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Following Google's Lead, Zuckerberg Says Facebook Isn't Giving Govt "Direct Access" Either
Jun 07, 10:24PM
Mark Zuckerberg has just taken to Facebook to personally respond to the accusations that Facebook is involved in PRISM, an alleged secret government program that gives the government access to user information, denying that Facebook has ever given any government "direct access" to its servers. This comes just hours after Google responded to the unfolding events regarding PRISM, which reportedly allows the NSA and FBI access to the servers and user information of multiple major US tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple.After Picking Up ExactTarget, Salesforce Buys Enterprise Business Intelligence And Analytics Startup EdgeSpring
Jun 07, 10:01PM
Salesforce is on a bit of an acquisition spree this week. After purchasing marketing software company ExactTarget earlier in the week for $2.5 billion, the sales SaaS giant has announced the purchase of EdgeSpring, an enterprise business intelligence and analytics startup.CAPTCHA Ad Startup Solve Media Says 2013 Revenue's On-Track For $13M-$16M, Should Reach 4B Engagements
Jun 07, 9:59PM
Solve Media, a startup that turns CAPTCHA verification systems into ads, says that it's growing quickly. There were more than 1 billion engagements with Solve's Type-In ads last year, the company says. It will exceed that number in the second quarter of 2013 alone, and it should hit 4 billion for all of 2013. Solve also says that it's on-track to bring in $13 million to $16 million in revenue for 2013.Ask A VC: Redpoint's Chris Moore On What He Looks For In An Ad Tech Startup And More
Jun 07, 9:40PM
In this week's Ask A VC show, Redpoint Partner Chris Moore joined us in the studio to discuss how he sources and spots promising startups, and more. Moore focuses on making investments for Redpoint in consumer internet, online marketing and SaaS companies, and has led Redpoint's investment in Efficient Frontier (acquired by Adobe), Right Media (acquired by Yahoo), Auditude (acquired by Adobe), and IntoNow (acquired by Yahoo). Considering the many successful exits Moore has helped startups navigate through (especially in the ad tech space), we asked him how he knows when a company has the potential to go public vs. stay private, and accept an acquisition offer.Your Arduino Is In My Android Device! UDOO Mixes It Up With An All-In-One Solution
Jun 07, 8:48PM
For most beginning hardware hackers, Arduino is hard and Linux/Android is easy. The folks at UDOO, a Kickstarter project that ends tonight, aim to solve that by mixing the best of both worlds. The UDOO device contains an ARM processor (dual or quad core) as well as an Arduino microprocessor. This allows you to program the Arduino using the tools you're familiar with including a standard embedded Linux install and the associated command-line software.Google: There Is No PRISM Back Door To Our Servers, No Open-Ended Access To User Data
Jun 07, 8:22PM
All of the companies that are allegedly involved in the PRISM surveillance program have now issued short statements saying that they are not participating in this program and that they are not allowing the government "direct access" to their servers. Among these, of course, is Google. The company, however, also just issued a longer statement penned by its CEO Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond.Twilio Raises A $70M Series D As They Consider An IPO
Jun 07, 8:19PM
Twilio, the company whose APIs help developers easily add SMS, voice, and VoIP functionality to their applications, has closed a Series D round of $70M dollars. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, and backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. As part of the deal, Redpoint's Scott Raney will be joining the company's board of directors.iOS 7, OS X 10.9, MacBooks And iRadio: What To Expect At WWDC 2013
Jun 07, 8:08PM
Apple is set to deliver its WWDC keynote address on Monday June 10, and there are bound to be a lot of new things revealed on that day. The exact details remain shrouded in mystery, but as with every major Apple event, there have been lots of leaks and rumors leading up to this one, so we can at least sketch in broad terms what we're likely in for next week.Airport Car Rental Startup Silvercar Ramps Up Expansion, With Plans For 7 Cities By Year-End
Jun 07, 7:56PM
Airport car rental startup Silvercar has increased the number of markets it hopes to launch in by the end of the year, as it seeks to more aggressively make its services available to more potential customers. Now available at three airports, it hopes to add a fourth by the end of the month, and expects to be in seven different markets by the end of 2013.After Quietly Launching Down South, NoChains Wants To Help You To Find The Best Cuisine In NYC
Jun 07, 7:50PM
Picture this: you're traveling somewhere new and when it comes time to eat you want to get a feel for some local flavors. You're not going to want to chow down at the nearby Applebee's in that sort of situation, which is why South Carolina native Rich Winley and Philadelphian Dan Mall whipped up an iOS app called -- creatively enough -- NoChains. NoChains has already soft launched in Austin, TX and Winley's native Greenville, SC, but the two-person team has just set their sights on a much more prominent target for their next public beta: New York.This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Form 1 3D Printer, WWDC, And WWDC
Jun 07, 7:33PM
If you've got that summertime sadness, look no further than this week's TC Gadgets Podcast. In it, we discuss the new Form 1 printer which is meant to compete with the likes of MakerBot, as well as all the upcoming WWDC goodness from Apple, including a revamped iOS 7, the new iRadio, and even some new MacBooks? Maybe?If PRISM Is Real, Why Are All These Tech Companies Denying Participation?
Jun 07, 5:52PM
PRISM is real. Even the U.S. government now acknowledges its existence. The question that remains unanswered, though, is how involved Google, Apple, Yahoo, AOL, Paltalk and Facebook were. These companies are all named as "providers" on the original slides, including the dates the NSA started collecting data from them. The reporter with the most direct access to these documents, Glenn Greenwald, has also now repeatedly stated that the NSA had "direct access" to these company's servers or seized this data from them.Despite Naming Coincidence, Palantir Says It's Not Part Of PRISM Program
Jun 07, 5:52PM
It’s dumb to postulate that, because big data and security startup Palantir has a similarly named product to PRISM, that it’s somehow culpable. And, in an emailed statement to the Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw, Palantir has now refuted that exact claim. “Palantir’s Prism platform is completely unrelated to any US government program of the same name. Prism is Palantir’s name for a data integration technology used in the Palantir Metropolis platform (formerly branded as Palantir Finance). This software has been licensed to banks and hedge funds for quantitative analysis and research.” The startup explains that the Prism software in question is for banks, not for government — though it does count the NSA as a client for other products. YCombinator partnet Garry Tan has backed up this statement, revealing that he helped build the team and code Palantir Prism née Palantir Finance in 2006. Here is Palantir’s description of its product: “Prism is a software component that lets you quickly integrate external databases into Palantir. Specifically, it lets you build high-performance Data Engine based providers without writing any code. Instead, you define simple configuration files and then Palantir automatically constructs the data provider and database code for you. This ensures that all data access goes through well tested, high-performance code paths. Also, you can iterate more quickly because you can modify and reload Prism-based data providers without restarting the server.” The Gawker story is unfortunate, because it is apparently already causing the startup recruitment damage on Hacker News; as mysterious as Palantir likes to play it, sometimes transparency assuages people’s greatest fear. Even if the startup were misleading us in its denial, and/or somehow involved in the government's controversial data-collection program, it’s sort of a paradox: Let's say someone was using Facebook to send nasty messages to random girls … Facebook's fault or that person's? You're using the Internet to download kiddie porn, the Internet's fault or yours? Software products are tools — Bludgeoned someone with a hammer, should ACE Hardware stop selling them? It’s the startup equivalent of the “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” argument. It’s a hard one. Check out Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s explanation of what the company actually does, at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, below:AdMob Founder Omar Hamoui Joins Sequoia Capital
Jun 07, 4:31PM
AdMob founder Omar Hamoui is joining Sequoia Capital, we've learned. Sequoia confirmed that Hamoui is joining the firm as an investment partner and will be starting in a few weeks. Hamoui's mobile ad platform AdMob was sold to Google in 2009 for $750 million, and Sequoia Capital was one of the first investors in the platform, back when AdMob was a one-man team with Hamoui. After Hamoui left Google, he started the incubator Churn Labs (with which Sequoia partnered, as well) along with AdMob's first engineer, Mike Rowehl.Piccolo Automatically Prints Your Facebook And Instagram Photos Every Month
Jun 07, 4:23PM
The growth of mobile devices, smartphones, and social networking services have forever changed the way we take photos. Today, we continuously snap pictures, pausing only to selectively share the best to our network of friends, family and followers on sites like Facebook and Instagram. Today, a new photo-sharing startup called Piccolo is launching into beta with a service that aims to make photo printing easier, by offering a tool that works alongside our current behavior rather than trying to change it.Breather Founder Explains How On-demand Rooms Could Unlock Cities With An App [TCTV]
Jun 07, 4:18PM
Breather is a new startup billed as a sort of "Zipcar for rooms". Announced at the LeWeb conference in London and due to launch later this year, it's closed $1.5 million in funding from Canadian VC Real Ventures, along with Gary Vaynerchuk, Loic Le Meur, Mike Walsh and others. The idea is to have a network of well-kept rooms - sort of mini business lounges - which a user can unlock with a smartphone app. That's it.U.K. Security Agency Also Tapped Into The NSA's PRISM Surveillance Program
Jun 07, 4:00PM
Prism already looked like a pretty far-reaching program, but a new report claims the NSA also gave at least one foreign security agency access to this system. According to a report in the Guardian, the NSA provided the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) with access to Prism since at least June 2010.Instafeed Lets Instagram Addicts Create Custom Photo Feeds
Jun 07, 4:00PM
Want to check out Instagrams from celebrities, artists, brands, or specific topics without cluttering your main feed? Instafeed's free iOS app lets you build and browse custom feeds of Instagram accounts or enjoy pre-curated feeds in a bunch of categories.LaunchRock Aims To Cover All Your Launching Needs With App Deals, Video Production, And More
Jun 07, 3:26PM
LaunchRock is a startup that helps other companies launch — it's best-known for putting up landing pages where beta users can sign up. Now, co-founder and CEO Jameson Detweiler said he's "doubling down" on helping companies launch. That might seem like an obvious step given the startup's name, but Detweiler said LaunchRock's previous expansion efforts have been around "post-launch stuff," focusing particularly on customer acquisition throughout a startup's lifecycle. That approach turned out to be more challenging than expected, Detweiler said, and meanwhile, there are many unaddressed needs when it comes to just getting a company off the ground. The ultimate aim is to provide access to the full range of products and services that a company might need during that early period.Obama Is An Open Government Pioneer, Spymaster Dataholic
Jun 07, 3:24PM
Love him or hate him, President Obama is no hypocrite: he’s been as fiercely innovative at encouraging citizen input to improve governance as he has been in secretly stealing Americans’ private information. Transparent budget spending, crowdsourcing government waste, unprecedented spending on polls, collecting school performance metrics, and rewarding civic app designers have co-existed with a massive expansion in Internet snooping and big-data spying. In short, Obama is a philosophically consistent dataholic — a policy that other innovative/civil liberty-ignoring political leaders, such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have proudly championed. (Note to commenters: I’m not defending Obama’s massive spying apparatus (I find it invasive). I am arguing that we’ll likely have to choose between a civil libertarian and an open government champion.) Many were quick to label Obama a hypocrite after a string of expose’s detailing the National Security Agency’s massive phone and Internet spying apparatus, “It is the very sort of thing against which Mr. Obama once railed,” wrote The New York Times editorial board in an uncharacteristically scathing OpEd. Or, in the blogging equivalent of our Aol cousins at Huffington Post, “GEORGE W. OBAMA”. But, before we brand Obama as some power-hungry George W. look-alike, it’s worth noting that Obama has given extraordinary resources to so-called “open government”, building digital platforms that encourage citizens to monitor, influence, and design public programs. During the multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, he took the risky route of allowing citizens to monitor how the money was spent and track the progress of projects in the groundbreaking transparency websites of Data.gov and Recovery.gov. The data-hungry prez crowdsourced waste monitoring under the aptly titled “SAVE Award,” which recognizes government employees who submit ideas on how to trim unnecessary spending. He oversaw the creation of petition platform, WeThePeople. The widely popular direct democracy system has helped unearth all kinds of latent political movements and helped empower the success grassroots movement to permit consumers to unlock their cell phones. His department of education pioneered an open government website to help parents know which colleges were the best fit and how public schools were performing. His first (failed) pick for a consumer protection agency chief, now-Senator Elizabeth Warren, was primarily tasked with making banking and credit card information more accessible to financially semi-literate citizens. One of the President’s first executive orders was the creation of a Chief Technology Officer, charged with opening up warehouses of government data, like GPS and weather data,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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