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Apptitude Uses Facebook To Figure Out Which iPhone Apps Your Friends Are Using
Apr 02, 6:29AM
Noisetoys, the creators of music discovery and promotion app Hitmaker have come out with another hit this week. In the same app-discover space as Explor and Chomp, Apptidude is an iPhone app that shows you the iPhone apps that your friends have most likely downloaded, all based on their posts and Likes on Facebook. "Quitely" launching in the app store this week, the app recommendation app is currently number 29 in the top free apps, most likely because it incorporates social elements and Facebook Connect as a way of gaging what's actually hot in the almost anti-social Apple app store, whose Top 25 lists leave much to be desired.
Google Increases Lead In Smartphone Market, But Verizon iPhone Wins February
Apr 02, 6:19AM
comScore's February mobile report was released today, and it looks like good news for Google. Android increased its lead as the top mobile platform, growing 7 percentage points since November, and strengthening its top position with 33 percent market share. Following behind Android is RIM, ranked second with 28.9 percent market share, and Apple with 25.2 percent. Microsoft and Palm rounded out the top five, with 7.7 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. In the big picture, the mobile numbers continue to impress. Over the last three months, an average of 234 million Americans (13 and older) used mobile devices. That's 75 percent of the population. Nearly 67 million of those mobile users were employing smartphones, representing a 13 percent rise from November. Smartphone usage only continues to grow, as you will remember that comScore's November report showed smartphone usage growing by 10 percent since the summer of '10.
Color Updates Its iPhone App With More Intelligible Icons, Navigation And Faster Speed
Apr 02, 12:45AM
Bye bye 69 symbol! Valley media darling/scapegoat Color has updated its iPhone App to 1.0.2 to address certain um, user interface issues. Color's launch caused a big splash in the Valley a couple weeks ago, due to what some people viewed as an unfairly allotted $41 million in funding as well as problems with the usability of the actual app -- Namely that it didn't work if other people weren't nearby. Color co-founder Peter Pham tells me the latest update was "crowd-sourced" as in Color listened to user feedback. Already it looks like the largest user complaints have been addressed, at least cursorily. 
10 Things That Simply Need To Be In iOS 5
Apr 02, 12:22AM
WWDC. It's like Christmas for OS X and iOS developers. Each year, they flock to San Francisco's Moscone Center, anxiously awaiting the pair of gifts that Apple annually bestows: the new iPhone, and a bundle of new features on which they'll build their next big thing. If whispers and hearsay hold true, this year's WWDC will only feature the latter; the iPhone 5, says the rumor mill, won't be showing its face until Fall. Instead, this show is purportedly going to be all about iOS and OS X. While Apple doesn't come right out and say it, it's pretty safe to assume that by "iOS" they mean "iOS 5". Given that we're writing about iOS on a regular basis and talking about it with readers and friends even more, we've got a pretty finely-tuned wishlist for iOS 5. We also happen to know that a heaping handful of Apple folk read TechCrunch regularly — and with the feature lock stage of iOS 5's development cycle (wherein they absolutely refuse to add anything new and just focus on what they've already started) presumably riiiight around the corner, we figured there was no better time than now to put it out there.
Accel and IDG Double Down on China Partnership, Raise $1.3B in Seven Weeks
Apr 01, 11:57PM
When Silicon Valley venture firms set out to conquer China five-to-seven years ago, most of them picked one of three strategies. There was the branch office strategy, whereby the China partners and Valley partners would still work as one firm, making all investment decisions together as a unit and sharing in the returns equally. There was the more common franchise model, where a brand name Valley firm lent its name to a group of local Chinese investors, but mostly left them to make their own decisions. And then there was the joint venture model, where a well known Valley firm didn't seek to create a China office, it just partnered with an existing one. That last tack - the join venture model - is the one Accel took, partnering back in 2005 with IDG Ventures-- one of the pioneers of investing in the Chinese consumer Internet.
Making Angels: The Pipeline Fund Announces 2011 Fellows
Apr 01, 11:50PM
The New York-based Pipeline Fund, which aims to increase the number of women who become angel investors and social entrepreneurs in the U.S., today announced its inaugural class of Pipeline Fund Fellows and mentors (listed at the end of this post). The Pipeline Fund Fellowship accepted ten women who are influencers in their fields, and have a track record of charitable giving. Together, they will go through a six-month boot camp style program in New York, where they'll learn how to route some of their wealth into angel deals (that will score them an equity stake) in for-profit, for-good businesses. The founder and chief executive of the Pipeline Fund, Natalia Oberti Noguera (image below) is serious about resolving bias against women that she — and many others — perceived in the investment and startup ecosystem. 
