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’s major developer conference, Google I/O, went down this week. Was it a bit of a letdown? Probably. Did cool stuff still come out of the event? Eh? Maybe? We discuss these topics and more this week on the TC Gadgets podcast. In fact, we even had Frederic Lardinois join as a guest, along with John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook (that’s me!), Romain Dillet, and Darrell Etherington as Bob… → Read More
Austin, I wish I knew how to quit you. It’s only been a few months since TC ventured down south to check out SXSW, but it wasn’t enough. We’re returning on May 30 with the legendary TC Meetup + Pitch-off, and tickets are selling out fast so pay attention and get ‘er done. → Read More
eBay has just updated its mobile app with a whole host of new features and a revamped look. To start, the refreshed UI makes it clear that eBay wants a more heavy-duty offering for its mobile users. You can now enjoy larger photo views, a better system for auctions that are about to end, and the added feature of being able to checkout multiple items at the same time.
But all that’s just fluff… → Read More
Amazon has just announced a new content deal with NBCUniversal, bringing a host of new television series to the video streaming platform.
Some of those titles include Covert Affairs, Defiance, Grimm, Hannibal, and Suits. And what’s more, the company is pulling content from NBCUniversal’s children series such as Curious George and Land Before Time, which will be available with Kindle FreeTime… → Read More
Samsung has confirmed via the Korean website Chosun Ilbo that it has shipped over 6 million units of the Galaxy S4 since its international release on April 26. According to the firm, this is the fastest ever sell rate for a Galaxy S smartphone, or any other Samsung smartphone for that matter. Specifically, the Galaxy S4 hit 4 million shipments between April 26 (release date) and April 30, and had… → Read More
BlackBerry has just announced the BlackBerry Q5 smartphone, the latest BB10 handset to come out of the Waterloo-based firm. Like the Q10, the Q5 has a QWERTY keyboard and comes in a host of colors, including red, black, white and pink.
“I know it’s going to be a big hit,” said Thorsten Heins, as he made the announcement. → Read More
Fresh on the heels of announcing new streamlined pricing plans, Aereo is announcing plans to launch its service in Atlanta as part of its move to expand outside of New York and across the country.
The service will launch in Atlanta on June 17 for users who pre-register for the service. Then, on June 24, Aereo will open up the service to everyone in the Atlanta area. → Read More
Who’s ready to party, ya’ll?
That’s right. It’s finally happening. The TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off series is officially underway, starting with the beautiful, historical and sometimes rowdy city of Austin. We want to see who has the chops to represent the great state of Texas in our 60-second pitch-off competition. → Read More
Aereo users, listen up. The company that has been bringing you access to 30 over-the-air broadcast channels on the cheap is switching up its pricing structure a bit to make things less complicated. Unfortunately, this switch also makes things slightly more expensive, but still highly competitive in today’s content streaming landscape. Starting on May 15, the original five-tier structure will… → Read More
Flipboard has just updated its iOS app to add a few more features for its 50 million+ readers. Back in March, Flipboard announced a new feature that would include user-created magazines, which seems to have excited Flippers.
In fact, the company announced that users have already created 500,000 curated magazines. Like our’s. → Read More
Though it’s but a baby in the app world, Vine is already making brands, advertisers, and especially media industry members chomp at the bit for some 6-second looping action.
The latest to join the herd is Marvel, who has posted a six-second teaser trailer for its upcoming “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” TV series. For those who were fans of the Avengers and other Marvel films, this should be a sweet… → Read More
Who wants to see some boobs?
Thanks to a new feature from Brayola, the startup looking to pair your boobs with the right bra, you can not only check out an endless stream of breasts but perhaps you can even find a bra that fits correctly.
According to the company, 80 percent of women are wearing the wrong size bra. Shocking, no? But the new Fit or Not feature from Brayola aims to change… → Read More
Though Snapchat has been picked on, picked apart, and blown up in the media, the technical aspects of the service are still somewhat mysterious to the average user. A new research report from a company called Decipher Forensics is looking to shed a little light on how the service “deletes” photos you send through Snapchat.
According to Decipher, Snapchat photos are renamed with a .jpgnomedia… → Read More
Rumors have been circulating that Google Glass may have a feature that lets you wink to take a picture. Within the kernel source code, developers have discovered that the feature does exist deep in the code, but for most users of Google Glass, this feature is not an option on the front-end.
