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
FiftyThree, the startup behind the wildly popular drawing app Paper, has closed a Series A round of financing from Andreessen Horowitz, we’ve learned. The investment was led by Chris Dixon, and could help the company to expand with new products for its iPad fan base. → Read More
There’s some interesting news coming out of London today in the form of VC musical chairs. DFJ Esprit, the European VC firm that is also part of Silicon Valley’s DFJ Global Network, has announced that Associate Scott Sage has been promoted to full VC Partner. However, that isn’t the big story. In events that seem somewhat related, TechCrunch has learned that long-standing DFJ Esprit Partner Nic… → 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
Elon Musk took to Twitter early this morning (via Verge) to promote an event coming this Thursday that promises to show off new tech that allows quick swapping of Tesla battery packs for extended trips, without requiring a Supercharger stop. The move would make a Tesla Model S roadster as easy to fuel up as a gas-powered car, if not easier, getting rid of the need for extended period charging… → Read More
Ayannah, a gift-remittance startup in the Philippines, just received $1 million in its first angel round. The company’s service is called Sendah, and allows Filipinos working overseas to pay for products and services back home for their families through Sendah’s site. Sendah has a number of benefits over plain cash remittance. The company has worked out a number of discount deals with… → Read More
Adafruit Industries has put together a weekend project for people worried the NSA is monitoring how many reruns of Seinfeld they watch on their tablet. The Onion Pi Tor Proxy is a weekend project that uses the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, along with a USB WiFi adapter and Ethernet cable to create “a small, low-power and portable privacy Pi”. → 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
Welcome to the Summer of 2013. Welcome to the summer when you’re not quite sure which of your Internet activities are being tracked. When you want to start Snapchatting everyone because at least then data “disappears.” Except when it doesn’t. → 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
Yahoo! is now the latest tech company to disclose the number of government requests for data it has received over the past 18 months, prompted by the fallout from the NSA spying scandal.
In a statement co-signed by CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo! general counsel Ron Bell, the company said that Yahoo! received 12,000 to 13,000 requests from FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and U.S. law… → Read More
The tech industry has been buzzing about “big data” for years now. And according to venture capital firm Accel Partners, the excitement around the big data space is not set to die down any time soon — it’s just about to enter into a new phase.
Accel is announcing tonight that it has dedicated $100 million for a new investment fund called Big Data Fund 2. The fund is the same size as Accel’s… → Read More
Yahoo is offering to purchase social email startup Xobni for $30 million to $40 million, according to AllThingsD’s sources. If the deal goes through, Xobni would be the latest acquisition by Yahoo as CEO Marissa Meyer seeks to boost the company’s talent roster and product offerings. → Read More
I get as excited as anyone thinking about the upcoming 49ers season. Quite a bit has happened since we were 5 years from winning the Super Bowl. The stadium was branded with the Levi’s logo, we got Anquan Boldin from the Ravens for pretty much nothing, and Michael Crabtree suffered a hefty injury. Yahoo!, while on a purchasing spree of startups, decided to align themselves with SF’s most… → Read More
Jack Conte, musician and founder of Patreon, has been on a tear lately with a set of unique music remixes performed by him and a group of pneumatic robots that fire off audio sequences to create some amazing music. → Read More
If there’s one striking thing about those PRISM slides, other than their hideous aesthetics, it’s that Apple’s allocated yellow oval, instead of a date, has the words “(added Oct 2012)” underneath it. That difference is most striking when you consider the fact that Apple competitor Microsoft cooperated with the government a full five years earlier. → Read More
Here’s a fun comparison from Optimal, a social advertising and analytics startup: If you look at big brands on social networks, their following seems to be growing more quickly on Twitter than on Facebook.
Optimal says it looked at the data from 4,330 brands, representing a total of 3.49 billion Facebook Likes and 595 million Twitter followers. Last week, those brands added 18.5 million new… → Read More
Following up on their massively successful $2.4M Kickstarter campagin, Oculus VR has just locked down a gigantic $16M Series A to help them build their truly amazing virtual reality goggles, the Oculus Rift. → Read More
The eyesore of a PowerPoint deck that contractor Edward Snowden had leaked had globally recognized names: Microsoft. Google. Yahoo. Facebook. Apple. AOL. Skype. YouTube. The NSA had allegedly collaborated with all of these Internet giants to request and access data on foreign users. But then there was also PalTalk. WTF? Even Stephen Colbert ribbed them last week. “You heard right. → Read More
When most men go out to buy a casual shirt, they think of sizing in terms of small, medium, or large. But a new startup called Trumaker wants men to start expecting more from the fit of their day to day shirts, by bringing personalized made-to-measure fitting to the world of casual men’s shirts — all at a price point that’s in line with the current offerings from mainstream men’s clothing… → Read More
President Obama finally took a sit-down interview on the National Security Agency scandal and we’ve pasted a partial transcript below. Disappointingly, most of it is (very) generic and defensive. But, there is one important takeaway: President Obama couldn’t answer whether oversight courts (FISA) have ever rejected a single NSA spying request. PBS’s Charlie Rose asked, pointedly… → Read More
Online coupon giant RetailMeNot has just filed for $230 million IPO, according to an S-1 released today. → Read More
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed,” wrote William Gibson. He’s right. Luckily, the future is mostly in my attic workshop.
I’ve been lucky enough to have access to a Form 1 3D printer for the past week and have come away with a better sense of the platform, the way forward of 3D printing in general and Form 1 in particular. In short, the Form 1 is one of the… → 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
We tend to do a fair number of giveaways here on TechCrunch, but today we’re giving away something extra special: power. Well, no — it’s more like we’re giving away knowledge, but knowledge is power. So we’re giving away power. The world’s largest video education platform creativeLIVE is hosting a “Secrets from Silicon Valley” workshop later this week… → Read More
At first glance, the similarities between PicMix and Instagram are obvious. Both apps are photo sharing platforms with simple, square Polaroid-esque aesthetics, and display photos from friends in streaming feed. But while Instagram is figuring out how to monetize, Indonesian startup, PicMix seems to have nailed it from the get-go. PicMix makes it part of the core photo posting process for users to… → Read More
Google sure isn’t giving up on its Chromebook initiative, even though it’s not clear that the company’s Chrome OS-based laptops are selling all that well. Today, Google announced that it’s expanding its brick-and-mortar retail efforts for Chromebooks through partnerships with Walmart and Staples. → Read More
The MacBook Air was the only new Apple hardware to be announced and launched at WWDC this year (besides the new AirPort Extreme), and while it isn’t a big change from the previous version, it packs some crucial improvements that really cater to the Air’s existing strengths. The 2013 Air is really Apple pushing the envelope with its ultraportable, and that has helped make one of the best computers… → Read More
You know who you are. You check into CrunchBase every day, maybe a few times, just to make sure your competition has not closed that new round. If you are that guy, CrunchBase is about to make your life a little easier. Today we are launching the CrunchBase Daily, an email roundup of the latest funding data from CrunchBase. You can sign up for the CrunchBase Daily by joining our mailing list… → Read More
There is no shortage of apps on the market to help users find new, interesting videos to watch and enjoy. But video discovery startup Squrl still thinks there’s work to be done. The company just released a new version of its iPhone and iPad app that provides new ways to share with friends and find content that is more personally relevant to them. → Read More
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