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.
Facebook Isn't Forking Android, They're Spooning With It
Apr 04, 10:25PM
Facebook is absolutely, positively, 100 percent not working on a phone. The first rule of tech news remains intact: when a company definitively says they're not doing something, it's as sure a sign as you can get that they will eventually do said thing.Second Life Founder Raises $2.4M For New Stealth Startup, High Fidelity
Apr 04, 10:17PM
High Fidelity, a new startup from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, has raised $2.4 million out of a $3.4 million round, according to a new SEC filing. Listed in the filing are Rosedale, Freddy Heiberger, and Ryan Karpf (Heiberger and Karpf and ex- Linden Lab staffers, and co-founders of Rosedale's last startup Coffee and Power).Google Launches Drive App Data Folders, Lets Developers Safely Store Configuration Files And Other Data
Apr 04, 10:12PM
If you’re a developer building web or mobile apps that utilize Google Drive for storing information, you’ve probably found that users really can’t be trusted not to delete or move that data. Once the user does that, the app experience won’t be so great and the data that the app needs to run isn’t there to use. Today, Google has introduced “app data folders” which are protected and can’t be seen by users within their Drive account. Other apps can’t see the files either, so there’s now an added layer of security to fight off bad actors who build apps to swipe information or do other damage. The Google Drive team suggests that these app data folders are used for configuration files, app state data or files that shouldn’t be modified in any way. Even though users can’t see the data, they can see how much space it is taking up on their device and clear the data at any time. Here’s what you’ll see as a user in your manage apps panel: Additionally, “custom properties” can be added to Drive files that will allows developers to create searchable fields that are either app-specific or to be shared with other apps. More information about the Drive SDK can be found on StackOverflow, a site oddly not owned or operated by Google. [Photo credit: Flickr]Facebook Home Boots Google Search Off The Homescreen On Most Android Phones
Apr 04, 9:46PM
Shortly after Facebook's Home announcement, I got to chat with Tom Allison, Facebook's Android Engineering Manager. We discussed his favorite parts of Home, how much they changed the underlying OS, and the biggest challenges they faced during Home's development. Plus: A bonus look at Home running on a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, and a peek at how Home can happily co-exist with your old homescreen.Without Strong Shareholder Support, Ray Lane Steps Down As HP's Chairman Of The Board
Apr 04, 9:03PM
With waning shareholder support, Ray Lane has stepped down as HP’s chairman of the board. Board member Ralph Whitworth will take Lane’s seat as chairman. Whitworth is chairman of Relational Investors. Also resigning are two other HP directors, John Hammergren and G. Kennedy Thompson. Lane, a managing partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has been under pressure to resign. In March, the effort took a new turn when some of the larger shareholders sought to block the re-election of Lane and the other board members due to their lack of scrutiny over acquisitions. In particular, the discontent stems from the acquisition of Autonomy, which HP acquired in 20011 for $11 billion. A year later, the company wrote off $8.8 billion from the acquisition. According to the Wall Street Journal, Lane decided to resign after getting re-elected to the board with only 58.9 percent of the vote. Whitworth said Lane did not feel he had a mandate from the shareholders to remain chairman of the board. HP has seen tremendous turmoil. In 2006, Patricia Dunn resigned over a spying scandal. In 2010, the board ousted Mark Hurd and hired Léo Apotheker, who led the Autonomy acquisition. He was fired last year and replaced by Meg Whitman, the current CEO.The Inspiring Tenacity Of Roger Ebert's Last Words
Apr 04, 9:00PM
Only a day before legendary film critic Roger Ebert passed away, he tweeted a final farewell at the Chicago-Sun Times, promising to pioneer new digital projects, in addition to a hefty schedule of movie reviews. At the ripe age of 70 and the cheery survivor of salivary cancer that left him him without a jaw or voice, Ebert proved that neither age nor disease could stand in the way of a pioneering mind. After cancer stole Ebert’s powers of speech, he turned to Twitter, becoming an instant sensation. “But there’s something seductive about it: The stream, the flow, the chatter, the sudden bursts of news, the snark, the gossip, time itself tweet-tweet-tweeting away,” he wrote for the Times. As of less than a month ago, his movie whit was still sharp as ever. He even braved the stage at TED, giving a speech entirely read by Apple’s monotone voice app, and