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Basho Co-Founder Raises $3M To Launch Orchestrate.io, A Twilio For Databases
May 22, 12:45AM
Basho Co-Founder Antony Falco has raised $3 million for Orchestrate.io, a database API similar to Twilio in its capability to ease the complexity of adding features to mobile and web applications. True Ventures led this initial round joined by Frontline Ventures and Resonant Venture Partners. Falco, who left Basho a few months ago, said Orchestrate.io solves the problems that developers face when building feature-rich applications. Often it means adding multiple databases for geo-spatial, time series or any number of other features. The database problem has been ongoing. It in part stems from the limits of scale with relational databases. Over the years, companies like Amazon and Google reached their own ceilings and were forced to develop new kinds of databases for high-volume queries. The result is a lot of time spent babysitting databases so the applications run well. Orchestrate.io acts as a service on a service, abstracting the database layer. Twilio successfully simplified the way developers accessed services, such as SMS and voice. Falco sees a service that also allows developers to add features by pulling the data through an API . “The comparison with Twilio and Sendgrid is not around the problem we solve but the pattern,” Falco said in an email interview. “We are taking a complex and burdensome task — running lots of databases — and putting it behind an API that programmers can use to more quickly build apps. Twilio and Sendgrid both do a similar thing, vastly simplifying the complex, for telecom and email infrastructure, respectively. Orchestrate.io uses in-memory technology for its service. “Memory — storing indexes and hot data in memory — will be critical to performance,” Falco said. “There are three tiers – the active data and indexes in memory, disk storage for durability and data less often accessed, and as data ages and becomes inactive, a cheaper tier of fault-tolerant storage. The more we serve reads out of the memory, the better our performance will be and, without a lot of latency, users will be able to execute relatively rich queries that might require three or four queries, made sequentially, to separate databases.” Orchestrate.io is using open source databases to build the service. “We aren’t going to build databases,” Falco said. “The databases themselves can change; we are not tied to any one database. Riak (a Basho service) is of course ideal for this use case — for forming part of theThe Former Flickr Employee Guide To Tumblr Yahoo Survival
May 22, 12:27AM
Editor's note: Kakul Srivastava is CEO and co-founder of Tomfoolery, Inc. She was General Manager for Flickr from 2004 - 2009 and helped the product grow from 37,000 users to over 60 million. Simon Batistoni is VP of Platform and co-founder of Tomfoolery, Inc. He joined Flickr in 2006 as the engineering lead for internationalization. OK Go's Damian Kulash Explains Why His Band Built Its Own Mobile Game
May 21, 11:42PM
OK Go (the band behind hit music videos like "This Too Shall Pass" and "Here It Goes Again") launched its very own game for iOS and Android earlier this month. Titled Say The Same Thing, you play the game with one of your friends or with a randomly chosen player. (If you sign up now, you can also participate in a temporary promotion where people are randomly selected to play with a band member) Each player types in a word, then you see what the other player said, and you use that as prompt for another word. As the game's title implies, you win when each of you enters the same word.Producteev's Social Task Manager Now Free And Enterprise-Ready As It Preps For Full Jive Integration Later This Year
May 21, 10:28PM
In November, Jive Software acquired Bay Area cloud-based, collaborative task manager, Producteev, to boost its social business platform. Going forward, as Alex wrote at the time, Salesforce.com and Jive will increasingly butt heads as they compete for mindshare in the enterprise. With Producteev's multi-platform task-management system, which allows users to create tasks from emails and collaborate around projects in teams, Jive acquired a service that was already beginning to compete with Asana and Salesforce.com's Do.com.New Xbox Fails To Excite Investors As Microsoft, AMD Stocks Stays Flat While Sony Shoots Up 9%
May 21, 10:15PM
Wall Street apparently wanted something more revolutionary out of the Xbox One that launched today, as Microsoft's stock is down 0.66 percent. In turn, investors on news of a potential spin off, pushed Sony shares up 9 percent, coincidentally just after Microsoft announced its answer to the Sony Playstation.PopExpert Online Video Education Marketplace Raises $2M In Seed Funding From Learn Capital And Others
May 21, 9:35PM
As edtech startups continue to challenge the current state of higher education, and various niche startups focus on educating people through digital means, yet another company is getting a boost when it comes to helping people learn. PopExpert, a learning marketplace that lets students connect with experts in one-on-one video chats, has just raised a $2 million seed round led by Learn Capital, with participation by Jeff Skoll, Ken Howery, Michael Chasen, and Expansion VC.TC Cribs: Inside Fab's NYC Headquarters, Where High Fashion And Hot Design Become Fun
May 21, 9:32PM
Welcome to a brand new episode of Cribs, the TechCrunch TV series that goes straight into the heart of the action at the tech industry's hottest companies to show what it's really like for the people who work there. For this edition we headed out on the road to the New York City headquarters of Fab, the super-popular e-commerce site that has quickly grown over the past couple years to be one of the web's key shopping destinations (and one of the industry's hottest companies from a valuation perspective.)Ditto Turns To Indiegogo For Help Battling Patent Lawsuits (Including One From 1-800-Contacts)
May 21, 8:51PM
Ditto, a startup that helps users virtually try on different pairs of eyeglasses, has launched an Indiegogo campaign to help fight a big threat — the company says it's being sued by 1-800-CONTACTS and another company called Lennon Imaging Technology. Ditto's technology allows users to create webcam recordings of their faces, which they then use to see how different designer glasses will look with their facial shape and size. Both Lennon Imaging and 1-800-CONTACTS are claiming that this technology infringes their own patents. But Ditto's campaign describes them as "patent troll" lawsuits — Lennon is a non-practicing company, meaning that it doesn't have a product or service of its own, and Ditto co-founder and CEO Kate Endress said 1-800-CONTACTS (which is owned by WellPoint) didn't purchase the patent in question until after the company's CEO visited the Ditto website.Laptop Week Review: The 13-Inch MacBook Pro With Retina Display
May 21, 8:31PM
If I could only have one MacBook (which is usually the case for your average laptop-buyer), this is the one I'd pick, without hesitation. Fewer issues than its 15-inch cousin, which pioneered the Retina line, combined with a much lighter design with a smaller desktop footprint for a display that can still give you crazy amounts of screen real estate all adds up to a sure-fire winner.Xbox One Makes The Console Gaming Experience Less Lonely
May 21, 8:03PM
Gaming has evolved from single-player to head-to-head to massively multiplayer, but also retreated from public arcades to isolated homes. Today's launch of the Xbox One makes the whole console experience social, not just the gaming itself. You'll still be battling other humans, but how you communicate with other gamers and choose what to play is about to change.Sen. Rand Paul Is Mostly Right In Defending Apple's Obligation To Minimize Taxes
May 21, 6:23PM
"It's absurd for Congress to vilify businesses like Apple for wanting to minimize their tax code just like every other American rightly does," tweeted uber-Libertarian Senator Rand Paul, lashing out at his Senate colleagues for 'dragging' Apple CEO Tim Cook in to defend his company's tax policies. On the eve of Cook's much-hyped testimony, a Senate investigation released a scathing report, accusing Apple of cooking the books and engaging in shady tax-dodging practices, to avoid repatriating $102 billion in offshore cash to avoid a 35 percent U.S. tax rate.Microsoft Confirms That The Xbox One Will Come With An Incredibly Sensitive New Kinect
May 21, 6:01PM
The Xbox One was just unveiled at Microsoft's Redmond campus and, true to multiple reports that circulated before the official reveal, the new console will indeed come with a Kinect. And what a Kinect it is! The rumors of a vastly improved Kinect sensor array were right on the money -- this next-generation model is capable of tracking motions as minute as wrist rotations, and Microsoft's Marc Whitten said the new Kinect would even be able to read users' heartbeats when they're exercising or when players shift their weight.The New Xbox One Live Features Add Advanced Social Gaming Features That Could Lead To True MMORPG Experiences
May 21, 5:41PM
While we don't have all of the details on the new Xbox Live features announced at today's Xbox One launch, it's clear that Microsoft is going all-in when it comes to social and multiplayer gaming. First, they are upping the number of dedicated servers for online play from 15,000 to 300,000 and nearly all of your content and game data will be store in the cloud.Xbox One Instant Switching Turns The Console Into A Voice-Powered Set Top Box With Live TV Integration
May 21, 5:39PM
Now leading the pack in gaming consoles, Microsoft's future growth lies outside the gaming sphere. We'll surely see tons of games at E3 in a few weeks, but at the big reveal of the Xbox One, the company chose to focus on non-gaming features, such as media streaming and Skype conversations. But what makes streaming and entertainment a true upgrade on the Xbox One, which already has access to almost all streaming platforms? Instant Switching. It allows you to switch between inputs, games, menus, internet explorer, and almost anything else almost instantly. And what's more, it lets you layer the the power of Microsoft partnerships and information across live TV.After Months Of Speculation, Microsoft Officially Reveals Skype For The Xbox One
May 21, 5:33PM
Microsoft’s Don Mattrick pulled back the curtain on the Xbox One at a live event at the company’s Redmond campus, and it wasn’t long at all before the talk turned to software. One application in particular has been the subject of speculation for months, and SVP Yusuf Mehdi confirmed that Skype (which, if you recall, Microsoft acquired for $8.5 billion nearly two years ago) is part of the Xbox One experience. As you might imagine, the Xbox One Skype application allows users to participate in group video chats with their fellow users using the Kinect camera — so there are opportunities for a natural type of ongoing conversation, one that won’t require you to chat for 30 minutes and then disconnect. This could be an “always on” situation. You can answer a call by saying “Xbox, answer call” and then the video screen slides in from the right. Since the Xbox One aims to be your all-in-one “Home Entertainment System,” Skype is going to play a huge role in the overall experience. The demonstration showed a group Skype conversation happening while watching a video, with video quieting down a bit once the call is connected. Microsoft has always talked about being the hub of the living room, and it seems like the newly announced Xbox One is the device that brings its vision to reality. The game-changer with this Skype integration is that you can watch a television show or play a game while carrying on a conversation. This has been attempted, mostly as a “second screen experience,” but to make this a seamless reality is a huge step forward for Microsoft. Until now, you were constrained to the functionality of a particular game supporting voice chat, but this gives you a more personal experience no matter what you’re doing on your Xbox.Here's Your New Xbox One: Microsoft's All-In-One Home Entertainment System
May 21, 5:10PM
Microsoft has revealed its new Xbox, the successor to the Xbox 360. It's a next-generation console, with plenty of power under the hood, but it's also clearly about consolidating your digital entertainment and operate as much more of a lifestyle device.Watch Microsoft's Xbox Reveal Event Live Right Here, See The Future Of Console Gaming
May 21, 4:59PM
Microsoft is about to unveil the next Xbox home gaming console, and they're broadcasting the entire event live for all to watch. There will be thrills! Spills! Chills! Maybe some actual hardware, unlike at Sony's PlayStation 4 reveal. Check it out above, or if you're in an environment where you can't listen in, or just prefer glorious words written by Greg Kumparak to these newfangled moving pictures, check out our live blog.Hotspot Shield Crosses 10M Installations On Android And iOS, Showing Strong Appetite For Mobile VPN
May 21, 4:47PM
Virtual private networking is a great way to accomplish a number of things, including making sure that your secrets stay your own, protecting against malware attacks, and getting around the geoblocking of audio and video content from networks, labels and basically anyone who wants to restrict your sweet, sweet access. It's understandable, then, that as computing increasingly goes mobile, VPN would get more popular on mobile, too.Live Blog: Live From The Reveal Of Microsoft's Next-Generation Xbox
May 21, 4:38PM
It's Xbox day! Almost exactly 8 years after the announcement of the Xbox 360, Microsoft is back with another one. We're live on the ground at Microsoft's Xbox campus in Redmond, where the company is about to show its next-generation console for the very first time. We'll be bringing you the news as it breaks with our up-to-the-second liveblog. Join us, won't you?After Getting Booted From Apple's App Store, Mobile Privacy App Clueful Returns On Android
May 21, 4:23PM
Clueful, the mobile privacy app Apple booted from its App Store for being too revealing -- or possibly because of its own behavior -- is staging a comeback. This time around, Clueful's maker Bitdefender is targeting Android users instead, with plans to reveal what the apps on your phone are doing, and how your privacy may be compromised in the process.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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