Jordan Crook studied English Literature at New York University before entering the tech space. Prior to joining TechCrunch, Crook dabbled in mobile marketing and mobile apps as well as doing device reviews for MobileMarketer and MobileBurn. Crook is fascinated with alternative energy production and greentech.
She is now a writer for CrunchGear.
Hello
Google just released Google Now for iOS through an update to the Google Search app for iOS. Google maintains that the service is exactly the same as Google Now on Android, though certain flourishes like swiping upward to launch the application sadly cannot carry over to Apple’s closed iOS ecosystem.
In other words, Google Now pulls in information from all of Google’s services. So even if… → Read More
The Hackathon has come and gone, and it’s time for the main event. TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 begins now. If you’ve been a fan of Disrupt in the past, you’re in for a huge treat this beautiful April morning. We’ll be live streaming the entire event from start to finish, with today’s live stream starting at 8:45am ET and ending around 6pm each night. In the morning… → Read More
And so it begins.
Another season has come and gone, and with it comes yet another TechCrunch Disrupt NY, complete with Hackathon. Sure, Disrupt doesn’t technically start until Monday, but the Hackathon is the fuel on the fire of the Disruptive flame, and it starts right now. → Read More
Another year has come and gone, and with it a brand new class of Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator graduates. At demo day today, we saw ten companies launch out of development and into the public eye. Yes, all of them are interesting, disrupting industries from real estate to big data to financial services. But a handful of companies truly stand out as potential game-changers in the tech world. → Read More
H.Bloom, the same service that makes you look like a superhero by delivering floral arrangements to your work which you can then deliver to your lady friend like a boss, is today launching an iPhone app. The app ties in with H.Bloom’s existing online service, but gives users an easy native way to place gift orders on the go. Along with H.Bloom’s standard floral arrangements, users will… → Read More
Today SoftBank Capital, the NY-based venture arm of Japan’s largest wireless provider Softbank Corp., has strengthened its ties to Japan even further, announcing that Yahoo Japan will be injecting $20 million into SoftBank’s early-stage Technology Fund ’10.
The $20 million investment and partnership will help U.S. startups at any point in their development, from early-stage companies who need… → Read More
We’ve heard musicians despair over the same issue for a while now: There’s great music creation software out there, but nothing that makes it truly easy to collaborate with people who are far away in real time. People have tried to solve this problem, with companies like Vinylmint launching on our Disrupt stage in SF, but these solutions often force musicians to learn a whole new program.
Sprint’s Q1 2013 earnings today revealed that although Sprint may have slowed its decline, it’s far from out of the woods.
Sprint’s reported earnings reveal a slight slowdown with losses narrowing from $1.3 billion last quarter to $643 million this quarter. The company reported losses of $0.21 per share, as opposed to a negative EPS of $.44 last quarter. → Read More
The Galaxy S4 has an easy mode, and more importantly, the Galaxy S4 needs an easy mode. This necessity is a double-edged sword. It means that the technology built into Samsung’s latest generation smartphone does things you’ve never seen before, and maybe couldn’t even imagine. However, really using that technology isn’t as simple as you might think, and could be downright overwhelming to a novice… → Read More
Apple has just released its Q2 2013 earnings report, announcing sales of 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter ending March. Apple also reported 19.5 million iPad units sold, which shows incredibly strong growth for Apple’s tablet business.
This is a slight decrease from last quarter, which included a holiday sales spike and being the first full quarter in which the iPhone 5 was available. → Read More
The Z2 wireless Airplay speaker from Bowers & Wilkins is a perfectly suitable option for those of us looking for a sightly, powerful, and compact speaker system. Anyone who’s already invested in Bowers & Wilkins systems before, like the Zeppelin Air or the A line should be especially considerate of the sexy little Z2, as it will fit in seamlessly with your current set-up in a relatively… → Read More
It would appear that Facebook Home has just surpassed 500k downloads on Google Play since launching on the platform five days ago on April 16. The app’s Google Play listing notes the milestone, and Ben Evans confirmed on Twitter.
Facebook Home isn’t so much of an app as a user interface for the phone, putting Facebook smack dab in the center of Android user’s smartphone experience. Users with… → Read More
Back in March, Amazon Studios announced that it had ordered six comedy series pilots to debut on Amazon Instant Video, further proof that the current television model is desperate for disruption. Today those pilots are finally available, released into the hands of viewers here in the US and the UK. Based on user feedback, Amazon will decide which of the pilots will be ordered for a full season… → Read More
The thought of buying underwear from the same company that makes your condoms might sound shocking at first. But don’t be so quick to judge, especially where sex is concerned, as Durex has just announced its latest innovation. Fundawear.
Fundawear represents the condom company’s first foray into the land of connected devices, and the name explains quite well how it works. You put on special… → Read More
Facebook today unveiled three new products at its Mobile Developer Conference in NYC that will put the company on an even faster track to becoming a mobile-first platform. The company announced Open Graph mobile, which takes Facebook’s social graphing product to the mobile platform for the first time. Facebook is also improving Login via mobile, and releasing a new Facebook SDK 3.5 for iOS. → Read More
Word of a standalone music service out of Twitter has been floating around for a week or so, but today the company took to the Good Morning America show to officially announce the service, comprised of both a web platform and an iOS app.