However, TechCrunch has confirmed with multiple sources, who wish to remain anonymous for obvious… → Read More
Today, gaming console and software company OUYA announced that they have closed a $15 million round led by Kleiner Perkins, and with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures and Occam Partners. This marks one of the largest institutional investments to go to a project that had its humble beginnings on Kickstarter.
OUYA is a company that launched back in 2012 on Kickstarter… → Read More
When this generation looks back to retell the best and most amazing past times of the early oughts, surfing YouTube will undoubtedly be on the list. But as we shift to a more mobile lifestyle, content discovery — with particular regards to internet video — is becoming less and less fluid.
That’s why betaworks is today launching Telecast, a new service that bundles internet video… → Read More
Are You Interested has been in the online dating game since 2007, predominantly focused on the Facebook platform as a way to connect people through the internet. The company has been relatively quiet in the past year, but is now speaking up after launching a new feature in the past few weeks that connects you with friends of friends. Other online dating startups have added similar features —… → Read More
Dots, a game launched just last week out of betaworks, has reached over 1 million downloads in just one week of availability.
According to a blog post, the app hit number 1 in eight countries, and went into the top five in another fifteen countries. Right now, in fact, you’ll find Dots as the number three free app behind Hardest Game Ever 2 and Falldown2, two worthy opponents. → Read More
Viber has made quite a name for itself as a global mobile first company, but today that all changes as the company breaks ground in the desktop space. That means that starting today, Viber’s 200 million+ users will have access to their Viber contacts from both mobile and desktop.
The rollout is part of a bigger push from Viber, including an update to its iOS, Android and BlackBerry apps to… → Read More
Even with 84 million uniques each month, About.com tends to fly under the radar. But there is change afoot since IAC bought out About.com from the New York Times last year, most notably the appointment of Neil Vogel as CEO. We brought in Vogel, as well as Chief Strategy Officer Scott Kim (who also served as interim CEO for the past few months), to discuss how About might be changing in the… → Read More
Today marks the latest step in Aereo’s legal battle with major broadcast networks like Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC, with the live TV streaming/DVR service filing a declaratory judgement action against CBS, in particular. → Read More
Haven’t quite gotten your fill of the Galaxy S4? We haven’t, either. First came the announcement, then the obligatory berating posts about the crazy launch event, followed by the review, which brings us to this fateful judgement day.
Will the Galaxy S4 fly or die? → Read More
You’ve likely heard whispers of a company called Wander in the past year. They nabbed $1.2 million, launched out of TechStars, and have since gone relatively quiet. Until today. Today Wander is launching a mobile app called Days, which aims to change the way you think of photo-sharing on every basic level. To start, Days asks you to stop thinking of the moments that are… → Read More
Songza, the app that matches expert-created music playlists to your mood or activity, has just released a huge update to its iOS app, streamlining the experience quite a bit and cleaning up the UI to ensure that users are getting the best music to match their mood and activity in the fastest time possible. To start, you’ll notice straight off the bat that the Concierge screen has changed… → Read More
You remember the first time you played Angry Birds, right? What about the first time you picked up the iPhone 4 and realized just how beautiful a phone can be, both in hardware and software? Well, the latest company to launch out of betaworks mixes the addictive nature of Angry Birds with the minimalist beauty of Apple’s hardware and software. Meet Dots. The idea is simple: Everyone has… → Read More
David Tisch has made quite the name for himself as an investor based in NYC. Most notably, Tisch spent years at TechStars as the Managing Director, and has since left to co-found another investment fund called BoxGroup.
We sat the man down backstage at Disrupt today to chat out his thoughts on the NY tech scene, trends he’s excited about and his transition to BoxGroup. → Read More
If email is first in line for disruption, messaging has to be second. But a new company launching out of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 has a fresh take on our most favoritest form of communication.
Talkz asks you to stop typing and start talking. Or type. Or doodle. Or share music. Really, anything you want. → Read More
Easy app creation, outside of the land of Ruby and Python, has become a huge phenomenon in the last year. And the latest company to join the fold,AppArchitect, is launching straight from our Disrupt NY stage. AppArchitect lets you build custom iPhone and iPad apps using a simple drag-and-drop interface. That’s right — you need zero coding experience to build your own iPhone app. It’s… → Read More
I want to marry Jonah Peretti. Why? Because he just found a way to rationalize why we look at hundreds of pictures of kittens each day on the Internet during his keynote at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013. “Cats on the web aren’t about the cats,” said Peretti. “It’s about being human.” Pictures of kittens, and dogs on their hind legs, and baby monkeys and teacup… → Read More
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
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