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Mobile Messaging Apps: A Primer
May 13, 12:00AM
The global mobile messaging app space is the new social battleground. Startups that would have had little chance of unseating Facebook's dominance on the web are attacking Zuckerberg's empire by refocusing social networking around the mobile phone contacts book. Enter your phone number, and these apps already know who all your friends are. No need to go laboriously recreating your social graph.What Games Are: There Is No Iron Throne Of Games Anymore
May 12, 11:00PM
We all know that big changes are happening in games, with the profusion of formats. What less of us realize is how much those changes have affected the underlying idea that one console or platform is the "gaming king". Some of us even pine for a return to those days, but they are gone. Likely forever.Quickoffice In The Browser: The Reason Why Microsoft Is Suddenly So Scared Of Google's Productivity Tools
May 12, 10:00PM
We’re just a few days away from the start of Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developer conference, and while we actually know very little about what Google plans to announce during its massive, 3-hour keynote on Wednesday, there is something brewing in Mountain View that has Microsoft’s Office division on edge. Over the course of the last week, Microsoft started a very negative anti-Google Docs campaign that fits the mold of its more general Scroogled anti-Google ads. But why the sudden focus on Google’s productivity tools? That reason, I believe, is Quickoffice in the browser. Quickoffice, which Google acquired last June, allows users to read and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the iPad, iPhone and Android. Unlike Google Docs, which remains a relatively limited productivity suite when compared to Microsoft Office, Quickoffice does a very nice job at allowing you to open and edit Office files without losing the document’s layout and other advanced features that Docs can’t currently handle. Just last month, Google brought Quickoffice to Android and the iPhone and introduced the new Chrome Office Viewer for displaying Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Google doesn’t say so explicitly, but it’s a fair assumption that this tool uses some of Quickoffice’s magic as well (it was previously only available for Chrome OS). When it comes to editing Office documents in the browser, Microsoft’s own Office Web Apps are an underrated gem in the company’s lineup and right now, Google doesn’t have anything in its repertoire of web apps that comes even close. Quickoffice, however, is coming to the web. When Google introduced the Pixel Chromebook in February, it also dropped a hint that it was porting Quickoffice to Chrome, using its own Native Client technology. At the time, Google’s Sundar Pichai said that many people love Google’s productivity apps, but in the business world, Microsoft Office is still the de facto default. Having Quickoffice available for Chrome and on Chromebooks, he said, “completes the story for a lot of users.” During the February event, Google said that it would take about three months to launch the browser-based version of Quickoffice with full editing capabilities – and that puts the launch date almost exactly in line with next week’s I/O. Microsoft knows that the competition in the online productivity space is about to heat up and may just put it on defense. For many potential Office 365 andHow A Car Crash Changed Vishal Sikka And The Direction Of SAP
May 12, 9:30PM
It’s a rare fall rainy day in Palo Alto and SAP Executive Board Member Dr. Vishal Sikka is as sick as a dog. It’s less than a week until SAP Sapphire in Madrid and the community around him are like a worrying family. I had told them that it is okay. I could make the trip another time. But they were insistent I make the trip. Fast forward to May. It has been several months since that cold rainy week in Palo Alto. We’re on the eve of the next Sapphire conference in Orlando this week. Last week, Plattner and Sikka held a press conference, announcing the new HANA Enterprise Cloud. HANA is an in-memory database that Sikka and Plattner developed with a team of about a dozen people around the world. SAP has built four data centers for HANA — two in Europe and two in the United States. It would not be an overstatement to say that HANA is SAP’s future, the first technology in a long time from the German giant that is getting buzz for what it can do. It potentially puts the company into play as a key developer platform for real-time analytics in the evolving world of technology spanning both consumer and the enterprise services that are the company’s legacy (and slightly stale bread and butter). The big question is can SAP show the world that HANA is a bona fide developer platform with visionary use cases and clear customer examples. Jon Reed is a longtime SAP Mentor and expert about the company. He is a great sounding board, someone who talked me through a lot of this story. He has a lot of respect for Sikka and Plattner. But he is skeptical, too, as am I about HANA and its direction. The potential is without question. And Sikka shows signs he has that rare combination of intellectual curiosity, technology credibility and passion that makes for a great leader. And he’s a humanist. He is impassioned about the potential for cancer research with HANA as much as he sees SAP transforming from an inward looking business software company to one that is outward facing, used for research and predictive analytics. “It makes him a compelling figure,” Reed said. “You do get the sense that if the work is not purposeful, he won’t stick around. He really does believe HANA and interrelated innovations can change the world.”Google Must Not Like Sports, As Google Now Will Crash When You Try And Add Or Remove Teams From The Sports Card
May 12, 9:06PM
Google Now is a great feature for Android users, and now those who are on iOS devices. The idea is that the more you use Google products, the more it learns about you and the better information it can spit at you proactively. However, if you try and interact with Google Now, specifically on which sports teams you’d like to follow, the app will crash. Not only will Google Now crash, but you’ll get continual pop-up messages telling you that Google Search has crashed, the app that runs the Now experience. It’s quite annoying and it’s something that people have been reporting on Google’s message boards for the past month or so. Even though Google employees have interacted with the community, there’s still no real fix. I tried to delete the Giants, since I’m a Phillies fan, which you can do by tapping on the information button of the Card: It will let you add or remove teams without any problem, but once you go back to Google Now, it crashes and you start seeing this beauty over and over: There’s no official fix from Google, with the only employee feedback on this thread being “Thank you for staying engaged on this issue. We’re continuing to look into it.” The employee then encourages you to send feedback to Google from within Google Now…which you can’t do because the app crashes. The only real fix that I’ve found for the issue is to go into your app settings for the Google Search app and clear out the app data and cache. That will at least let you open up Google Now again and put an end to the annoying crash alerts: Once you open up Google Now again, you’ll have to go through the original process of agreeing to use it and sit through the tour of example cards. However, don’t go ahead and edit the same Card again, or it will start the hellish loop all over again. It reminds me of another Android bug, the one where the team left December out of its date picker entirely. It’s probably something that should have been picked up on during a regular QA process. Let’s hope that Google releases an update to its OS at the I/O conference, so that us sports fans can actually enjoy one of Now’s core functionalities. Or maybe, Googlers just really hate sports. Maybe its usersSideCar's Sunil Paul On Working With (And Battling) Regulators
May 12, 9:00PM
SideCar co-founder and CEO Sunil Paul was part of what may have been the most spirited and feisty panel at our Disrupt NY conference earlier this month. Sharing the stage with Hailo CEO Jay Bregman (I'll be posting an interview with Bregman later) and NY TLC Deputy Commissioner Ashwini Chhabra, Paul positioned his ridesharing startup as an organization standing up for innovation and choice in the face of regulation. I interviewed Paul backstage, where I asked if he'd be able to find common ground with the regulators.Crowdsourcing An Alternate Name For 'Ride Sharing'
May 12, 9:00PM
We at TechCrunch have been referring to the phenomenon of peer-to-peer transportation services as "ride sharing." Not a post goes by, however, without someone jumping into the comments to point out that the phrase is inadequate to describe what SideCar, and Lyft, and Uber are actually doing. Help change that.Nokia Teases New Lumia's Camera In Prime Time TV Ad, Ahead Of "See What's Next" London Event On Tuesday
May 12, 8:49PM
Nokia has run a TV advert teasing a new Lumia device it’s widely expected to unveil at an event in London on Tuesday. The advert ran during a prime time evening slot on Channel 4, during a screening of The Inbetweeners movie. The teaser advert focused on the camera of an unnamed new Lumia smartphone, with close up shots of the lens and flash, and the words “more than your eyes can see” and “the new Nokia Lumia is coming”. Nokia sent out invites to “see what’s next” as “the Lumia story continues” last month, ahead of the May 14th event. Last week the mobile maker unveiled a new flagship smartphone for the U.S. on Verizon, unboxing the Lumia 928 — a device that had been widely leaked ahead of its official launch, including by Nokia who published a camera comparison with the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5. It also took the wraps off an update to its Asha range: the Series 40-based $99 Asha 501 is the first device to run Nokia’s new Asha touchscreen UI. With recent updates at both the bottom and top of its mobile ranges, speculation about what it will show at Tuesday’s event has run the gamut from the rumoured ‘true PureView’ EOS device, to its first phablet and possibly even the long rumoured leap (back) into tablets. Judging by today’s teaser the EOS device looks to be the most likely candidate for unboxing on Tuesday. As well as the camera lens, the teaser appeared to show a device with metallic trim or a metal casing. The EOS device has previously been rumoured to have an aluminium casing, rather than the polycarbonate/plastic Nokia has used on all other Lumias to-date. Nokia’s original PureView smartphone, the Symbian-based 808 PureView, had a 41 megapixel camera — something Nokia has not recreated on its Lumia Windows Phone-based line, despite repurposing the PureView branding for its flagship 920. It will certainly be interesting to see where Nokia takes the Windows Phone lens next, and whether it can bring the full 41MP PureView experience to the platform. Update: Nokia’s camera teaser was followed in the second ad break by a lengthy Vodafone iPhone ad, focusing on the iPhone’s camera and various camera apps. Someone in the Channel 4 ad sales department has clearly been busy.If You Can't Afford $605K For Coffee With Tim Cook, Jack Dorsey's Charity Auction Is At $5K With Four Days Left
May 12, 8:00PM
It's nice to see people in a power position in the valley give up their time for charitable causes. Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, recently offered up his time for probably the most expensive cup of coffee ever, to benefit The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. The current top bid is a whopping $605K, and the auction ends in two days if you've got the cash to donate.Google To Take On Apple's Game Center Soon, Leaks Suggest
May 12, 7:44PM
Games dominate the app ecosystem. It's easy to forget that as we all dig for the next app of the moment, but it's the truth. 9 of the 10 highest grossing apps in the App Store last year, all games. Combine this with the fact that Apple's Game Center was launched 2.5 years ago, and it's a bit strange that Google has yet to launch a Game Center-esque hub for Android. That'll change soon, it seems.Blinkbuggy Wants To Reinvent The "Baby Book" For Parents To Capture Memories Online
May 12, 6:00PM
For generations in the past, parents have carefully put together "baby books" that capture the first years of a baby's life in photos, hand prints and more. My mother created one for me, and it's something that I treasure. But in the world's digital age, the photos and memories of our babies are captured most often on mobile phones. Any paper is stored in a file cabinet or thrown away. And there hasn't been a product that is specifically tailored towards recreating the baby book online—until now. Enter Blinkbuggy, a new startup from a Googler that wants to help moms and dads create virtual baby books.You Can't Have It Both Ways
May 12, 6:00PM
Gun control is control of all guns. This tautology, in a developed society, is non-negotiable. If guns can exist in our country, then gun plans can exist, and, although I'm firmly on the side of draconian control over most weapons, I find the move to ban Defense Distributed's plans for their Liberator pistol unconscionable.Facebook's iPhone Culture Builds An Overzealous Home On Android
May 12, 5:27PM
Facebook didn't realize just how important widgets, docks, and app folders were to Android users, and that leaving them out of Home was a huge mistake. That's because some of the Facebookers who built and tested Home normally carry iPhones, I've confirmed. Lack of "droidfooding" has left Facebook scrambling to add these features, whose absence have led Home to just 1 million downloads in a month.Iterations: Snoopify, The Greatest Mobile Photobombing App Of All Time
May 12, 5:00PM
"What are the cool new apps you've seen lately?" To this oft heard question, lately, there have been lots of answers. So, mobile is indeed exciting and moving fast. And, just recently, a fun new app came out that instantly captured my attention -- no, it's not from a Stanford dropout or from the "innovation lab" of a large technology company. No. It's from Snoop Dogg -- excuse me -- Snoop Lion. Yes, that's right, the same artist so many of you grew up with. He's diversified his musical career into the business of his own branded apparel, a television show, and now he invades the greatest consumer stage of our times -- our mobile phones. And, what's more impressive is just how he did it -- the genius to observe and iterate, to pull out the nuggets of lessons we have learned and package it together with marketing that's both fun, easy, and devilishly derivative yet simultaneously novel.Google Quietly Kills SMS Search, Closing One Way Of Connecting With Mobile Users Who Don't Have Data Plans
May 12, 4:39PM
Google is well known for its regular bouts of spring cleaning when it kills off a number of products in one fell swoop, but it also sometimes makes quick changes in between the bigger announcements. One of those has now hit its portfolio of SMS-based products aimed at users of lower end devices: Google has quietly closed down SMS Search.Why Zuckerberg's Lobby Is Collapsing Like A House Of Cards Outside Of DC
May 12, 3:15PM
“Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location.” — Frank Underwood, House of Cards At this very moment, Mark Zuckerberg’s political lobby, FWD.us, is probably taken aback at how reviled it has become, both from the public and its own members. After all, there are countless political technology lobbies, including Facebook’s own Political Action Committee, which routinely offer Republican candidates campaign cash for quid pro quo political favor. So, why, after discovering FWD.us indirectly supporting the controversial Keystone Pipeline initiative, have would-be supporters flooded their Facebook page with scathing comments, and its A-list supporters, such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, ditched the group? Unlike other lobbies, FWD.us burst on to the scene with a very public op-ed from its celebrity founder, promising to galvanize the latent civic passions of Silicon Vally’s netizens in a noble crusade to advance the knowledge society. While one hand extended towards grassroots supporters, the other reached into its wallet pocket and discretely doled out funds to controversial candidates. There’s a reason most lobbies don’t bother with grassroots activism: communities don’t get excited about the kinds of soul-crushing moral compromise necessary in DC politics. So, when FWD.us rolled up with millions in hand claiming to be the voice of the technologists, those who felt misrepresented freaked out. Even more confusing, when confronted, FWD.us chose to do something no other major organization in technology has done: it remained silent. Even the notoriously tight-lipped Apple holds a press conference after public uproar. Californians haven’t become jaded to the kinds of secrecy common for Wall Street banks and campaign SuperPACs. The unfazed backdoor dealings caricatured in Netflix’s (addicting) House of Cards series may work for lobbies based in our nation’s capitol, but Californians evidently won’t tolerate it in their backyard. “I revised the parameters of my promise.” – Frank Underwood Twitter co-founder Evan Williams tweeted a link to a scathing blog post from former Branch CEO, Josh Miller, explaining, “In service of noble causes, FWD.us is employing questionable lobbying techniques, misleading supporters, and not being transparent about the underlying values and long-term intentions of the organization. More discouragingly, the leaders of the technology industry (and of FWD.us) have built their careers on bringing meaningful change to the world. They should be doing the same in Washington.” FWD.us would-be grassroots supporters agree, “Will Fwd.us prostitute climate destruction & other values to get a few engineers hired & get immigration reform?", wrote one commenterPacking For Walden
May 12, 3:00PM
I'm probably going to be consigned to whatever level of hell is reserved for pretentious editorialists for saying this, but sometimes when I'm trying to evaluate some new piece of technology, I consider whether Thoreau would have taken it to Walden Pond with him. Wait, just give me a second. I know how it sounds. Let me explain.Publisher iDreamSky Grosses $5-7M Per Month By Bringing Western Indie Mobile Games To China
May 12, 2:38PM
China now has more active iOS and Android devices than the U.S., up from about 40-50 million in circulation the last time I visited in late 2011. What that means is local entrepreneurs can finally build scalable mobile software businesses. iDreamSky is one of the companies riding this wave.Five Woot Execs Check Out, As Daily Deals Site Feels The Strain Under Owner Amazon
May 12, 2:01PM
Woot, the daily deals site that Amazon bought in 2010 for $110 million, built a reputation for its "pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap" business model for shifting goods. Now, the company is facing up to a shift of a different kind: that of its own talent. In the last week, TechCrunch has learned that With #HonorYourMom, Samahope Wants To Fund Medical Treatments For Women In Need Around The World
May 12, 11:58AM
This Sunday, there's a lot you can do in honor of the woman who raised you. But the San Francisco-based startup Samahope hopes that funds usually reserved for cross-state chocolate delivery might be used to finance medical treatments for women in need around the world. Its #HonorYourMom project is soliciting donations for medical treatments for women along with tweet-length anecdotes about participants' own parents' uniqueness.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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