Jason Kincaid worked as a writer for TechCrunch from April 2008 through 2012.
He grew up in Danville, California and later relocated to UCLA in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in ‘Society and Genetics’.
You can reach him at jkincaid@gmail.com
Last year, Dropbox raised a whopping $250 million funding round at a valuation in the ballpark of $4 billion. The raise had been rumored for months so it didn’t come as a huge surprise, but it still raised plenty of eyebrows. Because while Dropbox is totally awesome (I use it every day), at this point people see it as a convenient way to sync their files between computers — which it already does… → Read More
For the last few years we’ve been tracking the growth of a service called Textfree, offered by San Jose-based startup Pinger. As the name implies, Textfree has a very attractive value proposition: you sign up, it gives you a free, real, telephone number, and you can send text messages and make phone calls with it free of charge — the service makes most of its money by displaying ads alongside… → Read More
With stories of Terminator-esque Google glasses making headlines these days, you’d think a basic task like screen sharing would be something that’d be pretty well solved by now. But while there are many different ways to share your desktop (or some portion thereof) with your friends or coworkers, more often than not the process isn’t something you’d call easy.
It’s bad enough that many people… → Read More
Groupon has just acquired Hyperpublic, a NYC-based startup that’s spent the last two years building technology related to geo-location and the layers of information — like deals and events — that live on top of it.
Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but CEO Jordan Cooper describes it as a “huge win for our team and our investors”. He adds that Groupon was after Hyperpublic’s… → Read More
You’ll never forget your first time.
Huddled in a hallway three feet wide, arms reaching every which way for a cup or a beer or the microphone. It’s hot and it’s messy and it’s noisy and everyone is pushing against everyone else but it doesn’t matter because your best friend is at the front of it all belting Total Eclipse of the Heart (how did she just hit that note) — and the world outside… → Read More
Yesterday I reported on a bizarre incident I witnessed at Sundance last month: VEVO, the music portal owned by some of the biggest record labels in the US, had a pirated NFL playoff game playing on screens throughout its ‘PowerStation’ venue.
The incident was immensely hypocritical, given that VEVO is owned in part by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment (with EMI licensing its… → Read More
Over the last decade the major music labels — and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America — have established a repeated pattern of attacking consumers in the name of squelching illegal file-sharing. Piracy, they claim, has been the industry’s undoing, accounting for an over 50% drop in sales since 1999 (the industry likes to discount the impact of legal… → Read More
If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you’re going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while.
Because Chrome just landed on Android.
It’s faster. It syncs everything (provided you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. → Read More
A few weeks ago we wrote about Backplane — a platform for creating interactive, highly visual communities — that counts Lady Gaga as one of its backers, along with plenty of the Valley’s most well-known investors.
Now the company is harnessing its star power to hold a unique (and potentially awesome) event at SXSW: the SXSW Managers Hack — a hackathon that will be judged by some of the… → Read More
It’s the Super Bowl season, when a host of services and apps debut just in time for the biggest television event of the year. And, if you’re a fan of Madden’s NFL Superstars (a web app that’s available through Facebook), then you’ll like this launch: the game is now available as a Pokki right here.
Pokki, for those that haven’t used it, is a platform that lets you install lightweight apps that… → Read More
Earlier this afternoon Droid-Life noticed something strange: the Android developer devices page had been modified to remove the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, leading the site to question whether Google may have removed support for the device because of its spat with Verizon over Google Wallet. Which would stand to infuriate a lot of new Galaxy Nexus users (including myself), who are looking forward to… → Read More
Earlier this week during the Crunchies we snagged the founders of Warby Parker for a backstage interview — which was fitting, as I’ve been wearing a pair of their specs myself (they seemed pleased by this).
Tune in to the video above for some details on the company’s ‘Buy A Pair, Give A Pair’ program, through which Warby Parker matches every purchase by donating a pair of glasses to people… → Read More
The wait is over: Facebook has just filed for its IPO.
Facebook is looking to raise $5 billion— and will mint hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of employees as millionaires in the process. You can find its S-1 embedded below, or right here.
Rumors of Facebook’s public offering have been swirling for years, and have long been routinely sidestepped by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl… → Read More
Artspace, an e-commerce startup that helps connect contemporary artists and galleries with potential customers, has raised a $2.5 million Series A funding round with participation from Felicis Ventures, Accelerator Ventures, Blue Equity LLC, and Metamorphic Ventures.
