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Hackers, Start Your Engines: Facebook Opens Up Registrations For Its Annual Hacker Cup Competition
Jan 09, 12:35PM
Facebook today announced that it has opened registration for the Hacker Cup, its annual competition for programmers with a $5,000 top prize for the best of them all. Facebook holds the Hacker Cup in rounds, starting first online and then culminating in a final onsite round at Facebook's HQ in Menlo Park, CA for the top 25 programmers. This years preliminary rounds will be held between January 25 and February 16. Facebook will fly the top 25 for the onsite final round that takes place March 22-23.LinkedIn Competitor XING Buys Glassdoor-like Startup Kununu For $12.3M, But Will It Fair Well?
Jan 09, 12:11PM
The German market for startups never ceases to amaze me. While many European startups struggle with either internal markets that are too small or international markets that are pretty daunting, the German eco-system rattles along pretty well, given that with Germany, Austria and Switzerland you have a potential market of about 100 million German-speaking consumers. Thus it is that a small startup like kununu - a German-based equivalent of Glassdoor, the employer reviewing service - can exit relatively easily to a larger player like XING, a LinkedIn-like company that managed to float on the German exchange some years ago. The acquision is for up to €9.4 million ($12.3 million). At 3 million page impressions per month, kununu is not exactly that big - but crucially, it's big in the German market. XING is paying out €3.6 million, with an additional sweetener of €5.8 million based on performance to 2015. Founders Martin and Mark Poreda and all 30 staff are staying on.Europe's Telco Giants In Talks To Create Pan-European Network, Reports FT
Jan 09, 10:11AM
Europe's largest mobile network operators are considering pooling their resources to create pan-European network infrastructure, the FT is reporting. Quoting several people familiar with the situation, the paper says discussions to potentially "unite Europe's fragmented national markets" were prompted by the European Commission.Times Internet CEO Satyan Gajwani Discusses His Company's New Alliance With Gawker Media
Jan 09, 9:00AM
Gawker Media, which already has a presence in eight countries, is expanding its international reach even further. Nick Denton, the founder of the company and blog network, announced yesterday that it has entered a strategic partnership with Times Internet, the digital arm of India's Times Group. Times Internet will manage the Indian versions of Gizmodo and Lifehacker, both of which will offer a combination of original articles and content from their parent sites. I asked Times Internet CEO Satyan Gajwani (pictured above) about how editorial control will be divided between his company and Gawker Media, what the Indian versions of both Web sites will offer, and how they will be monetized.Chinese Microblogging Giant Sina Weibo Adds English-Language Interface
Jan 09, 8:36AM
Sina Weibo, the Chinese microblogging platform sometimes referred to as "China's Twitter," is finally offering an English-language interface, as confirmed to Tech In Asia by the company.Coursera Takes A Big Step Toward Monetization, Now Lets Students Earn "Verified Certificates" For A Fee
Jan 09, 7:45AM
Stanford professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng launched Coursera last year to give anyone and everyone access to courses from top-tier universities -- for free, online. At launch, the startup offered courses from a mere three institutions, but today, things have changed, as Coursera's platform now hosts over 200 courses from 33 top international and domestic schools and reaches over 2 million students around the globe. It has the makings of a transformational concept, offering content only from the most reputed departments, professors and universities, bringing that experience online and giving the key to the masses.McGraw-Hill & Kno Offer A Peek Into The Future Of Textbooks: They're Dynamic, Vocal, Adaptive & Bring Stats To Studying
Jan 09, 7:28AM
For many startups, creating the educational platform (and learning experience) of the future began with reinventing the presentation, distribution -- really, the essence -- of educational content. And what is the most familiar package for that content? The good ole textbook, in all its rigid and bulky glory. As such, startups like Kno, Inkling and Boundless have been helping to make textbooks and learning content digital, interactive and personalized. Of course, generally speaking, these startups have had to fight tooth and nail against the incumbents of the space -- the controllers of content -- the big, bad publishers. Self-publishing platforms and open content resources have grown in popularity and startups have begun experimenting with new ways to present learning material, all of which has threatened the old guard, forcing them to make moves. Adapt or go the way of the dinosaur. Although they've been known to stand in the way of innovation, this morning textbook publishing giant, McGraw-Hill, showed that it's been taking these changes seriously and may just be ready to play ball. Not your average CES startup, the company unveiled its new suite of interactive and adaptive learning products that aim to personalize the learning process and help students improve their performance.Google+ Photos Get Pan And Zoom Functionality, Letting You Really Explore High-Res Photos
Jan 09, 5:43AM
Google+ came out of its holiday slumber today with an addition to its Photo section of the service. The team has added pan and zoom functionality to let you explore small areas of high-resolution photographs. This comes after a hot-and-heavy feature push right before the holiday season. Google’s social feature set has attracted artists of all types, especially professional photographers. Uploading photos is super easy, and sharing with Circles has been a way to get feedback on those pics of the mountains that you just took on a hike before sharing them with the public. Here’s what Google’s Dave Cohen had to say about the release: Google+ is full of amazing photos, and today we’re introducing the ability to pan and zoom when viewing photos from your desktop. To give these features a try, simply open a large photo in the lightbox, then: - use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out - click and drag to pan right, left, up or down Higher resolution photos will offer more to explore, so we’re excited to launch pan and zoom just weeks after launching full-size backups of your Android photos (http://goo.gl/KRpjE). The experience on an Apple laptop is pretty neat, or any laptop with a touch or trackpad. Afte you click on a shared photo, simply use two fingers to zoom in and out fluidly, as you hone in on specific pixel areas. For huge panoramic photos of the outdoors, this can unlock photos in an all new way for followers. The new Nexus devices with the latest version of Android support these types of photos, in case you’ve forgotten. The box in the upper left-hand side of the screen allows you to see where you are on the picture itself, so that you can simply pan over to different areas to see what you’d like to see. This is an advanced feature, not something that would appeal to mainstream consumers, but one that will be enjoyed regardless. Basically, this wasn’t a must-have for Google+ Photos, but the team clearly felt like it was time to include it. This is going to be a huge year for Google’s social evolution, as you’ll start seeing this functionality trickle out to other Google products as the months go on. No, Google+ isn’t a social network, but Google is indeed now a social-focused company. Incrementally, feature by feature, piece by piece, Google iseBay Updates iPhone And iPad Apps To Simplify Mobile Browsing And Listing
Jan 09, 5:20AM
eBay released significant updates to its iPhone and iPad apps yesterday which it says will "play an important role in eBay Mobile's year to come." The ecommerce platform also said that 1.8 million new customers joined eBay through a mobile device in the first three quarters of 2012 and eBay Mobile currently adds an average of 2.4 million listings per week.Ford Launches Its OpenXC SDK And Hardware Specs To Let Developers Access Its Cars' Sensors And Metrics
Jan 09, 5:01AM
Our cars today feature lots of sensors, but it's not easy for developers and hardware hackers to get access to all of this data, which is typically proprietary and manufacturer specific. Last year, Ford, in collaboration with Bug Labs, announced its OpenXC program to allow developers to access metrics from its car's internal network and today, it is opening up the program and launching an SDK so anybody who is interested in this project can start building.Tech Titans In Asia: Apple's Cook Visits China, While Google's Schmidt Makes A Stop In North Korea
Jan 09, 4:32AM
Two top tech executives are currently visiting Asia, but though the reasons for Apple CEO Tim Cook's China sojourn are obvious, Eric Schmidt's trip to North Korea is confusing observers of the authoritarian regime and Google alike.Which Mobile Games Attract The Most Lucrative Players?
Jan 09, 4:02AM
Because data is hard to come by on active usage for top mobile apps, it’s hard to understand how wide a footprint the very highest-grossing games have. Plus, with a Renaissance in mid-core games over more casual titles during the past year, it’s often not the best-known or most widely popular games that perform the best financially. A small set of very loyal players can push a game to the top of the grossing charts, because they individually spend more than less committed players. Onavo, a Sequoia-backed company that tracks active usage for millions of apps through its mobile data compression products, took at a look at the highest-grossing games. They wanted to see how much market penetration these games have compared to their rank on the top grossing charts. Just for background, Onavo has two products: Extend, which helps consumers save on their mobile bills by compressing data usage and Onavo Count, which tells you how much data you're using. Because they have single-digit millions of users, they can peek into daily mobile traffic to different apps. On top of that, because Onavo creates consumer-facing products and doesn't work directly with developers, the company can publish data on active usage for specific apps. This is unlike other mobile analytics companies like Flurry, which can't really disclose performance of specific apps because developers would probably not work with them. The company looked at game usage among their U.S. iPhone users in November. Then they looked at the market share, or the percentage of their U.S.-based iPhone owners that use these games on a monthly basis. So for example, in the chart, they found that Angry Birds Star Wars was being actively played by 3.9 percent of U.S. iPhone owners every month. Then they compared that to the game’s ranking on the grossing charts. From that, they tried to see roughly how strong average revenue per user (or ARPU) is for each title. The most widely played games like Angry Birds Star Wars, Subway Surfers and Bike Race Free were not among the very, very top grossing games on a per user basis. More obscure (and often Japanese-made) titles seemed to do better. Legend of the Cryptids, a MMORPG from Applibot (which is a studio wholly-owned by the $1.4 billion Japanese company CyberAgent) did the best on a revenue-per user basis. The trading card game on DeNA’s Mobage network, Rage ofThe CES Show Isn't Over Yet: Watch Team TechCrunch Live At ShowStoppers
Jan 09, 2:45AM
Ah, ShowStoppers. It's always a nice change of pace for us — just about two hours after the first day of CES has wrapped, companies come to us to show off their wares instead of the other way around. As per tradition, we're gearing up to chat with a slew of new and just plain neat companies, and to top it all off, we'll be streaming the whole thing.Today We Learned That Verizon Is Going To Save The World
Jan 09, 2:18AM
