Sarah currently works as a writer for TechCrunch, after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to becoming a professional blogger, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.
Vdio, the video streaming service which launched into public beta this April as a complement to Rdio’s subscription music service, is today becoming available to all. Earlier, the service was available for preview in the U.S. and U.K., but only to those who were already paying Rdio Premium or Unlimited customers. → Read More
If you thought the “ambient location” craze has passed, prepare to be surprised. A company called SocialRadar is announcing today that it has raised $12.75 million in Series A funding from NEA, Grotech Ventures, and others including Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, Dave Morin and Kevin Colleran for a mobile, location-based people discovery app arriving first on the iPhone. → Read More
In 10 days, Google’s RSS feed-reading service Google Reader will shut down for good. In its wake, developers working on products in the RSS ecosystem have been stepping up to deliver apps, tools and other services to fill the void. Today, one of the frontrunners, Feedly, is transforming itself from RSS application to RSS platform, with the public debut of Feedly Cloud, the infrastructure that has… → Read More
Stealing a page right out of a startup called Aggregift’s playbook, Amazon today launched a new feature called “Amazon Birthday Gift,” which allows a group of Facebook friends to go in on an Amazon.com Gift Card together. That gift isn’t posted to the recipients’ Facebook Timeline until their big day arrives. → Read More
Filepicker.io, the Y Combinator-backed “filesystem as a service,” is today rebranding itself as “Ink File Picker,” a name which, explains CEO Brett van Zuiden, stands for something much larger than the former, more product-focused title. In addition, the company is announcing a $1.8 million seed round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Highland Capital Partners. → Read More
Following a bit of backlash arising from the loss of popular Viacom-owned children’s TV shows, Netflix today launched Netflix Families, which is essentially just a destination website designed to tout Netflix’s family fare. The site includes rows of Netflix recommendations for parents and kids, as well as tips on how to stream and other promotional content. → Read More
Apple has now taken another step to push app publishers to use its preferred ad tracking option, the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), with the debut of the iOS 7 beta. Confirming what many have suspected, Apple is eliminating an alternative option involving tracking by MAC addresses. This method had sprung up following a change to Apple’s Developer Documentation in 2011, announcing its… → Read More
Many of the children’s e-book applications for iPad today use a combination of animations, video or even games to make books more “interactive” for their young readers. Me Books, a London-based digital e-book app and retailer launching today in the U.S., has a slightly different take. Instead of animation, the app uses audio to add an additional element to stories. The e-books are narrated, and… → Read More
Lisa Frank. Dayglo Barbie. Rainbow unicorn. Fisher Price. A mess, trouble, confusing. Marketing department. What are, “words used to describe the iOS 7 redesign,” Alex? Now that the Apple keynote beer goggles have worn off, the polarizing makeover of Apple’s iOS 7 operating system is starting to sink in. Surely, this is not it? This is not done, right? → Read More
Foursquare this morning has launched a pretty new visualization feature called Foursquare Time Machine, which offers a new way to view a history of your check-ins on an interactive map. And oh, it’s also an advertisement for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone. Hey, look, Foursquare is trying to make some money by using your data! How clever! → Read More
At the SourceDigital13 conference this morning, Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf offered a look into how mobile users on iOS are spending their time in apps, as well as the differences between men and women’s app usage, and trends particular to advertisers’ favorite demographic (those aged 25 to 34), the latter which led to some surprises. → Read More
Fancy, the one-time Pinterest competitor which has long since set its sights on social e-commerce, is expanding its reach today with the launch of its internationalization efforts. The company is now making its service available in 30 languages and is shipping its products worldwide. → Read More
Google took swift action to ban Google Glass applications with facial recognition capabilities recently, following the launch of an API which would have allowed developers to build apps that could identify the faces of people who a Glass wearer encountered. Today, however, another company called Orbeus is launching its own face and scene detection API platform ReKognition for Glass, which… → Read More
Running a website not optimized for smartphones? Guess what, you’ve been put on notice. Google is using its influence and the power of its algorithm to finally force web publishers to fix their mobile website configuration issues, or risk getting downranked in Google Search. Directing smartphone users to 404′s? You lose. Sending smartphone users looking for specific content to some generic mobile… → Read More
The re-commerce sector just got another vote of confidence, this time from billionaire fashion mogul J. Christopher Burch, who along with a couple of angels have put in $600,000 in seed funding into the online women’s clothing consignment shop Bib + Tuck. The service, first launched in November 2012, attempts to bridge the gap between high-end luxury marketplaces and those that appeal to “fast… → Read More
