In an effort to streamline its digital offerings, The Weather Channel has today announced that its popular iPhone app has undergone a major redesign. It started with the launch of the iPad app, and just a few weeks ago The Weather Channel followed suit on the web. But the iPhone marks a major portal between TWC and its consumers, in that mobile and weather undoubtedly go hand in hand.
The redesign reminds me a bit of HTC’s Sense 3, with the home screen offering up a weather-themed background based on the weather outside. The user interface seems much more navigable, but the features themselves are getting a bump as well. → Read More
Heroku was a hit with Ruby developers because it was an easy-to-use development platform. Others have tried to do the same with other languages such as PHP Fog, dotCloud. Then last year AppHarbor, a ‘Heroku for .NET’ out of Y Combinator launched.
And today AppHarbor has extended its service to European developers. EU applications will still run on Amazon’s infrastructure, but they’ll be running out of the EU-West region (Dublin) instead of US-East, where all current applications are located. → Read More
Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant leading a $100 million investment in Pinterest, will be making two major contributions to the image-based social network as it gears up for its next stage of growth: the funds to take the image-based social network into new international markets, and a business model.
First up, Rakuten’s home market of Japan, where “Pinterest is growing very fast,” notes Rakuten’s CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, in an interview with TechCrunch. He wants Rakuten to grow right there with it by using Rakuten’s services to become the basis for buying things off the site.
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There’s been a lot of armchair valuation punditry across the Valley this week. As the Facebook IPO looms, our intricately entwined ecosystem of startups and investors seeks to benefit from the domino effect of a population feeling flush with cash. This is the picture that the WSJ painted in its Quora funding announcement yesterday, headline: “Former Facebook Hands Capitalize on Buzz.” Okay, sure, smart people will always adapt to a favorable environment — but the WSJ missed a deeper and more long-term dynamic at play. → Read More
There’s a new product that just came out of Disney Labs — a video portal for clips, movie trailers, and even a collection of curated YouTube videos, all designed to be watched online or on any of your mobile devices. The new Disney Video site, located at video.disney.com, combines the best of Disney past and present, with a whole lot of content that might not be found anywhere else.
It’s too early to know too much about the site — we spotted after it was announced on Twitter by Henry Work, Senior Software Engineer for Disney Interactive Labs, and have a request out for more information. But at first glance, it seems like a pretty cool example of what a major media company can do with a huge library of content that it hopes to bring to multiple platforms and devices. → Read More
Palantir Technologies, the big data analysis company founded in 2004 by a team of ex-PayPal employees including Peter Thiel, has raised $56 million in new funding, according to a document filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This is by no means Palantir’s first go-round with venture capital investors. This is the company’s 7th round of funding, according to our records. → Read More
Carrying on in the esteemed tradition of Facebook hackathons, there will be an all-nighter at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters that culminates with CEO Mark Zuckerberg ringing in the NASDAQ bell ahead of the company’s much, much, much anticipated IPO.
There is an internal event page for the big day that has about a thousand Facebook employees RSVP-ing for the bell ringing early on Friday morning. We can’t tell if there are any other big festivities prepared ahead of time. It’s all up in the air. Some people may dress up though. We don’t know if the gong will be used. Zuck will probably give some remarks as he has ahead of other hackathons. → Read More
Personal Capital, which launched last year, provides a suite of software aimed at helping people manage all their personal finances — no matter where they are — through one central suite of web and mobile apps. Earlier this month Personal Captial was named “Best In Show” at the FinovateSpring, a conference in San Francisco focused on all things financial and technology related, so it certainly seems to be onto something big.
So when Personal Capital put out its first iPhone app last week, we asked CEO Bill Harris and product VP Jim Del Favero to stop by TechCrunch TV and give us a hands-on look at the service. → Read More
American politics used to be fun: frequent political carnivals in the 19th century would mix parties, parades, and political speeches in an endless stream of local civic life. As a result, America had an astonishingly high turnout, between 70-90%, in presidential and local elections. Yet, the Internet has never quite captured the emotional gravity of real-life engagement, and keeps tripping up multi-million dollar campaigns designed to inject life into an otherwise passive electorate.
For example, take two technology initiatives that were widely predicted to dramatically increase democratic engagement: Obama’s 2008 campaign and Americans Elect. Despite the hype, Barack Obama’s juggernaut of a online campaign only boosted youth turnout by a meager 2%. → Read More
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Apple is currently ordering larger screens for the next iPhone. With the usual nonsense, the WSJ cited people familiar with the matter and stated these screens measure at least 4-inches diagonally. Production is set to begin next month, they say.
The Journal better be right, though. A 3.5-inch screen is just too small now. At this point to say anything to the contrary is pure fanboi nonsense. The standard argument that consumers don’t want a large phone is tired and overused. Besides, it’s effectively proven wrong by the 20 million Galaxy S II phones sold by Samsung last year. It’s time for a larger iPhone. → Read More
The folks over at Google just love their Google+ social network and more and more Google+ features have been creeping into Gmail lately as well. Today, Google is bringing even more of Google+ to its email client. With today’s update, Google is especially focusing on adding a deeper integration with Google+ circles. You will now, for example, see profile photos from people in your circles when you select a circle in the left sidebar. You can click on those images to search for email from a specific contact. In addition, if you really take your Google+ circles seriously, you’ll be happy to hear that you can now use circles as search filters in Gmail as well. Say you want to just see emails from your “friends” circle, you can just type circle:friends to find them. → Read More
Is link shortener Bitly raising $20 million in new funding? The Verge says it is. In response to my email, a company spokesperson denied The Verge’s story, but in vague enough terms that it could probably turn around and announce a new round in the next few weeks or months.
