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In Wake Of Outcry Over Censorship, Tumblr Explains Its NSFW Policy (Kind Of)
Jul 20, 3:19AM
So, I was searching for pornography on Tumblr this morning. (It was work-related!) Word was, the now-Yahoo-owned blogging network made a significant change to the way adult-themed blogs could be discovered on the site, which even further hid their content from public consumption. Tumblr finally addressed the issue this afternoon, following user outcry.Nate Silver Is Leaving The New York Times For ESPN
Jul 20, 1:15AM
Nate Silver, the statistician who rose to national prominence for his scarily accurate predictions of the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, is leaving The New York Times for ESPN. Silver will take the Five Thirty Eight brand with him to the sports giant, according to The Times' Brian Stelter .Apple To Buy Transportation App HopStop - Mass Transit To Return To Apple Maps?
Jul 19, 9:55PM
Apple has agreed to acquire transit navigation app HopStop.com, according to a report in Bloomberg. AllThingsD has apparently received confirmation from an Apple spokesperson. I've reached out to both companies and will update if I hear back from either of them. HopStop offers walking, taxi, and bicycle directions, but is probably most useful when it comes to mass transportation. When Apple broke away from Google and launched its own mapping application for iOS 6, on top of all the other problems it had, it removed transit directions and instead directed users to download other apps — including HopStop. (Indeed, it was through those recommendations that I became a regular HopStop user.) So acquiring the company could be a way to bring that information back into Maps.Ask A VC: Resolute Ventures' Mike Hirshland On Why He Hates Party Rounds (And Why Founders Still Raise Them)
Jul 19, 9:35PM
In this week's episode of Ask A VC, Resolute Ventures' founder Mike Hirshland joined us in the studio to talk about seed-stage investing, party rounds and how startups should structure boards.Poppy Is Now Courting Developers To Build 3-D Augmented Reality Games For Your iPhone
Jul 19, 9:25PM
Remember Poppy? It's that device -- now on Kickstarter -- that lets you watch and record 3-D photos and videos using your iPhone. It's kind of like a Viewmaster for the digital age. Now it's looking to court game developers to build for its device.Motorola Will Officially Unveil The Moto X In New York On August 1
Jul 19, 9:17PM
Well, here we go. After a considerable amount of teasing (not to mention cheerleading from Google execs during earnings calls), Motorola Mobility is finally ready to unveil its long-awaited Moto X smartphone to the world, and it's going to do it at a special event in New York City on August 1. Actually, you know what? "Unveil" may not exactly be the right word -- the veil has basically been off for months if you go the sheer number of leaks we've seen make the rounds.As The Series A Crunch Tightens, Teams of Coders Are Looking To Find New Jobs On DeveloperAuction
Jul 19, 8:59PM
DeveloperAuction, an online marketplace that lets startups submit salary bids to talented engineers, has expanded to allow teams of coders and designers to put themselves up for auction as a group. "As a general trend around the Series-A Crunch, we've seen a huge influx of talent on our marketplace in the last two months who are on there because their current company has been unable to secure fundingThrive Capital's Kushner Looks To Build A Modern Health Insurer With $40M For Oscar
Jul 19, 8:38PM
With new parts of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) going into effect next year, Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner is betting that health insurance — an area long considered off-limits to tech entrepreneurs because of its legal and political complexities — is finally ripe for change. Kushner, whose venture fund Thrive Capital has $200 million under management with bets in Instagram, Nasty Gal and Warby Parker, has amassed a team to revolutionize health insurance through a new stealth startup called Oscar. While the company isn’t sharing details about the product yet or even talking publicly, you can bet that its health insurance offering will likely have a more customer-friendly experience that is transparent about costs. The startup is actually licensed as a health insurance operator in the state of New York, so it isn’t some kind of front-end for existing providers, sources tell us. It will have its own plans so it can offer something truly differentiated. The company launches later this fall and it will only be for New Yorkers at first. Here’s the landscape: next year, some very key parts of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act go into effect. There will be an individual mandate, where consumers will be required to have