firm for alleged gender discrimination. After she disclosed that she’d been fired from her position (followed by a bit of a debate on what being “fired” meant), the story went quiet.
Today, we’re finding out her next steps: she’s joined team reddit. → Read More
Hiring good developers is one helluva process.
First you’ve gotta find the rare developer who isn’t already drowning in job offers. Then you’ve gotta sit down and chat ‘em up to make sure they’ll be a good fit for your team. Then you’ve gotta make sure they can actually, you know, code.
By combining a collaborative code editor with live video chat, Codassium makes the process a bit less… → Read More
Sometimes you just need a disposable phone number. Why? Maybe you’re not too sure about that dude you just met, but you want to give him a chance. Maybe you don’t want weirdos from Craigslist calling you once your couch is gone.
Last August, an app called Burner came along that popularized the idea of disposable numbers at the push of a button. After 9 months as an iOS-only app, Burner is… → Read More
There’s been a break-in! And this time, it’s a physical, real-world break-in — not the digital variety we’ve grown accustomed to.
Vudu, the video streaming service acquired by Walmart in 2010, has just sent an email to customers letting them know of a break-in that occurred in their Santa Clara, CA office on March 24th. While it appears that credit card info is mostly safe (Vudu says they… → Read More
Word has just come in that TripAdvisor has acquired Jetsetter, Gilt’s private community for exclusive travel deals. → Read More
A year ago, Icelandic game studio Plain Vanilla had hit a wall. The product they’d poured their hearts into for months had fallen from the charts almost immediately after launch, and they were just weeks from running out of cash.
This morning, the company is announcing a 2.4 million dollar Series A, following up on a 1 million dollar seed round they closed just nine months ago.
So what… → Read More
Sometimes, the product you should be building is hidden beneath the one you already are.
Back in 2012, four friends set out to build TapIn.TV. As one of many competitors in the live mobile video broadcasting space, TapIn.TV focused primarily on video. After months of development, they noticed something troubling: building video stuff is too damned hard. So they’re setting out to fix it. → Read More
Oh, man. If Microsoft thinks Facebook Home is bitin’ their style, they’re just going to love this.
Fliple is a new, free contacts app replacement for iOS. It’s largely inspired (cough) by Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS… and yet, it’s actually pretty darn good. → Read More
Shortly after Facebook’s Home announcement, I got to chat with Tom Allison, Facebook’s Android Engineering Manager. We discussed his favorite parts of Home, how much they changed the underlying OS, and the biggest challenges they faced during Home’s development.
Plus: A bonus look at Home running on a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and a peek at how Home can happily co-exist with your old homescreen. → Read More
Good morning, Internet! We’re live from Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, where the company is expected to finally detail the bordering-on-mythical Facebook Phone. Will it be just one phone? Will it be software to turn many Android phones into the Facebook Phone? We’re here to find out! → Read More
Are you ready for a Facebook Phone? Because it’s a-comin’. Zuck should take the stage at 10 a.m. Pacific today, where he’ll be showing off the company’s “new home on Android.” We’ll undoubtedly have all kinds of coverage for you throughout the day — but if you’re the kind who likes to camp out and watch an event, you can catch the live video stream of the event right here. → Read More
Pour one out for the Gold Guy tonight, my fellow gamers. A sage pillar of the industry has fallen. Just 154 days after acquiring LucasArts as part of their larger, $4B acquisition of Lucasfilm, Disney has dissolved the classic video game development company. Beginning today, Disney will continue to license out the LucasArts properties (namely Star Wars), but has ceased the development of all… → Read More
If you were one of the three million people who watched Google’s Gmail Blue prank yesterday and found yourself wondering just how horrible it’d be if it weren’t, you know, a joke — you’re in luck! → Read More
Let’s say we build a phone, theoretically. We’re not! But if we did, we could get maybe 10 million people to use it. 20 million. That doesn’t move the needle for us.
With today’s leaks, it’s looking like Zuck was being almost completely honest.
They aren’t building a Facebook Phone. They’re letting HTC do it for them.
But that’s probably not the end goal, here. → Read More
Famo.us, the Javascript framework that’s designed for building crazy rich (yet still fast) interfaces in pure HTML5, is making two announcements out of the HTML5 Developer Conference in San Francisco this morning: the framework will be free to developers thanks to a few “huge hardware vendors” taking interest, and it’s getting a physics engine. → Read More
Google is shutting down YouTube? Good riddance! There hasn’t been a video worth watching since Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract anyway.
With their newest totally real project, Google is making it clear that they know where the future of online entertainment really is: smells. Meet Google Nose. → Read More
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