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Inside StartX Stanford's Spring 2012 Demo Day [TCTV]
Jun 02, 11:30PM
StartX, the startup accelerator for Stanford University students, held its Spring 2012 Demo Day this past week at AOL headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Seven very diverse startups presented to a room of investors, media, and tech industry folks -- the latest batch of StartX startups range from a new method of doing DNA sequencing, to truly educational children's toys, to a new way for women to buy jewelry, and more. TechCrunch TV was there, and in the video embedded above you can see the general scene and also our interview with StartX's founder Cameron Teitelman. We also got six of the presenting companies to give TechCrunch their pitches directly...The Instagram Effect? Mobile Photo Sharing App PicPlz To Shut Down Permanently On July 3
Jun 02, 9:36PM
PicPlz, the mobile photo sharing app that is perhaps known best for being an early and direct competitor with Instagram, will shut down permanently on July 3. PicPlz delivered the news through a short post on its company blog as well as in a brief email to users that read:How Do Top Android Developers QA Test Their Apps?
Jun 02, 9:32PM
A couple weeks ago I ran this post showing how one Hong Kong developer, Animoca, tests its Android games. The company, which has had more than 70 million downloads, tests every one of their apps on about 400 different devices. The photo above is from their headquarters and is just a taste of all the Android phones and tablets they use. Needless to say, that post pissed Android fanboys off. Some commenters said it intimidated would-be developers, who might get scared off by Android fragmentation and the perception that you have to support hundreds of devices, screen sizes and densities and versions of the OS. So, I asked around to see how other mobile game developers do quality assurance testing for Android. This is what I got:YouTube Scores A Solid Return On Its Video Development Fund
Jun 02, 8:10PM
My son recently tried to call one of our older relatives. He dialed the number and quickly hung up with a confused look on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he replied, "I don't know. There's something wrong with their phone, it kept beeping." I called the number and was amused to hear a landline busy signal, something my cell phone centric pre-teen had never encountered. My son is similarly unacquainted with cable TV. Other than the occasional NBA game, he consumes his video content via our iPad and Xbox. Most of his online viewing is spent on YouTube. He is not alone. Mark Suster, fellow venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur, has written extensively about YouTube's evolution from dogs-on-skateboards to its current status as an entertainment medium rivaling cable television networks. Mark provides an excellent primer regarding the future of Internet TV HERE.HTC Evo 4G LTE Review: I Can't See Why Not
Jun 02, 8:04PM
The Evo 4G LTE is a fine phone. There certainly aren't any glaring issues: Sense has been considerably streamlined, and it's really good at what it was made to do, which is entertain. The design language is a little loud, though maybe that's what it takes to shake things up in the land of Android. (LAndroid.) But unlike the Evos that have come before it, this latest iteration doesn't really bring any truly special features to the table. I mean, consider the name. It's the Evo 4G LTE, yet Sprint's 4G LTE network isn't set to go live for another month, at the very earliest. And even if that weren't the case, LTE is no longer a wow factor. It's a soon-to-be norm, which means that the Evo needs something more than fast data to be a big deal. Does it have what it takes? Let's find out together, yes?Dropcanvas Offers Up Free, Dead Simple File Sharing, But Can It Last?
