If you have an iPhone, chances are you’re concerned with fine craftsmanship and design, but what about being green? A new phone case out of Portland could help you achieve both at once.
Meet the Skate Case. → Read More
Twitter has released Vine for Android, bringing the 6-second video sharing service to Google’s mobile OS for the first time. The Vine app is available for Android smartphones right now, and is a free download for anyone running Android 4.0 or higher. → Read More
If you thought smartphones were ubiquitous now — and in certain places they pretty much are — prepare for a whole lot more people to be coming online on their phones in the next 5 years. Ericsson has published its latest mobility report, based on traffic measurements of live networks, which projects global smartphone subs will rise from 1.2BN in 2012 to 4.5BN by the end of 2018 — a CAGR of 25%. → Read More
CBTec, the e-learning startup founded by ex-Nokians and members of the now defunct MeeGo team, has released an Android app for its Eliademy MOOC platform that’s also compatible with the widely used open source VLE Moodle. That’s because both Eliademy and Moodle are based on the same codebase, while in addition it provides CBTec with a nice new revenue stream. → Read More
Looks like not everyone is embracing the vision behind Corral Rides, which aims to bring all of your transportation options together in one place — cabs, ridesharing, mass transit, and more.
A reader tipped us off that Lyft, which was one of the main services in the app, has been removed at the company’s request. (Apparently this actually happened several weeks ago, but I thought it was… → Read More
There are dozens upon dozens of apps interested in your photo creation and sharing habits, but very few focus on the consumption of photos. Meet Divvy, an iOS app that lets you combine all of your social feeds (for now Facebook and Instagram) into one collective photo stream.
You can filter between the two social networks, of course, but that’s just the start. Divvy also lets you share photos… → Read More
MessagEase is an alternative keyboard that uses a mixture of taps and gestures combined with a radically different keyboard layout designed to speed up text input by minimising typing movements. Its method compacts the keyboard space required into a small square — which could easily fit on a wrist watch, say, or even enable a Glass wearer to type in the air with minimal finger movements. → Read More
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is a little over a week away, and that means we’re already seeing a lot of buzz surrounding what will and won’t appear at the conference. Apple itself has dropped hints, and recent comments from CEO Tim Cook while speaking at AllThingsD’s D11 conference last week indicate developers should be especially excited about what’s on tap for the annual conference… → Read More
As mobile gaming has exploded, it follows that startups helping to feed and in turn feed off the mobile gaming ecosystem are poised for growth. One such company is AppLift, the mobile games marketing platform co-founded and backed by games distribution incubator HitFox, which today is announcing that it’s closed a $13 million Series A round from Prime Ventures. → Read More
Crowdstar, the social and mobile gaming company that has built several fashion-focused titles, just picked up another $12 million from existing investors to bring two products to market later this year. As you might expect, both are mobile and Crowdstar CEO Jeffrey Tseng says the company now has a renewed focus on tablets. Competing companies like Finland’s Supercell have made tablet gaming… → Read More
A massive anti-government protest in Istanbul, prompted after days of unrest were sparked by plans to redevelop one of the last remaining central public parks, appears to have lead to a throttling of social media both in the city and across Turkey. TechCrunch has independently verified via a number of sources that both Facebook and Twitter have been almost impossible to access from inside… → Read More
Desperate to make its homescreen replacement Home seem less invasive, Facebook is advertising that you can temporarily deactivate it and use your HTC First or other Android phone as normal. The fact that Home replaces your widgets and app folders has been a core complaint. Facebook vows to fix that, but until then it’s reminding people they can leave Home for stock Android or their old launcher. → Read More
Like GIFs? Tumblr? Got an iPhone? $2.00? OK, good, then you’ll probably like this new app called Stilly which is either the most ridiculous thing ever or the most fun you’re going to have all weekend. The app, in a nutshell, turns anything you capture with your iPhone’s camera into a jiggling, wiggly, color-flashing GIF.
Well, you know, kind of! → Read More
I’ve always been impressed by people who can listen to music while they write. I mean, I’ll do it every once in a while, especially when one of my co-workers is being particularly distracting, but in general I’ve found that music just slows me down.