Mobile Ad Network JumpTap Raises $20 Million
Apr 01, 11:00PM
Mobile ad network JumpTap has raised $20 million in new funding, according to a recent SEC filing, out of a $27 million round. This would bring the company's funding to nearly $90 million. We've contacted the company for confirmation. JumpTap is one of the largest remaining independent mobile advertising networks, in addition to Millennial Media, Greystripe, InMobi and others. Jumptap's data-driven technology promises highly targeted advertising and the company partners with digital and media agencies, publishers, wireless carriers and brand advertisers to serve an array of mobile advertising solutions.
'Rachel Sequoia' And 'Share The Air' Were A Prank, But The Pitch Event Wasn't
Apr 01, 9:04PM
It's always feels sort of good to be able to de-bunk a prank on April Fools. Now most of us got that Rachel Sequoia's insane startup pitch for 'Share The Air' was fake, but the event it took place at, the SEO-optimized Venture Capital Fundraising Club of Silicon Valley was real in the sense that 5-6 real start-ups pitched there, hoping to practice in front of an audience of 80 people before they pitched VCs. The whole thing was orchestrated by Trademarkia founder Raj Abhyanker and Spiralmoon's Dan Carlson for two purposes, a) To give young startups a place to practice their pitches b) To add some levity to the mix with the 'Share The Air' parody of Silicon Valley.
(Founder Stories) "Every Day, I Try To Get Rejected"
Apr 01, 8:39PM
If you meet a lot of CEOs and startup founders, you will notice a personality trait that many of them share. No matter how many people tell them they are wrong or stupid, they remain unusually optimistic, almost blindingly so. In the Founder Stories video above, which is an outtake from last week's interview with Bnter CEO Lauren Leto, host Chris Dixon talks about the importance of rejection. "Every day, I try to get rejected," he tells Leto. Sometimes this requires him sending emails to Steve Jobs that never get a response. But being able to handle rejection, and even seek it out, is a crucial skill for entrepreneurs. The flip side of getting rejected over and over again, of course, is perseverance. It doesn't matter if 49 VCs pass on your startup if the 50th one hands you a check for $1 million, or if 24 engineers say No, but the 25th is a rockstar who says Yes. Getting to yes means letting the negativity wash over you.
Amazon's Cloud Player Tests The Limits Of The Record Labels' Patience
Apr 01, 7:03PM
Amazon may have introduced its digital locker music service, the Cloud Player, before similar services from rivals Google and Apple (that are widely believed to be launching this year), but that doesn't mean it will be an easy existence. Not long after the company published a note on its Web site inviting users to give Cloud Player a try did one of the major record labels offer a warning. "We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music," a Sony spokesman said. Is Amazon on a collision course with the music industry, and if it is, could that be a good thing for consumers?
Ex-Microsoft Games Chief Apologizes For 'Consolization' Of Gaming
Apr 01, 6:41PM
Robbie Bach, the former president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, has apologized to PC gamers for the "consolization" of their hobby. "Am I happy to have been a part of the destruction of PC gaming? No, of course not. But I am proud of the fact that I've helped convince a generation of gamers that it's cool to pay $10 for a pair of virtual sunglasses and that playing online should be considered a premium feature. Look, guys, no one's stopping your from installing Doom II and playing through that again, right? I mean, what's the difference between that and Black Ops, really?"
Angel Investors Counter Y Combinator Start Fund With New $100 Million Early Stage "End Fund"
Apr 01, 6:06PM
In a move reminiscent of AngelGate, Silicon Valley's top angel investors are banding together to counter what they're considering an existential threat. That threat? Start Fund, a new investment entity created by DST's Yuri Milner and Ron Conway's SV Angel. Start Fund shocked Silicon Valley in January when they announced that they'd offer every new Y Combinator startup $150,000, site unseen and without any due diligence. Angel investors panicked, realizing that Start Fund would likely result in soaring valuations. Y Combinator startups were no longer cash strapped, and negotiating leverage moved dramatically in their favor. "Start Fund was created to take traditional angel investors out at the knees," said one such investor. "It's highly irresponsible to invest in companies you've never met, and there will be unintended consequences that could hurt Silicon Valley over the long run." Top angel investors were already meeting regularly to align investment strategies to keep startup valuations down. The collusion involved an unspoken agreement (known as the "$4 million line") not to compete for deals but rather to let one angel lead a deal and set valuation and then that angel would let the others invest alongside them. 
