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Flickr's iOS App Is Still Playing Catch-Up
Feb 22, 7:57PM
A blog post from Flickr about new updates to its iOS application went relatively unnoticed yesterday. The post announced a series of incremental improvements to an app which has so far barely managed to catch up to the competition after months of abandonment, but has yet to really impress. The latest build brings a few now-standard features like the ability to save photos to your Camera Roll, communicate with @ replies, and more.Director Of Product Blake Ross Is Leaving Facebook
Feb 22, 7:49PM
Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross is leaving the company, he announced in a Facebook post yesterday afternoon. For those of you who weren't reading TechCrunch in 2007, Firefox co-founder Ross and Joe Hewitt came to Facebook through its acquisition of Parakey, a web OS that was still in stealth at the time. Parakey was Facebook's first acquisition. Hewitt, who spearheaded many Facebook Mobile projects, left the company in 2011.Instagram's Kevin Systrom To Join Us For Disrupt NY 2013
Feb 22, 7:41PM
In case you’re not vigorously refreshing our Disrupt NY events page like we are, TechCrunch Disrupt is coming up. We’re receiving a record number of Startup Battlefield applications and watching the last batch pour in before the deadline on Monday. We’ve also started to announce some amazing special guests and speakers. Tickets for this year’s show can be found here. From pivot to iconic acquisition, there is perhaps no recent Valley success story more symbolic than that of Instagram and its cofounder Kevin Systrom. His saga, and the fact that he’s a sharp cookie, are why we’re delighted to have this Crunchies 2013 Founder Of The Year join us on the Disrupt NY stage. Systrom will be headlining along with previously announced speakers Fred Wilson, Ken Lerer, Ben Lerer, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, David Lee, and Kevin Ryan. Stay tuned for more updates, and remember, if you want to apply for Startup Battlefield, do so before Monday, February 25th. More info on applying can be found here. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our amazing sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com. Kevin Systrom Co-founder, Instagram Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering—he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google—the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and combined with his passion for photography, Instagram is a natural fit.Google I/O Registration Date Leaks, Be Ready To Sign Up On March 13
Feb 22, 7:33PM
A tipster has sent in a screen grab of what appears to be a landing page announcing registration dates for Google's massive I/O developers conference in May. The page has been pulled, so the link no longer works. However, the screen grab says that registration for Google I/O will open up on March 13, at 7am PDT (10am ET).If America Was A Startup We'd All Quit
Feb 22, 7:16PM
So I was chatting with my dad yesterday. We had a long drive home after the Department of Homeland Security seized and impounded my boat. The mood was somber. We were talking about how awful America has become. We are a nation that has been split into groups that absolutely hate each other. Debt is rising, taxes are rising and freedom is being demolished. Meanwhile our elected officials are doing little more than stoking the drama fire while fiddling with the deck chairs on the Titanic. Whatever your politics, you must see it too. Just pick a political story at random and read the comments. There is no logic or reason on either side, only hypocrisy and hate. I’m a creature of startups. For example, I don’t want government interference in the startup ecosystem. And more importantly, as someone immersed in startup culture, I am a big fan of just walking away from stuff that can’t be fixed. In my post “Always Swim Downstream” I talk about focusing on what you’re good at and just walking away from unsolvable problems. America is an unsolvable problem, a nation divided and deeply in hate with itself. If it was a startup we’d understand how unfixable the situation is, most of us would leave for a fresh start and the company would fall apart. America is MySpace. But leaving America means renouncing your citizenship, moving out of the country and leaving family and friends behind. You can retain your citizenship if you like, but you’ll still be away from loved ones and still be paying taxes. You lose all the good stuff about America and have to keep all the bad stuff. I love this country but we have a management team that’s both evil and incompetent. And the way “stockholder rights” are implemented there’s absolutely no way to stop or even slow down the rush to misery. I wish people had the choice of voting with their feet. This tends to keep the individual states somewhat honest in their dealings with citizens because they have to compete against 49 other states. But there’s no escaping the fed. It’s like a startup where everyone is miserable but no one is allowed to quit.NYPD And Apple Team Up To Stop iThing Theft In NYC
Feb 22, 6:56PM
The number of gadget-related thefts in major metropolitan areas has only continued to rise, and the number of resolved cases simply can't keep up. However, it would appear that Apple is now working directly with the NYPD to help return iThings into the hands of their rightful owners. The NYPD has formed an official team which will work directly with Apple to track down stolen iThings, mostly iPhones and iPads.Google Confirms That Project Glass Will Work With iPhone
