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.
Live Facebook Press conference: Check-in Deals launches in Europe
Jan 31, 9:43AM
Facebook is today launching 'Places Deals' in the UK and Europe. Facebook users will be able to get discounts and special deals in shops, cafes and restaurants by checking in on Facebook Places on their smartphone. We're live broadcasting the press conference above. The Telegraph broke an early story on this this morning. 'Places Deals' launched in the US last November with Macys, Gap and Starbucks. European partners will be: Starbucks, Yo Sushi, Mazda (Mazda 20% off an MX5), O2, Argos, Debenhams, Alton Towers and Benetton. Live now in Germany, France, Italy, Spain. 
Rumors: Facebook Using Face.com's Facial Recognition, Acquisition Offer Rebuffed
Jan 31, 9:33AM
Guy Grimland of Israeli business newspaper TheMarker published two articles (both are in Hebrew) this morning about a rumored relationship between Facebook and Face.com. The first article claims that Face.com rebuffed an acquisition offer worth 'tens of millions of dollars'. The second article claims that Face.com is powering Facebook Photos' facial recognition functionality, which was clearly upgraded in the past few months, albeit, with no indication there was a third party involved. 
Quora Backlash Slams Head First Into Quora Backlash Backlash
Jan 31, 8:42AM
You know how I know Quora is going to be big? No one can shut up about it. That includes both people who love it and people who hate it. And that dichotomy is important, because it will keep people talking about it. And that will keep people signing up. And it will keep those that already signed up going back. And that's important because Quora is a service that takes a bit longer than others to get into. Anyway, the past couple of weekends have brought some truly great bitchmemes about Quora. Last weekend, it was Vivek Wadhwa who kicked things off on this very blog with his post, Why I Don't Buy The Quora Hype. That post led to a firestorm of reactions (both positive and negative) in both the comments section and on Twitter. In fact, at one point after the post went up last weekend, I swear my entire tweet feed was devoted to it.
Quora Is Really About A Better Wikipedia, Not Robert Scoble's Hopes & Dreams
Jan 31, 7:51AM
Robert Scobleized Quora today. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned super-blogger Robert Scoble's penchant for taking very strong positions on technology and startups and then reversing those decisions completely on a whim. I love him for his quick retreats. And I certainly admire a man who's willing to rethink his opinion after weighing new evidence.
Bill Keller vs Wikileaks: Goodnight, Julian Assange, And Bad Luck
Jan 31, 6:45AM
I'm loathe to write again about Wikileaks, or about its pig-to-man founder, Julian Assange. Not because I've run out of things to say, but because the response is so predictable when I do. Within minutes, the Assange fanboys - the Wikiliebers, if you like - will swarm into the comments, accusing me of unfairly slandering their hero. "He's sticking it to The Man!" they'll cry, "he's disrupting the mainstream media!" they'll holler, "it was a honeytrap!" they'll protest, until inevitably someone will accuse me of being in the pay of the US government and the whole thing will descend into farce. No forest of Vanity Fair and New Yorker profiles or unrelated criminal allegations or hubristic statements about having "two wars I have to end" will convince the Wikiliebers of the truth: that Assange is an arrogant computer genius who began Wikileaks with the best of intentions but has since lost sight of his principles in the relentless pursuit of personal celebrity. (I say that like it's a bad thing) But if I take some flak for my relatively inconsequential badgering of Assange, I can only imagine how much Bill Keller must be getting right now. After all, Bill Keller is the man who is about to put Wikileaks out of business once and for all.
WikiLeaks Founder Assange Tells 60 Minutes: "Our Values Are Those Of The U.S. Revolution"
Jan 31, 5:01AM
In an interview with 60 Minutes, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange compares his values to those of the Founding Fathers of the United States and argues that he is actually playing "inside the rules." He defends his actions by leaning heavily on the First Amendment, stating that "our founding values are those of the U.S. revolution." On the possibility of facing prosecution in the U.S. for leaking sensitive diplomatic cables and military documents, he argues: "there's been no precedent that I'm aware of in the past 50 years of prosecuting a publisher for espionage. It is just not done. Those are the rules. You do not do it." Both the U.S. Justice Department and the Pentagon are conducting a criminal investigation against Assange and WikiLeaks, but if WikiLEaks is charged with a crime for publishing classified documents, it begs the question of whether other publishers such as the New York Times (which also published part of the documents) could also be prosecuted. Of course, the U.S. government is not currently going after the New York Times. It is going after WikiLeaks. But Assange makes the case that should not be tolerated. (Video after the break).
