This is default featured post 1 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.

This is default featured post 2 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.

This is default featured post 3 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.

This is default featured post 4 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.

This is default featured post 5 title

Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.This theme is Bloggerized by Lasantha Bandara - Premiumbloggertemplates.com.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Evernote 5 Lands On Android With Updated Camera, UI Tweaks




TechCrunch » android





Evernote 5 Lands On Android With Updated Camera, UI Tweaks



unnamed

Evernote has just updated its Android app to version 5.0, the same update that recently hit both iOS and Mac OS X. The update brings with it an updated UI, as well as a number of new features such as a Shortcuts page which pops up when you swipe left, and an updated camera.


Page Camera mode, in particular, should be a blessing to those of us who use Evernote to capture pictures of notes more than we do to actually take notes. It lets you snap photos of text, automatically adjusting settings to reduce shadow and increase contrast for legibility. The newly updated camera will also let users snap multiple shots and add them to a note all at once.


Version 5.0 also integrates with Evernote’s Smart Notebook by Moleskin products.


Premium users also get to enjoy some new goodies, namely in the form of Document search. Evernote will now search through attached documents, spreadsheets and presentations from the universal search.


While version 5.0 of Evernote hit both iOS and Mac OS X already, Android is getting a feature that iOS hasn’t enjoyed yet in the form of shortcuts.


Evernote has continued to expand into international waters, but struggled to get its UI in shape. The 5.0 revamp across multiple platforms is a good start, but still laggy on mobile and perhaps too similar to the desktop version. As we all know, services with cross-platform support often need to tweak UIs and features differently on various platforms to meet user needs.


It’s also worth remembering that a recent hack forced Evernote to change everyone’s password. However, it looks like the storm has cleared, so if you’re interested in the Evernote 5 update for Android, click here.


















Saturday, March 30, 2013

Mar 30 - New 'TechCrunch' feed email from feed2email.net

Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.

Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.


The Tivoli PAL BT May Be The Best-Looking, Best-Sounding Bluetooth Speaker

Mar 30, 9:20PM

PAL-BT1Long before the advent of the Jawbone Jambox, there was a portable speaker that was decently rugged, had tremendous battery life and amazing sound, and that was the Tivoli PAL. The PAL boasted an audiophile peidgree and an auxiliary input that made it a good partner for early iPods, but the introduction of decent stereo Bluetooth streaming made it fall behind somewhat in convenience when the Jawbone and its ilk came around.


Amazon Instant Video Suffered Long, Unexplained Outage Last Night

Mar 30, 7:00PM

amazon-instant-videoAt the end of last year, Netflix suffered a prolonged outage because Amazon’s cloud services, which Netflix uses to host most of its infrastructure, went down. At the time, Amazon’s own video services continued to function without any issues. Last night, it was Amazon’s turn to suffer from a multi-hour outage. According to a number of tips we received, as well as a number of reports on Twitter and other social networks, Amazon’s Instant Video service and Prime Instant Video went down sometime in the late afternoon yesterday and remained offline for a large part of the evening. So far, Amazon hasn’t publicly acknowledged last night’s outage and its @amazonvideo account has remained silent since the first reports came in. Amazon Web Services, which powers Amazon’s Video Services, continued to work without issues last night. One of our readers provided us with a boilerplate email he received from Amazon last night after he complained about the outage: Hello, We’re sorry for the trouble you had while trying to connect to Amazon Instant Video. If you try again, you should be able to connect without encountering further problems. We look forward to seeing you again soon. We have contacted Amazon for more details about this outage and will update this post once we hear back from them. Hey @AmazonVideo maybe mention VOD is down right now. It's nice when the marketing tweets come with useful info between them.— Ry4an Brase (@Ry4an) March 30, 2013 Seriously, I get emails from @amazon every day, you'd think they could use one of those to let us know why @AmazonVideo is down.— Aaron Gardner (@Aaron_RS) March 30, 2013 @amazonvideo #fail. A little notice of when you're going to do maintenance would be nice. I expect a credit, or will cancel Amazon Prime.—   (@djdeedle) March 30, 2013


Report: US Patent And Trademark Office Denies Apple's iPad Mini Trademark Application, Deemed "Merely Descriptive"

Mar 30, 5:35PM

ipad-with-ipad-miniRight after it launched the iPad mini, Apple filed a trademark application for the name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As Patently Apple noticed earlier today, however, the USPTO will likely refuse Apple’s trademark filing because, the reviewer argues, “the applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant's goods.” The letter was mailed to Apple on January 24, but only made public in the last few days. Apple can still respond to this notice and correct its application, though it’s hard to see how Apple could argue against the USPTO’s argument that ‘mini’ is ‘merely descriptive.’ “The applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant's goods.” The word ‘mini,’ the reviewer argues, just describes that the iPad mini is indeed “a small sized handheld tablet computer” and just describes the mini’s features. It is not, the reviewing attorney says, “a unitary mark with a unique, incongruous, or otherwise nondescriptive meaning in relation to the goods and/or services.” The USPTO would only grant Apple the trademark to the full iPad mini name if the company could show that the word ‘mini’ has now acquired a “distinctiveness.” In addition, Patently Apple also notes, the reviewer also denied the application for now because Apple should have provided the USPTO with a specimen other than its own product website, even though Apple always uses these for its trademark applications and this was never a reason for a denial before. The reviewer also believes that there is a “likelihood of confusion” between Apple’s existing iPad trademarks and this new iPad® mini application, which, to be honest, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Here is the letter the USPTO sent to Apple in January: USPTO Refuses Apple’s iPad mini Trademark Application


Gillmor Gang: Spring Training

Mar 30, 5:00PM

gillmor-gang-test-pattern_excerptThe Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — takes turns sizing up the new season. With Steve Ballmer running out of room and close to the warning track, we talk about who might be called up from the minors. Dave Winer is back with a nifty pivot on Google Reader's trip to the showers. More than anything, Winer made the hard stuff look easy and gave the tech generation a voice.


Bing Gordon's Founder Checklist: Animal Energy, Blind Confidence, And A Toupee.