Well, there’a startup called focus@will aiming to solve that problem, and today it’s following the launch of its website and Android app with the… → Read More
Photo-sharing may seem a very saturated space but there’s still room for disruption reckons Seattle-based startup Linea, which is aiming to reinvent how people share multiple sets of photos with its horizontally scrolling filmstrip of images. The startup has just closed a $4 million seed round, with investment from an undisclosed group of Angel investors, and is about to start raising a Series A. → Read More
HTC is currently sailing through a patch of rough seas, and it seems as though the company is starting to rethink its tablet strategy. According to a recent report from Bloomberg, HTC was planning to put together a 12-inch Windows RT tablet for release later this year before scrapping it due to cost and anemic overall demand for Windows RT. → Read More
Apple continues to rule the roost when it comes to mobile ad share, according to UK-based ad firm Adfonic, but Samsung is winning a small victory in terms of seeing higher engagement for ads displayed on its smartphones, with better click-through-rates (CTR) and higher earned cost-per-mille (eCPM). There’s also a general trend that sees tablets overall increasing their share, suggesting we haven’t… → Read More
Fanatix, the U.K. startup that’s made a mobile-first social network for sports fans to chew over their team’s performance as and after they watch them play, has bolstered its seed round with another $1 million, from a series of undisclosed UK-based Angels. The additional funding brings its total raised to $3 million to date. → Read More
RadPad is one of those startups that comes from a founder’s real-world experience — specifically, Jonathan Eppers (a former product manager at eHarmony and Myspace) said that he was trying to find a new apartment in Los Angeles, and he was frustrated to discover that the process is still more complicated and painful that it needs to be. → Read More
As promised at the time of its acquisition by Twitter, mobile crash reporting tool Crashlytics has not stopped development. In February, it opened up its enterprise features to all for free, and today the company released the long-awaited solution for Android devices with the launch of the Android SDK. → Read More
Threadflip, the online and mobile marketplace that helps users clean out their closets, or buy from those who are doing just that, is today introducing a completely revamped mobile experience for its iOS application following a surge of growth from its mobile user base. It’s a welcome change, and one that should help the company better compete with similar services from Poshmark or thredUP… → Read More
Weotta is releasing a big update to its iOS app today, one that should make the app even more useful for planning cool things to do — particularly with friends.
The company, which first launched at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in 2011, is also announcing that it has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding, which came entirely from new investors. The round was led by Google Ventures… → Read More
Google will make another mobile phone available with stock Android soon. Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome, and Apps, announced at the D11 Conference that the company will sell the HTC One Google Edition for $599 on the Google Play store beginning June 26. → Read More
MoPub, a startup that helps mobile app publishers run advertising from multiple sources (such as ad networks, direct sales and cross-promotion), says that it reached a $100 million revenue run rate this month.
MoPub is now conducting 2 billion ad auctions each day and reaching more than 550 million unique devices each month, the company says. The MoPub exchange launched 18 months ago, and CEO… → Read More
Although you can’t ditch your leather-bound billfold yet, a startup called Lemon has been slowly building up a mobile wallet platform that’s encroaching on the traditional wallet’s territory, and even making it better in some cases. Today, it’s extending its feature set again with the addition of an expense reporting tool, which serves to augment its previously available receipt capture… → Read More
After Evernote, the personal note-taking app with 60 million+ users, got slammed with a security breach in February 2013, today the company is turning on three new features to give users better control over their accounts: two-step verification, access history and authorized applications listings. Two-step authentication will eventually get rolled out to all users, but a spokesperson tells TC that… → Read More
The mobile messaging space is exploding with ever more colourful ways to communicate, augmenting the basics of text and voice — whether that’s stickers, one-to-many video chats or the ability to leave random missives for strangers. Zoobe, a Berlin-based startup, has another cutesy option to add to the pile: cartoon avatars that animate your voice message so you can ramp up the kawaii. → Read More
Apple appears to have renewed interest in investigating gaze detection similar to what Samsung offers as “Smart Stay” tech on the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4, which can stop a screen from dimming and going to sleep when a user is actively watching it. Apple’s version uses the front-facing camera along with the onboard accelerometer to auto-switch between a predetermined screen power down time and… → Read More
Qriously, the “question network” that’s trying to reinvent the mobile ad, has announced that it’s closed a $3.5 million Series A round led by Spark Capital — funds it will use to expand its U.S. and European footprint and, more interestingly, to push its new mobile ad product based on what it calls “opinion targeting”. → Read More
Apple today dropped a mid-cycle refresh of the iPod touch, its iOS-based iPod, with 16GB of storage on board and without a rear camera, for $229. This slots in its existing lineup between the refreshed, fifth-generation iPod touch, which has a rear camera (and a loop for attaching a wristband), and the iPod nano. → Read More
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