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Zynga Tells CupidWithFriends To Stop Using 'With Friends'
May 17, 11:58PM
Zynga has apparently told the makers of the dating website CupidWithFriends that they need to change the site's name, because it allegedly infringes on Zynga's trademarks. CupidWithFriends was built by the startup Apartment 7 (which also released the dating apps Flock and Wednesday Night). The site launched a couple of months ago, allowing users to build and edit dating profiles for their friends.
Firefox 23 Lands In Aurora Channel: Kills Blink Element, Introduces Slew Of New Dev Tools
May 17, 10:09PM
Mozilla today bumped up Firefox Aurora, the pre-beta release channel of the popular browser, to version 23. With this, it is introducing a number of new tools for developers that will now slowly make their way into the stable release channel over the next few months. Sadly (or maybe not), this is also the first version of Firefox that does away with the good old blink element, a former staple of the horrid GeoCities websites of the 90s.
Gmail And The Stock Android Email App Combined Have Over 100M Mobile Users
May 17, 10:09PM
Google's Vikram Aggarwal, a software engineer working on the Android platform, revealed today that Gmail and Email, the native Android client that still ships on Android devices as well, now has a combined user base of over 100 million across the Android install base. It's an interesting stat, because although Gmail and Email only represent two of a multitude of email clients available on Android, it's likely that those two represent the email clients of choice for a wide swath of Android users.
Apple Boots Bang With Friends From The App Store
May 17, 9:51PM
Uh oh. Less than ten days after Bang With Friends made its mobile debut on the iOS App Store, Apple has seemingly changed its mind and given it the boot.
Ask A VC: Accel Partners' Rich Wong On Whether You Can Build A Great Tech Company Outside Silicon Valley
May 17, 9:40PM
This week, we hosted Accel Partners' Rich Wong in the studio for our Ask A VC show. Wong, who has invested in Angry Birds (Rovio), Dealer.com, Mobilespaces, Atlassian, MoPub, talked about where he sees the next wave of disruption in mobile technologies. He believes mobile security is a huge opportunity mobile, especially at the enterprise level.
Facebook's Growth Since IPO In 12 Big Numbers
May 17, 8:43PM
$FB is still stuck at $26.25, way down from its $38 IPO price, but it's made important progress since going public a year ago. Daily users up 26%, mobile monthly users up 56%, and revenue up 38% are some highlights. It's running out of people to sign up in the developed world, but with this growth and no serious competitor in sight, it's survived its hardest year yet.
Don't Let Your Company's Scale Tip Your Bathroom Scale
May 17, 8:30PM
Any programmer or blogger knows that when you work on the Internet, on a computer, it's easy to gain weight. Tech office pantries are stocked with Red Bull, candy, chips and even things you wouldn't think were too unhealthy, like protein bars. Protein bars are basically injections of sugar. That's why they taste like a Snickers. But what no one talks about is that the "Startup 15" or 40 is avoidable if you put in the effort, not to diet, but to be healthy. Because she is constantly around tech geeks and herself works online, blogger Darya Rose, who is both my friend and the wife of Google Ventures Partner Kevin Rose, is acutely aware of this pain and has a solution: Foodist, a way to stay healthy without going crazy dieting.
This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: All Google I/O, All The Time
May 17, 8:28PM
Google's major developer conference, Google I/O, went down this week. Was it a bit of a letdown? Probably. Did cool stuff still come out of the event? Eh? Maybe? We discuss these topics and more this week on the TC Gadgets podcast. In fact, we even had Frederic Lardinois join as a guest, along with John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook (that's me!), Romain Dillet, and Darrell Etherington as Bob McKenzie.
Postach.io Turns An Evernote Notebook Into A Blog
May 17, 8:24PM
One of the more interesting projects to emerge from Evernote's 2013 Devcup hackathon is called Postach.io, a new blogging platform that turns your Evernote notebook into a content management system. Input Logic, the Vancouver-based company behind the now just four-week-old service, has already caught the attention of local investors, as well as Evernote, who met with the team to discuss possible monetization ideas.
Amidst Tumblr Acquisition Rumors, Yahoo To Hold Product Event With Marissa Mayer On Monday
May 17, 8:02PM
On Monday, it seems that we may get a better sense of what Yahoo plans to build in the wake of its acquisition spree, as CNBC is reporting that the company will be holding a "product-related" news event on Monday in New York City. Marissa Mayer will reportedly be speaking at the press conference, but that's all we know about the contents of the event at this point.
Google+ App For Android Quietly Switched To WebP Image Format A Month And A Half Ago, Saves 50% Bandwidth
May 17, 7:58PM
About a month and a half ago, Google switched to its own WebP image format in its Google+ Android app, the company revealed at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco today. This, Stephen Konig, a Google product manager who focuses on WebP and Chrome Remote desktop, and Make the Web Fast team member and Chrome developer advocate Ilya Grigorik said in today's presentation, is saving Google - and its users - about 50% in bandwidth.
Google Play In-App Purchase Revenue Growth Jumps 7X In One Year, Subscription Revenue Growing 2X Each Quarter
May 17, 7:18PM
Google held a session today at I/O 2013 about how to make money on Android, and in the initial few minutes it shared some updated stats around Google Play revenues and how those are progressing. Not surprisingly, the big growth is coming with in-app purchases, though Google's recently launched subscription model is also making headway.
Behind The Scenes Of The Big Google Maps Redesign And Its Technical Challenges
May 17, 7:11PM
Google unveiled its completely redesigned Google Maps product on the web at I/O 2013, and at a panel dedicated to the new Maps experience, Maps User Experience Design Lead Jonah Jones and Engineering Director for Maps on the web Yatin Chawathe took us through what went into creating Maps and the engineering effort behind the considerable change seems prodigious.
With $1.5M Led By Winklevoss Capital, BitInstant Aims To Be The Go-To Site To Buy And Sell Bitcoins
May 17, 6:05PM
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twin Harvard graduates who famously sparred with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook and are now working as tech investors through Winklevoss Capital, are part of the growing group of venture capitalists who have taken a keen interest in Bitcoins. Last month, it was revealed that they personally own roughly one percent of the currency, a stake worth the equivalent of some $11 million. And now, the Winklevosses tell TechCrunch they have invested in Bitcoin in another meaningful way -- by leading a funding round for a startup in the space. BitInstant, a New York City based startup that operates an online platform for buying and selling Bitcoins, has raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round led by Winklevoss Capital with the participation of other strategic investors including money services veteran David Azar. The investment was closed this past fall, but the Winklevosses are just now publicly announcing it in the lead-up to the Bitcoin Foundation's 2013 Conference being held in Silicon Valley this weekend.
Google Introduces Portable Native Client, Makes It Easier For Developers To Add C And C++ Code To Their Web Apps
May 17, 6:02PM
Native Client - a technology that allows developers to run native compiled C and C++ code as part of their web apps - has long been a part of Google Chrome. Even though other browser vendors haven't adopted it yet, Google is clearly putting quite a few resources behind this technology and at I/O this year, it announced Portable Native Client (or PNaCl, which Google says we should pronounce as "pinnacle"). PNaCl is now available in developer preview in Chrome 29 and will slowly find its way into the stable version over the coming months.
Wisconsin Gov. Promises To Use Internet Sales Tax To Lower Income Tax
May 17, 5:06PM
It sounds like a nice idea, if you don’t own a calculator. The governor of Wisconsin wants to give his residents a tax break, using the revenue from a proposed Internet Sales tax to lower the state’s income tax. “I want to make clear, should federal Marketplace legislation become law, my intention would be for any resulting additional revenue be used to provide individual income tax relief for Wisconsin's taxpayers,” Wrote Governor Scott Walker to members of Congress. The Marketplace Fairness Act will permit state governments to collect sales taxes from any business that both grosses more than $1M in revenue and has a substantial operating base in their region. Earlier this month, a draft of the bill passed the U.S. Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support, but faces tougher opposition in the House, where Republican leadership is concerned that the law will be a logistical nightmare for small businesses. Although, I wouldn’t get too excited. With 5 million residents in Wisconsin and an estimated $95M in savings, that’s about $16/per person, assuming it would be distributed evenly. If Forrester’s research is any indication, the sales tax would cost the average American roughly $167 per year, so it’s a net loss. If it’s unevenly distributed, a few already wealthy people will be slightly wealthier. Still, it’s a nice gesture.
Backupify Is Phasing Out Free Consumer Products; Drops Support For Facebook Personal Profiles, Blogger, Picassa And Flickr
May 17, 5:06PM
Earlier this week we reported on how Backupify was closing down TweetBackup, a free service to back up your Twitter account that it acquired in 2010; now we have confirmed that, as we'd heard, this is part of a bigger plan at the company to phase out consumer services altogether, as Backupify focuses its efforts on paid services for enterprise customers. From today, it will stop accepting new sign-ups for its free tier of back-up services for personal files. It is also discontinuing by the end of this year support for certain sites, including Facebook personal profiles, Blogger, Picassa and Flickr.
Social Trip Planning App Tripshare Converts Travel Inspiration To Bookings
May 17, 4:27PM
Tripshare, an iPad application for travel planning, is joining a crowded space. But its CEO knows a little something about the industry – Bob Dana was the former employee No. 1 and first CFO of Virgin America. He once wrote the business plan and feasibility study for Sir Richard Branson in 2003. And now he’s doing a travel startup. Dana tells us the inspiration for Tripshare was based on a personal experience he had years ago. As CFO, he spent 10 hours on a plane each week flying back and forth from New York to California. In 2006, Dana was trying to convince his family to come out to California for a vacation, so he put together a proposed itinerary to help sell the idea. “I ended up preparing this 10-page Word document that included text and photos I cut and pasted from various websites. It was intended to be persuasive in nature, and collaborative, too,” he explains. “I thought afterwards, that collaborative travel planning was something that was rather difficult to do.” But not only was it difficult to plan, it was also hard to move from the point of inspiration and discovery to actually booking the trip. This idea later formed the basis for Tripshare, which he founded two years ago. The app was originally built in conjunction with then co-founder and CTO Ken Goto, a former director of engineering at Apple. Goto has since moved on but his ex-Apple development team, including acting CTO Eric Kapke, now continues the work. The app itself has actually been live in the iTunes App Store as unpublicized beta since August 2012. However, though that app was functionally similar, it drew some criticisms from early users because of its user interface. Today’s version is an overhaul and much improved. Still, despite having done no publicity or marketing, Tripshare has been downloaded nearly 20,000 times while still a work in progress. In other words, today’s release is technically a version 2.0, but for all intents and purposes, this is the big debut. Designed for those planning vacations or other complex trips with multiple destinations or activities, Tripshare allows you to browse, collect and share information with others before booking. Using the iPad’s big screen, you can flip through photos of destinations and lodgings, create itineraries and discover flights, hotels, restaurants, activities and more. Today, the app allows you to explore more than 20,000 cities worldwide, plus 500,000+ lodging
Now Netflix Is Promoting "Arrested Development" On Seamless.com
May 17, 3:53PM
How do you market a hot new TV show without the benefit of commercial space that you can fill with network promos? Just ask Netflix. The company has come up with a number of clever marketing stunts to get the word out about the upcoming premiere of Arrested Development ranging from Easter eggs on Netflix.com to this month's live frozen banana stand in New York, which was visited by hundreds. It even sent around jokey emails to the media, reportedly from "Dr. Tobias Funke."
Michigan Tech Sponsors A 3D Printers For Peace Contest
May 17, 3:46PM
Now that Defense Distributed is on the defensive, it's time to think a bit harder about what 3D printing really means. To that end, Michigan Tech is sponsoring a Printers For Peace contest that is encouraging designers and engineers to make amazing stuff using a 3D printer that can change the world for the better. "Unfortunately, the only thing many people know about 3D printing is that it can be used to make guns," writes Dr. Joshua Pearce, founder of the project.
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