Chris Velazco
Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy.
After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater, and soup among his myriad interests.
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Latest from Chris Velazco
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Lovely’s Apartment Rental App Moves Into Its New Digs On Android
Few things in life are more frustrating that trying to find a new place to live (especially if you’re itching to move to the housing market hellholes that are New York City and San Francisco). It’s no wonder then that so many startups — Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, Apartment List, Rental Engine, Zumper, Nestio, the list goes on — are trying to make it all just a little… Read More
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Google Outs Play Edition LG G Pad And Sony Z Ultra, But They’re Still US-Only
Well, that was fast. LG inadvertently outed a G-Pad tablet that would be getting the Google Play Edition treatment earlier today, and Google has just followed up with a confirmation, a price tag ($349) and another device to add to the mix. Sony’s $649 Z Ultra is also available in the Google Play store, much to the chagrin of rumormongers who have long claimed that Sony would soon get a… Read More
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Source Code Says LG’s G-Pad Tablet Will Get The Google Play Edition Treatment
Google and LG have been getting awfully cozy lately — the web giant tasked the Korean company with delivering its two most recent Nexus smartphones, and if you’re the type to put stock in rumors, it seemed like a new Nexus tablet (bearing the model number “LG-V510”) would be the next fruit of their union. Well, according some files posted to LG’s own site, it… Read More
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AirCast Mobile Wants To Make Phone-To-TV Video Sharing As Easy As Texting
Chances are you’ve got a screen in your pocket and a screen in your living room, and as time goes on more and more companies are trying to find ways to make the two play nice together. The latest entrant in the field is a Chicago-based startup called AirCast Mobile is taking a stab at bringing the phone-television content gap with an app called AirCast Live that lets users remotely… Read More
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The War For Your Wrist
The past decade has seen the consumer electronics war grow more furious and more personal: your living room is a battlefield, as are your desks and your pockets. Now, more than a year and a half since the Pebble (nee Allerta) team saw its e-Paper smartwatch concept shatter a $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal, gadget purveyors of all stripes are vying for a spot on your wrist. As I write this… Read More
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YC Alum MobileWorks Aims To Make Acquiring Users Easier (For A Price) With LeadGenius
Startup founders, especially those up to their necks in product development, don’t always have the head for building the kinds of customer bases required to keep their business afloat. That’s where Y Combinator alum MobileWorks comes in. It first raised funding for its approach to building a virtual, on-demand workforce, and now it’s trying to bring that distributed team to… Read More
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The Android-Powered, Dual-Screen YotaPhone Launches In Russia And Beyond For €499
Remember the YotaPhone? The delightfully kooky Russian smartphone that pairs a bog-standard LCD screen with an eInk display on its rump? It’s been teased for a launch for months now, but the company behind it has just spilled the beans at a press event in Moscow: the YotaPhone will launch in Russian and Europe today complete with a confirmed €499/19,990 RUB price tag, right in line… Read More
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Amazon Is Experimenting With Autonomous Flying Delivery Drones
Between launching a charity-friendly buying program, announcing Sunday deliveries, and gearing up for the first wave of frenzied holiday shoppers, Amazon has been busy these past few weeks. But that didn’t stop CEO Jeff Bezos from spending a decent chunk of time talking to Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes about something, well, new. Read More
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This Week On The TechCrunch Droidcast: We Give Thanks To BBM, Custom ROMs, And… Yoga?
Holiday weeks tend to be a little quiet, but there’s always something going on in the world of Android to dig into. This time around, though, Darrell and I roped in MobileSyrup’s Daniel Bader and our very own Natasha Lomas to liven things up before it goes quiet for a few days. And I daresay we pulled it off nicely. Read More
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Motorola’s Awfully Cheap, Unlocked Moto G Makes Its U.S. Debut
Motorola may have designed its cheap Moto X with international markets in mind, but cost-conscious phone nerds in the United States now join in the fun too — the company has confirmed that it’ll sell both the 8GB and 16GB versions of the device on its website starting today. Read More
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Done Deal: Apple Confirms It Acquired Israeli 3D Sensor Company PrimeSense
Well, it’s about time. After months of speculation and persistent rumors, Apple today confirmed that it indeed acquired Israeli 3D sensor company Primesense, as first reported by AllThingsD. Early reports pegged the transaction as costing Cupertino between $300 and $350 million, but ATD claims the figure was closer to $360 million and anyone hoping Apple will step in with the correct… Read More
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Motorola Taps 3D Systems To Produce Parts For Its Crazy Modular Smartphones
Back when Motorola revealed that it’s seriously trying to bring modular smartphones to the masses, it left more than a few of the particulars shrouded in secrecy. Granted, that’s probably because most of the particulars haven’t even been fleshed out yet, but the Google subsidiary is slowly starting to reveal its vision for how these crazy things will actually be made. Read More
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GameAnalytics Finds A Home In Unity’s Asset Store While It Works On Paid Products
It’s hard to overstate just how finicky game design can be, and a Copenhagen-based startup called GameAnalytics has been trying to help devs crack the design and monetization code going on two years now. Now the team has gotten a pretty nice kick in the pants thanks to the folks behind the Unity cross-platform game engine — the two have inked a deal that will see GameAnalytics… Read More
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4chan Founder’s ‘Drawquest’ Daily Drawing App Makes A Big Leap Onto Small Screens
“There this guy, ‘Slothdude’,” Christopher Poole mentions excitedly in a small conference room that used to be a bedroom. “And he just makes the most amazing stuff.” With a few taps, Poole has coaxed his iPhone into displaying an image of a dejected, bipedal sloth standing at a bus stop in the rain. It’s at once hilarious and sort of a bummer, and… Read More
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Google Wallet Invades Your Physical One With A New Prepaid Debit Card
For a while there a physical Google Wallet card seemed like the stuff of rumors, and then it looked like another project lost to the ages when former Wallet chief Osama Bedier (who purportedly pushed the concept) officially resigned from his post earlier this year. Larry Page’s disapproval of the card after a buggy pre-launch demo certainly didn’t help the project’s… Read More
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Logitech Outs Its $99 iOS Game Controller, And It’s Exactly What You Expected
Here’s a noodle-scratcher for you: you have an iOS device and love playing games on it, but you’ve grown weary of effetely pawing at a touchscreen. What do you do? Well, now that iOS 7 is out on and has already been installed on a veritable crap-ton of devices, the answer is to explore the wild and woolly world of iDevice game controllers like the one Logitech just officially… Read More
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Verizon Moto Xs Get Access To Android 4.4 KitKat Less Than A Month After Google Revealed It
As we inch ever closer to the madness that is the holidays, I’ve been thinking that two Android smartphones deserve just a little more attention than the rest: the Nexus 5 and the Moto X. The former has a stellar spec sheet and access to frequent updates straight from Mountain View, but the latter makes do with a slightly older version of Android propped up by some awfully valuable… Read More
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This Week On The TechCrunch Droidcast: Moto G Madness And CyanogenMod For All
Do you like Android? Do you like multiple people trying to talk at the same time about what’s new in the Android world? I thought so. This week’s edition of the TechCrunch Droidcast is just a little more raucous than usual since Darrell and I aren’t arguing amongst ourselves — TC family members Natasha Lomas and Greg Kumparak joined us from London and California… Read More
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The Dual-Screen YotaPhone Will Launch Internationally In December
Russia-based Yota Devices has been working on a curious beast called the YotaPhone for over a year now, and it’s gained quite a reputation for itself because of its split personality. While the front of the phone sports a traditional LCD screen, the back plays home to a power-sipping eInk display because… well, why not? The launch date was one of the last big questions left… Read More
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Gift Guide: Gadgets (And An App) For Digital Bookworms And Writers
The days are getting shorter, friends, and that can only mean one thing: winter is coming, and so too are the holidays. We here at TechCrunch like to think of ourselves as a gaggle of technological bon vivants, so we’re starting our Gift Guide a little early this year. Read More
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