Instagram is planning to launch video functionality in two days. But don’t go deleting Vine just yet. Before shoving Vine’s into the deadpool, let’s just calm it down a second.
Vine has been declared by many as the “Instagram for Video.” Instagram’s own video product is likely already too late to squash Vine like a bug. Heck, Facebook couldn’t even get Poke and Messenger off the ground after… → Read More
Hardware is so hot right now. So hot, in fact, that another European hardware startup is formulating an attack on the smartphone hardware space — joining the likes of Finland’s Jolla and Spain’s Geeksphone to have a go at handset making. The newest comer stepping in with a plan to shake up the “status quo” is called Kazam: a startup co-founded by a pair of former U.K. HTC execs. → Read More
Rounds, the video chat app and Israeli startup backed by $5.5 million in funding from Verizon Investments, Rhodium and DFJ’s Tim Draper among others, has been slowly expanding across platforms. Originally built as a Facebook-centric experience, Rounds expanded to the desktop last summer, launched Mac and Windows apps to allow its users to send and receive video calls without using their browser… → Read More
iZettle, the mobile payments company that has been described as a European version of Square, is today making a move that places it one national boundary away from the U.S. mobile payment company’s own backyard: iZettle is launching its iOS and Android service in Mexico. This is the Swedish company’s first move outside of Europe, and comes in the wake of a $6.6 million funding round from the… → Read More
Toronto-based Whirlscape attracted plenty of attention when it first debuted its innovative Minuum software keyboard, and sought funding for the project on Indiegogo. Now, the project is moving forward with the launch of the Minuum keyboard beta app for Android, which will give Indiegogo supporters their first chance to actually play with the tech and see what it is they’ve helped pay for. → Read More
Back in August, Lift launched the first rendition of its snappy-looking iPhone app that aims to help people build healthy habits and achieve their goals. Initially incubated and seed funded by Obvious Corp., the hybrid accelerator and seed vehicle created by Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone and early Twitter VP Jason Goldman, the startup added $2.5 million from Spark Capital, SV Angel… → Read More
There’s plenty of information swirling about the HTC One Mini thus far, especially considering it’s not an officially announced handset by any means. Still, we’ve seen pictures, learned about rumored specs, and today it would appear that we’re one step closer to confirmation.
The folks at TNW spotted a User Agent Profile that was published to a website owned by HTC, the Taiwanese … → Read More
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Samsung President Shin Jong Kyun this week to discuss how the two companies might work together to help Facebook reap more revenue from advertising sales targeted at mobile devices, according to Bloomberg. Kyun and Zuckerberg talked about possible partnerships between the two companies at a meeting at Samsung’s Seoul headquarters, which is especially… → Read More
Yandex, referred to as the “Google of Russia” for its dominance in search and subsequent extension into cloud-based services like maps, online storage and apps, today is unveiling another service that will give it a stronger foothold in the fast-growing mobile market: it is debuting a dedicated mobile browser, which will feature a single box for URLs and searches, voice recognition features and… → Read More
Advertising giant WPP is taking another step into the world of startup investments, this time specifically in mobile and social media. WPP Ventures, a new investment arm of WPP Digital, today announced a stake in Muzy, a social media platform that presents its content arranged in a Pinterest-style grid layout. The site, in some regards, has flown under the radar, but it has some 20 million users… → Read More
Popular exercise- and nutrition-tracking service MyFitnessPal is making its first significant effort to reach an international audience.
Co-founder Mike Lee said that MyFitnessPal now has “well north of” 40 million registered users. That already includes users in other countries: “In absolute numbers it’s large, but … it’s just a small percentage of our total userbase.” So Lee argued that… → Read More
TechCrunch writer Kim-Mai Cutler and Benchmark Capital general partner Mitch Lasky recently wrote two insightful pieces on venture investment in games (here and here) – both expressing some degree of skepticism of venture capital models for funding game startups. I agree venture funding is not for every game startup, and certainly not every game startup makes for a great venture investment. → Read More
What better way for an anti-social app to get noticed than by insulting its target audience? London-based app design studio ustwo has just put up a pair of billboards in the hipster heartland of Shoreditch, East London, a stone’s throw from where its own studio is based, which brazenly proclaim: You have no friends and No one likes you. → Read More
Sunrise, the Google-friendly calendar app that focuses on design, may have some competition coming from iOS 7, but even with the added pressure, the Sunrise team is clearly making strides.