Jun 02, 6:35PM
There's no shortage of robust, full-featured file storage and sharing services out there, but where do you turn when you want the quickest, simplest way to go? Crate costs money, JustBeamIt requires both users to be online at the same time, but newcomer Dropcanvas? They may be onto something. The beauty behind Dropcanvas is that it requires virtually no thought or effort to use properly. Upon navigating to the site, users are told to drag and drop a file onto the page. Once a file has been dragged onto the so-called "canvas" -- there's no set file size limit though canvases are capped at 5GB -- users are provided with a link to spread around and a share button for easy access to Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.Cleveland-Based LaunchHouse Is Looking For A Few Good Ohio Start-Ups
Jun 02, 6:31PM
Cleveland, known to many as the "Land From Whence The Cleves Came," is rarely mentioned when you think of hotbeds of entrepreneurial energy. But yet it was the long time home to Harvey Pekar and does still have many local colleges, including Case Western Reserve, John Carroll, and Cleveland State. It is also home to Sherwin-Williams, Progressive Insurance, and now LaunchHouse. In other words, it's a city that's ready to make a few sweeping changes.Hands-On With The Romain Jerome Space Invaders Watch For High-End Gamers
Jun 02, 6:14PM
People keep asking, "Why would anyone of sane mind buy a $17,000 luxury watch with a Space Invader's theme?" If you are familiar with the Swiss watch brand Romain Jerome - you don't need an answer. They are the people that brought you pieces such as the Titanic DNA (with metal from the actual titanic), and the Moon Dust DNA (with yea... real dust the from moon and metal from spare parts of the Apollo XI). So a "luxury licensing" deal with Taito Japan isn't that odd.ApriPetit Is A Little Robot That Wants To Talk To You
Jun 02, 6:08PM
Robots are hard to talk to. They're not friendly, they're mostly made of plastic, and, as anyone who has tried to chat with a Roomba can attest, they are often dedicated to a single task. Luckily, there's ApriPetit. Toshiba's R&D department built ApriPetit as a successor to their larger ApriPoco. This little guy is about six inches tall and follows along to conversations by moving its slug-like body and eyes in ways that resemble proper conversation.Gillmor Gang: Beneath Blue Suburban Skies
Jun 02, 5:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — watches helplessly as robots briefly take over the show. As investors reel from the backwash of the Facebook IPO, Microsoft chooses the moment to start pushing Windows 8. The Gang is underwhelmed. Also: Missing Steve Jobs at the D conference, liner notes on the way to Spotify, and another round of Google Glasses from @scobleizer. The thing is, we want to give permission to be interrupted, not beg for restoration of a clear view. Even when we don't talk push notification, we do.The Other Side Of The Story: WhosHere vs. Who's Near Me Live
Jun 02, 3:59PM
You guys may remember a post on TechCrunch yesterday about a trademark spat between an entrepreneur named Brian Hamachek, who built an app called Who's Near Me Live, and a Lightbank-backed startup called myRete, who built an app called WhosHere, strikingly similar in both functionality and name. The story unfolded that Hamachek had been bullied by WhosHere in the legal realm, despite the fact that WhosHere was built two years earlier, but there are at least two sides to every story. Hamachek's side of the story was written by Rip yesterday, but the main points you should know are these: Hamachek changed the name of his app to WNM in most (but not all) instances of its appearance after being hit with a C&D from WhosHere over a year ago. But the spat was revived after WNM got some traction on TechCrunch in March (this is where it gets really good).How To Cash In On Government As A Platform
Jun 02, 3:00PM
At TC Disrupt New York, the White House's chief geeks -- CTO Todd Park and CIO Steve Van Roekel -- rang the bell for Silicon Valley to step up and help recode the federal government with their Digital Government Strategy. They hammered home the need for developers to leverage the mountains of open data coming out of the government to create new services and products for consumers. But you shouldn't do this just for fun, or even out of a sense of civic duty: you should do it because there's money there -- lots of it.Bashing Facebook For All The Wrong Reasons
Jun 02, 12:00PM
So Facebook's IPO was a disaster. Or maybe it wasn't. Yes, it was an utter fiasco. No, wait: "The debacle was not the IPO but all the whining by speculators who didn't make money." Nope, it was "the flop of the decade", the worst first week of any IPO in years. Au contraire: "What we have here is an investment banker acting ethically. And the whole financial press is atwitter about it." Nuh-uh: "The IPO discount is the cost of going public." Yadda, yadda, yadda, ad nauseum. Why, what with all these furious alarums and excursions and outraged complains, Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley was moved to compare Facebook to another company that immediately dropped below its high-profile IPO issue price and stayed there for weeks and weeks; that well-known loser called ... er ... Amazon.com. You may have heard of it. Why is anyone paying attention to the this ultimately meaningless pageant? Probably because Guerilla Recruiting: Combating The Counteroffer
