The Latest
Enterprise
UK’s Purple WiFi Raises $5M To Push Its Free Social WiFi Service Abroad
2:29 am PST • January 14, 2015
Free public WiFi has become one of the more popular ways that cafes, shops and other public places attract users and then use the connections to serve ads and collect other kinds…
Media & Entertainment
Samsung Launches Its First Tizen-Powered Phone, The Z1, In India For $92
12:03 am PST • January 14, 2015
After plenty of speculation and aborted launches last year, Samsung has finally outed its first phone powered by the Tizen operating system. The Samsung Z1 is coming to India initially,…
Startups
The SocialRank Index Shows Companies How They Stack Up On Social Media
5:41 pm PST • January 13, 2015
Social media analytics startup SocialRank released a new tool earlier today called the SocialRank Index — aimed at tracking and aggregating the performance the biggest brands in the world. This…
After raising a massive $100 million round last summer, BlaBlaCar is opening its first market outside of Europe with India — if you count Turkey and Russia as part of…
If laziness was a sport, the equipment would be the Hovertrax. You step up onto the foot pads, tip your feet forward, and two motorized wheels carry you around while gyroscopes…
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has been weathering a Twitter storm of mockery for comments he made yesterday in which he appeared to suggest it would be the intention of…
Media & Entertainment
PayPal Here Adds Windows Support, Will Launch An EMV Card Reader Later This Year
2:59 pm PST • January 13, 2015
The PayPal Here card reader, PayPal’s hardware device that lets merchants accept credit and debit card payments through a dongle attached to their iOS or Android device, is being updated with support for…
Online Gaming Giant Kixeye Holds Large Scale Layoffs, Cutting As Much As 25% Of Staff
2:59 pm PST • January 13, 2015
Kixeye, the San Francisco-based online gaming giant, held layoffs yesterday as part of a larger reorganization of the company, sources tell TechCrunch. According to two sources, more than 100 people…
In a time when IBM has been dumping its x86 server business, and the mainframe would seem a relic of a bygone day, Big Blue took five years and invested a cool $1B to…
Hardware
Apple Watch Companion App Features Said To Include Activity Reminders, Phone Unlock
1:18 pm PST • January 13, 2015
A new leak of details from within the upcoming companion app for the Apple Watch claims to show some unannounced features we can expect from the wearable when it arrives…
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Media & Entertainment
Why Is Apple Going To Have A Better Time Launching A Wearable?
1:01 pm PST • January 13, 2015
At some point in the next few months (“Early 2015” can’t push much past March, can it?), Apple will release its Watch, likely defining the high end of the wearable…
Hardware
Apple Patents A Wireless Action Camera And Wrist-Based Remote
12:48 pm PST • January 13, 2015
Apple has been awarded a patent by the USPTO based on IP it acquired from Kodak in a deal from 2013, which details a remote digital camera system that can…
Startups
Clinkle Pivots From Its Soured Brand To “Treats” For Sharing Discounts
12:44 pm PST • January 13, 2015
Not since Color has a startup been as widely laughed at as the troubled Stanford payments startup Clinkle. So it’s little surprise that the company has changed the name of its…
Media & Entertainment
Carrot Hunger Is An App That Shames You Into Eating Healthier
12:03 pm PST • January 13, 2015
Brian Mueller’s Carrot suite of apps have become popular by sadistically pushing users into better behaviors. The latest is Carrot Hunger, an artificially intelligent calorie counter that will shame or reward you for…
500 Startups-Backed Italist Is Like Shopping The Streets Of Italy, But Online
11:26 am PST • January 13, 2015
Despite the brand recognition of Italian luxury fashion brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, and Valentino, there is no online aggregation of exclusively Italian luxury fashion. 500 Startups-backed Italist is…
Electronic Invoicing Startup Taulia Hires Silicon Valley Finance Veteran Rik Thorbecke As CFO
11:00 am PST • January 13, 2015
Fast on the heels of raising a $40 million Series C round of funding, electronic invoicing and supply chain financing startup Taulia has hired a CFO. Today the company is…
Media & Entertainment
PlayStation Now’s All-You-Can-Stream Game Subscriptions Available On PS4 Today
10:48 am PST • January 13, 2015
Sony’s streaming PlayStation Now service is available beginning today via PS4 in two subscription flavors starting at $20 a month, and $45 per quarter (or a discount of $15 vs.…
Google Opens Its Cloud Monitoring Service To All Developers On Its Platform
10:32 am PST • January 13, 2015
Last year, Google acquired the cloud monitoring service Stackdriver. Within weeks, Google had launched a private beta of its own cloud monitoring service based on Stackdriver’s technology and now —…
When Dubsmash founders, Jonas Drüppel, Roland Grenke and Daniel Taschik, created a new mobile app that lets you record a video of yourself, synced to a preselected sound clip, such…
Is the PC market growing or shrinking? It depends on who you ask. As TechCrunch wrote yesterday, tracking firm Gartner reports that PC sales were up 1 percent globally in the final…
