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Dropbox's Quest To Make Every App Work Offline
Jul 10, 2:41AM
*Screeeeech* That's your favorite app slamming on the brakes the second it loses its data connection. It seems ridiculous that apps can't function offline, until you realize that cloud data sync isn't some simple technology any developer can afford to build. That's where Dropbox comes in. "Users shouldn't even need to know if they're connected or not" CEO Drew Houston tells me.LG's Secret New Phone, The Optimus G2, Gets Leaked A Month Early
Jul 10, 2:08AM
You know that big announcement LG has scheduled for next month? The one with the invite that more or less shouts "HEY WE'RE ANNOUNCING A PHONE CALLED THE G2 AT THIS EVENT"? Yeah, so, the G2 seems to have just leaked. Whoops!Google Wallet Launches Promotion With Popular Android Apps In A Bid To Increase Its Brand Recognition
Jul 10, 1:55AM
Several Android apps are offering discounts for customers using Google Wallet's "Buy with Google" button as the company tries to ramp up adoption of its payment processing service. The button, which allows 2-click checkouts on mobile apps, is one of the strategies Google is deploying in its multi-pronged attack on PayPal's dominance.Tencent Starts Testing Its Highly Anticipated Games Platform On WeChat, Its Blockbuster Messaging App
Jul 10, 1:17AM
While messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, MessageMe and Path continue to duke it out in Western markets, the place to watch all the real action continues to be in Asia, where apps like Tencent's WeChat, Line and KakaoTalk innovate in China, Japan and South Korea. This week, Tencent, the $72 billion chat and social networking behemoth of China, finally started testing its long-awaited games platform on WeChat, the messaging app that has blown up to 400 million users in about two years. Tencent thinks of WeChat as its first product that might have true global appeal, instead of being limited to the mainland Chinese market. The company said earlier this year that the app now has 70 million users outside of China.Tom's Planner Acquires Gantt Chart Service Competitor Gantto
Jul 10, 12:15AM
Tom’s Planner, a web-based project management service, has acquired a competitor in providing Gantt charts to track projects: Y-Combinator-backed Gantto. The company plans to merge Gantto’s users and features into one platform under the existing brand. Gantto launched its product in 2010, less than one year after Tom’s Planner, and allowed subscribers to create their own charts and presentations to show project progress and management. At the time of acquisition, Gantto had about one-third the amount of its purchaser’s 120,000 subscribers. CEO and founder Tom Ummels tells me that while Tom’s Planner focuses on user-friendly interaction, it lacks the more complex tools that Gantto offers. “In that way we differ, and so we’re hoping now to combine the experience with all the feature-richness with the ease of use of Tom’s Planner.” With his eye on two other industry competitors, Ummels declined to give financial details of the acquisition. Tom’s Planner announced it was buying Gantto for its strong market position and active user base. But of course, those users aren’t guaranteed to stick around once Gantto disappears. Ummels tells me his plan to prevent attrition includes giving all existing users two more months before the service ends. Any time during those months, he says, they can “sign up for free accounts, export a schedule and import it in Tom’s Planner and just have a go at it.” There are many companies in the project management service field, some of which include Basecamp and Microsoft Project, which has over 20 million users. The balance now will be in keeping Tom’s product easier to use while adding in more of Gantto’s features. To that end, Ummels says Gantto features will be introduced as plug-ins, rolling them out as they are developed. With three account options ranging from $0-19 a month, all plug-ins will be available for the most advanced subscription, with some included in cheaper plans.Google Finally Brings Voice Calling To Hangouts, But Not To Its Mobile Apps
Jul 09, 10:50PM
Some Google fans were mighty miffed when Google removed the ability to make voice calls from inside Gmail, but now the feature is back, flying under Google's Hangouts banner. Instead of just being able to place calls from within Gmail though, users can dial up friends and family while poking around on Google Plus or by using the Hangouts Chrome extension.Apple Said To Be Working On "Mogul" Slow-Motion Video Recording Feature For New iPhones
Jul 09, 10:03PM
These days it seems like just about every smartphone player worth its salt is devoting time and resources to upping their camera game, and Apple is no exception. A new report from 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman points to snippets nestled within iOS 7 beta builds that seem to indicate the company is working on a camera feature called "Mogul" that will let users record video at 120 frames per second.Twitter Media Launches Blog To Fight Attrition By Teaching You What To Tweet
Jul 09, 9:45PM
Twitter wants to prove it's not just for broadcasting the mundane details of your life so it's just launched the Twitter Media blog. The site plans to feature great uses of Twitter for "TV, sports, journalism, government, music, movies, social good and beyond". It joins Google Inside Search and Facebook Stories as another media endeavor designed to help inspire our use of today's top technologies.Dropbox Says It Has No Plans To Charge Developers (Or Otherwise Change Its Business Model)
Jul 09, 9:32PM
One of the questions that came up a couple of times during the press Q&A at Dropbox's DBX developer conference: What does today's news mean for the company's business model? Given the impressive user numbers and platform expansion announced today (including a new API to sync data between apps), could Dropbox try to make money from advertising? Or by charging developers? Co-founder and CEO Drew Houston told reporters that's not the plan. Instead, he wants to stick with the company's existing business model, which involves charging subscription fees for pro and business users. In fact, he said that the simplicity of how Dropbox makes money is part of its appeal, because it means there should be fewer surprises down the road.Foursquare Checks In With Feature Phones: A New App For Nokia S40 Phones And An Asha Preloading Deal
Jul 09, 9:31PM
Foursquare has made a name for itself out of the growth in smartphones, but as it tries to build up business in newer markets, it's covering all of its bases. Today the company announced an update to its app for feature phones, specifically for Nokia's range of S40 devices -- which include its Asha handsets, sold and marketed as low-end smartphones. It looks like this may have been the first time in years that this app has gotten attention. Along with the new app, Foursquare's also inked a deal with Nokia to come preloaded on new Asha devices when they hit the market in coming months.Path Doubles Down On Stickers In Version 3.1, Alongside New iPad Design And Real World Friending
Jul 09, 9:08PM
Path added stickers to comments, released a new iPad design, and introduced a new way to add friends in person today. Path introduced stickers in version 3.0 in March to extremely positive feedback. In the first 24 hours after the launch, Path saw a million messages sent and made more money than it had in its entire lifetime as a company.With 200+ Buyers Signed Up, Acquisition Marketplace Exitround Announces First Exit (But Won't Say Who)
Jul 09, 7:58PM
Exitround, the website launched earlier this year where startups can anonymously seek acquirers, is announcing that it has facilitated its very first acquisition. Pretty exciting, right? But what's the startup? Who did the acquiring? Well, co-founder and CEO Jacob Mullins isn't saying. He claimed that he'd like to share details, but the acquiring company wants to keep the deal confidential. (And in this case, the acquirer isn't just trying to keep Exitround's involvement secret. Apparently the acquisition hasn't been announced publicly at all.)U.S. Venture Capital Investment Amounts Doubled In Q2, As Bay Area Companies Raised More Than NYC, LA, Boston Combined
Jul 09, 7:16PM
Total new capital invested in the United States tech industry rose from $1.9 billion in April to $3.8 billion in June, a 100 percent increase in two months, according to quarterly data from CrunchBase. The data, which is specific to the United States, breaks down new venture capital raised by round type, investor, company, geography and more. In the second quarter of 2013, $9.2 billion was invested in over 1,347 rounds. The rounds break down to 500 angel rounds, 306 Series A, 109 Series B, 102 Series C and later, and 330 unattributed rounds. This data set doesn't include some investments, such as private equity and post-IPO investments, and thus is lower than the total funding for the quarter.Keen On… Draper University Of Heroes: Tim Draper Is Looking For The Best And The Brightest (Is That You?)
Jul 09, 7:00PM
Do you have spark? Are you a hero? If so, Tim Draper may want to get inside your head. Draper, best known, of course, as the founder and a managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, has founded a "new kind of university" in an old hotel in San Mateo designed to attract the "best and brightest".Dropbox Launches Datastore API And Drop-Ins To Sync Data To And From Apps
Jul 09, 6:59PM
Today Dropbox launched two powerful new APIs for syncing and viewing data within apps that will help the company expand beyond the traditional "file" storage system it has built its service on. The Datastore API can save any structured data or metadata for an app. It lets developers protect their users' data even when they make changes offline. Drop-Ins and the new native Chooser let apps pull down files from their users' Dropboxes for display within the app. They could make sure you never lose the latest items you add in a to-do app, and can access your cloud-stored photos from any app.Hateya Uses Augmented Reality Glasses To Help Firefighters Escape Burning Buildings
Jul 09, 6:44PM
Firefighters are trained to go into burning buildings, but even with all of this training, they can get disoriented in the pandemonium around them. Hateya, Belgium's finalist for Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2013, says this is a leading cause of deaths among firefighters and a problem that technology can prevent. The team developed a system that uses a helmet with augmented reality glasses, as well as a small computer and sensors inside the firefighters' clothing to keep track of his location. To find his way out, the firefighter would just have to follow the arrows that will appear on the glasses.The Next Version Of Mailbox Adds Its First Integration With Parent Company Dropbox
Jul 09, 6:18PM
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston just announced that the company will be launching a new version of Mailbox, the iOS email app that it acquired earlier this year. This will be the first real integration between Dropbox and Mailbox, he said. The demo was pretty brief, in part because the integration looks pretty straightforward — if you include a link to a Dropbox file in your email, it will actually be viewable from Mailbox as if it was a normal file attachment.Cooliris Continues Push Into China and Russia, Shaking Hands With Tencent and Yandex
Jul 09, 6:10PM
Photo-sharing startup Cooliris is continuing its push into two of the world’s biggest Internet markets, China and Russia. The Kleiner Perkins-backed company has just partnered with Tencent in China to pull images from Tencent’s microblogging platform, Weibo, into Cooliris’ mobile apps. On top of that, it is also expanding its relationship with Yandex, the Google of Russia, to pull images from Yandex’s search engine and its cloud storage product, Disk, into Cooliris. Financial terms of the two deals were not disclosed. Cooliris made its name in 2008 with a browser add-on called PicLens, which would stretch a set of photos over a sphere or display them as a wall you could virtually walk across. It used to make its money through ads embedded in the “photo wall” it rendered in browsers, but since it transitioned to a mobile app strategy in 2012, freemium add-ons will be the way forward, said CEO Soujanya Bhumkar. The company plans to release premium features as part of a subscription plan later in the year, he said. So it makes sense that it’s keen to push further into China and Russia. After its first move into China via a tie up with Renren, aka China’s “Facebook,” in December last year, it enjoyed a 30-fold traffic spike. Bhumkar added that the number of photos that users have interacted with — shared or expanded from the thumbnail view — has also gone up from 300 million to 550 million in the past six months. “We’re expecting to hit new milestones for user growth with these new partnerships bringing us to international users,” he said. About 60 percent of Cooliris’ 3 million iOS users are in the U.S., with Asia its next-largest market at 30 percent. The company is looking to push further into Asia rapidly by working with established names there, he said. This is not its first partnership with Yandex, either. In February this year, it struck a deal with Yandex Fotki, Yandex’s photo hosting service. Yandex currently accounts for about 65 percent of Russia’s search market, and its Disk product rivals Dropbox, with about half of the several million files uploaded daily to Disk photos and graphics, according to Yandex. Currently, Cooliris’ app already pulls content from Facebook, Evernote, Tumblr, Flickr, Google+ and Google Drive, Twitter and Microsoft’s SkyDrive. That combined pool gives it to date about a billion photos accessible within its app, more than double the 350 million itWedding Snap Rebrands, Launches Group Photo & Video Sharing Service Eversnap
Jul 09, 6:01PM
Wedding Snap, a 500 Startups-backed online and mobile photo sharing startup is today expanding beyond its original focus - weddings, obviously - in order to target a wider user base who want to privately share photos and videos for other occasions like parties, conferences, events, reunions, trips, and more. Though Wedding Snap is still live, it will now slowly be transitioned under the new branding: Eversnap.More Tickets Are Now Available For The 8th Annual August Capital Party In Silicon Valley
Jul 09, 6:00PM
TechCrunch's annual party at August Capital is a few weeks away and we just released another round of tickets. The first two batches went within 24 hours so jump on these quick. Space is limited. We've hosted the TechCrunch summer party with VC firm August Capital since 2006. This year, as in years past, we'll be partying on August Capital's beautiful, sunny Sand Hill balcony on Friday, July 26. The party starts at 5:30 p.m. and goes til 9:00 p.m.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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