How Fast Is Your Site? Measure It With Google's Page Speed Online
Apr 01, 6:04PM
Yesterday Google announced Page Speed Online, which provides a quick and easy way to accurately measure the speed of your website directly from the web. Previously available only as a browser add-on, Google Labs launch allows you to analyze your site from anywhere and receive instant feedback on making it faster. Chances are, your website could perform better—all of ours could. There are a lot of tools online that only measure server response time, giving an inaccurate picture of your site's speed. For example, blazing fast servers might return your HTML in a fraction of a second, but visitors to your site will still be waiting for images to download or javascript to be executed. In contrast, Page Speed Online uses a webkit-based renderer to time all components of your site for a more complete picture of its performance. Page Speed Online is simple to use. Just enter a URL and get instant suggestions for performance improvements on your site. Page Speed Online gives you a score out of 100 and breaks down suggestions by their priority. Google caches the results, making it faster to use than comparative tools like WebPageTest which offers more features. With Page Speed Online you can also get mobile-specific recommendations. For instance, since mobile device CPUs are less powerful than desktop CPUs, suggestions that reduce CPU consumption will be featured more prominently.
Chinese e-Commerce Site 360buy Grabs $1.5B From DST And Others
Apr 01, 5:41PM
Yesterday we were hearing reports that global investing behemoth Digital Sky Technologies was setting up another fund, already investing in Groupon and Spotify's $100 million round and sniffing around the "Amazon of China," 360buy.com. Today the company has confirmed the reports to Reuters, revealing that the total amount of financing was an impressive 1.5 billion. 360buy.com, in the same space as Taobao, plans to IPO in 2013. 
TechCrunch Giveaway: Free Tickets To Disrupt NYC #TechCrunch
Apr 01, 5:10PM
TechCrunch Disrupt is back. This year's first Disrupt is taking place in New York City, where we will have the best new startups, all-star guests and speakers, after parties, and more that we will reveal in the upcoming weeks. Disrupt NYC starts on May 23rd and goes until May 25th. May 23rd is only eight weeks away. For every Friday leading up to Disrupt NYC, we are going to give 1 ticket away to one lucky reader, fan, or follower. The tickets start at $1,795, later going up to $2,995. The way to win the tickets may change, but the prize will remain the same. If you want a chance at winning this week's ticket to Disrupt in New York City, just follow these steps to enter:
The Onion, America's Finest News Source, Picks Finest Day To Debut iPad App
Apr 01, 4:32PM
This is not a joke. The Onion, "America's Finest News Source" (TM), released its iPad app fittingly enough on April Fools Day. IPad apps are serious stuff. This one delivers fake news stories, videos,and images from the parody site in both vertical and landscape modes. It's a pretty basic fake-news reading app, but it gets the job done. You can swipe through stories, watch videos, check out funny charts. Articles can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google Reader or saved to read later via Instapaper or Pinboard. All pretty standard stuff. From the press release:
DIY Cloud: Two Hard Drives That Let You Access Files Anywhere
Apr 01, 4:19PM
It has long been a dream of mine to connect a hard drive at home to the Internet. This dream, of late, has been deferred by the rise of cloud services like SugarSync and Dropbox but two hard drive manufacturers, Buffalo and Iomega, have come out with compelling devices that seem to finally allow home and home office users to get the benefits of cloud hosting with the safety of complete control over your data. The two devices, the Buffalo CloudStor and the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive, come in multiple sizes and sit on your network. They are, for the most part, plug and play except for a quick port change for the Iomega drive. I've put them both together as their feature sets are similar in process but intrinsically different in performance.
