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
Google has just announced that it’s named Diane B. Greene, a cofounder and longtime CEO of VMware, to its Board of Directors.
Greene is also on Intuit’s Board of Directors, where she serves on the Audit and Risk Committee and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee as well.
Greene was formerly President and CEO of VMware from 1998 through 2008, leading it to a $625 million acquisition… → Read More
Tired of looking at Android apps that are decidedly more homely than their iOS counterparts? Google is too — and it’s finally doing something about it.
Today the Android team has launched an official ‘Android Design’ portal, featuring an extensive guide outlining UI best practices that developers should work to use as they’re building their apps. You can find the new site right here… → Read More
Back in the old days of online publishing (say, 2007), you’d reach the bottom of a blog post or news article, peruse the comment section, possibly leave one of your own, and then move on to the next hot story.
It was a simpler time.
These days, things are a lot different. Many sites are now experimenting with myriad widgets: story recommendations, games, polls, a dozen sharing options… → Read More
This morning, Google began rolling out a major change to its core search engine that intertwines results from Google+ (and Picasa) with the ‘normal’ algorithmically-generated results we’ve come to expect. There have been plenty of critiques of the news, including John Battelle’s discussion on how this isn’t actually integrating ‘Your World’, as Google calls it, but rather just its own social… → Read More
Personalized video ads sound like one of those visions of that future — like holographic sharks — that are always a ways off. But a company called Eyeview is already making them. Their technology is impressive, and they’ve worked with brands including AT&T, T-Mobile, and McDonalds.
Today, the company is announcing that it’s raised $5.2 million in Series B funding, in a round led by… → Read More
Since the launch of Google+, Google has been putting a lot of muscle behind promoting and integrating the service into its core products. Fire up a new Android 4.0 device, and you’ll be prompted to create a Google+ account if you haven’t already. They’ve given it TV ads, not to mention a priceless promotion on its homepage.
And today, Google is launching an update to its core search engine at… → Read More
Getting travel search right on a mobile phone is tough. Thankfully Hipmunk, for the most part, has nailed it.
The service launched its iPhone application last February and an Android app in September, both of which serve Hipmunk’s agony-reducing flight search in a smaller — and very polished — platter.
Now Hipmunk is giving those mobile apps a big upgrade: they now both support hotel… → Read More
On November 30 2011, Spotify made a bold move: it became an application platform, allowing third-party apps to live within the walls of Spotify’s official application so that they could take advantage of the service’s full-song streaming and tight Facebook integration. The revamped Spotify went live last month, and there are 13 third-party apps now available as part of the App Finder.
One app… → Read More
Don’t get too excited — the Organic Batter Blaster shown above, on sale for a mere $2.49, has already sold out. But fear not: more grocery-centric deals are on the way.
Today Y Combinator alum Aisle50, which is best described as a sort of ‘Groupon for groceries’, is announcing that it’s closed a $2.6 million funding round. The round was led by August Capital, with participation from Ron… → Read More
Talk about starting your year off on the right foot.
Two days ago, Codecademy — a startup that’s looking to bring programming to the masses — launched a nifty initiative called Code Year. It’s pretty straightforward: sign up, and each week you’ll receive some programming lessons in your email inbox.
And apparently, there are a lot of people who want to learn how to code. Code… → Read More
Internet Explorer 6 — long a thorn in the side of many web developers because of its quirks, limited feature support, and cockroach-like resistance to extinction —is finally on its last legs in the United States. And Microsoft is celebrating.
In a post on the Windows Team blog, Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Marketing, writes that Internet Explorer 6 is now down to less than… → Read More
Tis the season for annual recaps and retrospectives. And while most such lists stem from a blogger’s yearning for page views during the otherwise-quiet holiday season, some lists are actually interesting — even useful.
One such list comes from Techmeme, one of the best tech news aggregators on the web, which releases an annual overview of the year’s top stories. The site typically generates… → Read More
Back at Google I/O in May, members of Google’s Android team unveiled a new initiative that’s going to extend the mobile OS beyond smartphones and tablets — and take us one step closer to Back to the Future II.
Dubbed Android@Home, the project aims to bake special hardware and software into a variety of gadgets, which will allow users to control these devices from their Android phones. Think… → Read More
Early this year, Amazon made a bold move: it took advantage of the open nature of Android to launch an Android Appstore — one that serves as a direct rival to Google’s official Android Market, which comes installed on many Android devices.
Thus far, Amazon’s early traction hasn’t been particularly strong, primarily because the Appstore is such a pain to install: you need to dive into your… → Read More
Quick, how many pairs of chromosomes do you have?
If your mind just drew a blank — or an image of Ethan Hawke fiddling around with tweezers in GATTACA — then you probably aren’t alone.
