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.
BitTorrent's Surf Extension Now In Beta; Use Chrome Or Firefox Like A Desktop Client For Downloading
Apr 15, 10:14PM
BitTorrent, the content sharing and distribution network with 170 million monthly active users and 85 petabytes of content, continues to roll out more tools for artists and consumers to turn to the service for all their music, video and reading needs. Today it's turning its attention to the mechanics of downloading: its putting its Surf Chrome extension -- which effectively turns the browser into a desktop client for downloading content -- into beta and adding in some new features, including Firefox support and a new recommendation engine.TC Makers: A Return To The Textile Economy At Durham's Spoonflower
Apr 15, 10:00PM
Making custom fabric has long been the domain of the big guys. Trying anything new, whether it was having a swatch of cool fabric made or printing a custom logo on some slip covers, has required minimum investments of a few thousand dollars and lots of waiting. Spoonflower solved that. Founded by entrepreneurs Gart Davis and Stephen Fraser, this Durham, NC company began shipping fabric out of an old sock factory in 2008. They essentially use inkjet printer technology to produce jobs as small as a $5 foot square of fabric or as big as dozens of yards. Material costs $15.75 per yard. Fraser got the idea for the company when his wife, Kim, was looking for custom curtains. Not content with run-of-the-mill choices, he realized that custom printing was possible but was prohibitively expensive. They began by buying one printer and running it in a dusty old warehouse where it clogged up and seized. They recently moved to a new space with well-ventilated print rooms and plenty of cutting space. We spoke with Fraser about his factory where they run printers day and night to fill the hundreds of orders they get a day. They see about 30% international orders with the most orders coming from Australia. They’re also working on wallpaper, decals, and giftwrap for users. Each of the printers has its own connection to the main management system and can tell operators what jobs are printing and which machines are low on ink. The company recently installed Nexus 7 Android tablets on all of their machines as well for more detailed tracking. The company can print on multiple fabric types and certain printers work best with certain fabrics, something operators can note before they run certain jobs. Spoonflower is profitable and expanding without investment. It’s a great success story that came out of the heart of a former textile capital of the world and just goes to show you that the more things change, the more things stay the same. TechCrunch Makers is a video series featuring people who make cool stuff. If you’d like to be featured, email us!.Dropbox Overhauls Chooser As Platform Adds "Tens of Thousands" Of Developers Each Week
Apr 15, 9:37PM
Dropbox, which is courting developers to make it easier for consumers to add and use files wherever they want, just overhauled its “Chooser” feature. Introduced in November of last year, it was designed to make it easy for developers to build in an "attach from Dropbox feature" instead of having to create one from scratch. Adding Dropbox’s Chooser to an app involves a small JavaScript snippet and helps developers avoid an implementation of OAuth, or managing uploads and storage. With that and Dropbox’s growing reach, the company says it’s adding “tens of thousands” of developers every week and that “hundreds of thousands” of files are being shared using Chooser every week. There are “thousands” of applications in development, said Daniel Levine, who works platform at the YC-backed company. Today Dropbox is touching up Chooser by adding the ability to select multiple files at once and upload files directly from their computer through Chooser. So if you want to grab 10 photos at a time and upload them directly, this would be the way to do it. “No file in Dropbox has been created by Dropbox,” Levine said. “We want a way for users to get files everywhere they want to use them.” Files uploaded through Chooser will get automatically saved in a user’s Dropbox and will automatically be available in third-party web apps. Another small upgrade is the ability to drag-and-drop files. Dropbox’s platform efforts have resulted in a couple key partnerships. Just weeks ago, Yahoo Mail did a big integration with Dropbox so that users could access Dropbox directly inside their Yahoo inboxes. Last fall, Facebook also said that its users would be able to share files directly to Facebook Groups using Dropbox's cloud-based storage system.Google: Mobile Web Access Speeds Increased 30% Over The Last 12 Months
Apr 15, 9:30PM
Mobile browsing got significantly faster over the last 12 months, according to a new report from Google, and the average page load times on mobile are now comparable to desktop page load times. On mobile, web pages now load about 30 percent faster than a year ago, but when it comes to desktops, Google only found some very minor speed-ups. That, however, is actually quite impressive, given that the size of the average web page increased by over 56 percent in the last 12 months. The report is based on aggregate data from Google Analytics’ Site Speed reports, which users can opt-in to transmit to Google. Given how many sites use Analytics, this data is likely representative of the web as a whole. The company argues that mobile speeds increased thanks to improved browsers, more powerful mobile devices and the fast rise of LTE/4G networks. A year ago, Google’s data still showed that mobile browsing was typically 1.5x slower than desktop browsing. The study found that users in Japan tend to see the fastest page load times, followed by Sweden, Poland and the United States. With regard to desktop browsing, Japan and Sweden are also in the lead, followed by Canada and the U.S.YC-Backed Heap Takes On Google With Their "Modern Take On Analytics"
Apr 15, 9:25PM
In a startup's never-ending battle for new users, data is king. When the decision to put that shiny signup button down here vs. up there can mean the difference between 40% of new visitors signing up instead of 20%, good data analysis can be what puts food on the table. YC-backed analytics service Heap wants to make analytics better. They want to help you to code less, but grow more.EFF To Challenge Six Innovation-Stifling 3D-Printing Patents
Apr 15, 9:06PM
As 3D printers become more ubiquitous, small manufacturers have two choices - build and hope for the best or cede to patent trolls who own a number of basic patents around extrusion and additive manufacturing. Sadly, more of those patents are being filed daily and many have plenty of prior art available that would make them unwelcome at the Patent Office.Xen Moving To The Linux Foundation
Apr 15, 8:42PM
The Xen project celebrates its 10th anniversary this week. It's also moving to a new home at The Linux Foundation as a Collaborative Project. Just like the Linux kernel, Xen enjoys contributions from a variety of different companies, so a vendor-neutral organization to host development and collaboration is a big win for the project.Hosting Undergoes Massive Changes As Providers Move Towards Platform As A Service
Apr 15, 8:30PM
The explosion of infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service offerings has greatly expanded the ways in which hobbyists and professionals deploy web sites and web services. For about the same cost as cheapo shared hosting, you can get your own small virtual machine at any number of providers, allowing you to tweak the entire instance to just the way you want it. If infrastructure isn't your thing, you can quickly deploy your code to various PaaS providers, often for free, and have as reliable of a site as what you'd get from shared hosting.Boston Marathon Explosion Injures Dozens. Live Updates
Apr 15, 7:53PM
An explosion rocked the Boston Marathon, causing widespread injuries. The earliest reports and images began flowing in from social media. According to a Boston Globe tweet, "dozens of people have seriously injured". Below are first-hand reports and images as they come in. WARNING: images are graphic.Adobe Will Contribute To Google's Blink Browser Engine, Believes It Will "Strengthen An Already Healthy Browser Competition"
Apr 15, 7:45PM
Google’s announcement that it would fork WebKit to develop its own Blink browser engine was definitely a surprise and the repercussions of this move for the browser ecosystem as a whole are still unclear. Today, about two weeks after Google’s announcement, Vincent Hardy, Adobe’s director of engineering for the company’s Web Platform team, announced that, in addition to WebKit, Adobe also plans to contribute to Blink. According to Hardy, Blink will “strengthen an already healthy browser competition,” and Hardy doesn’t seem to be too worried about additional fragmentation in the browser ecosystem because of Google’s move. Adobe has traditionally contributed quite a bit to both WebKit and Google’s Chromium project and also worked with Mozilla on its Gecko engine. As Hardy notes, ahead of Google’s announcement, there had been some concern about a “WebKit monoculture” after Opera announced it would abandon its own engine in favor of WebKit. Adobe, Hardy argues, wasn’t too worried about a WebKit monoculture, but in his view, ” the web is bigger than any one of its leading browser implementations and too important to be limited to a single code base even if that implementation has variations.” As Hardy stressed, a single implementation doesn’t establish a standard and, in his view, “the Web needs Mozilla's Gecko and Microsoft's Trident engines to nurture an open, innovative environment.” Blink, he thinks, will do “no harm” to the web, as long as both engines continue to implement the same features in different ways. For Adobe, Hardy notes, this means it has to continue to focus on making sure browser engines interoperate and that it offers developers tools to test their sites across the different engines. Adobe already uses Chromium in some of its Edge tools, so contribution to Blink is a natural choice for the company.Adobe Introduces Lightroom 5 Public Beta, With New Features For Enthusiasts And Pros Alike
Apr 15, 7:30PM
Adobe's Lightroom is probably the best software available when it comes to a photographer's digital darkroom needs. The company has been putting lots of time and effort into building it into something that appeals to both pros and enthusiasts, and now it's releasing Lightroom 5 beta, representing the fastest turnaround for a major point release in the app's history.Keen On… Intel: Why 3D Visualization Is Now A Reality [TCTV]
Apr 15, 6:49PM
Intel is one of those rare tech companies - IBM also comes to mind - that has successfully reinvented itself with each new wave of technological disruption. So, in our post-PC, networked age, how should we define Intel now? According to their new CIO, Kim Stevenson, Intel is a "computing company" that is now trying to be "startup-like". And one disruptive area that Stevenson believes is "unexploited" is 3D visualization applications - products which make visual sense of big data.500 Startups-Backed Wowzer Launches WowzerMatch For Job Seekers On Mobile Phones
Apr 15, 6:47PM
Finding a job sucks. There's the process of finding something in a relevant field, then submitting resumes, doing phone interviews, doing in-person interviews, etc. Wowzer wants to make this easier with the ability to streamline the whole process with video. And now, through the magic of a new mobile app, hopes to make applying for a job even easier.Kobo Launches Aura, A High-Res E-Reader, As It Preps For Its Own App Store This Summer
Apr 15, 6:46PM
Kobo, the Canadian e-reader, tablet and e-book company owned by Japan's e-commerce giant Rakuten, today unveiled its newest device, the Aura HD, a limited-edition e-reader it's aiming it at power bookworms, with a 265dpi resolution on a 6.8-inch screen, 4 gigabytes of storage and a two-month battery life for the premium price of $169.99 (£139.99). The announcement, made in London to coincide with this week's London Book Fair, comes as Kobo doubles down on its business, with a stronger retail operation and now plans to launch its own app store later this year to build out content for its devices.Apple Partner Foxconn Reportedly Ramps Up Hiring To Prep For Next iPhone Launch This Summer
Apr 15, 6:05PM
Apple's primary manufacturing partner Foxconn is said to be increasing its staff, shortly after a freeze on new hires following the holiday season, in order to get ready for a big push come summer when Apple debuts its next iPhone. That's the latest from the Wall Street Journal, which reported today that Foxconn is adding around 10,000 new assembly line workers a week to its iPhone production facility, with unnamed executives at the company confirming that it's in preparation for a new iPhone launch.LearnZillion Lands $7M From DCM, O'Reilly, NewSchools & More To Help Schools Adopt The Common Core
Apr 15, 5:15PM
In an effort to improve the quality of K-12 public education, schools across the country have begun to adopt the Common Core State Standards, which are designed to align the diversity of state curricula under one consistent, standardized guidebook of what students are expected to learn -- and teachers are expected to teach. Formally adopted by 46 states, which will be making the transition over the next two years, the Common Core is becoming essential to the educational system, but it can also be overwhelming.Flipboard's Mike McCue Talks Mobile Media At Disrupt NY
Apr 15, 5:02PM
People want to get their news on their phones, but many publishers are struggling to offer a set of mobile web sites and apps that users truly love. Meanwhile, mobile advertising is currently making much less money than web advertising, which is already a fraction of what print used to bring publishers. Basically, modern publishing is tough. But Mike McCue’s Flipboard is already making a big difference in the industry by helping publications succeed on mobile. Its popular native mobile apps let users read beautifully presented stories from across their favorite sites, then it sells ads on these sites and splits the revenue with publishers. It recently launched a way for anyone to create their own magazines, which has helped lead to a record 53 million registered users today — check out TechCrunch’s weekly edition here for a good example. I’ll be talking with McCue about his plans for the company, where he sees media going on mobile, and how his past experiences as an entrepreneur have shaped his present work. McCue joins our growing list of Disrupt NY speakers that currently includes eBay CEO John Donahoe, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, top investor Fred Wilson, and more coming to be announced in the weeks leading up to Disrupt NY. Tickets are currently available here. 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. Mike McCue CEO & Co-Founder, Flipboard Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue founded Flipboard in early 2010, with former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll. Together they set out to build a global service that would let people make all of their news, photos, and videos from across social networks accessible from a single place. In July 2010, they launched Flipboard for iPad, a social magazine that brings people the most informative, entertaining and amazing stories from around the world and from their daily life. With each flip, people can learn about stories and events that take place thousands of miles away or right at home; see life's great moments in one place; and be inspired by what others share. Today, Flipboard works across iPad, iPhone and Android. In 1999, Mike founded Tellme Networks, one of the world's largest Internet networks for voice communication. He successfully led the integration of the company’s technology into Microsoft’s infrastructure following its acquisition. Microsoft bought Tellme in 2007 for $800 million.Peer-To-Peer Airport Car Rental Startup FlightCar Raises $5.5M From General Catalyst, Softbank, And Others
Apr 15, 5:00PM
FlightCar is hoping to open for business in a number of new markets over the course of the rest of the year. To do that, FlightCar has raised a $5.5 million Series A round, with a number of high-profile investors such as General Catalyst, Softbank Capital, Airbnb founder and CEO Brian Chesky, as well as Ryan Seacrest's Seacrest Global Group.Red Hat Announces RDO And OpenStack Partner Program
Apr 15, 4:51PM
At the OpenStack Summit today, Red Hat announced RDO, "a freely available, community-supported distribution of OpenStack that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora and their derivatives." In essence, RDO will function for Red Hat OpenStack much like Fedora does for Red Hat Enterprise Linux: new features will land upstream, get integrated into RDO, and eventually make their way into the commercially supported offering.SendHub, A Google Voice Alternative For Enterprise, Arrives On Android
Apr 15, 4:42PM
SendHub, the Y Combinator-backed call and messaging solution targeting business users and other organizations, is today extending its platform to include support for Android. The company had previously rolled out support for iPhone almost a year ago, promising that an Android option was on the roadmap.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
