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iOS 8 Said To Take Maps To The Next Level With Added Data And Transit Directions
Apple has just shipped iOS 7.1, which brings a number of small enhancements and some considerable performance improvements to older devices, but now the way is clear for iOS 8, and already the rumor mill has started cranking. 9to5Mac, which generally has reliable information for first-hand reported rumors, revealed today a couple of details about Apple’s next big mobile OS, which should… Read More
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WhatsApp For Android Update Lets Users Pay For Their Friends’ Subscriptions
Today WhatsApp, Facebook's new $19 billion messaging darling, has released an update to the Android version of the app. Among a few new privacy-related features, the update also brings with it an interesting new feature that lets users pay for their friends'/families' subscriptions, regardless of the platform. Read More
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GamePop Review: The Android Gaming Console Gets Another Iteration, Still Disappoints
There’s a rush on to be the first Android console maker to strike the right chord with consumers, and there’s no shortage of contenders. Bluestacks is one such contender, and their GamePop is finally ready to ship to consumers. It’s a unique take, packing 500 top Android games into the console pre-loaded and ready to go, all for $6.99 per month. But can it avoid the pitfalls of… Read More
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Flypay Raises £1M To Make Settling Your Restaurant Bill “Waiter-Free”
Never mind poor service or the food itself, the experience of actually paying the bill at the end of a meal is often cited as the biggest pain-point for restaurant goes. Or so says Flypay, a new UK startup whose app wants to make settling the bill "waiter-free" and a lot speedier in the process. Read More
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Microsoft’s Power Cover Debuts As Rumors Of The LTE-Powered Surface 2 Landing In Stores Abound
Two quick hits from the Microsoft side of things: The Surface Power Cover is now up for pre-sale, and the rumor engine is kicking around the bit that LTE-capable Surface 2 devices have landed in Microsoft stores. Read More
Mobile Writers
TCTV
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Woowa Bros
- Size $12M
- Round Unattributed
- Investors CyberAgent Venture Capital, Altos Ventures, IMM Investment
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Sensys Networks
- Size $2.5M
- Round Partial
- Investors Not available
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LifeGuard Games
- Size $55K
- Round Debt_round
- Investors Not available
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Quipper
- Size $5.8M
- Round A
- Investors Atomico, Benesse
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Carbon Wants To Kick That Smartwatch Off Your Wrist – And Replace It With A Charger Instead
Your wrist is a hotly contested new battleground, with a small fry like Pebble doing battle with giants including Samsung, and activity trackers like the Jawbone UP and Nike+ FuelBand fighting it out, too. A new Kickstarter project also wants to be a contender, with the Carbon wearable solar charger. The project debuted a couple of weeks ago, with a blank-faced wrist-mounted charger that had a… Read More
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Speed-Reader Startup Spritz Closing $3.5M Seed
Spritz, a Boston-based startup that's been developing a speed-reading technology in stealth since 2011, is in the process of closing a $3.54 million seed funding round. Investors include Denis O'Brien, investing through his telco company Digicel. Read More
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TheNeeds Brings Its Personalized News Reader To iPhone
Newly launched iOS application TheNeeds is the latest attempt at offering users a better, more personalized news-reading experience with a service that focuses not only on your interests, but also how those interests evolve over time. The app, something of a competitor to the magazine-like Flipboard, or a community site like Reddit, helps to surface the best articles, blog posts, videos, social… Read More
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Pebble Kicks Off An Online Hackathon To Find And Reward The Best SDK 2.0 Smartwatch Apps
Pebble is launching an online software challenge, powered by ChallengePost, which begins today – right now, in fact. Developers who are interested in participating can submit new or existing apps designed for Pebble’s recently launched version 2.0 software development kit, and have two weeks to get those apps in. Once Pebble has collected all the submissions on March 23rd… Read More
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Aiming To Fit Fiction Into Busy Schedules, Rooster Is An iPhone App For Serialized Novels
If you're the kind of person who talks nostalgically about how you used to read novels (you know, before you got busy with work and life, and before you had a million Internet-connected devices to distract you ...), there's an app called Rooster that might be able to help. Rooster was created by Plympton, a serialized fiction startup co-founded by former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee… Read More
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Drifty, Makers Of The Ionic Mobile Framework, Raise $1 Million
Drifty, a participant in the TechStars Cloud 2013 incubator, and makers of a suite of tools for mobile developers building apps and websites, most notably, the Ionic framework, has closed on a million in seed funding, the company is announcing. The funding comes from Arthur Ventures, and will help the company grow its team and continue development on the Ionic framework. The startup was founded… Read More
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Free-To-Play Games Company Kabam Buys Phoenix Age As It Pushes For $650M In 2014 Sales
Kabam, the free-to-play gaming company that has raised some $125 million in venture funding and looks to be among those weighing up an IPO, has acquired Phoenix Age, a games studio based in San Francisco. The deal was done for diversification: it will give Kabam some strong franchises, and games developing talent, specifically in the area of role-playing games. Read More
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Mophie Space Pack Review: Have Some Extra Storage With Your iPhone Backup Battery
Apple offers the iPhone in a number of different storage capacities, ranging from 16GB to 64GB, but it doesn’t offer expansion storage options to let users add their own via micro SD or any other format. Mophie has spent years building backup battery packs for iPhone devices, and now it’s adding additional space to store your files, too, with the appropriately named Mophie Space Pack. Read More
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Unwired Planet Files Mobile Patent Suits Against Google, Samsung, Huawei, HTC In The UK, Germany
While existing Android patent suits between the likes of Samsung and Apple continue to drag on in Europe, Unwired Planet, the patent enforcement entity that acquired 2,400 wireless patents from Ericsson last year, looks like it is putting its IP to work. Today it announced that it has filed parallel infringement actions in the Patents Court of the High Court of Justice, London, United Kingdom and… Read More
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Android SDK For Wearables Coming In 2 Weeks, Says Google
Google is readying a version of its Android OS tailored for wearable devices. Google’s Sundar Pichai told the SXSW conference Sunday that it would be releasing an SDK for makers of wearable devices such as smartwatches in two weeks’ time. The SDK will be aimed at other makers of smartwatches and wearables, even though Google itself is thought to be working on building wearable… Read More
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Lowdown Is An iOS App To Help Busy People Prepare For Meetings
Apparently, preparing properly for meetings -- the who, what and where -- is a pain-point for some. This is especially true for sales people who have to hold a lot of meetings and where preparation can make the difference when trying to push a prospect over the line. That's the problem Lowdown is setting out to solve. The UK startup has created an iOS app that automatically pulls together… Read More
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TC Droidcast Episode 23: Samsung’s Music Milk Shake, HTC’s One 2 Punch
This week on the TechCrunch Droidcast, I’m joined by Chris Velazco as he shares his recent MWC memories. We also dig into Samsung’s new Milk Music streaming radio service, and the Pebble 2.0 software for Android, as well as HTC’s upcoming One flagship smartphone announcement. It’s a crazy, crazy time in Android land, if only because it’s new phone season, since spring… Read More
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The Console Market Is In Crisis
Neither of the games industry's new flagship boxes -- the PS4 and the Xbox One -- is selling well compared to previous generations of flagship home consoles. The console market as a whole appears to be shrinking significantly — and that’s having a knock-on impact on games studios and game development. Read More
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How Secret May Uncover A New Secret To Mobile Growth
Greetings from a rainy (but always fun) Austin, TX. As is the case leading up to every SXSW, many wonder what will be the breakout app. As someone who works in, invests in, and writes about mobile, the app that’s come up the most in conversation, offline and online, is no “secret.” It’s not too surprising given Secret launched publicly at the right time (a little over a month ago)… Read More
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Fly Or Die: Jelly
A couple of months ago, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone launched an app called Jelly, meant to make asking and answering random questions more fun. So, in a world where we wear out Google with inquiry after inquiry, is there really a place in the world for a Q&A app? This is the question we pose on this week's episode of Fly Or Die. Welcome. Read More
