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
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Family Photo-Sharing Service Lifecake Launches, Backed By $1.1 Million In Seed Funding
London-based Lifecake, a new photo-sharing service designed for families and built by former Skype, Qualcomm, and Yahoo engineers, is launching out of beta today, backed by an additional $1.1 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Balderton Capital, and comes on top of a previous $300,000 angel round from earlier this summer. Read More
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Tyra Banks Invests In Locket, The App That Brings Ads And Other Content To Android Lockscreens
Locket, the Android application that puts ads and other content on your lockscreen, letting users earn small amounts of money every time they unlock their smartphone, has received an additional investment from Fierce Capital, LLC, the investment arm of The Tyra Banks Company. Smize, you guys, Tyra’s into Ad Tech now! The size of the investment is not being disclosed, but the company is in… Read More
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Mixbook Debuts Montage, A Photo Book Builder Meant To Take Minutes, Not Hours
When the seven-year old company Mixbook introduced a mobile app for making photo books, Mosaic, last fall, the idea was to distill a process that had traditionally taken hours down to a matter of minutes. But in going mobile, there are some trade-offs in terms of losing the customizations permitted by Mixbook's traditional service. Now to fill the gap in between the more complicated online photo… Read More
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Kabbage Brings Its Small Business Lending Service To Mobile
Kabbage, the Atlanta-based company offering working capital to online merchants and sellers on marketplaces like Etsy, eBay and Amazon who wouldn't otherwise be able to get a bank loan, is today expanding its business to mobile. The company is officially introducing its new apps for both iOS and Android, which will enable Kabbage users to quickly add funds to their associated bank or PayPal… Read More
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Amazon Paperwhite Update Brings Goodreads, Kindle FreeTime & Cloud Collections To E-Reader Owners
Yesterday, Amazon upgraded its newer generation of Kindle tablets with the release of an updated version of its mobile operating system, Fire OS, and today the company is extending similar updates to its Kindle Paperwhite devices. Amazon announced this morning that the new software update for Paperwhite tablets will introduce deeper Goodreads integration and support for Kindle FreeTime, among… Read More
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Lookout Debuts A Mobile Security Suite For Business
As announced earlier this fall, mobile security company Lookout today launched its new security suite for business customers. The product, Lookout for Business, represents the first time the company has gone after the corporate market where the growth in BYOD (bring-your-own-device) programs has necessitated the need for IT departments to better secure the various mobile devices attaching to their… Read More
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Less Than A Year Post-Pivot, Payments Platform Spreedly Raises Additional $500K
Payments platform Spreedly, which offers customers a credit card vault in the cloud that works with 54 different payment gateways, has just raised an additional $500,000 in seed funding from Emerge.be, bringing its total raise to date to just under a million. The funding comes not even a year after Spreedly's pivot from a digital subscriptions service it sold off this July. Read More
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Deeplink.me Brings Twitter Card Support To Mobile Developers Without A Web Presence
Deeplink.me, an open initiative which encourages app developers to embrace deep linking - that is, linking directly to content inside an application from anywhere on the web or mobile - is today rolling out support for Twitter Cards. This means that app developers who don't currently have a web presence are now able to take advantage of Twitter's ability to point its users to a specific page… Read More
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Amazon Updates Fire OS With Deep Goodreads Integration, Better Enterprise Support, “Second Screen” & More
Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets are getting a major update, starting today, with the launch of Fire OS 3.1, an upgrade to Amazon's mobile operating system, based on Android. The release introduces a host of new features including Goodreads integration, an AirPlay-like option for watching videos on your TV and improved enterprise support, as previously indicated. Read More
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Totlol Delivers A Kid-Safe Alternative To YouTube On Web & Mobile
Back in 2008, a startup called Totlol emerged, offering parents a kid-friendly collection of video clips pulled from the YouTube platform on a single destination site. But that company, a one-man show, eventually hit a dead-end and closed up shop. Today, it has returned with new founders who are reviving the brand as well as porting the experience to mobile. The idea itself is solid enough… Read More
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Twitter Ditches Redesign Involving Swipeable Streams, Reverts Alpha & Beta Testers To Old, Four-Button Interface
Twitter’s tests involving a new mobile interface that would do away with the app’s standard four buttons in favor of a “swipeable” menu at the top, have come to a halt. Previously, users on Android’s beta testing program were using an unreleased version of the application that let you move through a number of streams, including Home, Notifications, Messages… Read More
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Google Music Arrives On iOS, Includes A Free Month Of “All Access” Radio
Google Play Music arrived on iOS today, following reports from earlier this week stating that a launch was “imminent.” The app, which will compete with Apple’s iTunes Radio and other streaming music options like Pandora, Spotify and Rdio, offers a standard service and All Access option, both of which allow you to store your music collection in the cloud, and stream songs to your… Read More
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Ahead Of Possible IPO, King Reveals “Candy Crush” Hits Half A Billion Installs, 150 Billion Plays To Date
King, the maker of the addictive and popular “Candy Crush Saga” game, and reported IPO candidate here in the U.S., released new numbers today indicating its growing user base and traction. The company says the game has now been installed over half a billion times across both Facebook and mobile devices, and has seen over 150 billion individual games played to date. Oh, and the level… Read More
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SecretInk Lets You Send Self-Destructing Messages Over Email Or SMS Right From Your Inbox
PowerInbox, the email platform company which merged with competitor ActivePath a year ago, is today launching technology called SecretInk that enables "self-destructing" messages that can be sent over email or SMS. The system works online or inside Gmail and other webmail services using the company's PowerInbox add-on. This utility also enables other interactive email content from dozens of… Read More
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Family-Focused Mobile Social Network 23snaps Hits Half A Million Users
While the proliferation of baby photos may be unwelcome across wider social networks like Facebook, there's a growing interest in closed, more personal social networks built for private sharing on mobile. London-based 23snaps is one of them. This company's cross-platform mobile application is designed specifically for families, and has now bootstrapped its way to half a million users as of last… Read More
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Children’s Educational iPad App Maker Kidaptive Scores $10.1 Million Series B
Kidaptive, the company behind a suite of children's apps for iPad which combine entertaining videos and games with a curriculum focused on kindergarten readiness, has raised an additional $10.1 million in Series B funding in a round led by Formation 8, with participation from A round lead Menlo Ventures, along with Stanford's StartX Fund, NewSchools Venture Fund and Prana Studios, an animation and… Read More
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Isis, The Mobile Payments Initiative From AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile, Launches Across The U.S.
Mobile wallet platform Isis, backed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon here in the U.S., is kicking off its nationwide launch today, as previously planned. Alongside the launch, an updated version of the Isis mobile wallet application also hit the Google Play Store yesterday, with separate versions designed for each carrier’s supported smartphones. Isis says that today there are over 40… Read More
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Twitter Now Lets Advertisers Target Users By Mobile OS Version, Mobile Device & Wi-Fi Connectivity
Twitter today expanded its ad targeting capabilities by allowing marketers to now more granularly segment audiences on mobile (iOS and Android) by operating system version, device, and Wi-Fi connectivity. Before, the company had only offered the option to identify users by operating system alone, on mobile. The change is an important one, given that 76 percent of Twitter's install base of 230… Read More
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SquareOne For iPhone Organizes Your Email, Gives You Better Control Over Notifications
Dropbox's acquisition of Mailbox for $100 million has fueled more interest and development of mobile applications aimed at helping users triage their way through overcrowded inboxes. The latest idea in the making is SquareOne, an email app arriving now in beta, which will allow users to designate which emails are important and worth their time. But it does this in a different way than typical… Read More
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A Pin On Pinterest Is Worth 25% More In Sales Than Last Year, Can Drive Visits & Orders For Months
According to new data sourced by the social marketers at Piqora (previously Pinfluencer), the value of a pin on Pinterest growing – today, a pin generates 78 cents in sales, on average. That’s up by nearly 25 percent from Q4 2012, says Piqora. More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that a pin can drive both pageviews and orders several months after its original pinning. Pinterest pins… Read More