Apple revealed a number of notable new features with the debut of iOS 7 yesterday, but there are many smaller features which are now leaking out as developers have had a chance to play around with the new operating system. Though most of these didn’t get a shout-out during Apple’s keynote and accompanying demo at WWDC, they are the “little touches,” which help to make iOS 7 something bigger than… → Read More
Apple is no longer offering the “Genius” feature as a way to surface and discover new mobile applications in the iOS App Store in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 7. Instead, the spot that used to belong to “Genius” now goes to “Near Me,” a new feature demoed during yesterday’s keynote at WWDC, which recommends apps based on your location. → Read More
Users of Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices got their first look at the company’s newest operating system, iOS 7, earlier today. Not only has Apple given iOS an entirely new look and feel, courtesy of head designer Jonathan Ive, but it has also revealed a revamped suite of core apps like Photos, Camera, Calendar, Weather and others, added new services like iTunes Radio and features like… → Read More
The app ecosystem is showing no signs of slowing down. That’s what Apple essentially announced today, revealing that there are now 900,000 iOS applications available for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Though the app stores are getting filled up and shifting more of the revenue to top publishers, the market itself is not decreasing as a result. The company added 250,000 more iOS… → Read More
One of the more interesting metrics to regularly emerge from Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is the one illustrating the growth of its app ecosystem. Today, the company revealed the latest figures, announcing a total of 50 billion total downloads from the Apple App Store, up from the 30 billion to date it announced last June, and still just ahead of Google Play’s… → Read More
A new real-time web analytics platform Spinnakr is launching out of its closed beta today, accompanied by a seed round of just under a million from Andreessen Horowitz, 500 Startups, Point Nine Capital, Sand Hill Angels, and others. Though analytics is already a crowded space, Spinnakr’s product is offering something different – it’s bringing the intelligence of a data scientist to all web… → Read More
Confirming reports from earlier this month, Amazon has today expanded its online grocery service AmazonFresh to it first non-Seattle market: Los Angeles. The company homepage was quietly updated this morning with news of the expansion, and the AmazonFresh mobile applications for iOS and Android have been refreshed as well, announcing the new availability. L.A. customers will now have access to… → Read More
On the heels of reports that Amazon is preparing to significantly expand its online grocery service AmazonFresh, grocery comparison shopping site mySupermarket is today bringing its service the U.S. Operating something like a Kayak for grocery and drugstore products, the new U.S. version of mySupermarket lets shoppers find the best prices across top stores, including Amazon, Walmart, Target… → Read More
Word leaked out earlier that the new release of Apple’s operating system, iOS 7, is in for a major overhaul, most notably bringing an end to so-called “skeuomorphic” design (visual metaphors reflecting the physical objects a digital version aims to replace – e.g. the faux leather in “Find My Friends,” bookshelves in iBooks, fake glass, notepad paper in Notes, green felt in Game Center, and so… → Read More
The growth of mobile devices, smartphones, and social networking services have forever changed the way we take photos. Today, we continuously snap pictures, pausing only to selectively share the best to our network of friends, family and followers on sites like Facebook and Instagram. Today, a new photo-sharing startup called Piccolo is launching into beta with a service that aims to make photo… → Read More
Following news of the NSA’s data-mining program which taps into Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple servers, among others, the network of internet activists known as Anonymous have released a collection documents online which detail the existence of an “intelligence-sharing network.” The documents are dated around 2008 – which, according to reports, was shortly after the PRISM program took off… → Read More
With more commerce moving online every day, the shipping industry is in need of innovation. And one of the bigger pain points developers face when trying to integrate postage and shipping into their applications involves the antiquated technology major carriers like FedEx, UPS and USPS provide – complex SOAP or XML APIs that most developers would say are a nightmare to work with. San… → Read More
New York-based Hullabalu is launching today with a new take on children’s storytelling – instead of digital books with interactive bits as is now common on iPad, this new tablet app itself is the story where the action progresses as children engage with the magical world Hullabalu introduces. → Read More
Is there room for another social network for book lovers, now that the biggest, Goodreads, has been snatched up by the largest online retailer (and Kindle maker) Amazon? Slice thinks so. Today, the mobile receipt tracking service backed by Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Lightspeed, Floodgate and others is expanding into a new vertical, with the debut of its second application, Slice… → Read More
Tango, a mobile messaging and video calling app with now over 120 million members worldwide, is expanding its service by opening its platform to third-party developers. By integrating the newly launched Tango software development kit (SDK) into their own applications, mobile publishers will be able to add a social layer into their apps meant to better reflect users’ real-world connections… → Read More
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