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
Science Exchange, a Y Combinator-backed company that’s helping to streamline the way scientific research is conducted, has raised $1.5 million from an elite group of investors. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Yuri Milner, Crosslink Capital, Morado Venture Partners (Ash Patel), Lerer Ventures, Webb Investment Network (Maynard Webb), Start Fund, SV Angel, Sam… → Read More
Facebook is holding a special event this afternoon at its office in New York City. The event is a little strange, in that Facebook only sent invites out this morning — which may be because it will feature U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The event will also include Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and VP of Engineering Mike Schroepfer.
Facebook hasn’t given any… → Read More
Color is almost ready for round two.
The company — which famously raised $41 million and launched last spring only to watch its initial product bomb (which in turn spurred plenty of Schadenfreude) — has spent the last eight months trying to figure out what went wrong, and where it’s headed next. And now it’s back with a product that has a mission statement as simple as its original vision… → Read More
Academia.edu, a social network for researchers, is having a good year. In 2011 it’s tripled its total registered userbase to 800,000, and today it’s announcing some major news that ensures the site will be expanding well into the future: it’s just raised $4.5 million in a funding round led by Spark Capital, with participation from True Ventures. This is the company’s second round of funding, after… → Read More
Hot music startup Spotify is holding a special event in New York City this morning, where it’s going to unveil what it’s calling a “New Direction” for the service. Spotify hasn’t given any details on what to expect, but it obviously considers it to be a very big deal — enough so that it’s invited dozens of reporters to attend.
Several reports indicate that Spotify will be launching a new… → Read More
There were a lot of sales going on this past Cyber Monday, as many sites across the web slashed prices in a celebration of consumerism.
But few sites had the star power that BeachMint did. Yesterday, the company launched a unique Facebook application including a live video stream featuring the likes of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Kate Bosworth, and Rachel Bilson. The celebrities are, of course… → Read More
If apps like Instagram have proven one thing, it’s that photos and mobile phones are an extremely popular (and powerful) combination. And photos on the web are obviously immensely popular as well.
A year ago NYC-based startup Aviary decided to capitalize on these trends by launching developer-facing APIs, which allow third-party apps to bake in image editing with a minimal amount of work… → Read More
Google Maps for Android is fantastic. Between its free GPS Navigation feature, speedy downloads thanks to vector-based maps, and offline caching, the app is leagues ahead of the Maps app on iOS. And it keeps getting better.
Today, Maps for Android is getting upgraded to version 6.0, and it includes a long-anticipated feature that presents a huge technical challenge: indoor maps. Yes, you’ll now… → Read More
Yes, really.
General Cannabis Inc. has just announced that it’s acquired Marijuana.com. The company didn’t disclose the details of the deal, but we’ve confirmed that the acquisition price was $4.20 million. Naturally.
The executives involved obviously have a sense of humor, but General Cannabis is a serious business: it’s traded on the OTCQX market, and a year ago it acquired WeedMaps, a… → Read More
Google has kicked off the week by posting a six-minute video clip that gives a fast-paced overview of its history as a search company, from its earliest days of Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s PageRank algorithm to its more recent feature launches, like Google Instant. The video features interviews from key members who have worked on Google Search, including Google Fellows Ben Gomes and Amit Singhal… → Read More
It wasn’t that long ago that the idea of flipping on a television and seeing a commercial for anything Google-related seemed totally implausible. For many years, the company seemed to take a certain pride in not having to resort to traditional marketing channels, and it eschewed TV ads entirely for well over a decade of its existence. Then, in February 2010, the web giant made its TV commercial… → Read More
Yesterday, Bloomberg published a story stating that Apple had made a major (and, frankly, somewhat surprising) change to its App Store policies: it was going to begin allowing game publishers to sell bundles of games as monthly subscriptions, as opposed to a la carte. Historically all games on the App Store have been sold as one-off purchases (or for free), and they can generate further revenue by… → Read More
Since Google CEO Larry Page took the helm this past spring, one of the company’s most visible initiatives has been to trim and shut down its products that haven’t taken off. These have included Aardvark, Google Desktop, Fast Flip, Code Search, Buzz, Jaiku, and even Google Labs — and today, it’s announcing a new batch of products that will be shut down in the coming months.
Among the… → Read More
At its f8 developer event in September, Facebook unveiled one of the biggest reinventions of its user profiles since the site first launched: Timelines.
Activate the feature, which is still in beta, and your Facebook profile morphs from what was effectively a feed of your most recent activities to something a lot more personal — you can feature your favorite photos, add widgets showcasing… → Read More
If you’re running a political campaign, a charity, or any other group where keeping in touch with community members — and/or delegating tasks to them — is critical, then you’ll probably be interested in a startup called NationBuilder.
