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The 2013 Enterprise Guide For Dummies
Jan 01, 11:00AM
The enterprise -- I get a sideways glance when I tell people it's what I cover. People want to know why I find it so compelling. They ask because truly they have no goddamn clue what the hell the enterprise is in the first place.The Top 25 TechCrunch Posts From 2012
Jan 01, 5:00AM
Twenty twelve was a big year for tech news. Facebook went public, Instagram was purchased for $1B, and Apple released rehashes of previous products. But that's just a small sampling. The list that follows is which stories you, our fantastic readers, read the most throughout the last year in order of their popularity. Some stories are predictably at the top, but others are surprising. A story about Bruce Willis and iTunes ranks higher than the most read post concerning the Apple/Samsung patent trial.Apple Partners With Local Publishers To Launch EBook Service In Japan
Jan 01, 3:26AM
Apple will launch an ebook service in Japan fueled with content from top local publishers, according to Japanese financial publication Nikkei (via The Digital Reader). Apple will begin selling Japanese language ebooks later this month for reading on iPhones and iPads. iPads currently hold about a 60% share of that country's tablet market in terms of units shipped in April to September.Legimi Wants To Be The 'Spotify For Ebooks' With A Business Model That Relies On You Reading Less
Jan 01, 2:00AM
Legimi is definitely a startup I'll be watching closely in 2013. Put simply, it aims to be the 'Spotify for ebooks,' in which for a monthly subscription, users get access to a potentially infinite library of reading material, all accessible via the cloud. But more than that, this Polish startup, whether it succeeds or not, epitomises the collision of old media business models with new technology and new consumer habits.2012: The Year Crowdfunding Was Kickstarted Into The Mainstream
Jan 01, 1:00AM
There we were, circled around a bachelor party campfire and drunk on keg beer, discussing the viability of using Kickstarter to fund a sex toy startup. My buddy Dan (he goes by Dangerous D at karaoke) had designed and handmade a compact speed controller for small vibrators (pic below). He was selling them at $75 a pop and apparently - I have yet to see or try one - they were getting rave reviews. Dangerous D's Magic Box, he called it. Another friend and I were passionately trying to convince him to quit his job as a bank manager and start a sex toy startup. We were positive, and a bit drunk, that all he needed was a successful Kickstarter campaign. The video would obviously be key.TechCrunch Makers: Bossa Nova Robotics & Mobi
Jan 01, 12:42AM
When I first saw Bossa Nova Robotics Mobi I was amazed. It was a robot that stood on a single, large ball and could roll through tight spaces and between people. It seemed like a ludicrously cool circus trick. Over the folks at BNR were kind enough to give us a quick tour of their facility in Pittsburgh, PA where they’re commercializing the product and hope to bring it to market next year. The Mobi moves effortlessly across almost any smooth surface and, in an odd way, looks like Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons. The founder, Sarjoun Skaff, brought Mobi to fruition after working on earlier prototypes at the Field Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. He and his team have built a prototype and research platform so academics can use Mobi as a base for their projects. The technology itself came from the famed Ralph Hollis, a researcher at CMU who invented Mobi’s form of locomotion. In the video below, we were giving the rare opportunity to see the future of Mobi and other ballbots and to really understand how these devices will help us in the future. Mobi gave us a peek at what robots could look like a few short years from now and I, for one, welcome our ball-bottomed overlords.Innovate Or Die: Nokia's Long-Drawn-Out Decline
Dec 31, 11:00PM
There can be little doubt Nokia's mobile glory days are behind it. Samsung now occupies its former throne at the top of the global mobile tree and Google's Android is the dominant smartphone platform, while Windows Phone still lags Nokia's legacy OS Symbian. So where did it all go wrong for Nokia? What were its big missteps and how could the 147-year-old firm have stayed in the smartphone running?The Maximum, Beautiful Product
Dec 31, 9:14PM
For years, all of us in Silicon Valley and its outposts have embraced the idea of the lean startup, shipping the minimum viable product, failing fast and iterating quickly based on customer feedback. This has been the perfect development paradigm for a hit-driven industry, with bright flashes in the pan, but also plenty of silt. Why dedicate years of your life to making the perfect hula hoop if it might never catch on?Innovation: Where Can We Go From Here? A Lot Of Places, Actually
Dec 31, 8:00PM
Just when you think that we’ve innovated all that we can, something new comes along and completely blows our mind. It could be an advancement in hardware, software or just a new way of thinking of things. Humans are pretty resilient when it comes to thinking up new things to tinker with and making our lives easier. This year was pretty awesome when it comes to innovation, and not the innovation that you might be thinking of. There was no “next big thing” to speak of, meaning there was no new big company to take attention away from Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. That’s ok, though, because there were plenty of companies that looked at what we do on a daily basis, and found new and cool ways to make it more fun or less time consuming. That’s innovation, too. I think of what Lyft and Uber have done to make our rides around big cities more enjoyable and less stressful, and you have to look at what Lytro has done to the camera, as well as what Lit Motors will do for motor vehicles. This year was pretty exciting. For consumer apps, it might have been an off-year though. That’s ok, because there are plenty of places where innovation can happen in 2013. Let’s talk about just a few of them. Healthcare Being “one” with your personal healthcare regiment is something we’re lacking right now. There are services out there that can help guide your way as you navigate what treatments are best for you, what insurance policies will keep you safe and what you might be succeptable to in the future. But there’s a long, long way to go there. Eventually, you’ll be able to beam your full medical history from your phone or other mobile device, directly to an emergency room or new doctor. No longer will you have to wait for records to be sent over or labs to be read. They’ll all be right there, and medical professionals will have devices to support it, too. We’re not super far off from that, but Apple and Google are making huge strides in what mobile devices can do. In the future, we need better software and technology applied to healthcare, and that alone will bring down the stress and worry of going for a checkup or perhaps finding out that you have a longterm illness to dealNetflix Goes Down: Company Says Only DVD Website Affected
Dec 31, 7:05PM
Following its lengthy Christmas Eve outage, Netflix is again experiencing issues today, according to a message posted on the Netflix website, dozens of reports from users on Twitter, and other third-party website monitoring services.Fire The Head of Social Media And Make These 10 Wishes Come True
Dec 31, 6:51PM
A joyous moment has come — the idea that you need a director of social media is beginning to lose its myth status. For me, it says that maybe in 2013 some businesses may stop obsessing about how to centralize “social,” and instead just get the work done. Companies with social media directors have a problem. Mostly, they just don’t get it. Or worse, they do get it but to decentralize the corporate, top-down structure would actually disrupt the business and force some change. So here are 10 wishes for the enterprise that thinks they still need one person to organize the company’s tweets, check-ins or whatever. This is by no means a final list. Start talking to each other – who cares how you do it. Build projects, not echo chambers: Start building new ways for everyone to participate. Don’t worry about it being social. You’ll figure it out. Reconsider the generic social network. Don’t ditch it but instead make social transparent in your product development app or whatever you use to get things done. Make blogging a core way for how the company communicates to each other and the world. You will never need a social media director if a lot of people are blogging. People who write are forced to think. That’s a good thing. It’s actually nutritious for the mind. Narrate your work. Start teaching people how to tell stories about the way they work day-to-day. Help them share it. Give developers more freedom to make things. They will do far more for the company than one social media director can ever do. Design for Failure. This is a concept popular in the DevOps movement. It can apply to the entire organization. Treat the company like it is an experiment. Expect failure and design accordingly. Teach people how to use data. How to collect it, how to use the tools to analyze it and how to act on it. Rethink what websites get blocked inside the corporate walls. Open up a bit. Finally: cloud accountability. There are lots of ways now to make sure that costs are kept in check so you can justify all those new efforts that come when you do fire that director of social media. Bonus: Have some fun next year. I mean, hell, watch more YouTube for goodness sake.Storm8 Grabs 2M Downloads In One Day On Christmas
Dec 31, 6:00PM
How big is Christmas for mobile app developers? For one San Francisco Bay Area-based game maker, it meant 2 million downloads in a single day. Christmas is unsurprisingly the biggest day of the year for many app makers as consumers unwrap brand-new phones and rush to the store to test out new apps. Storm8, which is a bootstrapped casual game developer out of Redwood Shores, saw four times the number of downloads they normally experience on a Tuesday. They also saw about 2.5 million hours of gameplay that day and up to 4.5 times the level of average revenue per daily active users, as consumers spent more on in-app purchases. Holiday-themed items like virtual Christmas trees and snow globes were the most popular. The 4x increase that Storm8 saw is consistent with what other analytics companies have picked up over the holidays. Flurry, an analytics company that tracks more than 260,000 apps, reported that device activations more than quadrupled to 17.4 million on Christmas Day. They saw a similar quadrupling effect last Christmas. On top of that, app downloads more than doubled to 328 million on Christmas, they reported. How does Storm8′s 2 million downloads in one day compare to other developers? Well, when Instagram released its Android version, it saw 1 million downloads on the first day and 5 million downloads over the first six days for the app. Rovio also said last year that it was seeing about 1 million downloads a day for its Angry Birds franchise. As for Storm8, it’s a casual game developer that was co-founded by a few early former Facebook employees. They’ve grown to have more than 150 employees and 400 million downloads without taking any venture funding (as a matter of choice and as the funding environment for gaming developers has changed substantially over the last year).Fab Looks Back At Past 18 Months: 10 Million Members, 4.3 Million Products Sold
Dec 31, 5:13PM
Design-focused e-commerce site Fab.com has been having a good year (and a half), and thanks to the massive 100-plus page slideshow the company has now shared, it has the figures to prove it. According to Fab's latest, the site reached 10 million members in 2012, and sold 4.3 million products across 26 countries.7 Apps That Will Keep Your New Year's Resolutions Alive
Dec 31, 3:31PM
A brand new year is upon us, and it's time to start thinking about the changes you want to make. But it can be difficult to follow through on New Year's Resolutions, especially without any help or support. But nine times out of ten, there's an app for that. We pulled seven of Time Magazine's list of the top ten most broken New Years Resolutions, and determined which apps would be best to help with each. So without any further ado, here are the best apps to help you live better in the new year.Lace Up Your Shoes, RunKeeper 3.0 Hits In Time For New Years With A New Interface And Improved Social Features
Dec 31, 2:00PM
The world needs more people in skin tight lululemon and short shorts that would make even the UPS man blush. Our culture's healthy obsession with running in large circles helps combat our other national pastime of gorging fists full of toxically concentrated "food." Popular running social app, RunKeeper, just released version 3.0 to exploit the post-New Years health frenzy, with improved end-of-activity functionality for sharing pictures, especially over Twitter. Bolstered by a $10 million Series B, RunKeeper has ambitious aims to be the "facebook for health" for its growing community which now numbers over 14 million users.Samsung Sells Millionth Galaxy Note II In Its Domestic Market
Dec 31, 12:30PM
Samsung has sold its millionth Galaxy Note II "phablet" in South Korea just over 90 days after its launch, according to MK News (via Sammy Hub, h/t to TNW). The South Korean multinational conglomerate announced last month that it has sold over 5 million Galaxy Note II units globally and, if its current momentum continues, the device might hit 10 million sales by next month. This latest milestone is yet more proof that consumers have become increasingly accustomed to gigantic smartphones that can, in a pinch, serve as a handy disguise by masking your entire face.I'm Bored. What's Next?
Dec 31, 6:34AM
It's just about 2013 and I gotta say, I'm a little bored. At least, the blogger in me is. As an investor things are just peachy. All this panic about overpriced consumer startups has led to a nice softening of the market (periodic reports of Blubbles are great for that). And other sectors, like business to business, is still under capitalized v. the consumer sector.Samsung And DoCoMo Reportedly Team Up To Offer Tizen Smartphones In 2013
Dec 31, 5:33AM
Samsung and Docomo, Japan's largest mobile communication company, are joining forces to develop Tizen, an open source OS that supporters hope will cut into the 90% marketshare held by Google and Apple. The smartphones may be on the market by next year, reports the Yomiuri Shimbun. DoCoMo is the only firm among Japan's three top mobile operators that does not sell iPhones, which has caused it to lose a substantial amount of subscribers over the last four years.The QLOCKTWO W By Biegert & Funk Is A Timepiece For Literate Lovers Of Good Design
Dec 31, 5:00AM
Biegert & Funk has made a name for itself thanks to its iconic clock design that tells time the way we tend to convey it to one another in conversation – with written words in five-minute increments, spelling out “half past twelve” or “a quarter to five.” After creating a number of wall and desk clocks with this design, the firm made a lot of people’s wishes come true and revealed the QLOCKTWO W, a wearable version of the design that fits on the wrist. One has been sitting on mine for the past couple of weeks, and in that time it has managed to make a strong impression on both myself and my friends and family. With only a 10 x 11 grid of letters making up 110 characters in total (that’s less than a tweet), the QLOCKTWO W can display any time, and even though it only spells out five-minute increments, if you’re more exact, four dots at the bottom of the watch’s face indicate the specific minute, and you can cycle through to a view of the seconds ticking by with a couple presses of the QLOCKTWO’s single button. It also displays the calendar date (and if you’re unaware of the month and year, you likely have more problems than a watch can fix), and is available in English, French and German versions. The QLOCKTWO W comes in three different finishes – polished, brushed, or black stainless steel. The face of each measures 35 x 35mm, which with a square-faced watch wears roughly similar to a 40mm standard round watch. For me, since I prefer smaller faced watches, it’s a perfect size. The square design and the non-tapering wide 24mm leather strap make it appear more substantial than you might expect, however, and it definitely attracts a lot of curiosity from onlookers. Biegert & Funk have done a phenomenal job with the overall look of the case and strap, which isn’t surprising given their history as a design firm. The QLOCKTWO W’s most impressive feature is its display, however. When you activate the display, words light up to reflect the current time. Unlike other watches that use a push-button LED illumination trick to show the time, I found the lighting on the QLOCKTWO to be incredibly even. The letters on the face are relatively small, but they show up clear and very easy to read thanks to the well-engineered backlighting. TheYahoo Bids Farewell to South Korea, Completes Exit
Dec 31, 3:42AM
After 15 years, Yahoo completed its exit from South Korea today, reports Yonhap News Agency. This move also marks the first Asian market that Yahoo is leaving.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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