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Has The Age Of Totemic Gadgets Passed?
Apr 03, 1:15AM
The lads here, mostly Devin and Matt, were talking about Everyday Carry, a website dedicated to the things we carry in our bags, pockets, and purses. Most of the EDC gear looks pretty heavy-duty - many EDCs include guns and long stickin' knives for, you know, those times when you need to stick stuff (Merlin Mann's is particularly interesting, for example) - and from the looks of the site it seems lots of people have totemic items, items of power that they carry to get things done. You've got Leathermen and diving watches. Little Moleskine notebooks. Pocket cameras and Space Pens. 
Conduit Acquires Web Application Platform Wibiya For $45 Million: Sources
Apr 02, 10:44PM
Exclusive - No, Conduit was not acquired for a billion dollars or more by Google or Microsoft ... yet (although one executive suggested to me in a phone call this week that the company should, in fact, be worth about half of Facebook's valuation on the private market - meaning about $35 billion at present day - because they reach about half of the social network's audience). We'll see about that. Either way, what's really happening, according to solid sources close to the company, Conduit is in fact acquiring another Israeli startup in the Web app publishing and distribution space, namely Wibiya, and they added that the deal could close as early as next Monday or Tuesday. 
Instagram Founders: Instagram Is A "New Entertainment Platform" (TCTV)
Apr 02, 10:03PM
Somewhere between yesterday afternoon and last night, Instagram hit 3 million users after only six months of existence. To put that into perspective, that's like 1% of the population of the US using a service that currently only fully exists on a iPhone. Instagram's explosive growth has made them the current go-to success story for pivoting and unleashed a torrent of buzz around the white hot photo-sharing space. But founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger don't think of the service as just a simple way to share images, but as more of mechanism for users to tell stories and discover the world around them, a "new entertainment platform" the co-founders told me in an interview for TCTV yesterday.
Will Social Media Save WrestleMania 27?
Apr 02, 9:49PM
Well, maybe not "save" WrestleMania, but help ensure it does better than last year's edition, WrestleMania 26, which, at well under one million pay-per-view buys worldwide, was considered a bit of a disappointment. What's different this year is WWE's use of social media—that is to say they're actually using it this time around. But even if this year's edition, WrestleMania 27, which airs from Atlanta tomorrow on pay-per-view, does better than last year's, how much of that can be attributed to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and how much of that can be attributed to the return of The Rock? Serious business, etc.
(Founder Stories) Moot On The Origin Of 4Chan And The Evolution of Memes
Apr 02, 7:48PM
When Christopher Poole (aka Moot) was 15 years old, he founder of the 4chan image board on an IRC channel with 20 people. Today, the site attracts about 12 million people a month and is the font of many of the Internet's most pervasive memes, from Lolcats to Rickrolling. Moot doesn't like to do video interviews, but after much pestering, Chris Dixon got him to come on Founder Stories for a rare video appearance. We'll be running the entire conversation throughout the week, including a sneak peak at what he's doing with his latest startup, Canvas. (Disclosure: Dixon is also an investor in Canvas through Founder Collective) . In this first part, Moot explains the origins of 4Chan in the video above. Both the idea and software was borrowed from a Japanese site called Futaba channel, but 4chan took on a life of its own—a completely anonymous site where community members felt free to express themselves in all sorts of ways. One of the unique characteristics of the site is that there are no archives. The most popular images, gifs, and comments bubble up to the top, and cascade through the site like a waterfall. Every so often, a meme will develop on the site and be picked up elsewhere. In the video below, Moot talks about the evolution of memes, how they start as one thing and change over time. 
Weekend Giveaway: A Tagged Tumi Bag
Apr 02, 5:33PM
This weekend we have a jam for the ladies (and the fashion forward men.) Tumi would like to offer you this handsome $445 suitcase tagged by some guy named Crash. I didn't dig too deeply into this one but I assume someone out there a) likes Tumi and b) likes stuff like this, so here you go.
State Department Builds A Panic Button App
Apr 02, 5:26PM
Imagine you are a pro-democracy protester on the streets of a repressive government. You've got your cellphone and you are messaging your friends. In the crowd near you, the police start making arrests. Fearing the government will confiscate your phone and investigate your contacts, you push a "panic button" on your phone. It deletes the contacts in your address book and sends out an alert. Such an app wasn't readily available so the U.S. State Department, acting as a venture capitalist, decided to build one. The State Department tells TechCrunch government funded work is underway to build an Android version of this "panic button" app. No release date has been set. Another version designed to work on low-cost Nokia phones, more common in the developing world, is being considered. No iPhone app is planned for now.
True Colors: Bathing Mobile In An Entirely New Light
Apr 02, 2:14PM
Color Labs is assumed to be the newest combatant in the photo-sharing wars. Many people ripped its floppy launch, interface, crashes, and some are feeling creepy about the Chatroulette aspect. Then there was the backlash to the backlash, where believers applauded the vision, risk-taking, and promise of mining meta-data from phones. Even with the latest update pushed out last night to address some of the initial product's shortcomings, Color remains the most polarizing Silicon Valley startup since Quora's rise and, appropriately enough, folks at Color have been answering questions on the company's Quora topic page. The source of the furor varies from the amount of money raised ($41m) to the team size (27) to the buggy app (despite updates). A good chunk of the backlash is because users perceive it as a photo-sharing service. But, what if Color is more than a photo-sharing service? Color Labs is on the record stating they are more of a data mining company with technology that, operating in concert on the phone, can paint a detailed mosaic of our mobility. Its patent-pending technologies are said to able to place users in proximity to others based on sounds and images, can capture the angle at which we hold our phones, how fast we move them in gestures, and how bright the environment is. And when users actually have the camera open, that's when the real show begins, tagging images, setting context, and opening the type of world Christopher Nolan conceived of in The Dark Knight, when Lucius Fox and Bruce Wayne use cell phone triangulation to create a digital reflection of the real world.
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 and foolish $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.
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