Today, Sunrise was updated in the App Store to add support for foursquare check-ins, CrunchBase and Google Maps, along with some design tweaks. → Read More
Last we saw Lumu Labs it was in Hardware Alley at Disrupt New York where the Slovenian startup was showing off a prototype of its digital light meter plus iPhone app — aiming to convince photographers to replace “bulky” traditional light meters with a pocketable gizmo that plugs into their iPhone. Now, Lumu Labs has just kicked off its Kickstarter campaign, aiming to raise $20,000. → Read More
Apple retains the top spot when it comes for uses making actual purchases on their mobile devices, according to a new Forrester report. iOS shoppers are around 30 percent more likely to make a purchase on their device, and about 15 percent more likely to do product research on their smartphones and tablets than Android users, the survey of 58,000 U.S. respondents found. → Read More
Irish startup Galvanic has just launched a Kickstarter to crowdsource funding a wireless stress biosensor it’s calling PIP. PIP is a Bluetooth biosensor that monitors its user’s stress levels by measuring their galvanic skin response (GSR) as they hold the PIP pinched between thumb and forefinger. GSR means skin conductance — so basically how sweaty you’re getting. → Read More
We’ve been working on getting more details on a press event that Facebook is having this week. Earlier, we wrote it could launch a news-reading app, but we have since heard more details that point to something else entirely. On June 20, a source says Facebook will unveil that Instagram, its popular photo-sharing app, will begin to let people also take and share short videos. Call it the Vine… → Read More
A few people have taken up the challenge of bringing some kind of Vine support to Windows Phone, but so far all the ersatz Vine apps in the Windows Marketplace do is let people view those 6 second clips. According to WPCentral’s Daniel Rubino, developer Rudy Huyn’s 6Sec is different — the third-party Vine app crossed a major milestone with a recent update so Windows Phone 8 users (well, ones… → Read More
So, this is weird. Earlier today, if you visited the Square’s hiring page on Jobvite, there were two unusual job listings, one for “Chirply — Potential Acquisition” and another for “SeatMe — Potential Acquisition.”
If those were accurate statements, well, that’s a pretty strange way to announce a pair of pending deals. But before you start sending out those congratulatory tweets and emails… → Read More
Tristan O’Tierney, a co-founder at payment company Square, announced via tweet that yesterday was his last day at the company.
O’Tierney is less well-known than his co-founders, particularly the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey, but according to his LinkedIn profile (where he describes himself as an iOS engineer), his accomplishments include building the original iPhone app, as well as being a “large… → Read More
Why are so many apps blue? The obvious answer is many tech brands contain blue in their logo or tradedress. But why? What’s with the love of blue tones? I ask because the number of blue icons on my phone has reached a kind of tipping point where I’m often firing up the wrong (blue) app. Apple’s iOS 7 redesign is also pushing away from using lots of blue, towards a more balanced multicoloured look. → Read More
The mystery of Path’s mysterious growth deepens. The app, which has been around for nearly three years, miraculously jumped up the charts from between 500th and 600th place to the teens on the free list about two months ago. That raised questions about how the app was able to do that so spontaneously. Was it that Path finally suddenly acquired the network effects and organic growth that it… → Read More
Back in March, I wrote about how Heyzap was introducing advertising to its mobile gaming platform. Now co-founder Jude Gomila says the company has become a significant player in mobile advertising.
Specifically, Gomila sent along the chart showing the growth in publishers running Heyzap ads and the corresponding growth in ad impressions over the past six months. You can’t tell exactly where… → Read More
It was a big week in gadgets, and thus, a big TC Gadgets podcast it shall be. This week, we discuss developments at E3, including Xbox One and PS4 pricing, the death of Nokia’s Symbian OS, and of course, WWDC.
Will you buy a PS4 or an Xbox One? Does despair fill you from nose to navel when you remember the good old days of Symbian? Is the new iOS 7 design repelling, attractive, or some bizarre… → 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
As photo-sharing truly hits its stride, an entire ecosystem is born around it. But what is creation without consumption? That’s what Divvy is all about.
We met the folks behind Divvy at the TC Meetup + Pitch-Off. At it’s core, the app aggregates all your photos from Facebook and Instagram (Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox all coming soon) into one filter-capable stream. You can also save photos from… → 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
Not content with following Nokia’s past playbook, by saturating the mobile market with countless iterations of its smartphone hardware, pushing a whole Galaxy of gizmos at every price point and form-factor fancy you can think of, Samsung has gone one further. It’s opened an R&D centre in Espoo, Finland, right on Nokia’s doorstep. Literally on Nokia’s doorstep. → Read More
The Google deal to buy Waze — reportedly for $1.1 billion — is a strong move for both companies to enhance their respective mapping services, and to help monetize them better. But it could also serve as the tipping point for Nokia to turn the screws on getting Google to take licenses for certain mapping patents that it owns, or else face legal consequences. According to a source… → Read More
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