Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.
Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.
Dear Michael: An Open Letter From The Present About The Future Of Your Past
Jan 21, 8:54AM
San Francisco, CA
21st January 2011
Dear Michael Moore-Jones, I just finished reading your thought-provoking post - "A Future Without Personal History" - over at ReadWriteWeb and felt compelled to write you this note. I was particularly taken by your concern that your entire generation will grow up without ever having written and mailed a letter, and as such will leave no permanent record of your lives. Hell, you know you're getting old when someone fifteen years younger than you is bitching about the state of the modern world. Still, yours was an argument well presented; certainly better than I could have managed at the age of sixteen. And I was with you all the way. Or at least all the way up to your conclusion where you suggested a solution to the problem of ensuring a sustainable record of your life: "copying and pasting communication from all different formats into different documents stored both on hard drive and in the cloud." It's on that point we part company.
mSpot Lands In Europe, Lets You Take Your Music Wherever You Go
Jan 21, 8:03AM
I'm a big fan of music streaming startup Rdio, but one thing it does not do (and probably never will): let me upload the music I already owned before I subscribed to their service so I can stream it on the go (it does have an iTunes syncing feature, but it's limited to the music they've licensed). Enter mSpot, a music locker service that does exactly that: let people carry around the music they've already paid for. And today, mSpot is formally launching in Europe.
TechCrunch Interview With Eric Schmidt, Larry Page And Sergey Brin
Jan 21, 3:43AM
Late last summer we were ready to break a big story - that Eric Schmidt would be stepping down as the CEO of Google. Multiple sources and all that jazz. The basic story was that he was tired (who wouldn't be), and that the idea of competing, and probably losing battles, against Apple and Facebook for the next decade wasn't all that appealing. Who would replace him? That was the rest of the article. But Google insisted the story wasn't accurate, wasn't even close to accurate, and generally contained no accuracy whatsoever. We killed the story, since their denials seemed fairly straightforward and honest, and we found no other independent sources. Knowing I'd be annoyed by today's news that Eric Schmidt will be stepping down as CEO of Google most likely explains why Google offered to let talk to the Trinity - Larry, Sergey and Schimdt - this afternoon in the flesh. At least, I assume they were in the flesh on the other end of the phone. 
YC-Funded AppHarbor: A Heroku For .NET, Or "Azure Done Right"
Jan 21, 3:10AM
You may be noticing a trend: there are a lot of startups looking to mimic the easy-to-use development platform that made Heroku a hit with Ruby developers and offer a similar solution for use with other languages. In the last few weeks alone we've written about PHP Fog (which, as you'd guess, focuses on PHP) and dotCloud (which aims to support a variety of languages). And today we've got one more: AppHarbor, a 'Heroku for .NET'. The company is funded by Y Combinator, and it's launching today. AppHarbor will be going up against Microsoft Azure, a platform that developers can use to deploy their code directly from Visual Studio. But co-founder Michael Friis says that Azure has a few issues. For one, it uses Microsoft's own database system, which can lead to developer lock-in. And it also doesn't support Git, which many developers prefer to use for collaboration and code deployment. 
Is This Google's Groupon Clone? Well The Logo Fits. [Update: Confirmed]
Jan 21, 2:54AM
A report on Mashable seems imply that Google will be imminently launching a Groupon clone, called Google Offers. By the look of the documents they have received from a source this product seems like it would be your run of the mill Groupon clone, "A Google Offer is a daily deal that enables subscribers to pre-purchase products and services at an attractive discount." Ha.
Verizon's First iPhone Commercial: It Begins
Jan 21, 2:15AM
Well that didn't take long. Here it is, the first Verizon iPhone commercial. As you can see, the focus is on clock — the first one on 11:59 — implying that people in all different walks of life are waiting for something. There's the noise of a click constantly ticking in the background as a low hum becomes a louder hum. Then the voice over: "To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come..." The clock strikes 12. A girl smiles. "Thank you." Cue the iPhone 4 logo. Cue the Verizon logo. Cue the launch date: 2.10.11. And then the new tagline: "It Begins".