Here’s what the spokesperson told me:
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Customers of Time Warner Cable have some reason to rejoice today, as the cable company has gotten the go-ahead to add channels like MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central to its live streaming iPad app. The addition of those channels comes after both Time Warner Cable and the networks’ owner, Viacom, have settled their differences and resolved litigation around the app.
The legal fight erupted last year, after Time Warner Cable released its streaming iPad app, which lets subscribers stream live shows to tablets inside their homes. While many networks grumbled about the app, Viacom was most vocal in rejecting the app, taking its distribution partner to court over whether or not it had the right to stream to other devices. → Read More
It’s hard to underestimate how important ranking in Apple’s top 25 in the iTunes store is for mobile app developers. After all, the top 25 is what one of the most important app discovery mechanisms for iOS users. But how many downloads does it take to make it into the top 25? Mobile analytics firm Distimo today published some interesting data that answer just this question. Turns out, in the U.S. store, the answer currently is about 38,400 daily downloads for free apps and 3530 for paid apps. To rank in the top 25 per category, of course, takes significantly fewer downloads, with games unsurprisingly being the most competitive category. It takes 25,300 daily downloads to rank in the gaming top 25 for free apps and 2280 downloads for paid apps. → Read More
No one ever called a limit on the number pivots a company can do, right? So here’s the latest at a company we’ve been watching for a while now. RAVN, an event planning and sharing app that itself was the product of a pivot from the developers behind “experiences marketplace” Skyara, has sent a letter out to its users telling them that the app is getting shut down at the end of this month. In RAVN’s place, the founders are starting up yet another business — their third — also loosely based around events but with a decidedly more commercial bent: a design flash sales site called Touch of Modern.
“After two years of building a new marketplace for experiences, we have decided that it is time to close down RAVN. The website and mobile app will completely stop working by the end of the month,” the RAVN team wrote in the note to users. → Read More
Almost 115 million households in the U.S. currently own at least on TV set and 36 million own four or more. That’s a huge market and as Apple, Google and Microsoft try wrestle more of this business away from the traditional content and hardware players, the old-school cable and satellite providers now suddenly have to content with this new group of challengers that, until now, barely registered on their radars. According to Forrester analyst James McQuivey, it’s Microsoft that’s winning this platform war so far. → Read More
Independent online video company Funny Or Die is about to get a lot of help from a traditional TV company, as it’s struck a strategic partnership with Turner Broadcasting to collaborate on multiplatform video content. As part of the deal, Turner is taking a small minority stake in Funny Or Die — terms of which have not been disclosed.
“We’re at an inflection point with digitally distributed video,” Funny Or Die CEO Dick Glover told me by phone. He says that as a result, the timing of the deal is poised to coincide with that inflection point and catalyze further growth for Funny Or Die. → Read More
One of the most memorable moments of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last year was office hours with Paul Graham, who is the heart and co-founder of Y Combinator. We are doing it again this year. But because Graham is back in Silicon Valley with a newborn baby, we’re doing it in a slightly different way.
Over the past few years, we’ve heard that it’s not only hard to find engineers. It’s hard to find great design talent. And if Apple’s still unbelievable and mind-boggling rise over the last 15 years shows anything, it’s that design matters. Design and simplicity made the difference between Instagram and every other photo-sharing app. It revived Path. It made Square stand out among all of the other credit card readers. So we’re changing Office Hours to focus on design. Design Office Hours will be held on-stage at Disrupt NYC on Wednesday, May 22nd, from 11:55am to 12:30pm. Just like we did last year at New York during Disrupt, six companies will be chosen from the completed applications below to spend time on-stage with some talented design experts. → Read More
One trend we’ve been tracking is the “Internet of Things” — the idea that at some point, all devices will be intelligent and connected, allowing for things like whole home automation. The problem is that most new systems equipped to connect to the Internet are reliant on proprietary software and hardware usually tacked on by the vendor. So whatever devices do come to market Internet-ready tend to be overly expensive, and don’t play well with others.
That’s where Electric Imp comes in. The startup was founded on the premise of decoupling all the connectivity and intelligence for these connected systems from the devices themselves, and instead, letting those applications be powered by a tiny chip, lovingly called an “Imp.” → Read More
Today, Google is launching one of its most ambitious and interesting updates to its search engine in recent months. Starting in a few days, you will start to see large panels with additional factual information about the topic you were searching for take over the right side of Google’s search result pages. The panels are powered by what Google calls its new “Knowledge Graph” and they will serve two different functions. Google will use this space to show you a summary of relevant information about your queries (think biographical data about celebrities and historical figures, tour dates for artists, information about books, buildings, animals etc.) as well as a list of related topics. In addition, Google will now allow you to clarify what exactly you are looking for and will use these boxes for disambiguation. Thanks to this, you will soon be able to tell Google you were looking for the L.A. Kings ice hockey team and not the Sacramento Kings when you searched for ‘kings.’ → Read More
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