coverage or pay a penalty. New health insurances exchanges are being established where consumers can compare and contrast different plans. Then there are also subsidies provided for those near the poverty line who can’t afford coverage. This is already having a profound effect on health care insurance costs. New York state insurance regulators say rates approved for next year, are at least 50 percent lower on average than this year’s rates, according to The New York Times. What that means is that there is a fresh market opportunity for new health insurance providers, especially ones that offer exceptionally good customer service, design, marketing and leverage big data. Kushner put together a team including his old Vostu co-founder Mario Schlosser, a Harvard Business School classmate Kevin Nazemi who oversaw marketing for Microsoft’s CRM programs and Fredrik Nylander, who ran engineering and operations and Tumblr. On the company’s board is Charlie Baker, who ran insurer Harvard Pilgrim out of Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance exchange before the Affordable Care Act was passed. The company also includes other long-time health care executives, who have at least a collective 250 years of experienceModCloth, Now With Over $100 Million In Annual Revenue, Is Going Mobile First
Jul 19, 8:31PM
ModCloth, the indie fashion site best known for its vintage-inspired dresses, is today offering the first look into its revenue situation since 2009. The e-commerce startup, which is backed by roughly $48 million in outside funding, says it did over $100 million in revenue last year, and is now growing faster than 40 percent year-over-year. That’s up from the $15 million it had previously reported in 2009. To compare that figure with other well-known e-commerce industry players: Fab.com did $120 million in revenue last year, and is now valued at $1 billion; Beyond the Rack estimated around $200 million for 2013; Rue La La had previously estimated $400 million in sales for 2012; and Gilt was at $600 million+ in 2012. Meanwhile aggregator Fancy speaks of sales differently, claiming around $100,000 in transactions per day. The majority of ModCloth’s sales are those for its well-known dresses, though other merchandise on the site, such as swimwear and shoes, will see seasonal bumps, explains company CEO Eric Koger, who founded ModCloth with wife Susan back in 2002. Half Of ModCloth’s Shoppers Coming From Mobile By Year-End News of the company’s progress comes at a time when the e-commerce industry as a whole is learning to adapt to the new mobile landscape, which affects not only where and when people shop, but also how. Earlier this year, ModCloth began tapping into this trend, launching first on iPad in February followed by the iPhone app release later that spring. Koger, who recently described ModCloth’s business as one where all future development will proceed with a “mobile-first” mindset, says that the company’s progress on mobile has gone well, speaking of softer metrics like “increased engagement,” as well as ones that more directly affect ModCloth’s bottom line. “We have more transactions and more purchases on the app – pretty significantly versus the mobile web app,” he says. “We’re predicting that more than 50 percent of our shoppers are going to be coming from mobile devices by the end of the year.” To put that in perspective, it was only last Christmas when the company noticed the surge in mobile visits had begun accounting for nearly 30 percent of ModCloth traffic. A year later, and they expect the number to grow to half. It’s a shift that is not without its challenges — and not just for ModCloth, but for any e-commerce company that wants to maintainGmail Offers Full-Screen Compose Again
Jul 19, 8:31PM
Google has just launched a brand new, but relatively ineffectual, feature for Gmail users: a full-screen compose option. Enabling this option will push the compose window to the center of your inbox, expanded across the majority of the screen for a better viewing experience.Microsoft Experiences Its Biggest Drop Of The Century As Shares Fall 12 Percent
Jul 19, 7:30PM
Microsoft shares (NASDAQ:MSFT) dropped 12.2 percent, representing the biggest single-day drop in over 13 years. On April 24, 2000, shares dropped 15.6 percent -- since then, Microsoft has never experienced such a shelling. Yesterday, the company announced disappointed earnings and took a massive $900 million writedown due to unsold Surface RTs.This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Surface RT, Moto X, And The Seattle Meetup
Jul 19, 7:00PM
Hello and welcome to another Friday. It's a scorcher out there, AMIRITE? But we're here to cool things down a bit with yet another episode of the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast.Blink(1), The Cute Little Indicator Light, Is Kickstarting Itself Into A Second Version
Jul 19, 6:49PM
Blink(1), a Kickstarter favorite that launched a year ago is coming back for more. The indicator light, which plugs into your USB and simply blinks on command, is now selling for a pledge of $25 and sports updated features including USB 3.0 support, dual-sided LEDs, and improved design.Adobe Launches PhoneGap 3.0 With New Plug-In Architecture, APIs And Better Tools
Jul 19, 6:30PM
Adobe today launched version 3.0 of its PhoneGap open source mobile app development platform. PhoneGap has long been one of the most popular tools for developers who want to write cross-platform mobile apps in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.Apple's Developer Center Goes Down For Over 24 Hours
Jul 19, 6:10PM
If you're trying to get some iOS development done and just can't get to the tools you need, don't worry: you're not alone. Apple's Developer Center is down. Hard. But why?Tracks Pivots From Photo Sharing To Social Self-Expression With The Launch Of Its New Kanvas App
Jul 19, 6:00PM
The team behind group photo sharing application Tracks has launched a new app today called Kanvas. The new app is aiming to create a whole new wave of social self-expression by giving its users the tools to easily make fun, creative, mixed media projects that they can share with friends.Microsoft Still Hopes You'll Buy A Surface RT, Launches New "Surface Vs. iPad" Ad
Jul 19, 5:50PM
Sometimes it feels like Microsoft just can't help itself. After yesterday's disastrous earnings report was made even worse because Microsoft had to reveal how badly the Surface RT had been selling, the company today released a new "Surface RT vs. iPad" ad. In this new installment, poor Siri also has to learn that the iPad doesn't have a kickstand.Job Listing Suggests Motorola Mobility Is Starting To Focus On Wearable Tech In Earnest
Jul 19, 5:00PM
Heads up, wearable tech aficionados: Motorola Mobility is looking to produce some new wearable gadgets and it wants some help. The Google-owned company quietly posted a job listing yesterday looking for someone to fill the role of senior director of industrial design for wearables -- according to the post, that person will "provide strategic leadership, champion innovation and institute best practices to create a new world-class wearable's [sic] design group within Motorola."San Jose State's Bold Experiment In Online Ed Disappoints, Suspends Pilot With Udacity
Jul 19, 4:47PM
The largest university system in the world has suspended a bold experiment in massively open online course (MOOC) education, after disappointing student outcomes. Last January, San Jose State University announced a partnership with online course startup, Udacity, to offer super-low cost remedial college courses to the masses. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal reports that pass rates for the courses were between 20% to 44%, well below the 75% typical of traditional courses. In a joint statement, the two organizations said that they will “make improvements and adjustments, ensure that campus policies and processes are all in alignment, and increase internal and external communications and opportunities for discussion and dialogue.” On the bright side, SJSU has had much better success with Harvard and MIT’s joint online education project, EdX. In a science course that combined online and offline components pass rates skyrocketed to 91%, compared to 55% without the online component. Part of Udacity’s disappointing performance can be attributed to the students themselves. According to the WSJ, “20% were high school students, 62% of students in the pilot were not regular San Jose students, and all of the matriculated ones had failed a remedial math class before. (Among the regular, so-called matriculated students who had previously failed, 29% passed the Udacity course.)” In fairness to Udacity, It’s hard overestimate impact from different student populations. For instance, much of the success wrongly attributed to some experimental k-12 charter schools is due to the fact that they can select the best students. For better or worse, there are vast differences in motivation and ability of the top and bottom students, which can reflect enormous differences in class outcomes. In all likelihood, this is just a short, temporary setback to the inevitable changes that are coming to higher education.Uber Takes The Rocky Road To Deliver You S'more Ice Cream
Jul 19, 4:00PM
Coffee, Coffee BuzzBuzzBuzz! Today, for the second year in a row, Uber will be delivering ice cream -- vanilla, chocolate, and everything in between -- in 33 cities in 10 countries. You might think its a Half Baked idea. But after all, isn't having ice cream delivered to you at the tap of a button the Americone Dream?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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