Mar 30, 1:13PM

Screen Shot 2013-03-30 at 12.09.31 AMEditor's note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. As an Electronic Arts’ intern eight years ago, I asked Bing Gordon then the chief creative officer and the only remaining early founding team member, a question about vision. "How can I know where the puck is going to be?" While he delivered a satisfactory response, two weeks later I received an email from Bing saying, "I answered that question poorly a few weeks and I wanted to try again." A few weeks ago Bing joined me at Startup Grind in Silicon Valley where he delivered some great advice that has become one of his trademarks. In 2010 Mark Pincus called KPCB general partner Bing Gordon (look for a bald guy on the front row) one of the world's "great CEO coaches" supporting founders on the boards of companies like Amazon, Zynga, Klout, and Zazzle. Here are some excepts from our recent interview. Derek: Tell us about your family and where you grew up? BING: So I grew up in a suburb of Detroit.  My dad was a first generation Scotsman and his dad was a janitor.  And he was somebody that believed the grass was always greener and didn't have, kind of, context or resources.  Thanks, Dad!  We were the first to move in to a subdivision built out of farmlands surrounding Detroit, so I grew up kind of in the creek.  Playing sports with my brother who remembers growing up in the House of Pain.  So I had a good Midwestern upbringing.  I didn't work in an office before going to Stanford business school, but I did think I was a pretty damn good teenage caddy. I played hockey and lacrosse at the university level and played both, kind of, for most of my adult life. Derek: What was your plan heading to college? BING: Well I went to Yale thinking I was going to be a math major and a writer, and I got there and Yale was lousy at math and it seemed socially irrelevant, so I kind of became an athlete-near-college-dropout.  I realized I was flunking a third of my classes going into the final.  My proud accomplishments in college other than sports achievements was I wrote poetry.  Kind of light verse, in a coffee shop, and Peter Faulk when he was doing Columbo came, and liked it so much he took


Big Data Could Cripple Facebook

Mar 30, 1:00PM

kredstreetSo there's this startup called SmogFarm, which does big-data sentiment analysis, "pulse of the planet" stuff. I spotted them last year, and now they've got an actual product with an actual business model up and running in private beta: KredStreet, "The Social Stock Trader Rankings," which performs sentiment analysis on StockTwits data and a sampling of the Twitter firehose to determine traders' overall bullish/bearish feeling. They also compare reality against past sentiment to score and rank traders based on their accuracy, which is more interesting. It's a first iteration, but it looks pretty nifty, and I like the idea of a ranking system wherein unknowns can leave high-profile loudmouths in their dust by virtue of simply being right more often. Even if I feel slightly uneasy when I imagine such a system being applied to, say, tech bloggers. Actually being held accountable for what I've written in the past? Doesn't that just seem terribly wrong?


Where Have All The Physical QWERTYs Gone?

Mar 30, 11:29AM

bbq10-5It's approaching three years since I emailed and got a reply from the late Steve Jobs. The topic of my caffeine-fueled missive that sunny day in June 2010 was the industry's move towards touch-based interfaces and, specifically, Apple's one-size-fits-all approach regarding the iPhone's lack of a physical QWERTY keyboard.


After Bootstrapping, Data-Mining Specialist Ondore Closes Million-Dollar Round For Mexican, US Operations

Mar 30, 9:00AM

OndoreEditor's note: Maria Rocio Paniagua currently works as a project manager at Innku, one of the top mobile and web workshops in Mexico. Ondore, the leading Latin American big data analysis company that develops online reputation management systems, has closed its first investment round for $1.5 million dollars with Alta Ventures. The company says it will use the capital round to expand sales and marketing efforts in Latin America, as well as Spanish-speaking U.S.


Sequoia Capital In Singapore After A Year, Has Yet To Invest In A Local Startup

Mar 30, 6:14AM

Singapore skylineWhen Sequoia Capital India landed in Singapore quietly in 2012, the buzz around town was that a big-name US fund being in the country was going to really jolt the market and provide serious cred to the startups here. The Indian team running operations here, however, appears to have spent the last year of its time in the island state helping startups in its India portfolio expand into Singapore, rather than directly investing in startups here. However, the company just moved into a fancy new co-working space called The Co, and is its anchor tenant, so it could be a sign that it's trying to get closer to local startups. Previously, it operated out of a service office in High Street. Singapore is a popular choice as a base for foreign companies looking to expand into Southeast Asia, because it’s a mature market with plenty of infrastructure available. But as a tiny country, it’s not often the main addressable user base, and startups originating from Singapore are also taught to have expansion plans charted. Early last year, Sequoia Capital India MD, Shailendra Jit Singh, expressed interest in having the fund's companies expand into the region. Sequoia Cap in the US also appeared to have been eyeing activity in Singapore for a while—it had its first offsite meeting in the country in 2011, and was in discussion with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about its presence here. The Prime Minister's Office oversees its R&D arm, the National Research Foundation (NRF), which has been busy backing local venture capital firms here over the past few years. Its Technology Incubation Scheme is a program that distributes seed funding to startups picked by 11 NRF-appointed VCs. The NRF matches investment values in the proportion of 85 percent to 15 percent—the larger portion dished out by the government. This allows the VCs here to provide bigger sums of seed capital to startups, with much of the risk absorbed by the NRF. Former NRF projects head, Yinglan Tan, was also pulled over to Sequoia Capital India's team in July last year, where he is now a venture partner based in Singapore. When I ran into Tan in Manila a couple of months ago, he was evasive about Sequoia’s activities in Singapore, but was happy to try to set up meetings with their existing portfolio companies in Singapore—all Indian-based startups, except for Airbnb and Evernote. Some of these companies


The Dash Car Dongle Wants To Make You A Better Driver By Syncing With Your iPhone

Mar 30, 5:18AM

dash-kickstarterI love my tiny little Mazda, but I'll be honest -- I still don't completely understand how it works. That's never really bothered me before (I'd much rather geek out over a phone or something) but a Kickstarter project from a small team in Boston has me itching to pay more attention to what's really going on under the hood. Long story short, Dash combines a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled dongle that plugs into your car's on-board diagnostics port with a smartphone app that gives you up-to-date information how on your car is holding up.


Foursquare's API Is A Pillar Of The Mobile App Ecosystem

Mar 30, 4:00AM

api branchesEditor's note: Jonathan Barouch is the founder and CEO of location-based startup Roamz, developer of social media business product Local Measure. Foursquare has become entrenched in the fabric of the local web, providing an API that delivers common good for developers. Any destabilization in Foursquare or its developer tools would fundamentally affect the stability of the mobile web.


Business Insider's Owen Thomas Is In Talks To Be The New Editor At ReadWrite

Mar 30, 12:45AM

owen thomasMy old boss Owen Thomas is very close to becoming the new editor-in-chief at the SAY Media-owned tech site ReadWrite, according to sources with knowledge of the company. I'm hearing that it's not quite a done deal, but that it's looking very likely. Naturally, I called Owen to ask if this was the case, but he declined to comment. A SAY spokesperson told me, "There's obviously a lot of interest in ReadWrite. There are a lot of good candidates in the mix, and no one's been hired yet." (Just to reiterate — I'm not saying he's been hired, just that the discussions are pretty far along.)