Jun 02, 4:30AM
One of the most frustrating things I've experienced as a leader is putting months into recruiting an amazing VP or engineer, only to have them change their mind at the 11th hour because of a ridiculous counteroffer. This is the big risk you face when aiming for the best people on the planet (see: "Hiring Rockstars") as they are the "beating heart" of their existing employer, and the incumbent company will often go beyond great lengths to keep them. They may be prized recruits for you, but they are absolutely the most critical people at their current employer. For instance, Google has been rumored to be especially aggressive at countering with restricted stock grants in the millions of dollars for their top people. But they aren't alone. Any employer will do whatever he or she can to keep key talent.Startups Vs. Startups: App Developer Gets Sued By Lightbank-Backed WhosHere
Jun 02, 3:32AM
So here's a story that hopefully will be an eye-opener for entrepreneurs and startups, while providing a painful peek into trademark harassment and the importance of due diligence. It goes a little something like this: About two years ago, software engineer Brian Hamachek decided to build an app first on Windows Mobile (how some horror stories have been known to begin), then on Windows Phone, that enables location-based chat -- and calling. In other words, call and chat with new friends who live close by, for free. He called it Who's Near Me Live. Long story short: A Lightbank-backed startup called myRete own and operate a similar app called WhosHere, which was founded two years earlier. Well, they didn't like the name Brian had chosen for the app -- claimed it was too similar -- so they asked him to change it. At first, he said "why no thank you," but then they hit him with a C&D and then a lawsuit, so he acquiesced. Sounds like standard stuff for startup vs. incumbent, right? Well, it doesn't end there.Emotion Measurement Platform Affectiva Wins $500K NSF Grant
Jun 02, 1:27AM
Affectiva, a startup that tries to measure the emotional response people have to ads and brands, just announced that it has a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The company spun out of MIT's Media Lab. This is its second NSF grant — in January 2011, it won another grant to help launch its Affdex service, which uses webcams to track consumers' responses as they watch videos. That should allow companies to test their ads with a broad audience in a quick and affordable way. When I spoke to co-founder Rana el Kaliouby last year, she also touted Affectiva's ability to recognize complex emotions — not just whether you're smiling or frowning, but also whether you look confused.With $5.5M From Google Ventures, Opus, Crittercism Launches An App Performance Management Solution
Jun 01, 10:48PM
Last summer, after graduating from AngelPad, San Francisco-based Crittercism announced that it had raised $1.2 million in seed funding from the likes of Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures, and AOL Ventures. Today, the startup has received further validation for its diagnostic and management tools for mobile developers, as Opus Capital, Shasta Ventures and Google Ventures have all re-upped, investing $5.5 million in the startup's series A financing.T-Mobile's Galaxy S III May Not Get A Facelift Before It Launches In The U.S.
Jun 01, 10:20PM
When the Galaxy S and the Galaxy S II made their respective journeys to the United States, they lost a little something that international customers have enjoyed since the beginning: the physical home button. According to some new images obtained by The Verge though, that era may be drawing to a close, as T-Mobile's GSIII variant may sport that home button after all. It may seem like a minor thing to get worked up over (because it is), but it's a considerable shift from the four-capacitive-button days of yore. Those design changes were mandated by carriers, and if true, these new images may mean that Samsung is flexing their muscle as the most prolific smartphone manufacturer in the world.Study: Yesterday's Facebook Outage Also Slowed Down Major Media And Retail Sites
Jun 01, 8:30PM
It's a testament to how important Facebook has become in the web ecosystem that the social network's performance issues yesterday didn't just affect the site itself but also a wide variety of other sites as well. Performance monitoring company Compuware APM, which analyses the performance of thousands of top sites, just sent us some interesting data about how Facebook's problems yesterday correlated with significant slowdowns across major U.S. media and retail sites.Gillmor Gang 06.01.12 (TCTV)
Jun 01, 8:02PM
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