Report: 'Peak Bandwidth' Threatens Global Economy Unless Decisive Action Taken
Apr 01, 3:08PM
Sometimes humor is the best mechanism to explain an opaque topic. Public Knowledge, a group that concerns itself with defending consumer rights in "the emerging digital culture," has released a report today entitled "Peak Bandwidth." Keep in mind today's date, is all I have to say. The report says that the "era of plentiful, low-cost bandwidth is approaching an end. The supply of bits, the raw material of our information economy, is rapidly dwindling… unless mitigation is orchestrated on a timely basis, the economic damage to the world economy will be dire and long-lasting." You hear that, we're running out of bits!
Evoz: Baby Monitoring 2.0 Comes Of Age
Apr 01, 2:40PM
Very soon (as in: in the next few days), I'll become a father for the first time. And of course, as every existing parent seems to know, babies cost money. One of those unbearable things young parents need to purchase without further ado, is a baby monitoring system. Me and my wife already bought one, but while we were evaluating existing systems I couldn't help but notice that even the more advanced ones on the market today seem little more than glorified walkie-talkies. A couple of weeks ago, knowing that I would soon become a dad, Jyri Engestrom nudged me and said he had stumbled upon a fledgling company, Evoz, that set out to build a baby monitoring system for the always-connected generation, and that I should check it out. 
Agilyx Raises $22 Million To Turn Plastics (Back) Into Oil
Apr 01, 2:19PM
A Portland area startup selling patented systems that turn plastic trash into synthetic crude oil, Agilyx, closed a $22 million series B round, the company revealed on Thursday. The systems (image below) look like the kind of equipment you'd see in a brewery. Here's how they work, according to the company website: Plastic feedstock, a mix of everything from grocery bags to vehicle dashboards and computer monitor cases, are dropped by a crane into a sizable vessel, where they are indirectly heated until they turn into a liquid, and then a gas... 
M&A Activity Down 22 Percent in Q1, But IPOs And Acquisition Amounts On The Rise
Apr 01, 12:33PM
DowJones Venture Source has released its quarterly data on venture-backed exists and its appears that M&A activity has dropped in Q1 2011 despite the momentum that venture-backed exits gained throughout 2010. In the first quarter of 2011, 104 U.S.-based venture-backed companies achieved liquidity, netting $9.8 billion, according to VentureSource. That represents a 21% decrease in exits and a 17% increase in capital raised from the first quarter of 2010 when 131 exits raised $8.4 billion.
OfficeDrop Raises $1 Million For Digital Filing And Scanning Software
Apr 01, 12:30PM
Digital filing and scanning software OfficeDrop has raised $1 million in angel funding led by White Owl Capital. OfficeDrop, a finalist in Amazon's startup challenge a few years back, offers a number of ways users can take paper documents and scan and manage these documents to be stored in the cloud. ScanDrop is a self-serve desktop scanning application for Windows and Macs. OfficeDrop also comes with a digital cloud filing system and OfficeDrop Paper to Go, an iPad application to manage, search and share documents from anywhere. Users can also use OfficeDrop's sail-in document scanning service to converts paper into Text Searchable PDF.
In Baffling Move, The Huffington Post Erects Paywall Solely For NYT Employees
Apr 01, 11:35AM
In a move sure to irk at least two or three people who work for The New York Times, The Huffington Post (owned by AOL, our own masters in some degree of command) has put up a paywall that applies only to NYT employees. In a message to affected potential readers of HuffPost content, founder Arianna Huffington explains that NYT employees can henceforth access only one article for free per month.
Facebook, Zuckerberg Sued For $1 Billion After Not Removing A Page Fast Enough
Apr 01, 10:24AM
I took my sweet time to check if this was an April Fools joke to be put on our exhaustive 2011 list, but it appears to be as real as can be. Larry Klayman, a renowned American activist, former Justice Department prosecutor, former U.S. Senate candidate and book author, says he has sued both Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg for over $1 billion after the social networking giant failed to remove a page calling for a third intifada against Israel's Jewish population swiftly enough. The suit was filed yesterday in Washington by Klayman, himself of Jewish origin. The complaint is embedded below.
April Fools 2011: The Big List
Apr 01, 7:02AM
Yes, folks, that's right. That special, special time of year is upon us. It's April Fools 2011! We take April Fools pretty seriously around here, so we'll be constantly updating this post with the best April Fools jokes and pranks the World Wide Interwebernets has to offer. All night and all day. As long as it takes. If you find a gem, please share it with us in the comments. Thank you in advance. So, without further ado, here is Aol HuffingtonCrunch's big list of April Tomfoolery:
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