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.
Apr 23, 8:42AM
Unfortunately for
PlayStation Network and
Qriocity services users, it looks like the widespread network outages will continue. Since Sony's PlayStation and music networks went down two days ago, there has been a fair amount of public speculation over the cause of the outage. (Largely due to Sony's tight-lipped handling of public relations.) Many blamed vengeful gremlins loose in Sony's server clusters and datacenters, while others immediately pointed the finger at
Anonymous, the merry band of hackers that metastasized out of
4chan. Thankfully, after 24+ hours of communication silence, Sony has
updated its blog and ended the speculation. According to the electronics colossus, "an external intrusion" is responsible for the ongoing outages of the PlayStation Network and Qriocity. (It probably sounded like
this at Sony headquarters. Or
this.)
Apr 23, 6:59AM
Mozilla released its new Firefox 4 exactly a month ago today and within a day had
more than twice as many downloads as Internet Explorer 9 after its launch. Some where around midnight tonight the browser build will hit 100 million downloads after one month in existence, according to the Firefox download
stats ticker. What's more impressive is that the browser has now taken over 7.94% of the worldwide browser market according to StatCounter, with Internet Explorer 8.0 at 29.99%, Firefox 3.6 at 24.43% and Chrome 10 at 15.35%.
Apr 23, 5:40AM
Enterprise chat platform
HipChat has entered the 101
Battle of the Billboards, putting up the above memetastic masterpiece on the 101 North after the Whipple exit this past Friday. For the uninitiated, the "Y U NO USE HIPCHAT" billboard is a take off of the startup friendly
Y U NO guy meme, which has already spawned at least one
parody Twitter account run by YCombinator hopefuls.
Apr 23, 12:11AM
We couldn't wait any longer to announce another batch of special guests for this year's
Disrupt in NYC. We had around 80 speakers last year and we have even more this year. We are pleased to announce that Tim Armstrong, Mary Meeker, Dennis Crowley, and Chris Dixon will all be with us on stage at Disrupt NYC. They will join the guests we announced
yesterday—Charlie Rose, Ron Conway, Roelof Botha, and Arianna Huffington. As you can see, we are not messing around. We said Disrupt would be big this year and we meant it. Tickets are still on sale and you can find the best deals
here. As we said before, make sure you purchase them as soon as you can since prices will go up as we get closer to the event. We are giving away 1 free ticket each week, and our giveaway for this week
started this morning at 10am PST. We will be picking the winner tomorrow, so if you want to enter make sure you do so soon!
Apr 22, 11:28PM
As if
my ego needed another boost. Last month at SXSW, I had the opportunity to interview Senator Al Franken, who was speaking at the conference to discuss the importance of Net Neutrality. The interview went well (I doubt you can tell he was my first Senator), and as I walked out of the room Senator Franken slapped me on the back and said I had a bright future ahead of me. Instead of responding with one of my famed witticisms I mumbled something about keeping my fingers crossed and went on my way, only to begin cursing myself a few moments later. One of the most level-headed members of the United States Senate had just complimented me — and I had failed to ask for it in writing. Bright future, indeed.
Apr 22, 10:21PM
I've been puzzling over Twitter's recent tactical moves around their API, Ubermedia and Tweetdeck, for a few months now, and it just doesn't add up. In fact I think Twitter's current strategy may take them in a direction where they end up missing out on their biggest potential win. If Twitter continues to go down the media company path, without incorporating their API into the plan, that could not only force a large part of their ecosystem to go elsewhere, but it could deprive them of a much larger potential infrastructure revenue opportunity, and could even end up costing them the company. After all, Silicon Valley is littered with the burned out wreckage of once-great media companies that failed create and keep third-party app ecosystems: AOL, Friendster, MySpace, Yahoo – to name a few. It's very hard to maintain leadership as an online media company without an ecosystem of outside apps increasing reach, innovation, and stickiness. In light of this, I've been exploring an alternate path for Twitter that leverages their API in a much bigger way, and this path appears to be a better strategy.
According to my own experimental revenue projections for Twitter, this alternative path is not only a good tactical move, but it's a good business move because it increases Twitter's reach, number of active users, and revenues massively.
Apr 22, 9:28PM
Everyone's favorite under-estimator of social media,
Malcolm Gladwell, might get a chuckle out of Amazon's EC2 problems this week. First, they took out Foursquare, Reddit and Quora service, as TechCrunch's
Mike Butcher reported yesterday. The disaster in the cloud
also put a stop to those who would Tweet the revolution via Act.ly, a site that gets petitions going virally, online. The site and service was still out of order as of publication. Act.ly founder Jim Gilliam said:
"We usually get several thousand activism tweets a day. That hasn't happened for 36 hours, because of these issues with Amazon and...