Feb 22, 6:55PM
After making a visit to a disappointingly bland Google conference room behind frosted-glass doors in New York, the Verge's Joshua Topolsky got some hands-on time with Glass and his in-depth report included an interesting little bit of information about Glass that many people have been wondering about. Glass, he wrote, will be compatible with Android - as most people always expected - and Apple's iPhone. Google just confirmed to us that this is indeed correct, though the company didn't want to comment on the details of how this will work.Pinterest Rival Fancy Reportedly Buys Samplrs.com To Beef Up Its Artisanal Food Business
Feb 22, 6:01PM
We haven't heard too much from Fancy.com -- a competitor to Pinterest and other sites focused on social commerce -- since they raised $26 million in October 2012, but it looks like this is changing today. Fancy has apparently acquired Samplrs.com -- a specialist in artisanal foods, which it sells by subscription as well as a la carte. The news, which we received via anonymous tip, was reportedly sent out in a customer email from Samplrs today. When you visit the site, it now redirect to Fancy.com.Built For Entrepreneurs And Investors, Simplr For iPhone Sorts And Prioritizes Your AngelList Feeds
Feb 22, 5:22PM
If you do a search for "AngelList" in the Apple App Store, you'll only get four results - and one is an app featuring quotes from entrepreneurs. In other words, there's not a lot of selection despite AngelList's readily available API. That being said, in the past an app called AngelList Wings has served as a useful resource for browsing, searching and following early-stage startups, founders and investors. Today, however, it has some new competition from a mobile app called Simplr.Google Glass Targeting End Of 2013 Consumer Release, With Price Tag Under $1,500
Feb 22, 5:10PM
Google seems to be looking to bring its ambitious Google Glass wearable computer to market much faster than many likely anticipated, according to the Verge. Google told the site that it hopes to have a "fully-polished" version of Glass available for sale to ordinary consumers by the end of 2013. The cost will be under the $1,500 Google was asking for developer-targeted editions of the headsets put up for pre-order first at Google I/O, and then again earlier this week.Nevada Legalizes Online Gambling, Opens Up Interstate Rollout
Feb 22, 4:44PM
Hard-working Americans may no longer need to buy a plane ticket to sin city to lose their kids' college savings: Online gambling is now legal in Nevada, and may soon be available nationwide. Nevada unanimously passed an emergency measure to legalize gambling in the state and open up opportunities to enter legal compacts with states for their own residents.Why Every Analyst Is In Love With The Siren Song Of The Low-Cost iPhone
Feb 22, 4:27PM
For almost as long as Apple's iPhone has been in existence, analysts have claimed to see visions of a low-cost version of the device aimed at developing and prepaid markets. It's easy to see why these visions have grown in magnitude and gained a more vocal following over the years: entering that market would, in theory, broaden Apple's potential appeal by hundreds of millions of new customers. But I refer to the low-cost iPhone as a "siren song" for a reason – there's a significant potential downside if Apple tries such a device and fails to impress.Making It Illegal To Fail Science Students Who Argue Humans Co-Existed With Dinosaurs
Feb 22, 4:24PM
As American science students struggle to compete with the global competition, Oklahoma is moving forward with a law that could ban Biology teachers from failing students who argue that humans co-existed with dinosaurs. The state legislator's committee in charge of education standards has approved a law that would forbid teachers from penalizing students who argue against widely accepted scientific theories, such as evolution and climate change.Facebook Admits Critical Bugs Caused Page Reach To Be Misreported For Months
Feb 22, 4:01PM
While trying to speed up its iOS and Android apps, Facebook accidentally stripped out too much data about news feed posts by Pages. This caused bugs in Page Insights that led to misreporting of metrics, causing admins to believe their posts reached fewer people than they actually did, in most cases. Bug fixes are now rolling out and accurate data will flow into Page Insights starting Monday.Subscription Underwear Startup MeUndies Launches A Redesign, Now Sells T-Shirts And Socks
Feb 22, 4:00PM
Subscription commerce startup MeUndies has a brand new look and all new products. The company, which provides monthly shipments of boxers, thongs, and other underthings, is rolling out a new design for its website. It's also introducing a new, ultrasoft fabric for its products, as well as a line of other basics, including t-shirts and socks.Like A Net Nanny For The Mobile App Age, AppCertain Alerts Parents What Apps Their Kids Download And What They Do
Feb 22, 3:57PM
It's rare to come across a service that's directly tackling a problem affecting a large number of people out in the real world, but AppCertain is doing just that. Designed for parents whose children use an iOS device like the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, this new app monitoring service sends out email alerts informing parents of the apps their kids have just installed, what those apps do, and whether or not they're appropriate for children.Watch These Quadcopters Flip A Reverse Pendulum Into The Air And Catch It (No, Seriously, Watch)
Feb 22, 3:51PM
