Sarah Perez
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.
CrunchBase profile →Latest from Sarah Perez
-
Emu, A Smarter Messaging App With A Built-In Assistant, Exits Beta
Emu, a new mobile messaging application exiting from beta today, is not just another text messaging alternative - it's a full-fledged mobile assistant, allowing you to schedule appointments, share your location, set reminders, get movie showtimes or buy tickets, reserve a table, and more, thanks to an artificial intelligence engine that understands the context of your messages in order to help… Read More
-
WhatsApp Experiences Second Major Outage Following Facebook Acquisition
Panic! Despair! Switch to Facebook Messenger!...Ah, I see what you did there, Facebook. Mobile messaging application WhatsApp is this morning experiencing its second major outage since Facebook bought the company in February for $19 billion. According to TechCrunch tipsters, reports on Twitter and DownDetector.com, the service has been experiencing issues for roughly an hour, at least in some… Read More
-
Fantastical 2, The Best iPhone Calendar App, Is Now Available On iPad
There are only a few companies whose mobile apps are so well done or engaging that they actually earn one of the precious few spots on your iPhone's homescreen. Flexibits, the makers of Fantastical 2, one of the best mobile calendaring apps for iPhone, is among them. And today, the company will have a shot at claiming a spot on the iPad's homescreen as well, with the long-awaited release of… Read More
-
TaskRabbit For Business Service Portal Quietly Disappears
TaskRabbit for Business, the errands marketplace’s business-focused web portal announced at the beginning of last year, has quietly disappeared. Links to this particular service, which was aimed at companies looking for temp workers, have been instead redirecting users to the main TaskRabbit sign-up form instead. However, TaskRabbit claims that the business offering was not shut down… Read More
-
Tinder Exploited By Bots Promoting “Castle Clash” Game
A number of users on dating app Tinder report being matched with fake profiles of women, who are actually automated bots promoting a mobile game called "Castle Clash." The bots are sharing a link to the game on the URL "Tinderverified.com," making it appear that Tinder is the URL's owner or is somehow involved with this scheme, which it is not. Read More
-
Mobile App Usage Increases In 2014, As Mobile Web Surfing Declines
New data from app analytics provider Flurry released today states that native app usage on smartphones is continuing to grow at the expense of the mobile web. The company claims that users are now spending 2 hours and 42 minutes per day on mobile devices as of March 2014, up from 2 hours, 38 minutes as of a year ago. Meanwhile, mobile app usage accounts for 2 hours and 19 minutes of that time… Read More
-
Video Chat Marketplace LiveNinja Raises Additional $500K, Launches Tools For Online Businesses
Video chat marketplace LiveNinja, a former TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley participant, has raised an additional $500,000 in new funding, the company is announcing today. The news, which is being announced onstage at The Atlantic’s Startup City Miami event this afternoon, arrives alongside the official launch of the company’s business marketplace, called Katana. The funding comes… Read More
-
AppRedeem Launches Smug Messenger, A WhatsApp Alternative That Rewards You For Getting Friends To Join
AppRedeem, the maker of AppTrailers, a service that allowed users to watch teaser videos about mobile applications in the hopes of boosting downloads, is shifting its focus away from app promotion - well, kind of. Today, the company is introducing a new mobile messaging app, Smug Messenger, that's designed to work on any mobile device, including those without a phone number attached, like a… Read More
-
Amazon Greenlights Six More Original Shows, Renews “Alpha House”
Confirming and expanding on news scooped by Variety earlier this month, Amazon this morning officially announced its plans to greenlight six more of its Amazon Studios’ pilot shows, which are now being given full seasons. The new shows, which include The After, Bosch, Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street, Mozart in the Jungle, Transparent and Wishenpoof!, will come to… Read More
-
Mobile Q&A App Jelly Now Lets You Ask Location-Based Questions Routed To Nearby Users
While the shine and novelty quickly wore off Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's mobile Q&A app Jelly, the company has continued to iterate on its product - the picture-based search service that lets you ask your friends and extended network the kind of questions where the injection of a personal opinion is valued more than a list of links to click, as on Google. Today, the company has rolled… Read More
-
Voxer’s Push-To-Talk Messenger Debuts A Redesigned, Speedier Version 3.0
Voxer, makers of a push-to-talk mobile messaging service, is rolling out a significant upgrade today of its iOS application (version 3.0) with the introduction of a redesigned user interface, speed and battery life improvements, plus new features, including read receipts and unlimited data storage. The company, for background, has long stood out among competing mobile messengers because of its… Read More
-
Google Cracks Down On Deceptive Ads And Other Shady Behaviors Found In Android Apps
Android apps are about to get cleaned up. That is, if the recently added changes to the Google Play Developer Program Policy are actually enforced. Google this week updated its policy that dictates to app developers what sort of content their apps are permitted to display, with a number of rules designed to crack down on shady and deceptive ads. Read More
-
BeHere Lets Teachers Take Attendance Using iBeacon Technology
While Apple’s iBeacon technology is already being adopted by both large and small retailers, we’ve started to see other use cases pop up for this new indoor positioning technology, which involves Bluetooth LE-enabled transmitters that can communicate with nearby iOS 7 devices in order to push alerts, or even interact with other devices in your home. Now a small team of developers… Read More
-
SRCH2 Brings Its Fast, Google-Like Search Technology To Android Developers And Consumers
SRCH2, an enterprise software company founded by ex-Googlers and Stanford PhD's and focused on building faster, more efficient search technology, is expanding its reach to mobile consumers and mobile developers. The company is now launching a new Java SDK for Android app developers, which will allow third-parties to integrate the SRCH2 technology into their own applications. In addition, a… Read More
-
CloudGOO’s New App Turns All Your Cloud Storage Accounts Into One Big, Combined Drive
CloudGOO, a newly launched Android application with something of a silly name, offers a way for you to smush together all your cloud-based file storage accounts to form one big cloud drive in the sky. That is, the app aggregates your cloud drive accounts into one mobile interface, then uses that space as if it were one drive for things like automatic uploads of photos, videos, music, and… Read More
-
Mailtracker For iOS Brings Read Receipt Functionality To Apple’s Default Mail Application
Want to stalk people via email, so you’ll know the moment they read your message? Or maybe you want to know if they gave your message a good look, instead of only a glance? Mailtracker, a newly launched app for iPhone, allows you to do just that, and more. Email stalking? Oh god, why am I telling you about this one? I’m already imagining the horror of the PR person’s… Read More
-
Zoobean Debuts A Recommendation Service For Children’s Apps And Books
Zoobean, one of many startups to experiment with the “Netflix for kids’ books” business model – meaning, a subscription-based children’s books service where new books arrive monthly – is today shifting to become a broader recommendations platform instead. Going forward, the company aims to become something that’s more like a “Pandora for… Read More
-
GoDaddy Partners With Dwolla On New E-Invoicing Option For Small Businesses
Web host and small business service provider GoDaddy is teaming up with payments network Dwolla, the companies are announcing today, to offer GoDaddy’s business customers an alternative to paper checks and competing online payment services like PayPal when invoicing their customers and vendors. The option will be made available to GoDaddy’s 12 million small business customer… Read More
-
Ex-Spotify Engineers Raise $2.2 Million For Lookback, A Mobile App Screen Recorder For User Testing
A team of ex-Spotify engineers has raised $2.2 million in seed funding for Lookback, a platform allowing developers to record onscreen activity within mobile apps – and even record the user’s face and voice, so they can explain what they’re doing when they encounter a bug or some other problem. The round was led by European investor Lakestar, and saw participation from Index… Read More
-
Timehop Brings Its Mobile Time Machine To Android
Timehop, the mobile app offering a way to recall your past one day at a time by displaying your old photos and posts from Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter, is now launching its service on Android. The app, for those unfamiliar, is a simple service that lets you look back on what happened on this day last year, and the year prior, and so on. It’s a “this day in history”… Read More