The round also includes a wide range of accomplished entrepreneurs. The full roster: Michael Yavonditte (Hashable, Quigo), David… → Read More
One of the most buzzed-about startups over the last few months has been Codecademy — a site that looks to make programming accessible to just about anyone, with a variety of interactive, web-based courses that have users writing their first lines of code within a few seconds. The site’s ‘Code Year’ program, which invites users to receive one programming lesson each week, racked up a whopping … → Read More
Y Combinator has just announced the newest partner to join the prestigious firm: Geoff Ralston. Ralston’s previous credentials include founding Four11, which was acquired by Yahoo back in 1997 for $96 million and served as the foundation for Yahoo Mail. Ralston spent eight years at Yahoo, eventually becoming Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer. Several years after leaving Yahoo he was named CEO of Lala… → Read More
The Wall Street Journal has just reported that Facebook may file for its long-awaited IPO as soon as this Wednesday, but notes that the “timing is still being discussed”, according to an anonymous source. The article says that Facebook is eyeing a valuation between $75 and $100 billion as it raises up to $10 billion, which is in line with a previous WSJ report last November.
The article also… → Read More
BeachMint — an ecommerce startup that lets customers subscribe to receive products hand-picked by celebrities each month — has quickly become one of the hottest companies in Los Angeles.
Today the company is announcing that it’s raised a $35 million funding round with some big-name investors: the round is being led by Accel Partners, with participation from Goldman Sachs, New World… → Read More
As a former resident of Los Angeles, New York’s public transportation system feels magical at times. Trains — underground trains — that go places you actually want to go. It’s a wonderful system. And I thank my stars that I live in an age when my smartphone can tell me how to use it.
Because for all its convenience, NYC’s subway system can feel a bit labyrinthine at times — particularly… → Read More
Warby Parker — the New York-based startup that sells prescription, designer glasses for a relatively modest $95 a pop — has just released its annual year in review, outlining some key stats and factoids from the past twelve months. My favorite section: most popular misspellings people search for when they’re trying to find the site, with the leaders including “Worvey Parkers” and “Warmby… → Read More
Early last summer we wrote about Backplane, a mysterious startup with impressive backers and some major star power behind it: one of its cofounders, Troy Carter, is Lady Gaga’s manager. And Lady Gaga herself has a significant stake in the company, as well as hands-on involvement with its development.
Details on the company’s product have been scant until now. But we’ve got some exclusive… → Read More
Google has just released its Q4 2011 results, and they didn’t live up to Wall Street’s expectations.
Wall Street’s consensus for the quarter was $10.49 in non-GAAP earnings per share and $8.40 billion in revenue. Google missed on both counts, with EPS of $9.50 and net revenue of $8.13 billion.
Google shares are down around 10% in after-hours trading. → Read More
If you’re a developer of applications for iOS or Android — or a publisher looking to better monetize your mobile web content — you’re probably going to be interested in this post.
Today Appstores.com is launching what it’s calling an ‘AdSense for apps’ — in other words, an ad unit that publishers can embed in their mobile websites that will automatically display ads for native… → Read More
Yesterday, as some of the biggest sites on the web ‘blacked out’ in bold protests of the deeply flawed anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in several cities across the US to take the fight offline. → Read More
YouTube may be best known for its viral sensations, lawn gnomes, and feline shenanigans, but the site’s massive collection of content has given rise to plenty of more benevolent — and, some might say important — trends.
Like helping non-profits including charity:water harness the power of video to connect to millions of viewers. And serving up lectures from major universities, opening the… → Read More
Aviary, the company that makes it easy for mobile developers to integrate image editing into their apps, has a major launch today: they’re introducing an overhauled version of their mobile SDK that’s both more powerful and significantly better looking than the previous one, which launched in September.
You may associate Aviary with the startup’s advanced suite of web-based image editing apps… → Read More
In case you hadn’t noticed, the state of technology reporting isn’t exactly refreshing these days. There’s a lot of the same news getting rehashed over and over. There’s a lot of interesting stuff that isn’t getting discussed at all because it doesn’t have the word ‘Apple’ in the headline. And there are some bylines that used to appear on this site that have been unceremoniously pushed out of the… → Read More
Back in fall 2010, Apple filed suit against Motorola alleging that the company was violating several of its patents with its flagship line of Droid smartphones, all of which run Android. The case was filed with the US International Trade Commission — a favorite battleground for these smartphone suits, as it has the ability to block potentially infringing devices from import into the United… → Read More
Yesterday Urban Airship announced that it would be shutting down SimpleGeo on March 31 2012, only a few months after acquiring the company for around $3.5 million. The news irked plenty of developers — you can find a thread on Hacker News here where some SimpleGeo customers are voicing their frustration.
So what are developers supposed to do now? Urban Airship’s blog post outlines a few… → Read More
Yesterday Google unveiled Android Design, a very nicely done (and sorely need) portal that instructs third-party developers on how they should go about designing their applications, both in terms of making them look nice, and in providing a consistent experience for users.
But while these guidelines are a big step forward for Android, there’s another issue: Google doesn’t really have any… → Read More
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