The Triple Crown
Jan 31, 3:23AM
Netflix is interesting because it is the first service to follow the disruptive arc of the iPad. Every time the iPad is analyzed, the projections are anywhere from just plain wrong to what amounts to a niche. Doesn't run applications… now there's an AppStore. Doesn't run Flash… now there's a Flash converter app. Apps don't support a magazine subscription model… Tuesday they will. Won't be accepted by IT… 80% penetration. Will be overwhelmed by Android tablets… Apple will Verizon them with iPad 2. What is reminiscent of iPadnomics is the speed with which the disruption is underestimated, the naiveté with which the backlash is orchestrated, and the resultant vaulting of the service into a near-incumbent position before the deposed incumbents can retrench from the initial mistaken counterattack. Netflix is already at the stage where iTunes was when the music cartel tried to cap it. While Amazon may be a cheaper service without so-called DRM, there's no device comparable to Apple TV at the end of the value chain. 
Should You Really Be A Startup Entrepreneur?
Jan 31, 1:49AM
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur who has gone to the Dark Side of VC. He started his first company in 1999 and was headquartered in London, leaving in 2005 and selling to a publicly traded French services company. He founded his second company in Palo Alto in 2005 and sold this company to Salesforce.com, becoming VP of Product Management. He joined GRP Partners in 2007 as a General Partner focusing on early-stage technology companies. Read more about Suster at Bothsidesofthetable and on Twitter at @msuster. 
iPad Mags Need A New Blueprint
Jan 30, 1:55PM
Ever since the iPad came out, print media companies have been feeling their way in this new medium, but so far they've just been stumbling over themselves. They are latching onto the iPad as a new walled garden where people will somehow magically pay for articles they can get for free in their browsers. But if they want people to pay, the experience has to be better than on the Web, and usually it's not. This sorry state of affairs is true for both magazines and newspapers. The New York Times iPad app, for instance, is gorgeous but crippled. All the links are stripped out of the articles, even from the blogs. Meanwhile, most iPad magazines are little more than PDFs of the print issues with some photo slideshows and videos thrown in. They end up being huge files—I recently downloaded a single issue that was 350 MB, some issues of Wired are 500 MB—with the same stale articles as in the print version. Replicating a dead-tree publishing model on a touchscreen is a recipe for obsolescence. 
Zuckerberg On SNL: "I Invented Poking" [Video]
Jan 30, 5:33AM
'The Social Network' star Jesse Eisenberg hosted "Saturday Night Live" tonight and opened the show talking about the movie's impressive eight Oscar nominations. The monologue then switched to video of actual Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg watching his two "Berg" doppelgangers backstage, "Why can't I go in there, I'm the real Mark Zuckerberg? 
OMG/JK: Massive Google Fragments (And An iPod Nano Watch!)
Jan 30, 1:16AM
This week's episode of OMG/JK, the show I do on TechCrunch TV alongside Jason Kincaid, is all Google all the time. So just to even things out a bit, we kick things off by showing off my awesome new TikTok iPod nano wristwatch. For those who don't remember, this is the result of the most successful Kickstarter project ever. We then dive into the Google stuff including Eric Schmidt being replaced by Larry Page as CEO, Google's index changes, Google Voice number porting, and the upcoming Android Honeycomb event. Watch it above.
90% of Y Combinator Startups Have Already Accepted The $150k Start Fund Offer
Jan 29, 11:51PM
Late last night the 43 startups in the most recent Y Combinator class got quite a surprise. Start Fund, a new fund created by DST's Yuri Milner as an individual and SV Angel, offered each of the companies a $150,000 investment in the form of a convertible note with no cap and no discount. Most of these companies are still in stealth mode, and Start Fund hasn't seen them. They made the offer based on the Y Combinator stamp of approval. The startups are jumping on board. 36 of the 43 startups in the class had signed the paperwork to take the loan before the event was even over last night, says David Lee, a managing partner at SV Angel who's also managing the Start Fund. "As of 3 pm today we've received 39 confirmed signature pages, and we believe the rest are awaiting approval from their attorneys."
