GiveO2 is an app that calculates your transport-related carbon footprint. The app uses your smartphone’s 3G or GPS connection to track your daily movements and spits out an answer, explaining in grave detail just how much you’re destroying the world. → Read More
Crittercism, the San Francisco-based makers of a performance management and error monitoring system for app developers, announced today that it has raised $12 million in series B financing. The round was led by Google Ventures, with contributions from existing investors, Shasta Ventures and Opus Capital. As a result of the new financing, Google Ventures General Partner Wesley Chan will be joining… → Read More
The mobile app ecosystem isn’t poised to decline any time soon, according to a new study from Compuware, which finds that the majority of smartphone users (85 percent) still prefer mobile apps to mobile websites. Users believe apps to be more convenient (55 percent), faster (48 percent) and easier to browse (40 percent). That data isn’t shocking, of course – native experiences do tend to work… → Read More
Sim City 5 is yet another game that exposes an inherent conflict at the heart of the PC, about how connected and app-like or independent it should be. Publishers like EA might be trying to convince PC users to think of their games more as services, but PC users are still as reluctant as ever. So are operating system developers. And so the PC continues to muddle on. → Read More
Hubbl, the app discovery service built by former TechCrunch Disrupt finalists, has introduced an interesting new feature today for users of its iPhone version: Passbook integration. To get started, you simply visit a link (hubbl.io/passbook) from mobile Safari, in order to add a pass to Apple’s Passbook which will then send you a new app deal every day. The Passbook feature will also be added to a… → Read More
After spending years working as technicians at public schools, Jeff O’Hara and Nicolas Borg launched Edmodo in 2008 to address what they had come to see as a huge gap in the teacher-student relationship: The need for a better, safer way for teachers to connect and communicate with their students. However, with the launch of its APIs early last year to allow developers to build apps on top of its… → Read More
I had a little bit of time to play with the Chromebook Pixel today and I’m a regular user of the Acer C7, a $199 machine that is wildly underpowered but good enough on a bad day. I really like the concept and I really like ChromeOS – it’s a solid way to get a little browsing done, say, in a cyber cafe or hotel bar. It isn’t, however, an OS. → Read More
Although there are a ton of DIY app builders out there, the majority of them are either designed for those with a little bit of coding know-how, or involve drag-and-drop components which are used to create a basic app or mobile website. A new startup called AppGyver (rhymes with MacGyver!) is different. It’s a mobile app prototyper, not an app builder, and it’s aimed at those who need to rapidly… → Read More
Google issued an update for its iOS application today that adds the “Send to TV” feature to its apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The feature allows you to quickly and easily pair your mobile phone with select TVs, making it possible to play and control video from the app on your television set. → Read More
Toronto-based startup AppHero launched version 2.0 of its service today, with a brand new interface and big behind-the-scenes changes to how it offers up recommendations to users. AppHero is on a roll, fresh off funding and a spot on NBC this morning, but the app discovery space is a crowded one, and competitors like AppGratis have more international experience and are aggressively targeting the… → Read More
Mobile app developers using a technology called “cookie tracking” (sometimes called “Safari flip-flop” or “HTML5 first party cookies”) are starting to have their apps rejected by Apple’s App Review team, we’ve heard from a few different industry sources. With this method in place, Safari is opened upon first launch in order to read a cookie that may exist there from a user’s past interactions… → Read More
Ginger Software is on a mission to become the go-to spell-checking tool for Android. This week, the Israeli makers of natural language technology designed to help native and ESL speakers better express themselves, released its latest free mobile app for Android, called the “Ginger Keyboard.” Simply put, the Keyboard is a straightforward, easy-to-use proofreading app that allows users to correct… → Read More
Apple hasn’t done much to change the way iOS works at its core, in terms of navigating within and between apps and the home screen. In fact, iOS is maybe the mobile OS that has remained the most fundamentally the same since its introduction, at least among those that are still in active use.
But while Apple hasn’t been making huge changes to the basic iOS user interface, third-party developers… → Read More
In the deep and rich world of self-generated Internet content, there are few things as stark – and as starkly polarizing – as text on a colored background. Is it meme-cheating? Is it boring? Is writing “i hate mondays” in Helvetica over a field of taupe better than posting a picture of a cat hanging off of a tree limb with the same aphorism under her? Now we can find out definitively with … → Read More
Illustrating how very, very hard it is to have a breakout hit in today’s mobile app stores, a report from app store analytics firm Distimo released today finds that only 2 percent of the top 250 publishers in the iPhone App Store are “newcomers,” versus just 3 percent in the Android store, Google Play. → Read More
Mobile backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) platform StackMob is expanding upon its earlier launch of a marketplace for third-party services, with the debut of a marketplace targeted towards enterprise customers. Through a series of partnerships, the marketplace allows StackMob to promote its integrations with other software and platforms-as-a-service companies, API infrastructure providers and more… → Read More
It’s Valentine’s Day and what better way for a crowdfunding site to show its love for you than release an iOS app? The new app will go live on iTunes shortly and allows users to follow their funded projects and search for new projects from the comfort of their iOS device. No word on an Android version yet. → Read More
The Apple TV could finally be getting a developer SDK that would allow third-party apps to appear on the platform, according to an analyst note from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek today. The note cites channel checks as the source of the info that Apple will hold an Apple TV-related event in March, at which time it may introduce an SDK for “iTV” development. → Read More
Mobilewalla, an app search and discovery website, Android application, and somewhat stealthy app developer analytics platform has raised $4 million in new funding in a round led by early Amazon investor Madrona Venture Group (Scott Jacobson). Also participating were notable figures in the Indian Angel Network (IAN), including Venkat Raju, Google India chief Rajan Anadan, and former Yahoo… → Read More
Fresh on the heels of its partnership with UK educational app maker Mindshapes, San Francisco-based kids’ app platform Fingerprint is today rolling out a new version of its software which introduces kid-safe multiplayer gaming, messaging and more. This news was hinted at in January, when CEO Nancy McIntyre, formerly of LeapFrog, spoke of a forthcoming release which would introduce new features… → Read More
A new report from German researchers reveals the five main ways people are organizing the applications on their smartphones. Despite the somewhat esoteric focus of a study like this, the resulting analysis has a broader impact on our digital lives. The content found in mobile app stores is growing at an exponential rate. There are over 800,000 iOS applications, just under that on Android, and app… → Read More
Mailbox, the email inbox management app for iPhone that was released in beta this week, currently has around 700,000 users queuing up for access, at the time of this writing. That’s according to the in-app counter that many of us have been staring at on and off for days now, which tells you how many people there are still ahead of you in line for the app, and how many people are joining up behind… → Read More
Fans of entertainment social network GetGlue have been subjected to a bumpy ride over the last few months. In November, the startup announced that it had agreed to merge with TV loyalty service, Viggle in a deal worth as much as $70 million. But the numbers didn’t look too good, and the merger was delayed again and again. Finally, last month, the deal was called off and, in spite of the botched… → Read More
Vine, the Twitter-owned video sharing iOS app which lets users knit together snippets of video to create six second loops, has had its user age rating increased to 17+. The increase was bundled in a v1.0.5 app update which requires users to confirm they are “at least 17 years old” before the download begins, and warns of “frequent/intense sexual content or nudity”, among other warnings. → Read More
App store analytics firm Distimo released a new report today which examines the effect that price changes, and specifically price drops, have on iOS app sales. When the price drops for iPhone apps, on average, cumulative downloads grow by 1,665 percent for five days following the decrease. Not surprisingly, a price drop is more effective on the iPhone App Store than it is on the iPad App Store, as… → Read More
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but the mobile app economy continues to grow like gangbusters — like it stole something. Research2Guidance found that revenue from the top five app stores hit $8 billion in 2012 (up 27 percent from the year prior), while about 26,000 applications are submitted to iOS’ App Store each week. As a result, AdEven expects Apple to add at least 435K apps to its… → Read More
Instafocus did what many new app startups did: tried to build a business on the back of another, only slightly older and more stable, one. In this app’s case, that bedrock business was Instagram, which was just testing out its wings as a broad-reaching platform with real-time developer API access. But Instagram changed the rules of the game over Christmas, disabling its real-time API, and that… → Read More
Today, the streaming music startup Serendip is bringing its “lean back,” serendipitous music discovery service to mobile with the debut of the Serendip iOS application. Like the web version which launched last fall, the new app offers a continuous stream of the music popular among friends, or others you’ve dubbed your “music soulmates.” → Read More
When it comes to developing for mobile platforms, Android and iOS — the top two mobile platforms by device sales worldwide — are also first in the mind of app makers. But surprisingly, beleaguered BlackBerry isn’t so far behind: an indication that, if RIM really connects on BB10, it could have a shot at some kind of comeback, or at least the support of developers to make sure it has the content… → Read More
The mobile app economy continued to show impressive growth in 2012, with Apple’s App Store maintaining its course, while its rival, Google Play, was able to make some significant gains. A November report from mobile analytics firm App Annie showed that, while iOS revenues still hold a lead over its rival, Google Play revenues were up 311 percent overall from January 2012 and downloads were up 48… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