Speaking of… Social Venues with Nic Adler of The Roxy [TCTV]
Jan 21, 2:04AM
We read a lot of news about amazing companies when they receive financing, have a change in leadership or launch new products, but we rarely get a glimpse into the companies and people that use those products and tools in incredibly meaningful ways. This week's Speaking Of... is with Roxy owner Nic Alder, son of Lou Adler who's famous for producing bands/acts such as Cheech and Chong, The Mamas and the Papas and films such as Up In Smoke and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Lou Adler is also the creator of the Roxy nightclub that Nic now runs and operates. The Roxy is a 37 year old international brand that was born the same year as Nic and has been the destination for legendary bands through the decades. Nic grew up around musical legends such as Bob Marley, Guns and Roses, etc. and when he took over the club, he had a very different vision for how it should operate. Lou ran a very successful club using traditional promotional tools, but the club was eventually displaced by bigger and hotter venues in different parts of Hollywood and deeply impacted by the move of consumers searching for how to spend their time using Internet tools and ditching old media.
The Saddest Pink Infographic About Women In Tech You'll Ever See
Jan 21, 2:04AM
"Female Tech influencers are sure to cross their ts and their legs." -- WPromote Infographic There was an extremely newsworthy Google earnings call at 1:30 pm today and I'd like to write about some startups at some point before the day ends so I'm not going to waste too much time with this one. But here you go before I forget, an infographic about women in tech that is pink, includes images of Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton, porn star Jenna Jameson and Snooki and asks hard-hitting questions like "What's your must-have bag?" and "Who is your dream man?" 
TestFlight: Super Simple, Over-The-Air App Beta Testing Comes To The iPhone
Jan 21, 1:40AM
If you've ever had to test an unreleased iPhone application or wanted to test yours with real world users, you'll know what a pain it is. The UDID thing is bad enough, but the process of having to drag and drop .ipa and provisioning files to the copy of iTunes on the computer you sync with is ridiculous. Why on Earth can't you do this over the air? That's exactly what TestFlight brings to the table. The service provides an over-the-air app installation solution that is massively easier to use than the current iTunes sync model. How do I know? I've actually used it. Before we heard about their launch today, I used TestFlight to test another startup's iPhone app. I was blown away by how simple the process was. I immediately wished all startups would use this solution.
Life360′s Family Safety App Embraces The Check-In, Then Surges
Jan 21, 12:48AM
For the last two and a half years we've been tracking the progress of Life360, a startup that looks to help you keep your family safer by offering a variety of tools, like protection against identify theft and an alert system to monitor for sex offenders in your neighborhood. It's not the sort of thing you'd expect to go viral. Except that's what just happened. Recently, Life360 has been adding over 10,000 families per day — it just set a new record last week, with 72,000 family signups. In total, it is approaching 1 million registered families, 363,000 of whom were active last month. And these are families we're talking about — the absolute number of downloads is higher. So what's driving the growth? 
Postling Raises Another $350,000 To Grow Its Marketing Dashboard For Small Businesses
Jan 21, 12:05AM
Postling, a New York City startup that makes a social media dashboard for small business owners, has attracted another $350,000 in seed financing through the services provided by a San Francisco startup, AngelList. Postling chief executive, David Lifson, said it was his fourth time "going out" on AngelList, a networking site that matches startups to potential backers. Postling was the second company to ever get funded on AngelList, and Lifson is now a volunteer "scout" in New York City, encouraging other entrpreneurs to use it... 
$3.9 Billion Of Apple's Massive Cash Reserves To Go Toward LCD Displays?
Jan 20, 11:43PM
When Apple announced their Q1 2011 numbers on Tuesday, Apple's Tim Cook made an interesting comment about what Apple plans to do with their massive, nearly $60 billion, war chest of cash. Apple will do the same for some 'secret' components, which is not dissimilar to the time that Apple bought all the flash memory. We think we might know what the secret is and here's why. When Tim Cook was talking on the conference call, he stated that "we've historically entered into agreements with others to supply; largest one was with flash memory suppliers back in 2005 that totaled over a $1 billion, because flash would become increasingly important across product line and industry." And because of that Apple became the largest consumers of flash memory, at the time for use in iPods. Cook later commented that the 'secret' deal is just like the flash deal, that it is "focused in an area that we feel is very strategic." Cook wouldn't say just what because of competitive advantage. So what could the next strategy be?