While I hate using Buzzfeed-style headlines, this video warrants the hyperbole. We're all familiar with the magic of quadcopters - they can fly in formation, roll around obstacles, and even interact with each other. This video demo, however, takes the cake. These little fellows are flying in formation while balancing a reverse pendulum. They're essentially doing baton tricks in mid-air.Even As HTML5 Gaming Skepticism Remains, Ludei Pushes An App To Seven Stores Simultaneously
Feb 22, 3:09PM
Even though Facebook admitted that its detour into HTML5 didn’t fully pay off for its mobile strategy, a host of startups like Ludei and GameClosure are still betting on the technology. They’re hoping that increasing complexity of dealing with all those Android devices plus new iOS formats, along with improvements in HTML5 standards will eventually make it viable for game developers. Ludei, a San Francisco-based company, said today that it pushed a single game called iBasket to seven different app stores from a single codebase today. They’re running all HTML5 versions of the game on iOS, Google Play, Amazon’s Appstore, the Nook store, Facebook, Firefox and Chrome from single a code base. “There’s a perception that HTML5 kind of failed us, or that we failed it,” said Eneko Knorr, Ludei’s CEO and founder. “There was a lot of negativity.” He said while Ludei has about 1,500 active projects on the platform, the company wanted to do a proof of concept with an app. So they took their most successful game, iBasket, which has had 15 million downloads, and revamped it to work on seven different stores and platforms simultaneously. “If we’re going to convince people that this is a reality, we can’t wait for other developers to finish their games in 90 to 150 days,” he said. “We wanted to do this now.” They also face competition from GameClosure, which made its developer kit public last week and is backed by more than $12 million in venture funding. Then there are a number of cross-platform tools providers like Spaceport and Marmalade. iBasket is a game that runs at 60 frames-per-second and Ludei’s layer includes payments, advertising and social features like multi-player mode. There are extended APIs that boost performance, a game engine called CAAT, extensions for push notifications, and a cloud service to manage updates and analytics. “In real time, you’ll get back these seven packages — APKs (Android application package file) for Amazon and Google Play, an iOS app store package. We’re an infrastructure component and we can also provide a game engine,” said Ludei’s president, Joe Monastiero, who saw Intel acquire parts of of his previous startup appMobi yesterday. The company says that more than 150 HTML5 games have been built from the platform, including Onslaught Defense and Lunch Bug from Lost Decade Games, Rhino Hero from shortblackmocca and Ready to Roll from D Lewis. The company isAlleged Galaxy S IV Cases Sprout Up On The Web
Feb 22, 2:48PM
A handful of cases seem to have leaked out for the forthcoming Galaxy S IV smartphone from Samsung. Since the phone has not yet been announced, we should approach each and every one of these cases with a hearty helping of salt. However, sometimes case makers get their hands on information we don't quite have, such as dimensions, meaning their cases can shed some light on what's coming next. In this particular case, the Galaxy S IV cases are coming from "a trusted Chinese case manufacturer," according to MobileFun, and are ready to support a phone with a 5-inch display.Study: Online Courses May Be The Worst For Minorities And At-Risk Students
Feb 22, 2:03PM
Online college courses are replacing traditional classrooms at a crazy-fast pace, yet it is still unknown whether they are actually better for students. A new large-scale study of 40,000 community and technical college students finds that, compared to traditional courses, students in online courses receive worse grades and are more likely to drop out. The negative impact of online study is disturbingly pronounced for minorities and students already at risk of dropping out. “Overall, the online format had a significantly negative relationship with both course persistence and course grade, indicating that the typical student had difficulty adapting to online courses,” writes Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars of Columbia University. “Specifically, we found that males, black students, and students with lower levels of academic preparation experienced significantly stronger negative coefficients for online learning compared with their counterparts, in terms of both course persistence and course grades.” The research team controlled for an impressive array of student characteristics, class types and demographics, and found a negative impact across most of their variables. Interestingly, they also looked at courses where more than 75 percent of the students were at risk, and found that the presence of at-risk peers made drop out all the more likely. The impact, or “effect size” as it’s called in statistics, was very large. Taking a course online correlated with a grade drop of between 0.15-0.4 on average out of a 4.0 scale. The study, however, should be taken in context. As I’ve written before, large-scale research by the department of education finds that online education is often better than traditional face-to-face instruction. We don’t yet know how massively open online courses (MOOCs) will affect students as they scale to the wider population. This new study from Columbia is an important part (but only a part) of the ongoing national experiment.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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