the help of his close confidants. “People who need a voice should know that most computers already come with built-in speaking systems,” he said. ” I’ve got to say, in first grade, they said I talked too much, and now I still can.” His optimism for technology is worth quoting at length: All of this has happened in the blink of an eye. It is unimaginable what will happen next. It makes me incredibly fortunate to live at this moment in history. Indeed, I am lucky to live in history at all, because without intelligence and memory there is no history. For billions of years, the universe evolved completely without notice. Now we live in the age of the Internet, which seems to be creating a form of global consciousness. And because of it, I can communicate as well as I ever could. We are born into a box of time and space. We use words and communication to break out of it and to reach out to others. For me, the Internet began as a useful tool and now has become something I rely on for my actual daily existence. I cannot speak; I can only type so fast. Computer voices are sometimes not very sophisticated, but with my computer, I can communicate more widelythan ever before. I feel as if my blog, my email, Twitter and Facebook have given me a substitute for everyday conversation. They aren’t an improvement, but they’re the best I can do. TheyFacebook's Gokul Rajaram, Google's Neal Mohan, And Twitter's Kevin Weil Will Discuss The Ad Landscape At Disrupt NY
Apr 04, 8:58PM
I'm happy to announce that I'll be discussing the latest trends in digital advertising with representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter at the end of April during TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. My goal for the panel is to give attendees from both Madison Avenue and the startup world an overview of the latest products and opportunities from the major online ad platforms. We'll talk about successful campaigns, best practices, and long-term strategy, and I'll do my best to pry out concrete details about future plans.Film Critic Roger Ebert Dead At 70
Apr 04, 8:49PM
In the annals of criticism it is often the case that a writer is cursed in life and forgotten in death. For Roger Ebert, voluminous historian of the cinema and its most astute critic, neither of these was the case.SFO Serves Cease-And-Desist Letters To Keep Ride-Sharing Companies From Operating At The Airport
Apr 04, 8:42PM
Last week, InstantCab announced to the world that it had received a partial cease-and-desist letter from the San Francisco International Airport, asking it to stop picking up and dropping off passengers there. Well, apparently it wasn’t alone, as other new transportation startups had also received the same notice last month. SideCar, for instance, confirmed that it received a cease-and-desist letter in early March. Zimride’s Lyft hasn’t responded to our inquiries, but we’ve heard that it too was one of the companies hit with a C&D notice. InstantCab, which operates a hybrid service with both community and taxi drivers, was actually the last of the companies to be served with a notice by SFO. And that notice applied to its community drivers only, not the taxi e-hail side of its business. The letters served to remind companies like Lyft and SideCar that the site is operated by the City and County of San Francisco and the Airport Commission, and also as a reminder that they didn’t have permits to operate on SFO premises. Without a permit, the notices say that continued operation of community driver services at SFO will be considered “an unlawful trespass.” In particular, the notice says those services are violating a couple of airport rules and regulations, including this one: Rule 3.3(E): No person shall enter or remain on Airport property and buy, sell, peddle or offer for sale or purchase any goods, merchandise, property or services of any kind whatsoever, on or from Airport property, without the express written consent of the Director or the Director's duly authorized representative. Like every other airport in the world, SFO allows regulated taxi services to pick up and drop off passengers on the premises. Black car and limo services have been driving passengers to and from SFO for decades. And over the past few years, Uber has even provided a transportation alternative to those flying in and out of the airport — although Uber drivers are mostly indistinguishable from limo services, in part because the company partners with them for its UberBLACK and UberSUV service. The key distinguishing feature of the services hit by cease-and-desist letters by SFO seems to be that they employ community drivers who are not licensed by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency or the California Public Utilities Commission. In that respect, SFO isn’t the first to try to outlaw these services. Lyft and SideCar (alongIndiegogo Suffers DDOS Aimed At YourAnonymousNews Campaign
Apr 04, 8:20PM
When there is no central authority, who has the authority to sell t-shirts? That question came to a head over the past few days when YourAnonNews announced it planned to create something like a newswire for Anonymous news.Meet Swirl It, A Location-Focused iOS App For Wine Drinking And Discovery [TCTV]
Apr 04, 7:41PM
Amidst all this coverage of snazzy new products from big established companies, it's always a huge breath of fresh air to talk to the little guys -- budding independent entrepreneurs passionately making clever new apps and services. In many ways, these are the people that actually keep the tech industry interesting. That's why it was great to meet Brittany Hawkins of Swirl It, a new app for the iPhone for helping you keep track of the wines you try and discover potential new favorites.9flats, The European Airbnb Competitor, Now Accepting Bitcoin Payments
Apr 04, 7:35PM
9flats, which operates a short rentals marketplace similar to and competing with Airbnb, has flicked the switch on Bitcoin support. The Berlin-headquartered startup now accepts Bitcoin payment, alongside its existing support for various credits cards and PayPal.HTC And Facebook Confirm They Modified Android To Optimize The "First" Phone For Home
Apr 04, 7:18PM
While Facebook's press event focused on the "Home" app that runs on unforked Androids, HTC and Facebook have confirmed to me they modified Android to give the HTC First phone features not available in the downloadable Home app. This lets the First pipe in email and calendar notifications to its homescreen. And with the Facebook Home Program, other OEMs can get Facebook's help fiddling with AndroidMozilla Moves Ahead With Its Plans For A Common Web API For Payments
Apr 04, 7:15PM
Mozilla is working with payment vendors and the W3C standards body to create a common API to make online payments, both on desktop and mobile, easier and more secure. To get this process going, Mozilla has implemented a new and experimental JavaScript API into its new Firefox OS for smartphones that will eventually allow web apps to accept payments. Mozilla argues that having a common API for handling payments that can be integrated with multiple payment vendors will open up new business models for developers and publishers. This new API, navigator.mozPay(), Mozilla says, was inspired by Google’s Wallet for Digital Goods API and will ship in Firefox OS first and then be added to Firefox for Android and desktop Firefox later. While it’s currently a very experimental API (and still incomplete), Mozilla expects that it will be usable enough to “process live payments on the first Firefox OS phones and evolve quickly from real-world usage.” The question to ask here, of course, is why bother, given that online payments don’t seem to be a major issue for users and developers, thanks to services like PayPal and Stripe. Mozilla, however, argues that users should have more choice when it comes to how they want to pay for goods online (be they virtual or physical). Users, the organization also notes, still have to type in their credit card numbers, which “is like giving someone the keys to your expensive car, letting them drive it around the block in a potentially dangerous neighborhood (the web) and saying please don't get carjacked!” With navigator.mozPay(), developers will be able to grant permission to each payment provider they want to work with and use a very straightforward process for handling these payments that’s more about exchanging tokens than exchanging credit card information. You can find more details about how to implement and test the current version of this API here.Orange France, EE In The UK Will Get First Facebook Home HTC First Phones In Europe In Summer 2013
Apr 04, 7:13PM
Facebook announced them earlier, and now Orange France and EE in the UK have confirmed it: they will be the first two carriers in Europe to carry the 4G HTC First, the first Android device with Facebook's new Android launcher, Facebook Home, embedded in it. Although AT&T revealed pricing and preorders from today -- at $99 -- the two European carriers are still mum on how much it will cost and other details, except to note that the devices will be available this summer.Facebook Home Wants To Own The Conversations Of Text-Obsessed Teens
Apr 04, 7:11PM
The average teenager now sends a staggering 1,800 texts a month. This scale is why Facebook announced a new chat-centric smartphone application, Home, hoping to snag the lucrative data of a new generation of hyper-connected, text-obsessed teens. Once the social center for yuppie Ivy League 20-somethings, Facebook will launch Home on a super-cheap $99 Android smartphone, expanding the social network to the rest of the youth market of high-schoolers with little more than piggy-bank money to spend on technology. Home’s signature feature, appropriately titled “Chat Heads,” is “a way you can talk to your friends no matter what you’re doing in your phone, no matter what app you’re in,” explained Joey Flynn, a Facebook product designer. When users share an Instagram photo, for instance, a chat thread is conveniently kept live, right underneath the shutter. As our own Jordan Crook reported, “[Mark Zuckerberg] explained that Messaging shouldn't be treated like any other app, though it often is treated that way in the current ecosystem…If you page through to another app, like a game or Instagram, the ‘chat head’ (as it were) stays right there in the corner, ready and waiting for interaction. The chat head even has an unread count to show how many photos you've missed.” If you haven’t witnessed the socialization habits of 21st-century teens, it’s quite a sight. Teens roam in groups, seamlessly juggling dozens of conversations with geographically disparate friends, sharing photos and gossip in a flurry of thumb taps. To the next generation, there is practically no distinction between a friend five feet away or 500 miles. If Home can be the technological solution that permits teens to share even more information, they’ll flock in droves to Facebook, giving the social network an extraordinary dataset of human conversation. Everyday chatting is rich with data on events, consumer preferences and hidden friendships. Much like Google advertises to Gmail users based on the textual scans of their emails, chats could make Facebook’s ad targeting smarter. Even if Facebook doesn’t plan on scanning chats, it makes the social network the default home of an entire generation. I suspect that many of my colleagues in the tech press will dismiss Chat Heads as a boring — if not irritating — feature. However, they’re not the target. The first Facebook generation uses the Internet to occasionally browse, comment and announce social activity. The next generation lives on the Internet as a"In The Studio," Paddle8′s Aditya Julka Discuses Building Niche Online Marketplaces
Apr 04, 7:10PM
"In the Studio" opens up Q2 of 2013 by hosting a three-time founder who, after stints in engineering and the biomedical industry in India, happened to team up with a young leader in the art world to create one of the art world's most fascinating online auction houses. Aditya Julka, a co-founder of online art and collectible marketplace Paddle8, has carved an unusual path of entrepreneurship. After growing up and studying in India, Julka began his career as a healthcare entrepreneur, founding two companies before he came stateside to pursue his MBA. After graduation, he moved to NYC and started what would become Paddle8, though the business initial began as a lead-gen engine for collectors, but Julka and his team quickly identified that, given the intricacies of the art world, the web could enable an interesting marketplace so long as they were able to secure the right art "supply."Hands-On With The HTC First Running The Gesture-Powered Facebook Home [Video]
Apr 04, 6:46PM
The Facebook Home experience is based around next-level gesture control. Here you can watch us swipe, fling, and pop Facebook content in our hands-on demo of the new HTC First handset that comes with Home pre-installed. Compared to Facebook’s flagship suite of native mobile apps, Home on the HTC First is much more responsive. You could even call it (gasp!) fun to use. Watch that in the video embedded above, and stay tuned for footage of our chat with Facebook Home product designer Justin Stahl.Chairs Only Have Bit Parts In Facebook's First Official Facebook Home Ad
Apr 04, 6:36PM
Facebook has posted its first official promotional video for Facebook Home to its YouTube account, and unfortunately it isn't the bizarre video set on an airplane they showed during their presentation earlier today. Instead, it uses the classic method of tugging at your heart strings and playing on your disconnectedness from real-life relationships to suggest how much a device could help with that.The Stock Market Smiles On Facebook 'Home', With FB Share Price Up More Than 3% After Launch Event
Apr 04, 6:31PM
Facebook this morning launched "Home," a family of apps for devices running the Android operating system, at a flashy press event at its Menlo Park, California headquarters. While sentiment about the launch is still shaking out among gadget experts and other tech industry watchers, there has been a positive response from one key demographic: Public market investors. Facebook's stock rose steadily this morning as the Home launch event played out after starting at 10am Pacific Time (1pm Eastern Time.) At the time that the official event and the following Q&A wrapped at 11:00am, Facebook's stock price was $27.04, a solid gain from the $26.57 stock price that it began the event with an hour before. Trading volume was also markedly up during the event, which was available online via livestream. In the minutes after the event, Facebook's stock continued to climb -- and a half an hour later at 11:30pm PT, the price was hovering steadily around $27.20, marking a 3.6 percent gain for the day.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