The Googlers Behind Pubsubhubbub Are Back At It With Camlistore. Open Sync, Store, Share
Jan 29, 11:06PM
You may recall that back in the summer of 2009, there was a lot of hubbub over a Google 20 percent project with a near impossible name: Pubsubhubbub. Creators Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin actually unveiled it at our Realtime Stream CrunchUp back then. And it garnered a lot of buzz for a good reason: it aimed to speed up traditionally slow feeds of information to realtime. Well, now the two are back at it again (with a few other contributors) with a new project: Camlistore. First of all, aside from the fact that I keep typing "Camilstore", this name is a significant improvement over the last project. It's an acronym for "Content-Addressable Multi-Layer Indexed Storage". But more importantly, the project once again looks to be a very interesting one. Though the team is quick to note on its homepage that it's "not ready for users", the site has quite a bit of information about the general hopes for the project and how they imagine it working.
Kevin Rose Invests In Facebook On SecondMarket
Jan 29, 10:50PM
Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss have made a co-investment in Facebook on the secondary market. In this video clip posted this week, Rose announces that he and Ferris recently invested in Facebook "before the craziness." We've embedded the video below; Rose talks about the investment just after the 34 minute mark. We confirmed with Rose that he and Ferriss actually bought shares on secondary market SecondMarket at a $45 billion valuation. We're told the deal was in the seven figures. The 'craziness' Rose is referring to is Facebook's recent $1.5 billion funding round from Goldman Sachs and DST at a $50 billion valuation, and the possibility of an IPO for the network by April 2012. 
Is Yuri Milner A Threat To Silicon Valley?
Jan 29, 9:26PM
Editor's note: Guest author Chris Yeh is an independent angel investor and VP of Marketing for PBworks, one of his investments. He has been involved with Internet startups since 1995. His Twitter handle is @chrisyeh. The big news this morning is Yuri Milner's announcement that he and Ron Conway will be investing $150,000 in *every* Y Combinator startup on a no-discount, no-cap convertible loan.
Gillmor Gang 1.29.11 (TCTV)
Jan 29, 8:00PM
With the eyes of the world on Egypt, the Gillmor Gang convened to discuss the impact of social media on what appears to a revolution without borders. Doc Searls, Seth Goldstein, John Taschek, and Kevin Marks put aside vendor sports and Silicon Valley to focus on a brave new world and its apparent off switch. What we came up with was the strong feeling that, whatever the tumult of the day, the genie is out of the bottle and will soon return. What started as what we were having for lunch has emerged as a worldwide message bus, whether by tweet or friend to friend, search, or gesture. And as the media tries to capture the speed of realtime, the incredible scope and power of the global network has never seemed more fragile and yet sturdy in its robust elastcity. The cloud has found its moment to change and augment history. 
When The Drones Come Marching In
Jan 29, 3:01PM
Way back in the 1970s, hardware-hacker hobbyists built kit computers like the Altair 8800 — and in doing so paved the way for the computer revolution that would reshape every facet of modern life. Today the same breed of people are building and selling kit flight controllers for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Just sayin'. Drones are far from new: the US military has been using them heavily for over a decade. (What else did the US military pioneer, back in the 1970s? Oh, right. The Internet.) UAV tech has long since metastasized around the world. India's private sector builds UAVs for both military and scientific purposes; Lebanon's de facto government Hezbollah has used Iranian-built drones for years; earlier this month, QinetiQ's solar-powered Zephyr set a world record by flying for 2 weeks nonstop; and, of course, the French-built, iPhone-controlled AR.Parrot has brought UAVs to the masses. All awesome, and all innovating fast. At this rate this may well become the Decade of Drones. Which makes me more than a little uneasy.
How'd Sequoia Let Yuri Milner Grab this Sweetheart Y Combinator Deal?
Jan 29, 7:27AM
Earlier tonight, Mike posted a bombshell that must have made super angels shudder. Not content with the grenade he threw into the late-stage investing world with aggressive investments in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, tonight Yuri Milner announced a new partnership with Ron Conway that offers similar you'd-be-crazy-not-to-take-this-deal terms for every Y Combinator company. But you know who might be even more bummed by the news than the super angels? Sequoia Capital. The top Valley firm led Y Combinator's last funding, less than one year ago. At $8.5 million, this was a big step up for Y Combinator, dramatically allowing it to expand how many startups it could let into its incubator. And it should have been a big advantage for Sequoia too: A way to see a crop of new deals early in an increasingly competitive investing landscape, where most VCs are being shut out of early rounds by super angels. It seems Milner stole the opportunity right out from under Sequoia.
