Jottacloud, a cloud storage service based in Norway, is promoting itself as a safe and secure haven, free of the NSA’s long reach that it has with services such as SkyDrive, Dropbox and iCloud. → Read More
Digg today announced that the first public beta of its Google Reader replacement Digg Reader will launch next week and will be available to everybody by June 26th. Judging from the early screenshots the team just posted, we’re looking at a straight-up feed reader with a clean design and – at least for the time being – without any of the social media integrations the company hinted at earlier this… → 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
Google may have acquired Geoffrey Hinton’s DNNresearch and is now using his technologies to power its Google+ photo search features, but the academic work Hinton did on deep neural networks (DNN) is now also helping Microsoft to improve its speech recognition systems. Microsoft today announced that it is using DNNs to double the speed of its speech recognition engine for Windows Phone while… → Read More
It was only in March that one of Russia’s hottest startups — hotels booking service Ostrovok.ru – raised $25 million in a Series B round led by billionaire investor Yuri Milner. We said at the time that this market is very capital-intensive, especially in a market like Russia. But today we learn just how difficult this might be in the mid-term. Today the company has announced on their blog… → Read More
Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, has acquired Poster, the popular iOS WordPress client. Its sole developer, Tom Witkin, will join the WordPress mobile team. Poster, which launched its 2.0 version in January, has already been removed from the App Store, but users who previously bought it will always be able to re-download it. Witkin also promises to continue to support it. → 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
DotEEBubble is one of the most controversial startup blogs in the world and you’ve probably never heard of it. In the rah-rah world of entrepreneurs, accelerators, and incubators, it’s rare to see much talk about the problems with the government funded VC model and how the biggest players look more like scamsters than bootstrapping entrepreneurs. That’s just what this blog is – a cold, hard look… → 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
As we continue to see more details brought to light in how the government requests and uses information about what we do on the web and on our mobile devices, an ex-Googler and a consumer rights attorney, who have dedicated themselves to helping users remain private, have raised some funding to do this better and in more places. → 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
Skype has just announced that the previously beta video messaging feature it’s been testing is now a proper release feature of its Skype applications for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry. Video messaging on Skype simply allows users to record a message for a contact to be viewed later, sort of like a video voicemail, instead of requiring that any real-time communication… → Read More
In little more than a month from now, TechCrunch will host its first-ever meetup + pitch-off in Seattle. We’re stoked. Coffee, rain, more coffee, followed by more rain. It’s going to be epic.
General admission tickets are just $5. We’re also looking for title sponsors and companies who want to exhibit at a demo table. Both options are available now here. → 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
Online multichannel network Fullscreen has become the latest in a series of YouTube partners to raise funding. The company has officially closed a funding round led by The Chernin Group, which also included investment from Comcast Ventures and WPP’s investment arm, WPP Digital. → Read More
Amazon is moving deeper into at-home grocery delivery with AmazonFresh, which is expanding to L.A. as of last week, and which is set to continue to roll out to further markets over the course of this year and beyond. But it learned to take things slow from Webvan, the famous home grocery delivery flare-out of the 90s, and also to limit delivery areas to only high density urban areas, and to pursue… → 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
Netflix has been using original programming to power its Internet-TV business, luring viewers to flagship programming such as House of Cards. Today another development showing no let up in its strategy to use exclusive content to put clear blue water between its streaming service and rivals’: it has inked its largest original content deal yet, with DreamWorks Animation. → Read More
Startup accelerators have gone “niche” over the last year. Instead of simply copy and pasting the Y Combinator model ad nauseam, incubators have started to seep into verticals, tailoring their programs to particular industries. Education technology has been enjoying more attention from entrepreneurs and investors of late, and following suit, a new generation of EdTech accelerators have begun to… → Read More
Apple posted a press release on its site reaffirming its “commitment to customer privacy” and stating that it first heard of the Prism program when questioned by news organizations on June 6. The company also said that it received between 4,000 to 5,000 requests from U.S. federal, state and local law enforcement for customer data between December 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013. → Read More
Buried in the ongoing PRISM debacle, there was actually some hopeful news out of Washington D.C. for startups this week. The Supreme Court ruled this week that naturally occurring genes can’t be patented, which should be a boon for the host of emerging gene testing and patenting companies that are coming out of the Valley. Silicon Valley VCs like Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Felicis… → Read More
Earlier this month many people were surprised to hear the revelation that a number of major web companies may have granted user data access to the U.S. government through a secret program called PRISM. But it’s fair to say that Andrew Keen was likely not exactly dying of shock as these allegations surfaced — he’s been arguing for years that the social web is not nearly as safe as many people… → Read More
If you own a Samsung Galaxy and are a Jay-Z fan, then you will probably be thrilled to hear that Samsung is giving away one million copies of “Magna Carta Holy Grail” to owners of its flagship smartphone 72 hours before the album’s official debut on July 4. → 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
Chicago-based Inventables, a marketplace for technology and materials for developers and designers, has raised $3 million in new funding led by Tim Draper (via Draper Associates) with Dundee Venture Capital, Richard Yoo (founder of Rackspace), Georges Harik, and True Ventures participating. This brings Inventables’ total funding to $5 million. → Read More
Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A guy walks into a watch store and… a smartwatch business partnership is formed. OK, it’s not a funny joke; in fact, it’s not a joke at all. When Secret Labs’ founder and CTO Chris Walker walked into the House of Horology store on Prince Street owned by… → Read More
My father put together a Heathkit shortwave radio in his youth. The radio is still there in my childhood home. He’s still alive so this isn’t saccharine reminisces of a man who passed. Dad still sits in that room with the radio, the radio still works, his hands pound away at the Internet all day now, the radio forgotten but still as vital as the day he built it. My Dad is a little less vital, but… → Read More
A growing number of YouTube creators and multichannel networks are beginning to grumble about the revenue share that the site has with its partners and their inability to monetize their huge audience of viewers on the site. And, increasingly, they’re looking for off-YouTube solutions to better distribute and monetize their videos. → Read More
Apple is building a big, visually stunning store in the Stanford shopping center. A few hundred yards from the construction site sits a small, modest Apple location. Last spring, Microsoft opened a flagship spot right next to the small Apple store with a free Maroon 5 concert.
This new flagship location offers enormous space for testing new retail products. → Read More
Yesterday, a CNET story that alleged that the NSA disclosed during a secret Capitol Hill briefing that its analysts can listen to domestic phone calls “simply based on an analyst deciding that,” got a lot of play in the tech and political blogosphere. Today, however, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement that denounces this story as “incorrect.” → Read More
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