With Microsoft pulling out of the Consumer Electronics Show and Apple nowhere to be seen, the show has become a huge opportunity for other companies to have their major onstage moment. With more than 150,000 people in attendance and millions of people watching remotely, it's the opportunity of the year for a company that isn't known for its press conference prowess. You know. Like Verizon. Verizon's Lowell McAdam has the eyes and ears of millions of people right at this very second, and to keep the attention of so many for 90 minutes there must be a narrative that goes beyond "We have a really sweet and super speedy network."GE Hires Kleiner Partner, Teams Up With Startup Health To Help Fuel Digital Health Innovation
Jan 09, 1:58AM
General Electric built what is today a $219 billion multinational industrial behemoth by continuously investing in innovation, technology and computing. As the maker of airplane engines, trains, power plant turbines and medical equipment, GE's business generally falls outside the virtual walls of the consumer Web. However, as the New York Times reports, GE has recently renewed its commitment to investing in innovation, particularly as it places its bet on the "industrial Internet" in an effort to bring some digital magic to industry.Verizon Announces $10M In 'Powerful Answers' Awards For Health Care, Education, And Sustainability
Jan 09, 1:47AM
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam's keynote speech this afternoon at the Consumer Electronics Show was all about the big challenges facing different industries (and indeed society as a whole), as well as the ways that Verizon technology is helping. At one point, for example, he declared, "4G LTE proves the case that innovation in networks is the foundation for innovation across the industry." Ultimately, however, McAdam said it's not just about Verizon: "We know that to move this industry forward, the whole ecosystem needs to be involved in the innovation process." Which is why it's announcing a new awards program called Powerful Answers.Meet The Clarity Ensemble, The Phone That Closed-Captions Your Conversation In Real Time
Jan 09, 1:42AM
Most of the time when we cover a new phone launch, it's all about something that's small, lightweight, fully-featured, and mobile -- and often it's aimed at the cutting edge of hip young consumers. But today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, we met the folks behind a very compelling new gadget that happens to be none of those things: The Clarity Ensemble.Facebook Removes Instagram User Counts From Developer API After Holiday Traffic Confusion
Jan 09, 1:34AM
In the aftermath of a controversial story claiming Instagram’s traffic numbers were down, the data that was the source of the story has now disappeared altogether. Instagram was in the spotlight, and owner Facebook’s shares tumbled, when the New York Post ran a story between Christmas and New Year’s Day claiming that the popular photo app’s traffic was falling off a cliff after the controversial introduction, and then reversal, of new terms of service. We and several others cast doubt on how the NYP read those traffic numbers, which came from AppData, and Facebook eventually said they were inaccurate, too. Now that data is no longer there. Facebook tells us that this is to bring Instagram in line with the rest of its own apps, which stopped appearing on AppData in December 2011. “We don’t provide app usage metrics for apps owned or created by Facebook through our API,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We’ve updated our API to reflect this for Instagram, which would remove it from AppData’s rankings.” Effectively, this means that it’s not only AppData that will no longer have information on Instagram usage; anyone using the Facebook API for this data will also no longer be seeing that data. So, for now, this is what you see on AppData’s Instagram’s page: On January 7, it recorded 45.8 million monthly active users, as measured by Facebook logins; today, that number is zero. Similarly, for daily active users, there were 8.7 million yesterday (again, based on Facebook logins), and none today. (And I know Facebook has already dismissed the AppData numbers as inaccurate, but it’s worth pointing out that the MAUs were steadily rising, while the DAUs since December 28 had continued to fall, again as measured by Facebook logins.) Facebook may need to consider a wider change in the relationship between itself and third-party data services that track traffic across Facebook apps. Data on app growth helps developers monitor progress of themselves and their competitors, but it can be problematic if there is a glitch in the data channel, which in turn affects how overall traffic looks. Journalists who don’t understand how services like AppData work can jump to negative conclusions (Insta-gate being one case in point). Elsewhere, there are other signs that Facebook is drawing the curtains on how third parties can track and use their traffic data to draw conclusions about the company. Last week, we reportedXzibit, Sugar Ray Leonard, Nick Cannon And More Pimp Headphones At CES
Jan 09, 12:47AM
The CES showroom floor is full of surprises, but none were quite as exciting as the plethora of celebrities we bumped into on Day 1. Much of that is in great thanks to Monster, who is focused on new partnerships with brands and celebrities alike, including Diesel Jeans, Nick Cannon, and Xzibit. With a little luck and the help of some nice PR folks, we managed to get video interviews with male supermodel Tyson Beckford, Joseph "Run" Simmons of Run-DMC, Sugar Ray Leonard, Nick Cannon (formerly of Nickelodeon and current Mariah Carey spouse), and Xzibit.The Zivix Jamstik Is An Absolutely Amazing Portable MIDI Guitar For Beginners And Pros
Jan 09, 12:43AM
The surprisingly small and light Jamstik is, in short, one of the coolest things I've seen at CES Today. It is a MIDI guitar that is actually a musical controller. By playing and plucking the strings you can play music using synthesized sounds and it recognizes chords, notes, and nuances including bends and hammers.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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