Friday, March 29, 2013

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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.



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