Twitter Music, as it were, is the brainchild of We Are Hunted, a startup quietly acquired by Twitter just last year. The app pulls in music from Rdio, Spotify… → Read More
Less than a month ago, Tribeca Film Festival opened up a sub-competition within the festival for those of us with a knack for brevity: the Tribeca Film Festival’s #6SecFilms competition. Partnering with Twitter’s new darling and video-sharing app Vine, TFF made a call for submissions from filmmakers who’d like to use the Vine platform to be featured on TribecaFilm.com, along with a nice cash prize… → Read More
Long before the era of iPads and Snapchats and holographic Tupacs, some of the greatest minds in tech and science spent their life trying to understand weather patterns. Since, we’ve evolved to have an almost overwhelming amount of data on what today’s weather will be like, and it’s entirely possible that we’ve gone overboard with the notion of being ready for a little… → Read More
Picture-messaging sensation Snapchat seems to experiencing some growing pains. CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel said today that over 150 million pictures a day flow through the auto-destructing photo-sharing service, but as the service gets bigger and gains more attention, the worst parts of the Internet are sure to follow.
According to a post on the company blog, some Snapchatters experienced… → Read More
Oovoo has been on a tear of late, tripling its user base in the past year with Jay Samit at the wheel as president. We brought him into the studio to chat about Oovoo’s growth, the video chatting space and forthcoming features on the Oovoo platform. He was surprisingly forthcoming. He hinted at a feature that would let users preview how they look before they begin a call, explaining that the… → Read More
Today’s the day. AT&T has officially put the Galaxy S 4 from Samsung up for pre-order on its website. For now, only the 16GB models in both black and white are available, and only in select areas.
AT&T will likely make more models available in the next few days as pre-orders ramp up. The 16GB model starts at $199 with a two-year contract. According to AT&T, the phone will ship on… → Read More
There isn’t much to miss about old-school VHS tapes. They are fuzzy, show static, have bad audio, and are generally difficult to navigate around — remember having to hold down the button on the VCR to rewind your favorite movies?
Perhaps the only thing about VHS tapes worth reminiscing over was the feeling of opening that giant plastic VHS cover of my favorite Disney films. → Read More
Rally Software shares floated for the very first time today as the company had its IPO on the NYSE. The agile project management software development company priced its 6 million shares at $14, raising $84 million at a valuation of $315 million.
Shares popped more than 28 percent in the first hour of trading, under the ticker RALY, and the stock is now trading around $18/share. That brings… → Read More
Today, Turntable.fm’s latest mobile venture is launching out of beta as a free iOS app to the public. Music lovers, meet Piki.fm.
Piki.fm is the asyncrhonous counterpart to Turntable.fm’s real-time social music experience. Where Turntable requires that you and your friends (or randos) all be in the same room at the same time, Piki lets you enjoy a steady stream of your friends’ music at your… → Read More
From the moment it launched under Twitter’s watchful wing, marketers and the media have considered Vine a new frontier for advertisers. User-generated content is all the rage in marketing, and social media is finally old enough for even traditional ad agencies to have it figured out. Vine combines all that with the familiarity of video advertising. → Read More
It appears that Twitter is experiencing some performance pains this morning, as links that appear within tweets seem to be automatically borked. Clicking on a link that appears within a tweet will bring you straight to an error page, telling you that “Something is technically wrong.” Duh. Since most of Twitter is working normally, it would appear that T.co, Twitter’s link… → Read More
Teens still love Facebook. No news there. According to a recent study by Piper Jaffray, 33 percent of the 5,200 teens surveyed choose Facebook as their most important social network. Following behind, Twitter has 30 percent of the vote, while 17 percent of teens say that Instagram is the most important social network. What’s notable, however, is that interest in Facebook seems to be… → Read More
Just a few months ago, Skype competitor Viber previewed voice calling on the BlackBerry platform. Viber is available on a multitude of platforms, including iOS, Windows Phone 8, Bada, S40, Symbian, and the list goes on.
However, BlackBerry represents a good chunk of Viber’s user base (it’s their third largest platform behind iOS and Android), and yet it’s still in the minority of Viber apps… → Read More
This is a story about multiple lawsuits, a clone, and yet another tale of David vs. Goliath, except this time David and Goliath are kind of the same person.
After winning in the courts against a cohort of major broadcast networks just last week, two major problems have befallen the streaming TV startup Aereo.
The first is a clone called AereoKiller LLC, which claims to operate under… → Read More
Google has quietly rolled out an update to its Google Search app for iOS, and before you get your hopes up, I’ll go ahead and tell you that there’s no “Google Now” anywhere to be seen.
The update does, however, bring with it some improvements to voice search. According to the official iTunes page, users will have “faster and significantly improved voice recognition with text streamed on the… → Read More
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Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
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