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.
This shouldn’t be the first time you’ve seen Skullcandy’s Hesh headphones appear on TechCrunch, but I’ll forgive you if it is. As a refresh, I reviewed the cans last week and found that it really came down to like vs. love. They’re fine, but I can’t necessarily justify a $60-$70 purchase.
John felt the same way when we sat down to chat about the Hesh headphones in this latest episode of Fly or Die. But it extends far beyond that. As John would say, “friends don’t let friends buy bad headphones.” → Read More
Yext has been making waves of late, what with the spin-off of their original pay-per-call ad business which has been renamed Felix and the launch of their new business, PowerListings. But this is far from the beginning for Yext — the company first hit the scene way back in 2009 at our TC50 conference.
That means founder and CEO Howard Lerman is about as close to a Disrupt veteran as you can get, seeing as though he was launching at Disrupt before we even called it Disrupt (tickets here).
I asked him to come into the AOL headquarters to discuss what TC50 did for his brand and the company’s overall success, as a part of my “Disrupt Alumni: Where They Are Now” series. → Read More
Very rarely do we see gaming startups launch on the rather limited platform of SMS. Mobile games are all about the graphics, the functionality, and the ability to leverage the very best of technology through an app. But StrayBoots, a real-world scavenger hunt via text, has managed to generate $200,000 in revenue over the past 12 months, with nearly 50,000 paying customers.
Oh, and did I mention that it’s all through SMS? → Read More
I’ve been spending some quality time with HTC’s Titan II, and I would never call it a bad phone. But that’s not the question — good, bad, fast, slow, ugly, beautiful… they don’t matter unless I feel that I’d put down money and live my life with this device. And even though I expected this to be one of my favorites, I walk away from my review certain that I wouldn’t exchange cash for this handset.
HTC is great at building quality hardware and Microsoft’s new mobile platform is fresh, different, and intuitive. But the way that the duo comes together leaves me unimpressed and disappointed, namely in the camera and the display. Past that, the thickness of the device paired with poor battery life does nothing to make up for these more minor disappointments. In essence, it’s simply not good enough.
Let’s talk about why. → Read More
The Olympus OM-D E-M5 is arguably the best micro four-thirds camera Olympus has to offer. We’ve had issues with past m4/3 iterations like the EP1 and EP3, like awful color reproduction and slow auto-focus. The same problems don’t persist here, and anything that impresses John on the photography front is a rare gem certainly worth consideration. → Read More
You’ve seen the ads. What once was Carly in a pink dress, talking about her myTouch 4G that let her Facebook her face off while making little “digs” at AT&T, has now become a biker chic badass whizzing by an iPhone biker with a wink and a hat tip. She’s now edgy, and has the leather to prove it.
But T-Mobile is getting punchier on its own. Even in its earnings call today, T-Mo’s CEO Phillip Hume said it himself, “the iPhone is slow, even on AT&T’s network.”
If you can’t join ‘em, might as well start punching, right? → Read More
When I think of product sampling, I remember the glorious days of wheeling around the grocery store with my mom and picking up every cheese and meat-laden toothpick in the building. My mom hated it. She was quite organized, and knew exactly what she wanted from the trip, while I was busy begging for the salami I just discovered or the special water crackers I sampled with a cube of Colby Jack.
She didn’t run off and buy the stuff I had sampled (probably because she never actually tried it), and I obviously wasn’t old enough to throw down cash for a box of crackers.
But clearly, product sampling can be big for a brand if it hits the right demographic in the right setting, which is exactly the business proposition of a new startup called LetsWombat. → Read More
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