MIT Files Court Papers "Partially" Opposing Release Of Documents About Aaron Swartz Investigation

Mar 30, 12:22AM

250px-Aaron_Swartz_profileThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is “partially” opposing a request by the estate of Aaron Swartz for the release of documents related to the investigation that led to Swartz’s arrest and prosecution in federal court. In court papers filed today, MIT counsel states that its opposition stems from two factors: its concerns about people in the MIT community named in the documents and the security of its computer networks. MIT has previously stated that it would release the documents with redactions of names and other information. MIT President L. Rafael Reif said in email to the MIT community earlier this month: On Friday, the lawyers for Aaron Swartz's estate filed a legal request with the Boston federal court where the Swartz case would have gone to trial. They demanded that the court release to the public information related to the case, including many MIT documents. Some of these documents contain information about vulnerabilities in MIT's network. Some contain the names of individual MIT employees involved. In fact, the lawyers' request argues that those names cannot be excluded ("redacted") from the documents and urges that they be released in the public domain and delivered to Congress. The paper filed today reiterates this position, basing it on threats already made to MIT staff and three separate hacking incidents at the university. The information includes “email, the names, job titles, departments, telephone numbers, email addresses, business addresses, and other identifying information of many members of the MIT community.” Swartz has become a symbol in the Internet community since his suicide. His supporters have led the debate about the role MIT played in Swartz’s prosecution and the vigilance of the U.S. Attorney General in the case. MIT claims it is fully cooperating in the investigation that has come since Swartz’s suicide.


With Alternative Offers From Blackstone & Icahn On The Table, Dell Filing Shows It Will Push Ahead With $24.4B Silver Lake Merger

Mar 30, 12:14AM

Screen shot 2013-03-29 at 5.15.25 PMDell announced today that it has filed its initial proxy materials with the SEC in connection with a merger agreement between Dell, its Chairman and CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners. Under the terms of the deal, shareholders would received $13.65 in cash for each share of stock, which would be valued at about $24.4 billion.


Bonobos' SF Engineers Split Between NY Relocation And New Company Led By CTO Mike Hart

Mar 29, 10:09PM

bonobosBonobos' newly hired San Francisco engineering team is fracturing, but there's no disaster. Bonobos CTO Mike Hart has departed the company to become a co-founder, along with Cory Hicks, of a brand-new business. After cooking up some hot new personalization technology at Bonobos, Hart and five other engineers from the team will be spinning out that technology into a standalone company separate from Bonobos.


Stranded In SF? Corral Rides Shows Uber, Lyft, Sidecar And Muni In One App

Mar 29, 9:57PM

uberSuper Awesome Party A has just ended, and you need to figure out how to get to Super Awesome Party B stat... and preferably by spending as little money as possible. So what do you do? Muni? Uber? Lyft? Sidecar? Hoof it? You could switch between half a dozen different apps and try to figure out which of the options is cheapest and fastest... Or you could just open Corral Rides.


Kicking Off Our Flip Off - Meet The "TechCrunch Weekly" Magazine On Flipboard

Mar 29, 9:47PM

techcrunch-weeklyfbFlipboard this week announced a new version of its app that allows anyone to make a “Magazine,” which is a curated collection of stories based on any topic that you can think of. The company has shared that over 100,000 magazines have been created since the feature launched. We’ve decided to put together our own magazine called “TechCrunch Weekly,” which will be full of the best TechCrunch stories from the past week, refreshed every Friday afternoon. As you know, our staff works hard to write about every technology topic imaginable, and it’s hard to keep up with all of it. Along with the really great “flipping” experience of Flipboard on mobile devices, using the app is one of the best ways to catch up on news that you missed because you were checking Facebook working, or to give yourself a chance to re-read something that you only skimmed the first time. Just to give you an idea of what you’ll find in this week’s edition, there’s possibly a Facebook Android OS coming out, Bitcoin’s worth a billion, Google Glass explorers got the boot, BlackBerry did things wrong, OUYA is a real product and paying for things with fingerprints is a thing. We’ll also be sharing some of our more interesting guest posts from the weekend. That’s a pretty full week of news, and now you can sit back, relax and flip through all of the stories with Flipboard and TechCrunch Weekly on your iOS or Android device. Click or tap here to check it out, or search for TechCrunch on Flipboard. Under the main navigation up top, find the magazine, subscribe, read and wait for a new edition to show up with new content every Friday afternoon. This is the future of publishing and it’s fun to be involved.


Ask A VC: AngelList's Naval Ravikant On The Currency Of Silicon Valley And More

Mar 29, 9:45PM

naval-1AngelList’s Naval Ravikant joined us in the TechCrunch TV studio for our Ask A VC series, where we put VCs in the hot seat. Ravikant talked about the currency of Silicon Valley, which he says is deals shared, talent referred, and acquirers introduced. He explains that AngelList, a service he co-founded that matches early-stage startups with investors, puts these transactions online. We also chatted about his secret to picking the right startups for angel investments (Ravikant invested in Twitter, Foursquare, BranchOut, Codecademy, Uber, Heyzap and Disqus). Check out the video above for more!


Facebook's Home On Android Could Give You A Sixth Sense For Your Social Life

Mar 29, 9:05PM

Facebook Heads Up DisplayConstant, close contact with your friends. That's the promise of a "Facebook phone". The modified Android OS and mobile homescreen replacement sources tell us Facebook will unveil April 4th pushes your social life to you so fetching it isn't interruptive. The News feed brought us ambient intimacy, but Facebook's homescreen could turn that social graph awareness into a sixth sense.


LivingSocial Co-Founder And CTO Aaron Batalion To Leave The Company

Mar 29, 8:48PM

Image of Aaron Batalion via his LinkedIn profileAaron Batalion, the co-founder and CTO of daily deals site LivingSocial, is leaving the company. He announced his departure in a post on his personal blog published Friday afternoon. We've reached out to Batalion for more details on his exit and his plans for the future, and will update with anything we hear. For now, here is the full text of his blog post:



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.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks

Lock Screen Security Hole Found On Some Android-Powered Samsung Galaxy Phones




TechCrunch » android





Lock Screen Security Hole Found On Some Android-Powered Samsung Galaxy Phones



galnoteii

Remember that nasty little iOS 6 lockscreen bug that let hackers access apps on any iPhone with a few smooth moves? Well, fresh on the heels of yesterday’s iOS update that squashed the problem, another security researcher has found a similar issue on Samsung’s Android smartphones.


Terence Eden claims to have found a flaw that lets hackers access a phone’s apps, dialer and widgets even if it’s been locked with a password, PIN, or other security measure.


Just like the iOS flaw, the Samsung security hole seems to involve the emergency dialer. For a brief moment after the emergency dialer is closed, there is a window of opportunity for a hacker to launch apps or place calls. Eden says that he discovered the flaw and contacted Samsung about it in February, but the company declined his offer to hold off publication until they had a fix.


He also discovered an earlier flaw that also involved the Emergency Dialer, in which the user presses a few various parts of the screen at the same time to gain access to the home screen. Both flaws are very similar, but Samsung is aware of both and currently working on a fix for this problem.


The latest security flaw is not present in other Android builds, but seems to only occur on Samsung’s modified version of Android 4.1.2. The flaw has been spotted on both the Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S III, but could also extend to other devices. We’ve asked Samsung about which devices specifically are affected, but haven’t heard back yet.


For those interested in checking out the hack, Eden posts instructions on how to access a home screen on a locked Android Samsung phone here. He also explains that the only fix is to load a different ROM onto the phone, which can be tricky.


Considering that the Galaxy line is one of Samsung’s top-selling lines, including both the S series and Note series, this security hole is quite possibly in your pocket at this very second, so be safe out there.


[via SlashGear]










Friday, March 29, 2013

Mar 29 - New 'TechCrunch' feed email from feed2email.net

Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.

Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.


Bonobos' SF Engineers Split Between NY Relocation And New Company Led By CTO Mike Hart

Mar 29, 10:09PM

bonobosBonobos' newly hired San Francisco engineering team is fracturing, but there's no disaster. Bonobos CTO Mike Hart has departed the company to become a co-founder, along with Cory Hicks, of a brand-new business. After cooking up some hot new personalization technology at Bonobos, Hart and five other engineers from the team will be spinning out that technology into a standalone company separate from Bonobos.


Stranded In SF? Corral Rides Shows Uber, Lyft, Sidecar And Muni In One App

Mar 29, 9:57PM

uberSuper Awesome Party A has just ended, and you need to figure out how to get to Super Awesome Party B stat... and preferably by spending as little money as possible. So what do you do? Muni? Uber? Lyft? Sidecar? Hoof it? You could switch between half a dozen different apps and try to figure out which of the options is cheapest and fastest... Or you could just open Corral Rides.


Kicking Off Our Flip Off - Meet The "TechCrunch Weekly" Magazine On Flipboard

Mar 29, 9:47PM

techcrunch-weeklyfbJust a few days ago, Flipboard announced a new version of its app that allows anyone to make a “Magazine,” which is a curated collection of stories based on any topic that you can think of. The company has shared that over 100,000 magazines have been created since the feature launches, which is impressive. We’ve decided to put together our own magazine called “TechCrunch Weekly,” which will be full of the best TechCrunch stories from the past week, refreshed every Friday afternoon. As you know, our staff works really hard to write about every technology topic imaginable, and it’s hard to keep up with all of it. Along with the really great “flipping” experience of Flipboard on mobile devices, using the app is one of the best ways to catch up on news that you missed because you were checking Facebook working, or to give yourself a chance to re-read something that you only skimmed the first time. Just to give you an idea of what you’ll find in this week’s edition, there’s possibly a Facebook Android OS coming out, Bitcoin’s worth a billion, Google Glass explorers got the boot, Blackberry did things wrong, OUYA is a real product and paying for things with fingerprints is a thing. We’ll also be sharing some of our more interesting guest posts from the weekend. That’s a pretty full week of news and now you can sit back and relax and flip through all of the stories with Flipboard and TechCrunch Weekly on your iOS or Android device. Click or tap here to check it out, or search for TechCrunch on Flipboard. Under the main navigation up top, find the magazine, subscribe, read and wait for a new edition to show up with new content every Friday afternoon. This is the future of publishing and it’s fun to be involved.


Ask A VC: AngelList's Naval Ravikant On The Currency Of Silicon Valley And More

Mar 29, 9:45PM

naval-1AngelList’s Naval Ravikant joined us in the TechCrunch TV studio for our Ask A VC series, where we put VCs in the hot seat. Ravikant talked about the currency of Silicon Valley, which he says is deals shared, talent referred, and acquirers introduced. He explains that AngelList, a service he co-founded that matches early-stage startups with investors, puts these transactions online. We also chatted about his secret to picking the right startups for angel investments (Ravikant invested in Twitter, Foursquare, BranchOut, Codecademy, Uber, Heyzap and Disqus). Check out the video above for more!


Facebook's Home On Android Could Give You A Sixth Sense For Your Social Life

Mar 29, 9:05PM

Facebook Heads Up DisplayConstant, close contact with your friends. That's the promise of a "Facebook phone". The modified Android OS and mobile homescreen replacement sources tell us Facebook will unveil April 4th pushes your social life to you so fetching it isn't interruptive. The News feed brought us ambient intimacy, but Facebook's homescreen could turn that social graph awareness into a sixth sense.


LivingSocial Co-Founder And CTO Aaron Batalion To Leave The Company

Mar 29, 8:48PM

Image of Aaron Batalion via his LinkedIn profileAaron Batalion, the co-founder and CTO of daily deals site LivingSocial, is leaving the company. He announced his departure in a post on his personal blog published Friday afternoon. We've reached out to Batalion for more details on his exit and his plans for the future, and will update with anything we hear. For now, here is the full text of his blog post:


Microsoft: jQuery 2.0 Will Add Full Support For Windows Store Apps

Mar 29, 8:41PM

3007.jQueryonWinRT_196B064BThe next version of jQuery, the popular JavaScript library, will drop support for Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft isn’t very bullish about getting developers to use jQuery 2.0 and HTML5 to develop “a new wave of jQuery-based Windows Store applications.” As Microsoft announced today, Microsoft Open Technologies, the company’s wholly owned open source-focused subsidiary, and the JavaScript experts at appendTo, have been working with the jQuery community to ensure that the next version of the framework offers full support for Windows Store applications. Developers could obviously already build Windows Store/Metro apps with jQuery, but thanks to this cooperation, the process for developing jQuery 2.0-based Windows Store applications should now be smoother, safer and more streamlined. As appendTo’s director of support Jonathan Sampson wrote in today’s announcement, jQuery always met the language criteria for Windows Store applications, but “Windows 8 exposes all the WinRT APIs within the HTML5 development environment, which comes with a new security model that made some code and common practices of jQuery flagged as unsafe in the context of a Windows Store application. AppendTo reviewed and re-authored portions of jQuery core to bring it into alignment with the Windows security model, as well as identified key areas where alternative patterns would need to be substituted for actually-used conventions." Even though Microsoft has always stressed this in the run-up to the Windows 8 launch, quite a few developers are still unaware that they can use their web development skills to write desktop apps for Windows 8 and Windows RT. Developers, by the way, can already use a number of other open-source JavaScript frameworks, including backbone.js, Knockout.JS and YUI. As Deve Methvin, the president of the jQuery Foundation noted in a prepared statement today, that’s also something his organization is interested in. "The jQuery team is excited about the new environments where jQuery 2.0 can be used. HTML and JavaScript developers want to take their jQuery knowledge with them to streamline the development process wherever they work. jQuery 2.0 gives them the ability to do that in Windows 8 Store applications. We appreciate the help from appendTo for both its patches and testing of jQuery 2.0 and MS Open Tech for its technical support."


Gillmor Gang Live 03.29.13 (TCTV)

Mar 29, 8:32PM

Gillmor Gang test patternGillmor Gang - Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recording for today has concluded.


Treasure Data Projects 500 Percent Growth This Year, Launches New "Plazma" Distributed Database

Mar 29, 7:43PM

tdlogoIt's only been six months since cloud data warehousing company Treasure Data launched its services, but they're already reporting some impressive growth figures. Treasure Data achieved month-to-month profitability last year, and they're well on track to achieve a 500 percent increase in revenue this year. They've also amassed 50 high-profile clients, which include a leading social gaming company, a mobile advertising platform based in France, and some other Fortune 500 companies – unsurprisingly, Treasure declined to name names. Treasure Data is basically a massive warehouse in the cloud for companies to store their data. Big companies like IBM, Oracle, and Teradata offer data services as well, but with their rates going as high as $5 million, that's not something every business can afford. Treasure Data, on the other hand, costs $1,500 to $2,500 a month with a year-long commitment. That’s a low enough price point for companies that can’t afford or do not have the resources to roll out services of their own. They're also launching a new distributed database called Plazma, which offers significant improvements over HDFS (Hadoop Distributed Files System). Plazma is significantly better than HDFS precisely because it's more efficient and is able to compile and parse data at a much faster rate. "The reason we did this was for robustness, reliability, and performance," says Kiyoto Tamura, VP of Product at Treasure Data. "Hadoop distributed several problems around reliability, and we knew we could do better." With Plazma, Treasure Data boasts that their systems are processing more than 300 billion data points every day.


TechCrunch Giveaway: Fitbit One, Aria Smart Scale And A Ticket To Disrupt NY

Mar 29, 7:42PM

fitbitHappy Friday, everyone. As you know, we love giving things away here at TechCrunch, and this week, we have a Fitbit One Wireless Activity + Sleep Tracker and an Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale to give away. But that’s not all! TechCrunch Disrupt NY is right around the corner and tickets are going super fast, so we want to give away another ticket to a deserving person who would like to attend (and then party with us). The winner of this giveaway will win all three — the Fitbit One ($99.95), the Smart Scale ($129.95) and a free ticket to Disrupt NY (valued at $1,995 right now). Want a shot to win all three? Follow the steps below. 1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page: 2) Then do one of the following: Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag), or Leave us a comment below telling us something fun – anything! The contest will start now and end April 5th at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet or comment once, or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner once the giveaway is over. Please note the winner will only receive one (1) free Disrupt ticket, and it does not include airfare or hotel. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here sponsors@techcrunch.com.


Video Q&A Startup VYou Is Shutting Down Its Consumer Site To Focus On White-Label Opportunities

Mar 29, 7:37PM

vyou_logoVideo question-and-answer site VYou launched several years ago with a unique premise -- allow users to create video responses to questions posed to them by other community members. Now, about two-and-a-half years later, the company is sending an email to its community members informing them that its site will be shut down next week.


Apple's Long-Rumored Game Controller May Soon See The Light Of Day

Mar 29, 7:19PM

apple-pippinI've long believed that touchscreens leave a certain something to be desired when it comes to playing games, and if a new (and very curious) report holds true, Apple may feel the same way. According to PocketGamer.biz's Jon Jordan, Apple has been meeting with developers on-site at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to talk about a forthcoming Apple game controller.


This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: 3D Printing, Ouya, And The Facebook Fone

Mar 29, 7:00PM

gadgets130329This week on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast we celebrate episode number two of everyone's favorite audio file! We also talk about 3D printing, the Ouya console, and the Facebook Fone AKA the FF.


Jun Group Launches HyprMX To Help Mobile Publishers Manage Their Video Ads

Mar 29, 5:31PM

hyprmx logoVideo ad distribution company Jun Group has launched a new, wholly-owned subsidiary called HyprMX, offering mediation tools for mobile publishers and developers manage video ads from multiple sources. HyprMX CEO Corey Weiner said that Jun Group runs its ads through hundreds of publishers, and it found that some of those publishers needed more help managing their inventory: "They're just not in the ad business — they're in the content business, they're in the games business." So HyprMX helps those publishers run ads from multiple sources, including Jun Group.


Twitter's Vine App Now Supports Embeds, Expanded Sharing To Facebook & Twitter

Mar 29, 5:30PM

embeds01Twitter's Vine app received a small, but notable, update today which allows the videos you create to be embedded across the web. The embedded posts are available in two styles (simple and postcard), and can be created directly within the mobile app itself or from a post's page on Vine.co.


State Of The Platform As A Service Market, A Discussion For Deploycon

Mar 29, 5:11PM

Deploycon LogoThe spring tech tour continues next week in Santa Clara with Deploycon, and I will be there to discuss the spectrum of PaaS providers and how they play across this broad, malleable and often manipulated sector of the market. It has become apparent that the platform as a service (PaaS) market has reached a pivot point. I have written about two companies that have pivoted in recent weeks, and we should expect the transformation to continue as the forces build apps faster with ever more data. It’s also evidence of a greater shift in the market to more standard ways to build apps and APIs. Developers often build out apps that require multiple APIs to connect. Data has to be accessed, signaling a greater need to develop a linking structure and visual way to see updates and interactions in the lifecycle process. For context, I thought it would make sense to look at Krishnan Subramanian’s spectrum of the PaaS market and where the market players fit. At every space on the spectrum is some level of abstraction. On the far left, business users get a high degree of abstraction but primarily so they can focus on creating apps out of custom processes, tasks and other business functions. Coding is not a requirement. Everything except making the connectors is done on the backend. Force.com and OrangeScape are the two most noticeable players while companies such as workXpress also compete in this market. The further you get to the center, the abstraction comes with creating more sophisticated apps by having some control over the infrastructure. For example, Subramanian said use cases could be some big data applications or some real-time processing based on various performance parameters. It is about offering different choices. Cloudbees, Heroku, Appfog, and Google App Engine play in this space. With private PaaS, the difference is choice. The developer can have a granular level of control but not necessarily have to worry about middleware or finely tuning the infrastructure. Extensible architectures give developers a way to scale if need be. Cloudfoundry.com, Cumulogic, Apprenda, OpenShift, Uhuru, ActiveState and Iron Foundry (Tier 3) are companies in this space. PaaS players further to the right give developers the capability to do continuous development and provide access to the infrastructure but not worry about backend operations. These platforms also offer open-source plugins and other advanced features. DevOps PaaS simplifies the “assembly” of services, providing capsules


Focused On Women, Sprightly Debuts A Visual Content Platform Showing What's Hot Across Fashion, Beauty, Design Sites & More

Mar 29, 5:01PM

sprightly-logoSprightly, a newly launching startup whose founding team has an extensive history working in female-focused businesses, including Refinery29, Etsy, Chloe+Isabel, and others, is debuting its content aggregation platform on Monday, with a focus on verticals like fashion, beauty, design, decor, and more. TechCrunch has early invites (see below).


Adobe Launches Blank, An Open Source Fallback Font You Can't See

Mar 29, 4:20PM

blank_340wAdobe today launched Adobe Blank, a new open-source OpenType font that, at first glance, does absolutely nothing. Indeed, the whole point of the font, as its creator Ken Lunde writes today, is to render every Unicode character as a “non-spacing and non-marking glyph.” This may sound like a lame and early April Fool’s joke and even managed to inspire the only pun-thread on HackerNews in recent memory that wasn’t immediately downvoted into oblivion, but this is actually a pretty useful tool for web developers. Lunde says there are two good reasons to use a font that nobody will ever see: Invoking this font, as a temporary measure, prevents OS- or application-level font-fallback from kicking in before the intended font can be rendered. Related to the above, using the font allows one to detect when a web font is actually loaded, which is arguably a hack to overcome a limitation in CSS. The idea here is to use Blank to avoid seeing your operating system’s or browser’s default font before the actual web-font has rendered. As more designers now use non-standard fonts on their sites to differentiate them from all the other sites that also use Helvetica, it’s become increasingly common for users to see this rather jarring switch between different fonts. As the Blank font is extremely small, it loads instantly and the user never sees the default font. Lunde’s second use case – allowing developers to detect when a web font is loaded – is definitely a bit of a hack, but Adobe itself is using this trick in its Edge Web Fonts extension for its Brackets code editor and other developers will surely find more uses for it. The font is now available on SourceForge and will soon be on GitHub, too.


Bespoke Post Raises $850K From Great Oaks, 500 Startups & Others For Its Subscription-Based "Box Of Awesome" For Men

Mar 29, 2:59PM

logo-vert-blk-rgbBespoke Post, a subscription-based e-commerce startup offering a hilariously titled "Box of Awesome" (no, not that one - Bespoke Post is for grown-ups), is today announcing having closed on $850,000 in seed funding, led by Warby Parker and Bonobos investor, Great Oaks VC. Also participating in the round, which actually closed last fall, were 500 Startups, Brad Harrison Ventures, 1-800 Flowers' strategic investing arm, and several angel investors. And, as of Monday, the company is expanding into Canada.


Fanbase Media Debuts Its Social Marketing Platform For Instagram (And Maybe One Day, Vine)

Mar 29, 1:54PM

hd-logoFanbase Media, a new social media marketing startup which has been flying under the radar for over half a year, helps companies use Instagram for connecting with their customers. Despite the company's low profile - its turnkey, self-serve solution won't launch until next week, in fact - it has already attracted the interest of some bigger-name brands, including Michael Kors, Shape Magazine, and others which the company isn't allowed to publicly name.



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.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks

Google Rumored To Be Making A Smartwatch, Too




TechCrunch » android





Google Rumored To Be Making A Smartwatch, Too



Screen Shot 2013-03-22 at 9.20.39 AM

Amidst Apple iWatch rumors and Google Glass sightings, it would appear that Google is actually working on its own smartwatch to be paired alongside connected Android devices. According to the Financial Times, Google’s Android arm will be the team working on the device, as opposed to the X Lab division, which handled Google Glass development.


The wearable computer market is heating up quite rapidly. Alongside Google’s Glass project, a number of smaller OEMs have launched Bluetooth-connected smart watches to work as a companion to the smartphone.


Fossil has a well-crafted MetaWatch, InPulse has the hot-selling Pebble smartwatch, and there are even a handful of quantified self devices that measure your daily activity. There’s the Nike FuelBand, the Jawbone UP, and the Basis to name a few. Add to that an Apple competitor in the iWatch, and a Samsung smartwatch to boot, and it only makes sense that Google has a watch in the works.


Google Glass takes wearable computing a step beyond the basic wrist watch. However, the rate of adoption will almost certainly be lower than that of a watch or a smartphone since the experience is such a huge change in the way we interact with digital content and our world. A smart watch, on the other hand, would feel a lot more like using a really small smartphone, and that familiarity makes the watch a great bridge between smartphones and computational headsets.


Google didn’t comment on the speculation.


However, there’s a patent owned by Google and filed in 2011 for a “smart watch” with a “flip-up display.” It would appear that the patent also provides for a touchscreen experience.


The question isn’t really if Google will build a smart watch. As small OEMs and big competitors around it flood the market with wearable smartwatches, Google will likely need to join the fight. However, it’s unclear what exactly that will look like? Does a flip-up display look like a flip phone?


From the patent filing, the “flip-up display” seems to work like a digital pocket watch, showing two displays when open and a single display on top when closed.


However, just because Google filed this patent, it doesn’t mean that Google’s Android smartwatch will look anything like it.


On the software side, Google has already proven that it can develop for new forms of computing, such as Google Glass. Even some of its already-released apps like Google Now and Field Trip seem like they would fit in swimmingly with a smart watch. Plus, we can’t forget that the acquisition of Motorola has left Google with a rather sizable hardware team.










Thursday, March 28, 2013

Mar 28 - New 'TechCrunch' feed email from feed2email.net

Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.

Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.


The $99 OUYA Console Will Make Its Retail Debut In The US, UK And Canada On June 4

Mar 28, 9:44PM

ouyaDidn't get a chance to back the ambitious OUYA Android game console to lock in your pre-order? Considering how much press the thing has gotten, you don't have much excuse for missing that particular window, but never fear -- OUYA intends to sell the $99 pint-sized gaming gadget through retail partners like Amazon, Gamestop, and Best Buy starting on June 4.


Social App MeetMe Introduces In-Feed Advertising With Flurry Partnership

Mar 28, 8:55PM

meetme logoSocial discovery startup MeetMe is ramping up the advertising in its smartphone app. CEO Geoff Cook told me via email that the app was already running ads, for example at the top of the screen, but its mobile monetization efforts have been more focused on payments. The new ads, which are being introduced through a partnership with Flurry, will appear in the Live Stream, offering a more "native" approach, Cook said: "This is the first time we are placing ads within the context of the application itself, where the user encounters advertising while scrolling. The ads look and feel more like content with social cues like ratings and comments surfaced."


Well-Funded Gaming Startup Booyah Confirms Layoffs And New CEO Brian Morrisroe As It Shifts Focus To Tablets

Mar 28, 8:44PM

Screen shot 2013-03-28 at 11.49.49 AMIt looks like some changes are afoot at Booyah, the location-based gaming company best known as the maker of the MyTown franchise. MyTown and MyTown 2 attempted to evolve the location-based check-in model in gaming, allowing users not only check into locations within a city-building sim, but also scan and check into products in the real world.


Amazon Acquires Social Reading Site Goodreads, Which Gives The Company A Social Advantage Over Apple

Mar 28, 8:10PM

Goodreads-LogoToday, Amazon has announced the acquisition of social reading service, Goodreads. Specific terms of the deal weren’t disclosed and it should close by the end of Q2. Goodreads had raised $2.75M in funding from the likes of True Ventures, since launching in January 2007. When we talked to them last August, the site had over 10M members and had catalogued more than 360M books, adding 22M each month. Now, the site boasts over 16M users. This type of social integration could give Amazon a major advantage over e-sellers like Apple, who have no social components to their product whatsoever. With people actually discussing and sharing the books that they’re into, having an Amazon direct connect makes complete sense. The site can offer special deals to Goodreads users, which in essence is now Amazon’s book-reading social network. Here’s a look at the spike in books added per month in a graph from last August. With a connection to Kindle, those numbers will skyrocket: Amazon VP of Kindle content, Russ Grandinetti discussed how important this integration could be for its e-book division: Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading. Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike. Goodread’s CEO and co-founder, Otis Chandler, discussed the acquisition and the opportunity for the site to infuse some social into Amazon’s bookselling strategy: Books – and the stories and ideas captured inside them – are part of our social fabric. People love to talk about ideas and share their passion for the stories they read. I'm incredibly excited about the opportunity to partner with Amazon and Kindle. We're now going to be able to move faster in bringing the Goodreads experience to millions of readers around the world. We're looking forward to inspiring greater literary discussion and helping more readers find great books, whether they read in print or digitally. Goodreads has also posted its own note on their blog, going a bit deeper into why the deal makes sense and making it clear that Kindle integration is a top priority, as its something that users had been asking for. Chandler said: I’m


Dwolla Is Latest Victim Of DDoS Attacks: Site & API Down For Second Day

Mar 28, 7:58PM

Dwolla_logoWhile the media continues to debate the severity of the denial-of-service attacks taking place across the web this month, they appear to have claimed another victim: payments startup Dwolla announced today that it, too, is now experiencing a distributed denial-of-service event (DDoS attack). The attack, which is still underway, began yesterday, resulting in either limited or no availability to the company's website, Dwolla.com.


Hot Gaming Startup Supercell Is Closing A Round Above $100M At Valuation Around $800M

Mar 28, 7:44PM

Supercell_logo_white_on_blackSupercell is a very quiet, humble mobile gaming company out of the very quiet and humble city of Helsinki, Finland. Unlike their brasher, Angry Birds-making brethren a 15-minute drive away in Espoo, they don’t like to talk much about anything beyond making games and about the company culture they’re deliberately cultivating. All of this belies what has become a phenomenal business over the last nine months — one that makes around $1.3 million per day off two iOS games called Clash of Clans and Hay Day. After about three months of considering whether to do a huge secondary round with the help of boutique investment bank Code Advisors, we’ve heard they sold somewhere between 16 and 20 percent of the company’s common shares in a deal that would value the company at around $800 million. We’re still trying to figure out the exact amount. It’s somewhere between $100 and 150 million, but closer to the lower end of the range. We heard they got close, but didn’t quite get to a $1 billion valuation, not that this should be the goal anyways. Supercell declined to comment on the financing round. “We simply will not comment on market rumours,” said spokesperson Heini Vesander. “We’ve never really done that and will not do that now.” We’ve heard that Institutional Venture Partners, Atomico and Index Ventures are the new investors. Tencent and DST had done some due diligence on the company in February, but didn’t end up going in for whatever reason. Index declined to comment, and Atomico and IVP did not reply for comment. It’s a bold, ballsy bet for what is basically a two-product company in a notoriously hits-driven business. While the macro trends behind mobile gaming are hard to argue with, the business is unpredictable. Several of the companies that were leading the charts two years ago are now much farther down, even if their businesses are still profitable. Last year, the whisper numbers for top grossing titles ranged in the $40-80 million range annually. At around $1 million a day, the industry is looking at mobile gaming franchises that could gross between $200 and 400 million in 2013.  A few days ago, Japanese carrier Softbank increased its stake in Gung Ho Entertainment, the maker of what is probably the most valuable iOS game in the world today — Japan’s Puzzles and Dragons. That deal valued that company at $4.1 billion,


After Raising $2.1M, TiKL Opens Their Mobile Chat/Voice Calling API To Developers

Mar 28, 7:30PM

Tikl logoFor a team that has somehow stayed mostly off the tech press' radar, TiKL has had a pretty friggin' good year. With $0 spent on marketing, their two apps, TiKL and Talkray, have nabbed a total of 28M downloads. After taking part in YC's Winter 2012 class, they raised $2.1M from some of the Valley's biggest names. Today TiKL is unveiling the other half of their business strategy: the Talkray API


"In The Studio," Live Nation's Joel Resnicow Muses About The State Of Digital Music

Mar 28, 7:00PM

Live Nation"In The Studio" welcomes a digital media savant who has hustled his way up through the music world by interning for Rolling Stone, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum, MTV Networks (through Viacom), Hulu, and Twitter, worked as an editor and analyst for ABC News and Fuse TV, and eventually embarked down the path of entrepreneurship to be recently acquired by Live Nation.


SEC Greenlights One Style Of Equity Crowdfunding For Startups

Mar 28, 6:58PM

Crowdfunding PiggybankThe SEC today paved the way for a new era of venture capital investing by stating it won't pursue enforcement action against FundersClub, whose platform lets any accredited investor fund startups in exchange for equity. Before, some thought FundersClub's founders could face jail time for violating finance laws. FundersClub's model could be used by others before the JOBS Act goes fully into effect.


Google Makes Gmail's New Compose Experience The Default

Mar 28, 6:56PM

gmail-logo-iconLast October, Google introduced the new email compose window as an option for Gmail users and starting today, this will become the default. The new compose experience, which is essentially a pop-up window that appears on the right side of the screen, is easier to use, faster and makes it easier for Gmail users to multitask, Google says. In return, however, it’s now a bit harder to find text formatting options like underline, indent, numbered and unnumbered lists, etc. (you can, of course, also still use the same keyboard shortcuts as before). The new compose experience will roll out over the next few days. It looks like Google will still allow users to switch back to the old compose windows for a while, but it’s not clear for how long. A Google spokesperson told me that the company has not set a timeline for this. The new experience breaks the integration with Rapportive (recently acquired by LinkedIn) and similar services (though Boomerang apparently works just fine with it) which previously lived in the right-hand sidebar of the compose screen. You can still use Rapportive while you are reading emails, of course, but the new compose windows have no sidebar (and hence also no ads), so it’s not clear where these tools would present their information while you are composing emails. Thankfully, it looks like the old compose window will still be around for a bit longer, but we’ll have to see for how long. On the positive side, though, the new compose window makes it easier to multitask, as you can open multiple compose windows next to each other, though things get rather confusing once you open more than two. The new compose window is also close integrated with Google Drive and makes it very easy to attach documents from Google’s cloud storage service.