Start Fund: Yuri Milner, SV Angel Offer EVERY New Y Combinator Startup $150k
Jan 29, 5:11AM
Everything just changed in the angel investing world. Two years ago Yuri Milner, through his investment firm DST, disrupted the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital model when he began investing in the hottest startups - companies like Facebook, Zynga and Groupon - at very high valuations and extremely easy deal terms. He looks brilliant in hindsight, with all of his U.S. investments at significantly higher valuations since he invested. Most top VC firms have begun emulating DST's deal structure. Now he's partnering (as an individual, not as part of DST) with Ron Conway's angel fund, SV Angel. And they're making a bold investment move. This evening they've just made a blanket investment offer to every Y Combinator startup in the most recent batch. They're going to invest in all of them. Every single one. And this is the biggest Y Combinator class to date - some 40 new startups.
Blekko Takes Curated Search Mobile With iPhone And Android Apps
Jan 29, 3:52AM
Blekko, the search engine that is fighting the good fight against web spam with human editors, is joining biggies Google and Bing in the mobile search arena today with an Android and iPhone application double whammy. Says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta, "In a world where people want the most relevant answers on the go, mobile search is becoming increasingly more significant."
'Angry Turds' Is Like 'Angry Birds' Except With, Yes, Turds
Jan 29, 12:54AM
Ever wish Angry Birds had more poop in it? Well look no further than the App Store today, as Apps Genius has launched Angry Turds. As a monkey in Angry Turds, you get to battle evil island explorers who have stolen your monkey babies with various projectile weapons. The concept is similar to Angry Birds as your objective is to throw stuff but the stuff here goes beyond rocks to coconuts, turds, banana bombs and grand poop-bas (I am so glad I never spent any money getting a journalism degree).
War Maneuvers: Android Event Will Battle iPad Event For Press Love On February 2
Jan 29, 12:01AM
I love asking companies if the timing of events is on purpose or purely coincidental. Not only do they almost always say that it's purely coincidental, but they often try to claim that didn't even realize a rival was also doing something when they made their plans. Sure. Next week will feature another such situation. Earlier this week, News Corp. and Apple sent out press invites for an event to unveil the new iPad-only app, The Daily. And then this evening, we've just received an invite to a Google event to show off the latest version of Android, Honeycomb. The one meant for tablets. And guess what? They're on the same day.
AnyLeaf Aggregates And Delivers Personalized Grocery Store Deals
Jan 28, 11:58PM
For decades, my mother and grandmother have both religiously scanned the weekly coupon books and circulars that arrive in the weekend newspaper. While clipping coupons can be tedious, grocery stores' weekly deals can often take out a significant chunk of change of the weekly food bill. Of course, as print couponing becomes obsolete, many consumers are looking to the web for deals at their local grocery stores. Today, Y Combinator-backed AnyLeaf is launching its intelligent grocery deal aggregator to the public. AnyLeaf scours local grocery store sites in the San Francisco Bay area and aggregates all the deals from these stores, including CVS, Lucky, Nob Hill, Raley's, Safeway, Target, and Walgreens. You simply enter your zipcode and email address, and AnyLeaf will send you a weekly email with deals from the local grocery stores near you. 
The Future of Search: Who Will Win The Spam Wars?
Jan 28, 11:52PM
Sometimes, all it takes is a little spark to set off a major forest fire. That is what seems to have happened with my New Year's Day post on Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google. Over the last two months, there has been an avalanche of articles echoing my post, including New York Magazine, Business Insider, GigaOm, TechCrunch, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal. I had a feeling that this would get Google's attention. And I had the same concern as when I challenged the Russian government, once, in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about Skolkovo (a new tech park). I feared that Google would either blacklist me or do its equivalent of putting me in a Gulag—deliver even more spam when I search websites.
Meetup Feels The Wrath Of The Crowd After Radical Changes
Jan 28, 11:35PM
Meetup, a long time go-to place to create local online groups, has undergone a major re-launch in the past day. However, it may have missed a trick: not consulting the meetup organizers who pay through the nose for the service. There now appears to be something of a revolt going on amongst some organisers, who are vociferously protesting about the changes. The reaction of annoyed organisers and members has turned into two, count-em, Twitter hashtags: #newmeetup and #meetuporganizersunite. Alternatives to Meetup like BigTent are being touted, as is GroupSpaces – a startup which last year raised $1.3 million from the likes of Index Ventures and Angels like Dave McClure and Chris Sacca. It is is already gunning for "FormerMeetupOrganizers" with its own group and a blog post on the subject.
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