Schmidt: Decision Made Over The Holidays, It's About Execution, And Larry Is Ready To Lead
Jan 20, 10:32PM
We're still digesting the huge news today that co-founder Larry Page will be replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO of Google on April 4. It's a move that no one saw coming — or did they? After reading over his statements and listening to his comments during the earnings calls, Schmidt does give some insight into the move. Most notably, Schmidt says that he got together with Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin over the holidays to figure out how to best run the company going forward. In other words, this decision was made very recently, and hasn't been a long-time coming. But why now? It's pretty clear from Schmidt's comments (as well as Page's) that there was a feeling that Google has been moving too slowly recently. Specifically, Schmidt notes discussions the three have had about "how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making."
Sergey Brin: We've Touched 1 Percent Of What Social Search Can Be
Jan 20, 10:11PM
With the news that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is stepping down and founder Larry Page is taking over in the role, both gentleman and Google co-founder Sergey Brin joined the earnings call to address questions from analysts. One analyst asked about what Google's plans were with incorporating more social elements into the business. Schmidt deferred to Brin, saying that this was an area that Brin has been working on, which we knew from previous reports. Brin said that the notion of realtime and social are both important to search, and the company has worked to make search for realtime and to include social elements within search such as integration with Twitter in results. But he added that there would be much more to come, saying that "we've only touched one percent of what" social can be within search. 
Out Of The Box: Bloom Energy Debuts 'Electrons' Financing Service
Jan 20, 9:44PM
In a move that could be torn from the playbook of SolarCity, Bloom Energy introduced a financing service today called Bloom Electrons that could popularize its solid oxide fuel cells, and make clean energy more accessible to the owners and operators of commercial and institutional buildings. Through Bloom Electrons, power-consumers commit to a 10-year contract and set rate for fuel — for now, that means natural gas provided by California-based Bloom partners including PG&E. Then, Bloom Energy installs their system (the Bloom Box, a.k.a. energy server) on the customer's site, though the customer doesn't pay for it up-front...
Live: Eric Schmidt And Larry Page Talk About Google's Q4 And Their New Roles
Jan 20, 9:36PM
Google has just announced their Q4 2010 results. Oh, and they announced that co-founder Larry Page would be replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO on April 4. Obviously, the earnings call is going to be interesting. Find our live notes below (paraphrased): Eric Schmidt: Thanks everyone for getting on our call. We jumped on to talk about the other announcement this afternoon. We had a very strong quarter and year. Our outlook is very bright. Larry, Sergey and I have spent a long time talking about how to run things. But we thought about how to run things even better. After discussions, we decided to change things. We've been doing it one way, but we think this way will be better. Larry will run things day-to-day, I'll be elevated. And Sergey will do what he does best.
Google Grows Revenues 26% In 4th Quarter To $8.44 Billion [Slides]
Jan 20, 9:13PM
Google has once again posted optimistic growth this quarter boasting $8.44 billion in revenue, and increase of 26% compared to fourth quarter of 2009 in which revenue was $6.67 billion. Traffic acquisition costs, which Google includes in the $8.44 billion number were $2.07 billion, or 25% of total revenue. The slides above show more in-depth results. Google beat the street easily, with analysts expecting non-GAAP earnings per share at $8.06 and $6.1 billion in net revenue. Non-GAAP earning per share in the fourth quarter of 2010 were actually $8.75.
Big Bang At Google: Larry Page To Replace Eric Schmidt As CEO On April 4
Jan 20, 9:05PM
Google has just announced their Q4 2010 earnings. Looking them over quickly, they look good. But that's the secondary story right now. The bigger story is that Google has just announced that co-founder Larry Page will be replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO of the company. This transition will take place on April 4, Google says. Schmidt will take the role of "Executive Chairman" and will focus on "deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership," the company says. He will also continue to act as an advisor to Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin. Speaking of Brin, he'll be working on "strategic projects, in particular working on new products," the company says. So it sounds like no big change there.
SkyFire Pulls In Another Million Bucks With SkyFire For iPad
Jan 20, 8:59PM
Up until recently, the revenue model for SkyFire's smartphone browser (you know, the one that converts Flash Video on-the-fly for playback on handsets that otherwise could never touch it?) wasn't too clear. Its biggest feature, the video transcoding, required hefty proxy servers and a good amount of bandwidth, and those things don't come cheap — and yet, they were just giving the browser away. That all ended with the launch of SkyFire for iPhone. They started charging $2.99 a pop — and within 3 days, they'd grossed roughly a million dollars in sales. SkyFire followed up a few weeks later with SkyFire for iPad, which they managed to get into the App Store at $4.99 just nights before one of the biggest App sales days of the year: Christmas. The result? Another million bucks.
