Editor’s note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs.
I remember when the press first hit about Nest Labs, the guys behind the iPod/iPhone were taking on thermostats everywhere! A collective “huh?” went through the tech industry. It felt like the tech version… → Read More
Apple faces a whole lot of inbound requests to unlock iPhone devices from law enforcement officials, according to a new report from CNET. Seized iPhones with a passcode lock are apparently secure enough to frustrate a lot of police agencies in the U.S., resulting in a wait list that Apple has put in place to help it deal with unlock requests from the authorities. → Read More
Once again, news from a supplier is fueling rumors about Apple’s future product roster. This time it’s manufacturer Pegatron’s announcement that it will increase its number of workers in China by up to 40 percent in the second half of this year. The hiring blitz at the company, which produces iOS devices, has led to new round of speculation that a cheaper iPhone is in the works. → Read More
Google Glass is finding its way to developers and others and the reaction has been, well, predictable. So far, there are those who think that Glass will absolutely change the world, that it’s our version of the flying car. Those people are full of shit. On the other side of the coin, there are those who say that Glass will never find a place in the hearts of consumers, that it’s… → Read More
To use text messaging and navigation on Google Glass, users currently have to pair it with an Android phone and install the Glass companion app on their phones. This will change very soon, however, one of the Google representatives in its New York office told me when I picked up my own unit yesterday afternoon. Glass, the Google employee told me, will soon be able to handle these features… → Read More
Since graduating from Y Combinator in 2012, Grouper has been on a mission to help busy, overworked young people get away from the glow of computer screens and out into the real world to meet new people. To do that, the startup sends its members on “Groupers,” which are essentially blind, group dates between two groups of friends, designed to take the awkwardness out of one-on-one dating. → Read More
Sprint’s Q1 2013 financial results came out this morning, and the news wasn’t great overall. Losses continue to accumulate, and total smartphone sales aren’t faring very well, either, with just 5 million units sold in total. The iPhone, after achieving a record high of 2.2 million handsets sold on Sprint’s network last quarter, dropped back down to 1.5 million, the same number Sprint saw in the… → Read More
Apple has just released its Q2 2013 earnings report, announcing sales of 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter ending March. Apple also reported 19.5 million iPad units sold, which shows incredibly strong growth for Apple’s tablet business.
This is a slight decrease from last quarter, which included a holiday sales spike and being the first full quarter in which the iPhone 5 was available. → Read More
The Infinity Cell is a kinetic charger for the iPhone that uses your body’s movement to generate electricity. The current prototype for the Infinity Cell is a crude 3D printed rectangle, roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes, linked up to the iPhone with a cable. The plan is to create a more streamlined version during the product’s Kickstarter campaign. → Read More
Opera has just put out its latest State of Mobile Advertising report for Q1 2013 and its findings put the iPhone back on top for “impression volume” (i.e. generating the most traffic to mobile ads), regaining its lead over Android. iOS also maintains its top position for monetisation compared to the other mobile platforms. → Read More
Verizon said today on its earnings conference call that it had activated 4 million total iPhones during Q1 2013, of which half were LTE devices and half were 3G. That means 50 percent, or around 2 million were iPhone 5, with the remaining 2 million making up iPhone 4 and 4S devices. → Read More
Remember the good ol’ days of the Internet? When the only fakes we had to worry about were the images and the people? Video was like a safe haven. Sure, there’d be some shakycam footage of a dude in a bigfoot costume every once in a while — but if something looked real and moved at a decent framerate, you could assume it was legit.
As this video so kindly reminds us, those days are long over. → Read More
Apple’s primary manufacturing partner Foxconn is said to be increasing its staff, shortly after a freeze on new hires following the holiday season, in order to get ready for a big push come summer when Apple debuts its next iPhone. That’s the latest from the Wall Street Journal, which reported today that Foxconn is adding around 10,000 new assembly line workers a week to its iPhone production… → Read More
T-Mobile finally began selling the iPhone 5 earlier today, and it seems as though all that pent-up consumer tension has resulted in some promising sales for the carrier.
“Today has been gangbusters for T-Mobile,” CMO Mike Sievert noted to AllThingsD earlier today. Naturally, Sievert wouldn’t discuss just how many iPhones were moved during the course of the day, but he did point out that… → Read More
Before Mailbox was even an officially announced project, and long before it sold to Dropbox in what is said to have been around a $100 million deal, Josh Milas and Alex Obenauer took to Kickstarter to fund their very own reinvention of email. The team created Mail Pilot, which promised “email reimagined,” with the goal of turning email into a task-oriented to-do list to help people truly get… → Read More
A new Kickstarter campaign from San Antonio-based Ubertronix, Inc. aims to turn your Android smartphone into a wireless trigger for your DSLR. The project follows others that offer similar devices, but this one, the brainchild of Josiah Leverich, who founded Ubertronix a little over a year ago to build camera remote hardware, has some unique elements, including a way to use your smartphone as a… → Read More
Apple’s trajectory in the U.S. smartphone market over the past little while has been an upwards one, with the company gaining more and more iPhone subscribers every month. During the three month period covering November 2012 to February 2013, Apple added 8.9 million new iPhone subscribers, while Android as a platform in total added only 2.9 million. That means Apple’s share of the total smartphone… → Read More
Udemy launched in 2010 to help students of all ages continue their education through video-based, online courses — and in turn, give teachers (and experts) a way to make a buck by sharing their knowledge with the masses. Capitalizing on the growing interest and buzz around online learning and MOOC platforms pioneered by sites like Khan Academy, Udemy has been on a mission to create the largest… → Read More
Apple is looking to start production of a new iPhone of “similar” design to the current one during the second quarter of 2013, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The production ramp-up is designed to set the stage for a summer launch of a new flagship iPhone, the report claims, which agrees with information we’ve heard from our own sources recently. → Read More
A group of MIT students created an app at a PennApps Hackathon that can do amazing things, connecting multiple iOS devices into a single, interactive screen. The app itself, which doesn’t require any kind of jailbreaking or special access and is currently available in the App Store for free, is impressive enough, but Mosaic has much bigger plans: They’ve also created an SDK to let other developers… → Read More
Long before the advent of the Jawbone Jambox, there was a portable speaker that was decently rugged, had tremendous battery life and amazing sound, and that was the Tivoli PAL. The PAL boasted an audiophile peidgree and an auxiliary input that made it a good partner for early iPods, but the introduction of decent stereo Bluetooth streaming made it fall behind somewhat in convenience when the… → Read More
My recently-purchased car has Bluetooth built-in to let me use my phone hands-free from the steering wheel, as do most cars coming off the line new these days. The one issue is that there’s no way to activate Siri using the car’s default controls, which is another unfortunately common thing for modern cars and aftermarket Bluetooth stereo kits. But Plano, Texas-based Beanco Technology offers a… → Read More
A confidential presentation that describes a Shenzhen-based manufacturer’s 2013 product plans points to a few interesting bits of information about the iPhone 5S launch in June 2013 and Foxconn’s role as manufacturer of record for Apple products. → Read More
Apple has a new patent filing just published by the USPTO today which details a wraparound-style AMOLED display that could make it possible to create an iPhone that’s almost entirely screen, with touch gestures and virtual buttons replacing physical ones completely. The patent describes designs that could have a seamless, continuous surface resembling the fourth generation iPod nano, as well as… → Read More
Today, Google has announced a mobile refresh for Google+ for Android and iOS that includes some of the functionality that has come out for the desktop over the past few months. Both versions will be available later in the day. Some of the changes are things that we’ve expected, thanks to acquisitions like Nik Software and features like Communities that were introduced on the desktop last… → Read More
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is a man with a mission: to try to drum up interest in the company’s Windows Phone line of Lumia smartphones in a market saturated with Androids and iPhones. So what better way to grab a lot of eyeballs than by literally trashing someone else’s iPhone on TV? → Read More
TechCrunch was lucky enough to interview several of the Game of Thrones cast members before the San Francisco screening of its Season 3 Premiere. Since we work for a tech blog, we weren’t that interested in learning what they were most excited about when talking about the new season. Instead, we wanted to find out what each cast member’s smartphone of choice is. → Read More
Apple has just issued Podcasts version 1.2, which brings a long list of improvements to the iOS app. Among the changes are a new feature that lets users generate their own custom playlists with any podcasts they choose, with auto-updating of new episodes for each. Stations are stored in iCloud and synced across devices, and users can choose to start with either the most recent episode or oldest… → Read More
Apple reached out to us today to clarify that regardless of comments made by Google Executive Chairman at the Big Tent event in India earlier today, it hasn’t yet received an official submission of Google Now for iOS. There’s no such app in the queue, Apple says, so Google Now on iOS is still a pipe dream for the time being. → Read More
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was on stage today at the Google Big Tent Summit in India, and he discussed a range of topics, including Google Now. Recent rumors posit that Google Now could make its way to iPhone and iPad, based on a supposed leaked video received by Engadget last week. Schmidt addressed a direct question about Google Now on iOS today at the Big Tent event, adding fuel to… → Read More
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