The service launched in April, closing a $500,000 seed funding round the following month that was led by Chris Hughes. Hughes is best known for cofounding… → Read More
Turns out you don’t have to charge an arm and a leg for SMS messages to make money off of texting.
One startup that’s proven this is Pinger, the company behind the massively popular free texting app Textfree. Today, the company is announcing that it’s reached a major milestone: since launching in March 2009, Textfree users have sent and received a total of 20 billion text messages. For free. → Read More
We’re back for a new episode of TC Cribs, and it’s one of our most colorful yet: Eventbrite. The company, which offers a variety of ways to coordinate events and sell tickets, has a penchant for orange — and it shows.
Their office is nestled in San Francisco’s SOMA district and has an office loaded with goodies that include everything from train sets to nap rooms… and random people walking… → Read More
Of all the cool things going on in technology, one of my favorites is 3D printing. It’s got such a futuristic quality to it: input a digital schematic, and you get a physical product custom cut to your exact specifications. You can print bike parts if you want to. How amazing is that?
Sorry, still wrapping my head around it. In any case, I’m not the only one who’s excited: Shapeways — a… → Read More
One seemingly minor change that Google has introduced in the new version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, could actually have just as large an impact on the company as the various UI tweaks: anyone who enters their Google account credentials into the phone (which means, just about everyone) will be prompted to sign up for Google+. And they’ll also be prompted to enter their credit card information… → Read More
The Galaxy Nexus is big.
There, we’ve got that out of the way (don’t worry, we’ll revisit it shortly). Now onto the more important news: Ice Cream Sandwich, the new version of Android that ships on the Galaxy Nexus, represents a big step in the right direction: it’s making Android, which has long been faulted for being more confusing than iOS, significantly easier to use.
I received my… → Read More
Today at its ‘These Go To 11‘ special event, Google just announced that Google Music — which launched over the summer in a private, invite-only beta — is open to everyone.
The service allows you to upload your music library and stream it to all of your other devices. And while Google had initially stated this would be a premium service after the Beta ended, it has some good news: it’s… → Read More
Congress is in the process of kneecapping the web as we know it with a House bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (a similar bill, called the Protect IP Act, is in the Senate). In a misguided attempt to curb piracy on the web, the bills would introduce website blocking at the DNS level, among other things, in a way that would effectively amount to censorship. And they could… → Read More
Many people think of television antennas as relics of the past: bunny ears and ugly wires, black and white, and fuzzy snow pictures. So, instead, we’re happy to plop down upwards of $50 (or $85, or $100) a month to get cable, which comes loaded with HD content and (sometimes) high quality programming.
Turns out, TV antennas are a lot more useful than most people think: most of the shows people… → Read More
The web community is currently in an apprehensive uproar over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which threatens to create an Internet blacklist that operates at the DNS level in a misguided attempt to curb piracy. It’s bad news — many of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies are speaking out against it, and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt just went on the record calling it draconian… → Read More
Based on official blog posts that were apparently posted early (and then pulled), developers will soon be able to access some key features of Google+ via the service’s API: photos and videos.
Google announced the news on both the Google+ platform blog and its Photos blog, only to take the posts down shortly thereafter — but not before they were copied by Google’s cache, syndicated to… → Read More
Know exactly what you’re searching for on Google? It’s now a bit easier to find it.
Google is constantly doing things to automatically tweak your queries — it’ll swap in common synonyms, correct spelling, omitting certain terms that might not be necessary, and so on. Most of the time these tweaks are helpful, but occasionally they can get in the way. It’s long been possible to search with … → Read More
The code for the latest version of Android — 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich — is now in the wild.
According to a post from Jean-Baptiste M. “JBQ” Queru, a software engineer on the Android Open Source Project, the code is still in the process of being uploaded, and developers are advised to wait til it’s fully complete before they start downloading it themselves. But it’ll be… → Read More
Last week, we got an invite for a mysterious Google press event that’s being held in Los Angeles this Wednesday. The event didn’t give any details as to what we could expect, but it’s widely believed to feature the launch of an improved version of Google Music. And the invitation also contained another clue: an image of a warehouse that includes a small T-Mobile sign, among other things.
Now… → Read More
Google has long been known as a company that favors algorithms and automation — which scale nicely to millions of people — over human-powered services, which don’t.
That works well enough for them most of the time, but it’s led to one key issue: if something goes wrong with a Google product, it’s remarkably hard to get an actual human on the phone. It’s hard to get too upset over this… → Read More
San Francisco-based startup Giftly is looking to help you kill two birds with one stone: quickly give your friends and family gift cards via the web, and introduce them to interesting new restaurants and venues that they (or you) have never heard of. The company is also announcing that it’s raised an additional $600K, which comes on top of a $1.8 million round last March.
Since launching… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