Calm Down, No One's Getting Fired Because Of FireMe!, New Site That Exposes People Tweeting Horrible Things About Their Jobs

Mar 28, 6:56PM

FireMe-logoAnytime there's a lull in our outrage over the public nature of social media, a new site shows up to again demonstrate its dangers. Like clockwork, the latest to play on users' fears is FireMe!, a website that tracks when people are saying inappropriate things about their jobs on Twitter, including their hatred for their boss, their desire to murder said bosses or co-workers, and even those making comments about "sexual intercourse," in relation to their jobs.


Game On, Google: eBay Now Same-Day Delivery Service Expands To Chicago And Dallas

Mar 28, 6:36PM

eBay NowEBay is in the middle of its Analyst Day, and just a little while ago it announced plans for some significant expansions for eBay Now, its same-day delivery service, with Chicago and Dallas deliveries coming this summer, and integration of the service into its "core experience" as it gears up for competition with Amazon and now Google.


Fancy Hands Now Has An iPhone App, So You Can Book A Personal Assistant Anytime

Mar 28, 5:54PM

Fancy Hands logoSometimes the smallest, most mundane tasks are the things you really dread -- and put off for weeks. Like booking an oil change for your car, or finding a nice play for an anniversary date and buying tickets, or finding a good dentist in a new city and scheduling an appointment. It's stuff that any patient person with internet access and a cell phone can do, but takes up just enough time and mental energy that it can be a huge drag. That's why wealthy people have personal assistants. And lately, that's why I've been using Fancy Hands.


Mobile Home Is An Easy Way To Turn Siri Into Your Very Own Personal KITT From Knight Rider

Mar 28, 5:17PM

IMG_6627My recently-purchased car has Bluetooth built-in to let me use my phone hands-free from the steering wheel, as do most cars coming off the line new these days. The one issue is that there's no way to activate Siri using the car's default controls, which is another unfortunately common thing for modern cars and aftermarket Bluetooth stereo kits. But Plano, Texas-based Beanco Technology offers a really simple solution called the Mobile Home, which offers a fix in the most minimalist way possible.


Storify Announces A Paid VIP Plan With Liveblogging And Collaboration Features, Partners With BBC

Mar 28, 5:00PM

storify logoStorify has become a useful tool for media organizations trying to capture newsworthy or entertaining social media conversations for their readers, with its ability to combine tweets, photos, and more into an embeddable conversation. Today the company is announcing a VIP plan with features designed specifically for "media organizations, publishers or anyone wanting to deeply integrate social curation and storytelling into their site." The plan includes the ability to update a Storify story in real-time (useful for live blogging), to customize the appearance of a story with CSS, to receive priority technical support, add custom sources, and to share stories privately. Co-founder Burt Herman told me via email that the first two features will probably make the biggest difference for readers, while the private sharing could be useful for newsroom collaboration, and also for communication within companies and PR agencies. (So for example if a brand becomes embroiled in a big social media controversy, Storify might be a good way for an agency to capture what's going on, but that's probably not something they'd want to highlight publicly.)


Deliv Raises $1 Million To Crowd Source Same-Day Local Delivery For Big Brick And Mortar Retailers

Mar 28, 5:00PM

deliv_bagOnline shopping is happening at the expense of big national retail chains, which are having a difficult time keeping up with online competition. A new startup called Deliv hopes to provide retailers with a new way to please tech-savvy shoppers, by offering same-day local delivery for the same price — or less — than having items shipped.


Announcing TechCrunch's 2013 Meetups + Pitch-Off: Austin, Seattle, San Diego, And Boston

Mar 28, 5:00PM

meetups460After the amazing success of our New York Pitch-Off in February, we thought it would be fun to bring the energy and excitement of a mini-Disrupt to more cities across the country. We're pleased to announced the 2013 Meetups + Pitch-Offs will begin in Austin on May 30 at Stage On Sixth in downtown Austin. Then, throughout the year, we're holding meetups with pitch-offs in Seattle, San Diego, and Boston.


Playdek Closes $3.8M Series A To Build A Digital Community Where Tabletop Gamers Can Feel At Home

Mar 28, 4:52PM

playdekFresh from putting smiles on the faces of tabletop gaming geeks everywhere, with yesterday's news that it would be helping to bring Dungeons & Dragons to iOS devices later this year, mobile game publisher Playdek has closed a $3.8 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Qualcomm Ventures, with IDG Ventures and ff Venture Capital also participating.


Google Analytics' Real-Time Stats Now Feature Event Reports, Device Breakdown And Shortcuts

Mar 28, 4:48PM

real-time-2Google Analytics’ real-time feature is very useful for those who don’t need more specialized tools like Chartbeat or Woopra, but still want to get a basic overview of what’s happening on their site right now. Compared to the breadth of features Analytics offers, though, it’s still a very limited tool. Today, however, Google is making a few changes to Analytics’ real-time reports that make it a more powerful and easier to use service. Analytics, for example, now also shows you a breakdown of how many of your current visitors are on a desktop, tablet or on their phone. The main feature of this update, however, is the addition of event reports. Google Analytics’ event reporting takes a bit of extra work to set up and is also a major part of the new Universal Analytics feature the company launched as a public beta last week. This feature allows developers to create custom events for interactions that go beyond just loading a site, including downloads, video plays, ad clicks and other actions a developer might want to track on a site. Starting today, website owners can track these events in realtime, too. This, Google says, means “you can now not only see the top events as they occur but also filter on particular event categories (and actions).” With this update, Analytics also introduces shortcuts for real-time segments, so if you just want to see what your U.S. visitors on smartphones are doing on the site right now, you can create this segment and easily recall it from the Google Analytics sidebar. The ability to create segments and filter your real-time data this way is obviously a major feature of Google Analytics, but the only way to really fully make sense out of this data is to compare it to your overall traffic. Today’s update adds the option to always see a breakdown of your overall traffic in the background, so you can put the data from your segments into the context of your site as a whole.


Judge Says Mathematical Algorithms Can't Be Patented, Dismisses Uniloc Claim Against Rackspace

Mar 28, 4:24PM

Patent trollsA federal judge has thrown out a patent claim against Rackspace, ruling that mathematical algorithms can't be patented. The ruling in the Eastern Disrict stemmed from a 2012 complaint filed by Uniloc USA asserting that processing of floating point numbers by the Linux operating system was a patent violation.



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.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks