February 2014

Korean messaging leader Kakao is negotiating with Morgan Stanley and Samsung Securities Co. to file for an IPO in Korea, according to the WSJ. The seven-year-old company is mostly known…

We broke the news yesterday that Google was producing a prototype 3D sensing smartphone called Project Tango. We also broke down the capabilities of the vision processor inside the device…

The mobile market may still essentially be a two horse race, with Android and iOS enjoying a significant lead, but there are lots of upstarts trying to make inroads, too.…

As an expat, the proliferation of mobile devices is one of the best things that has happened in the seven years since I moved to Asia. I can send silly…

Samsung has a new teaser out for its “Next Galaxy,” which will be unveiled February 24 at an event during MWC in Barcelona. The short video, which clocks in at…

London-based Spider.io has been acquired by Google, the company’s DoubleClick advertising blog announced today (via Re/Code). Spider.io is a startup that specialized in weeding out fraudulent clicks around online ads.…

A new report pegs Amazon’s potential TV set-top box launch for March. Re/Code reports that the e-commerce and digital media giant is indeed still hard at work on a streaming…

In a Finnish startup love-in, Angry Birds maker Rovio and Sailfish OS smartphone maker Jolla are partnering for co-branded content on Jolla’s first handset. Jolla is also working on an…

Well, that’s an unusual school assignment. Colin Heilbut, who says he’s a student at the Draper University for Heroes, emailed TechCrunch earlier today to inform us that he’s selling Jimmyjane…

There are almost 900 million active cell-phone users in India now, and from newer startups to some of the biggest companies in the world, everybody is chasing the next mobile…

Mt.Gox promised to get its house in order, and get back to the Bitcoin community and its users today. It did, but didn’t open up withdrawals, or set a firm…

The White House isn’t waiting for Congress to enact new intellectual property laws. President Obama has made good on his promise to go after so-called “patent trolls,” businesses that hoard…

There are few canvases harder to find yourself portrayed upon than the US postage stamp. Unless you’re a state bird, a beautiful wild flower, or a historic/cultural icon, it’s pretty…

King’s long anticipated IPO filing dropped some staggering figures this week. The $1.8 billion in annual revenue that the Candy Crush Saga-maker earned last year was about $600 million or…

YouTube is rolling out a new design to its users today that takes its cues from the “card-like” design Google now uses on many of its other web and mobile…

Tackk is announcing that it has partnered with photo-sharing startup 500px, making a wide variety of photos available to Tackk users. Tackks, for those of you who don’t know, are…

Jon Mills, the founder and former CEO of real-world analytics startup Motionloft, has been arrested by the FBI. The arrest follows allegations that Mills lied to investors about an acquisition…

Viki, a streaming video platform that crowdsources translated subtitles, will launch a beta version of its site for Japanese viewers tomorrow. The announcement comes five months after Tokyo-based Rakuten paid…

After the last two decades of consumer Internet and mobile innovation, is biotech or bioinformatics the next wave? There are a handful of San Francisco-based startups that cross the bridge…

On the web, no one can hear you converse – or perhaps they can, but it’s not terribly easy to surface them and have a sustained, engaged dialogue around any…

Just because WhatsApp will “operate independently” doesn’t mean Facebook won’t put its 6,000-employee muscle behind its new acquisition. We’ve heard a lot about how WhatsApp will save Facebook from losing…

Today after the close, HP reported a slight beat in its fiscal first quarter, including net revenue of $28.2 billion, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.90. Investors had expected…

In May of last year, we broke the news that Seamless and GrubHub — two of the largest players in the online and mobile food delivery space and “arch rivals”…

Tinder, one of the hottest dating apps, is making headlines for more than making matches. A security firm, IncludeSec, recently revealed a major problem in Tinder’s app that could allow…

Amplitude, a Y Combinator-backed mobile analytics service aiming to take on the likes of Flurry and Mixpanel by offering advanced features at more competitive prices, is officially making its public…

If any of your favorite sites don’t seem to be working right now, don’t panic — it’s not just you. Namecheap, the host of some 3 million-plus domains, is reporting…

Twitter announced its Ads API program a year ago today, allowing advertisers to run their campaigns through API partners like Adobe and Salesforce. Now it’s giving the program a new…

After reporting better than expected profit and revenue for its fourth quarter, Groupon surged. However, investors soured on its guidance, sending its share plummeting.

As crowdfunding is all the rage today, there are entrepreneurs like Ryan Caldbeck of CircleUp who approach opportunities a bit differently. A former private equity analyst focused on consumer retail,…

Now here is one spectacular tale. A company, with little PR or marketing, grows in just a handful of years to connect half a billion people around the world through…