The answer, of course, is 23 pairs, for a total of 46 chromosomes. And it’s what the name of well-funded genetic testing company 23andMe, which has raised some $52.6 million to date, refers… → Read More
Tutorspree, a startup that’s looking to pull the time-honored practice of tutoring into the 21st century, has landed a $1 million funding round from some top investors, including Sequoia Capital. The full list: Sequoia Capital, Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, Thrive Capital, Paul Buchheit, Geoff Ralston, Tim Brady, Alexis Ohanian, Adam d’Angelo, Reinmkr Capital, and Bubba Muraka. The… → Read More
It’s Google Zeitgeist day — the annual event where Google rounds up the year’s top search queries and trends to present a data-centric recap of the last twelve months (minus, ahem, any adult searches).
Most of the Zeitgeist data went live this morning — see our earlier post for the top trends overall. Spoiler: Rebecca Black took the top spot.
And now Google has given us some additional… → Read More
Buying a car doesn’t have to be such a nightmare, after all.
That’s the promise of CarWoo, a startup that looks to take the stressful negotiation tactics and pushy salespeople out of the equation, allowing consumers to buy their car online with a relatively small amount of hassle. Today the company is announcing that it’s closed a new $6 million funding round led by Interwest Partners, Comcast… → Read More
When Google+ first launched this past summer, one of its biggest differentiating features was a free video chat service called Hangouts. At first glance, it looks like something that’s been done before: video chat, between up to ten people. But it’s free, and unlike most video chat services that require friends to invite each other, Hangouts are more like those late-night college study lounge… → Read More
Republic Wireless, the potentially disruptive mobile phone carrier that uses special hybrid Wifi/cellular phones, has another plan to help spur interest and drastically reduce your phone costs. We’ve confirmed with the company that starting this week, it’s going to let its users to receive international calls to any phone, free of charge. Well, that’s their aim anyway — read on for the… → Read More
Yes, that title is laughably buzzwordy.
You may not have used App.net yourself, but you’ve almost certainly come across one of their sites: the startup makes it easy for mobile developers to build attractive, informative splash pages. In other words, it helps them establish a web presence and build SEO — things that are often surprisingly neglected by mobile app developers, who are… → Read More
Over the last two years, Apple has been engaged in vicious legal battles over smartphone patents, many of which are aimed at squelching (or squeezing money out of) manufacturers of devices running Android. And now, for some reason, it has given valuable patents to a patent troll — which is using them to sue many of the top technology companies in the world.
Meet Digitude Innovations, a firm… → Read More
Groupon is in late-stage negotiations to acquire Silicon Valley-based startup Clever Sense, we’re hearing from a source. Clever Sense is the company behind Alfred, a popular ‘butler’ app for iPhone that makes restaurant and activity recommendations based on your taste preferences. The company was founded in 2008 and has raised around $1.5 million to date.
Clever Sense declined to comment, and… → Read More
Google has just launched its much-rumored Flipboard competitor, Google Currents. The service is available for both iOS and Android — including support for phones and tablets — and you can download it right here. But only if you’re in the US (sorry international readers).
The gist of Currents is simple: it’s a clean, touch-friendly way to consume your favorite blogs and news sites on your… → Read More
No, Google is not launching super-creepy facial recognition, so put those pitchforks down. But it is introducing a new feature to Google+’s photo app, which now makes it a bit easier to quickly tag your friends. It’s called ‘Find My Face’, and while the name leads me to recall scenes in the classic Nic Cage/John Travolta film Face/Off, it’s a feature that plenty of users will find handy.
It’s… → Read More
Back in October — after many months of speculation and rumors — Facebook launched its long-anticipated iPad application. The app was notable for two reasons: first, it was the first time the social network offered an official app for Apple’s tablet, and second, because it included an overhauled UI for Facebook’s immensely popular iPhone app as well.
Improvements include persistent… → Read More
Yesterday news broke that Verizon would be blocking Google’s flagship Galaxy Nexus phone from including Google Wallet, the NFC-based system that will let you tap your phone against special sensors to pay for goods and services. The decision was almost certainly spurred by Verizon’s support of a rival NFC-based payment solution called ISIS.
We’ve now learned more details.
Some reports… → Read More
Android Market, the official, Google-sanctioned app marketplace for Android, is announcing a major milestone today: 10 billion total downloads. More important, the rate of growth is surging. Google says that it’s now seeing 1 billion app installs every 30 days.
To give some context to that, it took 20 months for Android to hit its first billion downloads, and another five months to reach its… → Read More
Before me sit two phones. On the left is the iPhone 4S, which I bought (and signed my soul over to Verizon for) in October. On the right sits a loaner GSM version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, sporting Android 4.0.
I like the one on the right better. I’ll have to send it back to Google soon, but I’m already certain that through a combination of mysticism and Craigslist I’ll be swapping the… → Read More
Facebook has acquired location-based startup Gowalla, according to a report this evening by Laurie Segall on CNN Money. The terms of the deal haven’t been reported, and Gowalla declined to comment. Facebook says it doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation. Update: We’ve heard from an independent source that Facebook is indeed acquiring Gowalla.
According to CNN’s report, the Gowalla team will… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
