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What Took So Long? Germany's Samwer Brothers Rumored to Launch a Square Clone Soon
Apr 04, 7:15AM
Square, the mobile payment startup founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is one of Silicon Valley's hottest companies right now. It's no surprise then, that German clone factory Rocket Internet, which is run by brothers Mac, Oliver and Alexander Samwer, is now rumored to be developing its own blatant Square clone. According to German startup blog Deutsche Startups, the clone, which will supposedly be called Zenpay, is currently one of Rocket Internet's top priorities, though it is not clear when and where it will launch. The source that talked to Deutsche Startups, however, did indicate that Rocket Internet is planning to launch Zenpay "globally." Given the nature of these payment systems, however, this seems rather unlikely.The Interesting Part About Amazon's In-App Payments Beta Is That Developers Have Pricing Control
Apr 04, 4:21AM
The most interesting part of Amazon's move to provide an in-app payments flow is that they're ceding pricing control to mobile developers. Amazon has been testing a new in-app payments system with several top-tier mobile developers for several months. It's a big deal because there has been a huge shift over the last 18 months toward giving away apps for free instead of selling them for a dollar or more. This move would bring Amazon's Android appstore closer to parity with Google and Apple's stores for developers. But the part worth noting isn't that Amazon will offer an in-app purchases flow. It's obvious that they would do that, given their experience in online payments and commerce and need to compete with Google's app store. The part worth pointing out is that Amazon is letting developers set their own prices for virtual currency and digital content. That's a departure from the strategy the e-commerce giant tried to pursue last year with mobile developers.Google Highlights Search Changes From March
Apr 04, 1:20AM
Google has rolled out a great number of small changes to the search engine and UI over the last month, and now they have rolled them all into a big blog post for your consecutive enjoyment. We've highlighted a few that seemed more relevant, but there isn't much here that's life-changing. All the same, it's good to stay up on changes like this, just in case you happen to do SEO for a living (scoundrel).Nokia Lumia 900 Review: Initial Impressions (Video)
Apr 04, 1:00AM
Now that 9pm has rolled around and the awkwardly timed embargo has lifted, I can finally talk to you guys about the phone I've been playing with for the past week: the Nokia Lumia 900. I'm not going to get too detailed, as a full review and a head-to-head battle will go live in the coming days, but I wanted to hit you guys with initial impressions as early as possible. To put it plainly, I think this is a swell phone.Tell The Truth But Tell It Slant: There Are Still Major Worker Issues In China, Just Not Where Daisey Looked
Apr 04, 12:40AM
In the hullabaloo over Mike Daisey lying about meeting injured workers, the spotlight turned from actual employment problems in Asia onto the face of the orotund and penitent former colonialist. Now that the news cycle has passed, we're no longer interested in the topic of Chinese manufacturing and, judging by the positive response to my April Fools' post on Sunday, the world now understands assembly work to be a good if tedious form of employment. But the problems Daisey seemed to fabricate do exist. He just didn't do the legwork to see them. I've personally been to factories where OSHA is just a four-letter word and ISO standards are paid little more than lip service. And the factories I saw were relatively good and considered reputable suppliers by Westerners in town. After seeing these I wondered "If these are the good ones, what are the bad ones like?"With $25M From Benchmark And Larry Summers Advising, Can Minerva Build An Online Ivy?
Apr 04, 12:39AM
Well, we've said it before: Technology is changing education. It's flipping the classroom, bringing instructional videos to the masses, and dragging online higher education into legitimacy. Investors have begun to hear the call, as was evidenced today when Benchmark Capital made its largest seed investment to date -- $25 million -- in a startup/university called The Minerva Project. Sure, it's not quite the $41 million Color raised pre-launch, but it's certainly head-turning for an education startup. Hopefully it can avoid the rough early start and crushing expectations that come along with big seed rounds. To help it take flight, the startup is announcing that Larry Summers, former Harvard President and U.S. Secretary of Treasury will chair its advisory board.Backed By Time, Next Issue Launches A Tablet Newsstand With Netflix-Style Pricing
Apr 04, 12:06AM
Many magazine publishers see the iPad as their salvation. Five of the big ones (Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp., and Time Inc.) banded together to create a joint venture called Next Issue Media, and today the company is launching its Android app. CEO Morgan Guenther (formerly president of Tivo) says that despite all the excitement about bringing magazines to tablets, the current system is lacking — specifically, the need to download a new app for every magazine. Gone is the "newsstand" feeling of walking into a store and browsing a rack of titles. Instead, it's like you're ushered into a windowless room where you can read a copy of Wired. Want to read The New Yorker? You'll have to leave for another room.Facebook Sues Yahoo With Patent By A Former Yahoo Employee
Apr 03, 10:36PM