Apr 22, 9:19PM
Let me start of by reiterating how much I hate Donald Trump. Hate is, of course, a strong word. But then again so are "liar", "crypto-racist" and "criminally-irresponsible publicity whore". And there can be fewer more hateful blots on the current landscape of American politics than that of Trump - looking for all the world like a pugnacious Oompa-Loompa with a combover - dog whistling to the racist "birther" movement in order to promote his crappy reality TV show. And yet, for all that I despise Donald Trump and everything he represents - including his range of ties, and his Vegas hotel - there is one aspect of his recent behavior for which I need to give him unqualified credit. For all of Donald Trump's faults, at least he isn't an anonymous Internet commenter.
Apr 22, 9:03PM
It's finally official: Twitter has just announced on its blog that it will be moving to Market Square in SF's Central Market neighborhood, just on the edge of the Tenderloin (one of the city's most blighted areas). Twitter says it expects to move into the new office in mid-2012. The announcement has been a long time coming: Twitter was engaged in much-publicized negotiations with San Francisco's Board of Supervisors over a proposed tax break incentive that would give a six year payroll tax deferral for net new jobs (the city approved the agreement earlier this month). San Francisco typically requires businesses to pay unusual taxes on payroll (including stock options), causing Twitter, Zynga, and other tech companies to threaten to leave the city and take thousands of jobs with them. The tale is perhaps best illustrated by the goofy video below.
Apr 22, 9:00PM
Despite enormous sales of the iPad and iPad 2, it seems like the digital publishing world isn't quite ready to support the digital magazine editions coveted by media giants like Conde Nast. This is the company, if you'll remember, that was busting to get iPad editions ready before the iPad had even been announced. It seems, though, that these well-laid plans, or at least extravagantly-laid, aren't quite paying out just yet, according to a report at Ad Age. 
Apr 22, 8:42PM
The value of mobile advertising networks is well established at Google and Apple: Google bought Admob for $750 million and Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $275 million. So far though the independent ad networks have stayed on the sideline. Until now. A source tell us that ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK) has acquired mobile advertising network Greystripe for $75 million in cash. Greystripe has raised $18.1 million in funding to date over four rounds. They have a direct sales force that sells rich mobile ads directly to brands, and are on pace to bring in $25 million - $30 million in revenue this year, with about $6 million in gross profit. 
Apr 22, 8:17PM
Like an Airbnb for travel experiences, secondary market place Vayable launches today to offer travelers the opportunity to buy experiences in exotic locales all over the world, from Rome to Rio as the well worn cliche goes. Founders Jamie Wong and Samrat Jeyaprakash tell me that the key difference between Vayable and the other "Airbnb for experiences" Skyara is that Vayable is targeting travelers specifically, especially those who are tired of the relative banality of activity offerings from sites like Orbitz and Expedia. 
Apr 22, 8:07PM
On Thursday, Greenpeace published a study on energy consumption and choices made by IT companies including Akamai, Amazon.com (Amazon Web Services), Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo, entitled "How Dirty Is Your Data?". The study roundly criticizes the sector, especially Facebook, for using "dirty energy" — power produced from hydrocarbon based sources, especially coal — to meet growing IT demand. It also criticized companies for concealing details about their own, overall energy footprint and practices. Greenpeace specifically noted (excerpt from the environmental activists' own summary): Data centers, which house the explosion of virtual information, currently consume 1.5 to 2 percent of all global electricity and are growing at a rate of 12 percent each year; Companies in the sector, as a whole, do not release information on their energy use and its associated global warming emissions...
Apr 22, 7:41PM
Over the last few days there's been quite a hubbub over the location tracking going on in the background on iOS devices, namely the iPhone and iPad 3G. The report that sparked it all focused on a database file stored on iOS devices that stores a record of the rough location of the device over long periods of time — and is unencrypted. Senator Al Franken subsequently sent a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for an explanation. Then, last night the Wall Street Journal published an article with a new revelation: Apple and Google (with its Android devices) are both sending some location data from these devices back to their home servers. That sounds pretty sinister, but as a long-time Android user it didn't ring true to me — I vividly remembered a checkbox that asked if I wanted to allow Google to collect anonymized data, which means it isn't really a secret, and you can opt-out of it. Unsurprisingly, Google confirms that this is indeed the case.
Apr 22, 7:38PM
Beer, the sweet elixir that draws me to the doom of oblivion, is apparently available in places called "Beer Gardens" here in NYC (and in various other locations, but this is NY-centric.) These "Gardens" are not actually gardens at all but are, in fact, large patios where people can sit and drink beer until they reach a heightened level of joviality and fun and convivial relations (until, of course, you have to fight your way to the bathroom.) But how is one supposed to find these "Gardens?" Are they secret, like in that one movie? Or are they like a mysterious Brigadoon, appearing and disappearing every few eons? Nope. They're real, and thankfully, there's an app for finding them.
Apr 22, 7:36PM
Enterprise mobile startup DoubleDutch has raised $1.2 million in funding, led by Lightbank, with Charles River Ventures, Launch Capital, Accelerator Ventures, Venture51, Zig Capital, and angels participating in the round. DoubleDutch allows companies to essentially build their own Foursquare, enabling the development of mobile, location aware apps that connect employees, customers, and communities. It's kind of like the Ning of geolocation apps. 
Apr 22, 5:49PM
Happy Earth Day everyone! And to have a good Earth Day, and I mean a really good one, you need to watch a three minute video that was released today. It's called Water Changes Everything and it's been made by charity: water, an amazing non-profit organization founded by the incomparable Scott Harrison and actively supported by many Silicon Valley notables including Michael Birch, Jack Dorsey and Chris Sacca. And then, after you've watched Water Changes Everything, please watch three short Earth Day interviews I conducted with Scott Harrison in which he talks about ways that we can both save water and help solve the water crisis afflicting a billion people around the world. Did you know, for example, that 50% of schools in the world still don't have clean water or that a $5,000 donation can finance a well which will provide water to an entire village?
Apr 22, 5:13PM
Here is another chance to win a free ticket to this year's Disrupt in NYC. We have confirmed some incredible guests and speakers, a few of which we announced yesterday. We will continue to announce more as we lead up to Disrupt, along with a few special surprises as well. We also announced some other exciting news yesterday. Disrupt NYC is so big this year, we have taken over a whole pier in New York City. We will be holding this year's Disrupt NYC at Pier 94—overlooking the Hudson River in west Midtown Manhattan. At over 133,000 sq. ft., this venue is by far the largest venue we've ever had and will make for an amazing event. A special congratulations to Matt MaCarty for winning last week's giveaway. This promises to be our biggest Disrupt yet. If you want a chance at winning this free ticket, all you have to do is follow the steps below.
Apr 22, 4:10PM
AT&T's FCC filing for their planned T-Mo merger brings up a few interesting points about AT&T's network. To wit: A smartphone generates 24 times the mobile data traffic of a conventional wireless phone, and the explosively popular iPad and similar tablet devices can generate traffic comparable to or even greater than a smartphone. AT&T's mobile data volumes surged by a staggering 8,000% from 2007 to 2010, and as a result, AT&T faces network capacity constraints more severe than those of any other wireless provider.
Apr 22, 3:55PM
Pixable, a startup that develops sleek social photo creation and categorization tools, has raised $3.6 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures. This brings Pixable's total funding to $6.6 million. Founded by 3 MIT graduate students, Pixable's service allows people to use of all their Facebook and image sharing site photo content like captions, tagging information, comments, and birthdays to make albums, slideshows, calendars and nor artwork. Pixable's browser-based simplifies the creation of albums, making it easy to use for anyone. One of Pixable's early applications was a nifty tool that allows you to make mosaics of your Facebook photos.
Apr 22, 2:26PM
At this year's overcrowded and overhyped SXSW conference in Austin, one of the few startups to break through the noise was group text messaging app GroupMe. How did GroupMe win SXSW? Grilled cheese. The company rented an outdoor food shack for something like $10,000 and turned it into the GroupMe Grill with free grilled cheese sandwiches and beer. The grilled cheese, says co-founder Steve Martocci in this episode of Founder Stories, was "an homage" to Phish concerts, where grilled cheese sandwiches are consumed in large quantities (watch the video above). The GroupMe Grill became a meeting point for attendees of SXSW, and it was one of the places everyone was taking photos of on Instagram (one of the other "winners" of SXSW). Jason Kincaid stopped by and did this video. All in all, two million text messages were sent through SXSW groups during the week of the event.
Apr 22, 1:16PM
Sequoia Capital has invested 'multiple millions of dollars' in Milanoo.com, a China-based online retailer and wholesaler with a "passion for fashion". The proceeds of the financing rounds will be used to strengthen Milanoo's product supply system, optimize its online shopping platform, allow it to lower its prices and to hire more people.
Apr 22, 1:10PM
In the world of Internet startups people can become obsessed with the function of a product or app, often ignoring how a company can change the dynamics of a market just through its sheer existence. More often than not, it is not just a case of just having a better technology than the other guy. Equally it can be about a creating an incursion into a competitors' space which forces them to manoeuvre, destroying value for them, and creating value for yourself. No greater example exists of this today as the dramatic moves being made around the rumoured sale of Tweetdeck. I have been talking to sources well acquainted with the issue and what they have to say suggests a fascinating drama - which we are about to see played out.
Apr 22, 12:45PM
Silicon Valley Bank this morning released Startup Outlook 2011 (PDF), a survey of startup perceptions. The financial institution surveyed 375 U.S.-based, private, VC-backed software, hardware and cleantech companies, and found that startups are generally optimistic about current business opportunities and that they will continue to hire throughout 20111 to support the expected growth.
Apr 22, 12:16PM
Exclusive - Big Switch Networks, a fledgling company building a platform for virtualizing enterprise networks based on the OpenFlow standard, has raised $13.75 million in Series A financing in a round led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. The startup also announced that it has joined the newly formed Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit group on promoting OpenFlow and other Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies as a way to speed innovation in the networking industry. 
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
Posted in:
