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Songza Founders Talk About Newly Launched Club Songza, Competition From Apple, Pandora
Jul 06, 3:00AM
Songza is one of the hottest music streaming services on the market, with a special feature called Concierge that matches specific, expertly crafted playlists with activities it thinks you might be doing, based on time, day, and your preferences. Up until very recently, Songza was an entirely free experience with a few visual ads (never audio ads) to help pay the Songza bills.AT&T Considers Selling Your Browsing History, Location, And More To Advertisers. Here's How To Opt Out
Jul 05, 10:39PM
Good news, everyone! Wait, no. Not that one. The other one. Bad news, everyone! AT&T is considering selling your usage data (location, web browsing history, etc.) to advertisers, having seemingly decided that it's been too long since everyone was mad at them. Here's how to opt-out of the program before it begins.Bing As A Platform Will Allow Microsoft To Compete With Google For Developer Cred
Jul 05, 10:00PM
Microsoft knows how to build platforms, so when it announces a new one, it’s worth taking a closer look. Until last week, Microsoft mostly wanted you to think of Bing as a search engine that could compete with Google. At its Build developer conference, however, the company made a surprise announcement: Bing is now also a developer platform. Microsoft is opening up tools like Bing’s Entity API, speech capabilities, optical character recognition, translation and a number of other tools for developers of third-party apps. It’s also bringing its existing Maps API under the Bing Services umbrella. Microsoft describes these services as “an intelligent fabric” that it uses to build products “to help people interact with the world's knowledge and their surroundings in a more human way.” Microsoft already uses some of these capabilities internally, but it’s now opening them up to others, as well. The Entity API is the highlight of the Bing services. If Microsoft plays this smart, it could establish Bing as the go-to platform for developers who need easy access to information about the real world for their apps. While not everything from Bing’s advanced Satori Entity engine — Microsoft’s version of Google’s Knowledge Graph — will soon be available through the Entity API (Microsoft has not announced a launch date for the Entity API yet), the company believes it will allow developers “to build scenarios that augment users' abilities to discover and interact with their world faster and more easily than they can do today.” As Microsoft’s Director of Search Stefan Weitz told me during a brief chat after Microsoft announced the new Bing developer services, there had been some discussion inside the company about making these tools available to developers outside of the company. It’s a very good sign that those in favor of opening the platform up to outsiders won this fight. The limitation right now is that some of these new Bing services will at least for now only be available for Microsoft’s own platforms, including Windows 8, 8.1 and Xbox One. Given Microsoft’s push to get more and better applications onto the Windows 8 platform (in the form of more “metro” apps), this move makes sense in the short-term, but if Microsoft really wants to turn Bing into a developer platform, it will have to open all of these services to developers on all platforms. Microsoft knows that it’s competing for developers’Ask A VC: Lightbank's Paul Lee On The Art Of Finding Your Co-Founder
Jul 05, 9:30PM
In this week's episode of Ask A VC, Lightbank partner Paul Lee stopped in the studio. Lee, who is based in Chicago, joined Lightbank as a Partner in February 2011 and has led investments in BabbaCo, Udemy, ElaCarte, Skyvu, and Contently.Meet Consano, The Crowdfunding Platform That Wants To Help Cure Cancer [TCTV]
Jul 05, 7:44PM
Crowdfunding has been a godsend for getting lots of projects off the ground that otherwise may not have attracted dollars from traditional powers-that-be in retail manufacturing, music, movies, and the like. So at a time when the federal dollars that typically fund medical research are under more constraint than ever, doesn't it make sense to bring that same model that has worked so well for wristwatches and rock albums to work for curing breast cancer and new methods for lung transplants? That's what Molly Lindquist believes, so she founded a non-profit organization called Consano for allowing people to browse through vetted medical research projects at select universities and research institutions, and then contribute funding directly to the ones they find compelling.This Tiny, Portable Laptop Stand Will Finally Fix Your Posture
Jul 05, 7:02PM
"The Roost--stop hunching over your laptop," I read, back and neck aching as usual. I had been working at my laptop like a gargoyle since early in the morning. But in the Roost, a laptop stand that's raised almost $100,000 on Kickstarter, I've finally found a solution. Enter James Olander, a literal rocket scientist who decided that designing systems at Lockheed Martin wasn't for him anymore.This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: Boxee Bows Out, Samsung And HTC Suffer And Moto X Unmasked
Jul 05, 7:00PM
Boxee got bought by Samsung this week, and announced that it would be closing down the Boxee Cloud DVR's cloud DVR feature. So that's done. Both Samsung and HTC disappointed investors, albeit in very different ways, and Motorola's next big play got some early details.Local Food Delivery Service Fluc Goes Live In Palo Alto And Menlo Park
Jul 05, 5:00PM
People like to eat, and generally don't like to cook. All of which means that food delivery is becoming all the rage among startups lately. There's a whole new food delivery service, called FLuc, opening up for service in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, hoping to let people pick and choose all their favorite foods and have them delivered for a small fee."Made In America"
Jul 05, 3:51PM
The five day work week. Chevrolet. Grand Funk Railroad. Steel plants on the shores of Lake Michigan. This is America. There is a rebirth happening right now. It's happening all over the country. Pockets of makers here. A consumer electronics company there. A startup accelerator in beautiful Harbor Springs, Mich.. They're appearing all over this land. And it's all heavily advertised. "Made in America" is, sadly, in vogue right now. "Imported from Detroit", "This American buys American." All bumper sticker catch phrases fueling America's greatest innovation: capitalism.No More 3D TV On The BBC Please, We're British - And Glasses Are A Hassle
Jul 05, 3:30PM
The BBC has been running a pilot 3D broadcast program for the past two years. But not for much longer. It's decided to pull the plug on 3D TV production, in the face of massive audience 3D ennui -- and the hassle of misplaced 3D glasses.Samsung's Quarterly Earnings Suffer On Slowing Growth, Gives Apple Room To Shine In The Fall
Jul 05, 3:11PM
Samsung has missed expectations for its quarterly earnings guidance, which is bad news since those expectations were already pretty low. The slowing growth of the smartphone market dominator is being attributed to lacklustre Galaxy S4 sales. Samsung's premiere handset has reportedly sold 20 million units since its launch according to a recent report from Yonhap News, however.How Health Trackers Could Reduce Sexual Infidelity
Jul 05, 3:01PM
I wear a health tracking watch that monitors minute-by-minute my heart rate, calories burned, steps taken, and if I’m sleeping. Anyone who had access to my data, like a spouse, could tell when I was exercising. Most importantly, they would know if I was having sex — and how intense it was. Indeed, I inadvertently discovered that people knew whether I was engaging in sexual congress after I gave my health tracker data to a friend and he wryly quibbed about my night time activities. I instantly realized that it will become far more difficult for anyone to cheat on a spouse or fake an orgasm, thanks to a radical transparency in daily exertion that will follow health trackers as they become ubiquitous. Sexual Infidelity Health trackers give me a daily read-out of my minute-by-minute exercise and when I’m sleeping. Here, for example, is the calorie burn profile of weight-lifting at the gym: Notice from 7:15pm to 8:45pm, I have a steady state of calorie burn around 5.7 calories per minute. It also records my steps as I walk between lifting stations (in the graph below, I start walking more than usual at the same time I’m at the gym). Sex looks quite different: it has a bi-modal caloric burn distribution (i.e. lots of calorie burn at the beginning and end). Most importantly, I wasn’t walking much while I was burning calories (not shown). Were I married, my wife might like to know why I burned 100 calories between 1:07 to 2:00 am, without taking a single step, and fell asleep right afterwards. Many married couples hold joint online accounts for Facebook and email, and even more share their passwords. Anyone looking at my exercise readout that night would instantly know that I was getting a sweaty workout. Skeptical readers may claim that not all infidelity happens at night, and that clever philanderers could simply claim that they were hitting the gym, when they were actually knee-deep in sin hotel. But, as we’ve seen above, sex looks quite different than weight-lifting. In fact, the profile of sex looks distinct from any exercise I’ve recorded myself doing, including weight lifting, sprinting, yoga, martial arts (capoeira), TRX, spin class (stationary cycling), grocery shopping, and cleaning the house. For reference, the first graph is Bikram Yoga and the second is a spin class. It’s important to note that health trackers aren’t perfect measuresAviate Reveals A Smartphone Interface That Adapts To You & Your Surroundings
Jul 05, 3:00PM
Given the challenges faced by Facebook Home, an Android homescreen replacement app which makes interacting with the social network easier for mobile users, it's wise to be cautious about the chances for success of other, alternative "intelligent homescreen" apps. Apps like Andreessen Horowitz-backed Aviate, for example, which though still in alpha format was recently thrust into the limelight following a recommendation on Reddit.Goodbye Mr Silva - Now It's Time To Test Tech City Yourself
Jul 05, 2:11PM
It was December 2009 and I was headed to a Christmas party at Number 10 Downing Street. This wasn't exactly a regular diary date for me. Two years in to working for TechCrunch out of London and it had proven harder than I'd thought to attract the attention of government people to the concerns of technology entrepreneurs and startups. This was despite kidnapping the Culture Secretary's Twitter account. I guess Twitter wasn't big enough a deal in 2009.Google Glass Could Soon Get Device Locking, Music Player And 'Boutique' App Store, Firmware Reveals
Jul 05, 12:28PM
Google Glass is still a pre-release product that's fairly rough around the edges, compared to a lot of shipping consumer hardware, but new clues (via Slashgear) from the latest firmware update suggest that there are a number of practical additions coming to the device. Those include a Glass app store dubbed "Boutique," which would be a welcome addition for app discovery, as well as a locking mechanism that would let it be locked down when not in use using a swipe gesture code combo.Google Ordered To Amend Its Unified Privacy Policy In Europe By September
Jul 05, 10:52AM
Google's unified privacy policy continues to draw the attention and ire of data protection watchdogs in Europe. In the latest development, the U.K.'s ICO has confirmed it has written to Mountain View to confirm the privacy policy raises serious questions about Google's compliance with the UK Data Protection Act.HTC Suffers Another Bad Quarter, With Profits Down 83% In Its Q2
Jul 05, 9:42AM
HTC has just put out unaudited results for its Q2, with profits down 83% on last year. The Taiwanese phone maker, which is battling for oxygen in the fiercely competitive Android OEM smartphone space dominated by South Korea's Samsung, said profits came in at NT$1.25 billion ($41.63 million), below analyst expectations, with earnings per share after tax standing at NT$1.50.Solve Media Lands $6M From New Atlantic, First Round, AOL And Others For Its Fast-Growing CAPTCHA Advertising Platform
Jul 05, 9:40AM
You know those “CAPTCHAs” you run into from time to time during your Web surfing sessions and Internet escapades? Well, a startup named Solve Media has developed a way to upgrade and monetize those pesky CAPTCHAs and, as my colleague Anthony Ha recently detailed, is beginning to see real results. In fact, TechCrunch has learned today that Solve Media this week closed a $6 million round of series B financing, led by New Atlantic Ventures, with contributions from First Round Capital, AOL Ventures, BullPen Capital and others. The new round, which co-founder and CEO Ari Jacoby says the company will use to expand its sales and engineering teams so that it can continue working on new ways to provide ant-bot security solutions to publishers, brings the startup’s total investment to $15 million. But for those unfamiliar, CAPTCHAs are those security mechanisms one finds when taking actions across the Web that require us to input a random set of letters and numbers so that, say Ticket Master knows that a human being is buying tickets and not some bot or evil supercomputer. Founded back in 2009, Solve Media has been on a mission to re-imagine CAPTCHAs, allowing advertisers running “Type-In” CAPTCHAs to show display ads, video ads or prompt users to type in a brand name or message instead of just serving users with those fuzzy alphanumeric puzzles. The idea behind Solve Media’s CAPTCHA alternative is to enable publishers to see supplementary revenue from the impressions and clicks taken from these ads and messages, while giving advertisers a new way to get their messages in front of consumers and use similar ads to run as a pre-roll before their videos. In fact, it’s a method that Solve Media co-founder and CEO Ari Jacoby claims deliver 10x higher brand recall than standard display ads. As Anthony described last month, Solve saw over 1 billion engagements with its Type-In ads last year and expects to exceed that number in the second quarter of this year alone, expecting to hit 4 billion for the year total. As a result, the company is on track to see $13 to $16 million in revenue this year. Jacoby also tells us that the startup is now adding “hundreds of publishers each month” and is working with over 100 major brands, like Unilever and InterContinental Hotels Group, attracted by Solve’s claims that its average click-through rate is nowOliver Samwer, Marco Boerries And Sonali De Rycker Join TechCrunch Disrupt Europe
Jul 05, 8:22AM
We're delighted today to announce the first round of speakers for the first-ever TechCrunch Disrupt Europe conference, to be held in Berlin this October. Disrupt Europe will feature an outstanding slate of global startups, influential speakers, guests and more. The conference lands in Europe just as TechCrunch has seen double-digit growth in unique global visitors over the previous year. While other speakers will be announced shortly, the first speakers at Disrupt Europe we're announcing are:Jordanian Startup Dakwak's Translation And Localization Platform Helps Web Sites Go Global
Jul 05, 6:02AM
Jordan might not seem like the most obvious place for a tech hub, but the country is leading the Middle East's growing startup industry. 500 Startups' current class features two Jordanian companies, including Dakwak, a Web site translation and localization platform that wants to help small- to medium-sized businesses go global in the shortest amount of time possible.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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