In 2006, former Yahoo employee Thyagarajapuram S. Ramakrishnan was working for Facebook when he filed a patent for the news feed. Today in a sweet piece of irony, Facebook is using that same patent to sue Yahoo. Facebook claims that Yahoo's Flickr Photostream and Activity Feeds infringe on "Generating a Feed of Stories Personalized for Members of a Social Network". This U.S. Patent 7,827,208 for "generating dynamic relationship-based content personalized for members of a web-based social network [with] weighting by affinity" and nine others could help Facebook escape a costly settlement over the original patent lawsuit Yahoo's filed against it last month. See kids, trolling doesn't always pay.Keen On… Beth Comstock: Why GE Might Be The World's Oldest Start-Up [TCTV]
Apr 03, 10:01PM
I have to confess that when I think about GE, the first thing that comes to mind isn't radical innovation. But, as usual, I might be wrong. As GE's Chief Marketing Officer, Beth Comstock, told me when we met at The Economist's stimulating Innovation event last week, GE is actually totally committed to creating radically new structures of organization. As what Comstock calls the "world's oldest start-up," the 130 year-old company has the scale, she says, to be both nimble and agile. Indeed, she even boasts of GE doing away with traditional organizational hierarchy in some of its many manufacturing businesses so that it can generate more innovation.NSF-Funded Project Aims To Enable Print-On-Demand, Customizable Robots
Apr 03, 8:35PM
In some of the old science fiction stories I remember from Weird Tales and Ray Bradbury and the like, robots always figured. But they always came the way you might expect a new dryer or hot water heater to arrive. In a big box, packed in straw or foam, heavy and metal of course as they always were back in the day. But the world of robots is different from the way they imagined it then: the metallic golems of yore have given way to a sort of Cambrian explosion of potential robot types, imitating everything from worm to dog to bird. A team of researchers hopes to both expand that robodiversity and change the way our future companions are delivered. Funded by the NSF, they've begun a 5-year-long project exploring the idea of on-demand robots. MIT is leading the effort, specifically Professor Daniela Rus from CSAIL. They have researchers from University of Pennsylvania and Harvard on the team, and the object is to "make it possible for the average person to design, customize and print a specialized robot in a matter of hours."Facebook Threatens To Sue TechCrunch Commenter
Apr 03, 8:33PM
Last year, Alexia covered a funny Chrome web browser extension called "Defaceable" that allowed you to comment anonymously on Facebook and on other websites using Facebook Comments. Instead of having to associate your comment with your real name and identity, the Defaceable extension let you once again post your troll-isms to friends' walls and blogs like TechCrunch (which uses Facebook Comments) using the names of fruits. For example, instead of "John Smith," your comments would identify you as "Peach" or "Watermelon." Oh ha ha. As it turns out, Facebook didn't think it was so funny, and has since taken legal action against the company for violating its Terms of Service. But it hasn't stopped there. Facebook also went after one of the commenters on that blog post, too - a guy named Rick Stratton, who gleefully discovered he made it into the screenshot used to accompany the post. Stratton doesn't work at Defaceable, to be clear, he was just commenting on the post. Apparently, posting "Hey! I made TechCrunch!" is now worthy of legal action.Want To Rent A Founder? Justin Kan's Exec Is Making That Happen (For Charity)
Apr 03, 8:21PM
Justin Kan is a busy guy. The serial entrepreneur is best known as the founder of Justin.tv, the online community that lets users broadcast, watch, and interact around video. Last year, he and team spun-off Twitch.tv, a gaming-focused version of the video streaming site, and the fast-growing Socialcam, which is on a mission to bring mobile video creation to the mainstream. Not one to sit still, Kan jumped into yet another venture in January, launching Exec, a task-management service in the vein of TaskRabbit and Zaarly that lets people post errands on-demand for $25/hour. Today, Kan and Exec announced via blog post that they are now getting into the founder-renting business. That is to say: Exec is offering a one-day-only special which allows anyone and everyone to book time with the founders of companies like Parse, Reddit, Hipmunk, Sincerely, and even Exec itself.No LTE, No Problem: Sprint's $100 LG Viper Goes Up For Pre-Order On April 12
Apr 03, 8:18PM
Sprint still hasn't launched their new LTE network yet, but if a new announcement about a LTE-capable handsey is any indication, they're getting pretty close. Though the existence of a Sprint-bound Galaxy Nexus probably overshadowed it a bit, Sprint has announced that LG's eco-friendly Viper handset will be available for pre-order beginning on April 12 with a release soon to follow.A Brave New Push: Urban Airship Brings Location, Context Targeting To Mobile Notifications
Apr 03, 7:06PM
At the end of October, Urban Airship, the startup that gives developers a simple way to build in-app purchases and push notifications into their mobile apps, acquired SimpleGeo for a reported $3.5 million. At the time, it was unclear what Urban Airship would be doing with the terabyte-plus of SimpleGeo location data, but in January, Urban Airship announced that it would be shutting down the startup's Places, Context, and Storage services by April 1st. Though both SimpleGeo co-founders have left the company, the rest of the team stayed on board and has been heads down, plugging away on a big new product. Today, at O'Reilly's Where Conference, in its biggest announcement since its acquisition of SimpleGeo, Urban Airship is unveiling that product -- which combines its push notification platform with the ability to segment audiences by location, time, context, and preferences in an effort to improve relevancy and targeting of both messages and offers.Facebook Fights Back, Countersues Yahoo For Patent Infringement
Apr 03, 6:33PM
In response to being sued by Yahoo for patent infringement last month, Facebook today filed counter-claims against Yahoo for infringing 10 of its own patents. Facebook says the following Yahoo features and properties violate its intellectual property: Yahoo Home Page, Yahoo's Content Optimization and Relevance Engine ("C.O.R.E."), the Yahoo Flickr photo sharing service, and advertisements displayed throughout Yahoo. Facebook also denied the original claims against it from Yahoo, seeks damages for Yahoo's infringement, and requests a trial by jury. The two lawsuits could effectively end up causing a stalemate between the companies that could prevent Facebook from having to pay exorbitant patent licensing fees to Yahoo or having to shut down some of its services. Facebook's legal response and full counter-claim can be seen here and below.TRUSTe Announces An Opt-Out System for Mobile Ads
Apr 03, 6:03PM
It looks like there are some big challenges ahead for mobile advertising, as the industry faces increasing scrutiny from the federal regulators, and as Apple phases out the UDIDs used by advertisers and publishers to identify users. Now privacy company TRUSTe is offering a new way for advertisers to address some of these concerns. The program is called TRUSTe Mobile Ads, and it allows consumers to opt-out of both targeted advertising and data collection. When an ad is shown by one of TRUSTe's partners, it includes a small AdChoices icon. When someone taps on the icon, they're taken to a page where they can opt-out of collection and targeting from an individual network, or from all of TRUSTe's partners. Those preferences are then remembered through a system called the Trusted Preference Identifier.Opera Software Launches Yet Another UDID Alternative For Anonymous Mobile Ad-Tracking
Apr 03, 5:46PM
Just when iOS developers had thought they had heard of every UDID replacement mechanism out there, Opera Software had to go and launch its own, too. Today, the company, best known as the maker of the Opera web browser, is introducing something it's calling "App-Tribute" - and yes, it's yet another system providing an alternative to the now deprecated UDID.Rumblefish Catalog Grows To 1M Songs, Powers Soundtracks In Socialcam, Animoto, And More
Apr 03, 5:32PM
Rumblefish, a service where consumers and businesses can easily license music for their online videos, says that its catalog now has more than 1 million songs, making it the largest licensing catalog of pre-cleared music. The idea is pretty simple: When you're posting a video on a site like YouTube, you might want to flesh it out by adding a soundtrack. However, most people don't have any idea how to license music legally, and even if they do, they probably don't have the money to pay for their favorite hits. So Rumblefish makes it easy to license music at affordable rates. On its site Friendly Music (which launched last year), you can search for songs based on things like mood, see how the song looks when played with the YouTube video of your choice. When you've found what you're looking for, you can instantly create a "Mash" with the synced up video, or download the song to edit into the video yourself. The licensing fees start at 99 cents.Jonathan Heiliger: From Yahoo's ISP To Facebook's Infrastructure To Being A North Bridge VC
Apr 03, 5:25PM
If you're familiar with Jonathan Heiliger's work, it's probably because you used Facebook sometime in the last five years. He was the person in charge of keeping the site online as it grew from 35 million to more than 800 million users. Or, maybe you've encountered his efforts over the past decade and half when you logged online -- because he helped build some of the core technologies and businesses that ran sites like Yahoo, starting fresh out of high school in the 90s. Next time you hear about him, it might also be because of the next hot company that blows up in Silicon Valley. But this time he'll be one of its investors. He's joining North Bridge Venture Partners today, a firm that has quietly distinguished itself by focusing on infrastructure and enterprise startups over the last two decades.Keen On… Vivek Wadhwa: Why There Are So Few Black Or Female Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley [TCTV]
Apr 03, 5:17PM
Sexism and racism in Silicon Valley. It's a debate that doesn't seem to want to die. On one side are those who believe that Silicon Valley is a genuine meritocracy; on the other, are those who are deeply troubled by the self-evident lack of female and/or black start-up entrepreneurs. And one of the most vocal members of the latter group is the multi-affiliated academic, Vivek Wadhwa, who isn't shy to take on what he calls the "white boy's club" in Silicon Valley. But Wadhwa, who spent his first career as a start-up entrepreneur, is no enemy of Silicon Valley. "It's an amazing place," he told me when we met last week at The Economist's Innovation conference in Berkeley. But what troubles Wadhwa are the smattering of sexists and racists at large venture capitalist firms who, he says, kill the deals that fund minority-led startups. These "arrogant people who think they are gods," he told me, they are the bigots who are undermining the meritocratic foundations of Silicon Valley.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.
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