Deloitte: 2011 Will Be The Year Of The Tablet (Say Goodbye To Your Laptop)
Jan 20, 8:26PM
Deloitte, the multi-faceted professional services company that's perhaps best known for its annual Football Money League study, says that 2011 will be the year that computers stop being computers. The agency says that more than 50 percent of all "computing devices" sold this year will be non-PCs. You know, things like tablets, smartphones, and the like. So not only are the days of big, hulking desktops behind us (with the exception of gaming PCs, like the Digital Storm Black Ops), but other traditional computers, like your friendly neighborhood laptop, are on the way out. 
Box.net Upgrades Cloud Storage Platform With New UI, Collaborative Features And More
Jan 20, 7:55PM
Today, Box.net unveiled a brand new version of its cloud storage platform. Box's CEO Aaron Levie says that in creating the new version of Box, the company focused on three key themes—simple, open and mobile. The company now stores 300 million documents on its platform (more than the Library Of Congress) and has accumulated 5 million users (up from 4 million last year), with hundreds of thousands of businesses using the application. Levie says that the new version is much simpler, enabling a new, easier set of workflows on the applications, The startup rewrote the entire front end of the application with a new UI. The first new feature of the platform is that the new Box is built entirely around viewing content, with relevant document suggestions, and a more seamless document viewing experience. The new viewing experience uses HTML5 technology to offer a more user-friendly multimedia experience with the ability to drag and drop files in folders, preview files, and more. 
Collaborative Fund Aims To Seed Startups That Compete On Values And Crowdsourcing
Jan 20, 7:23PM
Angel investor and entrepreneur Craig Shapiro is starting a new seed fund based in Los Angeles with the help of friends and advisors like YouTube founder Chad Hurley and Kiva co-founder and Profounder CEO Jessica Jackley. Investors in the relatively small $6 million fund include GM O'Connell, Nicholas Negroponte, Jason Krikorian (co-founder of Sling Media), Ben Goldhirsh (founder of Good and heir to the Inc. magazine fortune), and Brendan Synnot (founder of Bear Naked and RevelryBrands) Called the Collaborative Fund, it will invest in startups focused on two themes: collaborative consumption and those which use their values as a competitive weapon. 
What Good Are Download-Only Services If You Have A Rubbish Internet Connection?
Jan 20, 7:05PM
It's hardly a secret that many of us here are big fans of Steam, Valve's digital download service that makes buying PC games pretty painless. Who among us hasn't spent more than a few dollars during one of those big Steam sales? The only problem with Steam sales is that, having purchased a game, you have to sit there for at least several (long!) hours, waiting for it to fully download. Meaning, if that you were waiting all year to buy, say, BioShock 2, then when you finally buy it when it's on sale for 75 percent off, you'll probably have to leave the download running overnight, the servers being swamped with other, like-minded folks. That's not fun at all.
Techmeme Taps Twitter For Faster Headlines, Pithy Context
Jan 20, 6:39PM
It's been no secret that for a number of years now, quite a few posts you see on this site and others come directly as a result of a tweet from someone. It usually works like this: someone tweets out a bit of information either to quickly promote it — or even better, that they probably shouldn't — and we jump all over it, adding context. But as fast as we are at that, it can still take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to get those posts up. And in some cases, that's just not good enough for an aggregator like Techmeme. They want it now. And now they'll be able to get it now. Today, the service is launching the ability to turn tweets into Techmeme headlines. Yep, they'll no longer have to wait for the first tech blog to jump on the news. They'll just put up the tweet itself. That is, if it's worthy.
Bubble Motion Expands Beyond Voice-Blogging With Twitter And Facebook Integration
Jan 20, 6:00PM
Sequoia-backed Bubble Motion, which offers a popular a Twitter-like voice blogging service in India, Japan, and Indonesia, is expanding to include social media services today with Twitter and Facebook integration and SMS alerts. Bubble Motion's Bubbly platform is a voice-blogging phone service that allows people to share status updates in their own voice with fans and followers. It essentially takes Twitter's model and applies this to voice blogging and mobile phones. These 'bubblers' record their voice update into their phone, and their followers everywhere are notified by SMS and prompted to click and listen.
If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks
