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Chris Devore Talks Up Seattle As A Solid Tech Hub
Jul 23, 1:36AM
Each time we run a meet-up we like to have a brief interview with some of the major players in the industry. This time we spoke with Chris Devore, creator of Founders Co-Op and a serial entrepreneur and general Seattle cheerleader.
Kiip Will Power Rewards In Yahoo Japan's Mobile Apps
Jul 23, 1:30AM
Kiip, a startup that delivers real-world rewards to app users when they perform desirable tasks and reach key milestones, is announcing its integration with Yahoo Japan — marking the first time Yahoo Japan has integrated a third-party service into its app, according to Kiip co-founder and CEO Brian Wong. As in other Kiip campaigns, users of the Yahoo Japan iPhone and Android apps will see "achievement ads" offering them rewards after completing certain activities. However, unlike most other Kiip campaigns, the rewards in this case will take the form of Yahoo's T-Points. In other words, Kiip is providing the technology for Yahoo Japan to bring T-Points from the web (where they are already available) to mobile.Facebook Remembers Its First Chef, Josef Desimone, After Tragic Motorcycle Accident
Jul 23, 1:21AM
Although CEOs and the first engineers are often the ones most lionized for creating the founding blocks of great companies, there are others who shape corporate culture in ways that are sometimes hard to appreciate or see. Early Facebook employees today are reeling from the loss of the company’s executive chef, Josef Desimone, who was poached from Google back in 2008. He died of an apparent motorcycle accident, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg wrote today: I have some very sad news to share. This morning Josef Desimone, our executive chef, was involved in a motorcycle accident and I'm sorry to report that Josef has passed away. Josef was a Facebook legend and institution. “Chef Josef” joined us in 2008 and built our culinary team from a handful of employees in a single café into a global team with dozens of world class restaurants. He never compromised on quality while maintaining total attention to detail. Josef played an incredibly important role in defining our culture during those first years and right up to the present. Away from Facebook, Josef was just as energetic and driven. Almost every weekend he was volunteering with veterans' organizations, hosting firefighter breakfasts or supporting some other valuable cause. He had a strong belief in giving back more in life than he took, and it shows in all the people who mourn him today. We will find a way to permanently honor Josef's legacy at Facebook soon. For now, let's remember and celebrate the passing of a great friend, devoted mentor and inspirational leader. Many Facebook employees are posting memories of Desimone. Current employees referred me to the press department and I’ve reached out to former employees as well. Facebook hasn’t added anything beyond Zuckerberg’s statement yet. In any case, people remember him as someone who valued high quality and who was deeply caring and empathetic. He joined Facebook five years ago and set up the company’s culinary teams in multiple offices around the world. Said one early Faceboook engineer Wayne Chang, Desimone would often exclaim, “I have the best job in the entire world!” on countless status updates. He also took care to be inclusive of many cultures in Facebook’s menu and daily meals. One time, when an engineer asked him to host a feast in honor of a Persian festival named Nowruz, he went out of his way to research Iranian cuisine by goingMeet The Winners From The TechCrunch Seattle Meetup
Jul 23, 1:06AM
If you weren't in Seattle last week for our TechCrunch meetup, we've got the pitches from the winners for your viewing pleasure. StowThat, RedRide and Pigeonews took the top-three prizes from a field of 18 companies that gave one-minute pitches to our judges before an audience of about 900 people at the famous Showbox Theater.How To Stop 3D Printing's Race To The Bottom
Jul 23, 1:03AM
Today's big news, courtesy of Quartz, is about the expiration of laser sintering patents that will change the face of 3D printing in 2014. In short, the reason "good" 3D printers - namely the ones that create solid, injection-molded style pieces - aren't cheap or readily available is that older 3D printing companies have held the laser sintering process hostage. For example, the Form One printer by Form Labs infringes on these patents even though they detail a printer that uses a laser to fuse fine powder to create an object and the Form One uses a liquid.Behind On Loan Payments, Online Gaming Company Zattikka Could Fold As Soon As August 2
Jul 22, 11:06PM
Online gaming company Zattikka suffered a precipitous decline on the London Stock Exchange today, falling a staggering 64 percent in normal trading. The cause of the plummet is simple: Zattikka is behind on its loan repayments and today confirmed that discussions are ongoing with its creditors. That is troubling given that a loan payment of £0.275 million, which was due on the 9th of this month, remains unpaid. The debt owed comes via a firm that Zattikka purchased, Hattrick.Happy Birthday To Alex Wilhelm, Our Newest TechCrunch Writer
Jul 22, 10:38PM
Alex Wilhelm is turning 24 today, but he’s been writing about tech since his sophomore year of college. So he’s joining us now with four solid years at The Next Web, where he wrote about Microsoft, finance, tech policy and the broad range of startups that have helped define this era. He’ll continue writing about those same topics and will also be focusing on monetization on mobile, and the changing nature of online software business models. It’s worth adding that Alex has become a bit of a monster on Twitter, regularly pumping out a flood of at-replies to anyone who comes near… including to the official accounts of large content sites like The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed*. This is fine by us. In fact, since TechCrunch is such a freewheeling place anyway, we expect him to really start going to town here, like so many others have before him. Please wish our newest TechCrunch writer a happy birthday and warm welcome. (Check out these tumblrs somebody made of him at-replying if you dare. The obligatory disclosure about us having a parent company in common with HuffPo.) (In a less obvious disclosure, he and I both grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, although we went to rival high schools and were years apart — in fact we have no friends in common back home. This brings the total number of TechCrunch staffers from or based in Oregon to 5. Whoo!). Photo by Spencer Chen.A Peek Inside Science Inc.'s Santa Monica Tech Startup Studio [TCTV]
Jul 22, 10:11PM
TechCrunch has written quite a bit about Science, the Los Angeles-based startup "studio" that's helping to create and grow some of the more interesting companies on the tech scene today. So when a few of us TechCrunch TV folks were in Los Angeles earlier this month, we made it a point to head over to Science's Santa Monica HQ to get a firsthand look at what it's really like inside. After all, a video is worth at least 1,000 words, right?Memorability Lets You Create & Narrate Beautiful iPad Photo Books, No Printing Required
Jul 22, 9:57PM
There's no shortage of mobile photo book applications on the market today, but a majority of these are focused on taking digital creations and turning them into offline, printed products. Memorability, a recently launched iPad photo book app, is different. Instead of bringing online web printing services to the new, smaller screens of smartphones or iPads, the app instead suggests that we no longer need to print out our photo scrapbooks at all - and that an iPad-only solution actually has advantages of its own.eBay CEO John Donahoe: I Wish We Could Buy Airbnb But We Can't Afford It
Jul 22, 9:55PM
At Fortune's Brainstorm Conference in Aspen today, eBay CEO John Donahoe joined Airbnb's co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky onstage to talk about how they mentor each other (you can watch the live stream here). The two CEOs have been informally advising each other for a few years, after being introduced through eBay board member and Airbnb investor Marc Andreessen. In fact, Donahoe asked Andreessen who the smartest founder was in Silicon Valley, and he immediately responded with Chesky's name.5by Wants To Be Your Web Video Concierge, And It's Taking Aim At Phones And TVs, Too
Jul 22, 9:35PM
I like to think we've all been here at one point: You're bored out of your wits and rather than try to do something productive, you just spend hour after endless hour on YouTube. The problem that tends to come up in those situations is that, after a while, you just can't find videos that strike your fancy any more. Tragic, I know. As it happens, that's exactly what Greg Isenberg, founder and CEO of a Montreal-based web video startup called 5by is trying to fix. 5by takes a decidedly different approach to how it finds and plays videos for you, though it may look a little familiar if you've spent some time mucking around with mobile music apps.Netflix's Original Content Plans Go Beyond TV Shows To Include Stand-Up Comedy And Documentaries
Jul 22, 8:37PM
Following a second quarter that saw slower-than-expected subscriber growth, Netflix's letter to shareholders touted the progress that the company has made in original content and its future plans. Perhaps most interesting is its intention to expand beyond TV shows to stand-up comedies and feature-length documentaries. That's not entirely new information — Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos had already stated his plans to expand into comedy in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. And it already streams John Hodgman's comedy special Ragnarok exclusively. However, as far as I can tell, it hadn't previously mentioned its documentary plans.Netflix's Q2 Misses Due To Lower-Than-Expected Subscriber Adds, Earns 49 Cents Per Share On $1.07B In Revenue
Jul 22, 8:10PM
Netflix just released its second-quarter earnings report, missing analyst expectations with lower-than-expected subscriber numbers. For the second quarter, Netflix reported earnings of 49 cents per share on revenues of $1.07 billion. That compared to earnings of 11 cents per share on sales of $889 million last year.Google Brings Cloud Print To Windows, Makes Printer Sharing Easier
Jul 22, 7:45PM
Google today launched a number of updates to Cloud Print that finally bring it to Windows and make it easier to share printers with others. Even Google knows that there are still some occasions when you just need to print something, so for the last few years, the company has been steadily improving this service. At its core, Cloud Print allows you to share your printers with others and print virtually anything from anywhere. There are plenty of “cloud-ready” printers on the market, which you can connect to the Internet and manage from your Google Cloud Print accounts. Until now, however, Google only supported Cloud Print in Chrome on Chrome OS. There are also some third-party tools for OS X and Windows, but until today Google itself didn’t really offer any support for third-party operating systems. Today’s launch of the Cloud Print Service for Windows allows admins to easily connect their existing printers in their schools and businesses. The service runs in the background and connects your printers to Google’s cloud. It’s officially in beta, requires that Chrome is installed and is compatible with Windows 7, Vista and XP with the Windows XPS Essentials Pack installed (but then, you really shouldn’t run XP on your computers anymore…). The other tool Google is launching today is Google Cloud Printer for Windows, which is essentially a printer driver for Windows that lets you use Cloud Print just like any other printer that’s installed on your computer. With this, you can print to Cloud Print from any application on your computer. With today’s update, Google also now makes it easier to share printers with anybody nearby by simply providing them with a link. You can manage access this way and also set limits for how many pages a given user can print per day (something schools will surely appreciate).Sir Michael Moritz To Join Us At TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco
Jul 22, 7:32PM
The original journalist-turned-investor, Michael Moritz, will be joining us onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco next September. In his over three-decades-long tech career, Moritz, who rose from humble beginnings, has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, written two books about Apple, consistently topped the Forbes Midas List, and has either sat on or currently sits on the boards of Stripe, LinkedIn, PayPal, Yahoo, Google, Kayak and Zappos among others. Moritz’s leadership as Chairman at Sequoia has been marked by efficiency and focus. And the lucrative $25 million co-investment in Google with competitor Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Moritz saw the firm through some of the most major tectonic tech shifts of our time before he stepped away from day-to-day proceedings last year. At Disrupt SF, Moritz will be speaking about the latest shift — the personal economy. Moritz joins other noted investors at Disrupt, including Kleiner’s John Doerr and Sequoia’s Douglas Leone. With founders and CEOs like Marc Benioff and Marissa Mayer, Disrupt SF 2013 is already set to have a stunning speaker lineup. And we still have more to announce in the coming weeks. Disrupt SF takes over The San Francisco Design Concourse from September 7 to 11. Tickets are currently on sale here. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, opportunities can be found here. Michael Moritz Sequoia Capital Partner Sir Michael Moritz is Chairman of Sequoia Capital where he has worked since 1986. Michael represented Sequoia in its investments in Google, Yahoo, PayPal, Flextronics, Kayak, Pure Digital and Zappos.com. He has always had an eclectic set of investment interests and today represents Sequoia's interests in Klarna, Green Dot, and Stripe (two banks and a payments company), LinkedIn (the world's professional nework), Instacart (grocery delivery in an hour), PopSugar (the entertainment and fashion site for women), [24]7 (an outsourcing customer service company) and The Melt (a grilled cheese restaurant chain). Before joining Sequoia, Michael worked as a correspondent for Time; wrote a couple of books, including the Little Kingdom, the first authoritative book about Apple's early years; and co-founded Technologic Partners, the precursor of Venture Wire.Researcher Reported iAd Workbench Hole Before Apple's Dev Center Went Dark, Here's What He Found
Jul 22, 7:20PM
Apple's developer site went down unexpectedly last Thursday and stayed inactive for most of the weekend. The company revealed yesterday that it was because an "intruder" attempted to access personal information pertaining to Apple's registered developers. While Apple continues to work on revamping the Dev Center's security and bringing the whole thing back online, a 25-year-old Turkish security researcher named Ibrahim Balic thinks that it all may have been his fault. But was it?She++ Documentary Features Industry Leaders, Stanford Professors and Students Talking Women In Tech [Video]
Jul 22, 7:12PM
She++, a Stanford community for women in tech, released a 12-minute documentary today featuring Stanford students, professors and alumni discussing gender in technical fields. High profile Silicon Valley leaders like Tracy Chou, a software engineer at Pinterest; Jocelyn Goldfein, a Director of Engineering at Facebook share their personal experiences in the documentary.Frontback Is A Deeply Personal Photo-Taking App To Capture Fleeting Moments
Jul 22, 6:33PM
From the team behind Checkthis, Frontback is a straightforward iPhone photo-taking app to capture the moment as it happens. You launch the app, take a photo of what you have in front of you, take a photo of your face and share the digital collage on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. It’s addictive, very easy to understand, and, more importantly, deeply personal. “People tell us that they want to see their friends, not only what their friends see,” co-founder and designer Frédéric Della Faille told me. “We want to own the selfie,” he continued. The Frontback concept isn’t something new. When you make a post on Checkthis, you can add as many photos as you want, as well as text and headlines. Nearly four months ago, Della Faille first posted two pictures on Checkthis of New York’s beautiful landscape and his reaction. He explained the concept of a ‘#frontback’ at the same time. Over the past few months, I have started noticing that more and more users were posting #frontback pictures on Checkthis. Like in the early days of Twitter, a user invented a new use case — except that this time around, the user was Checkthis’ co-founder. There wasn’t any sort of #frontback wizard tool to ease the process of creating them. Users were only experiencing with this newfound lingo and artistic rules. It’s all about immersing yourself and putting yourself in your friends’ shoes. Enter Frontback, the app. It was released today in the App Store. Now, there is no whitespace around a Frontback photo, absolutely no chrome. The photo itself doesn’t have any filter. It’s just two square-ish photos on top of each other, filling up the entire screen of your iPhone. It’s all about immersing yourself and putting yourself in your friends’ shoes. “It tells so much more than a photo on Instagram,” Instagram designer Tim Van Damme recently told Della Faille. “Two photos change everything,” Della Faille told me. “On Instagram, you share something because it’s beautiful, but you don’t share the context,” he continued. Frontback isn’t another social network. For now, it’s built on top of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. When a friend joins Frontback, you automatically follow him or her, without having to do anything. And of course, you’ll probably start seeing their Frontback posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well. Della Faille now hopes that users will launch the Frontback app toScenes From The Seattle TechCrunch Meetup
Jul 22, 6:27PM
The startup scene in Seattle is for real. More than 1,000 people came to the Showbox theater last Thursday night to mingle, have a drink and hear the pitches from 18 local startups. Here are some scenes from the event and interview with attendees and participants in the pitch-off.Rovio's Latest Bad Piggies Update Is Nothing To Snort At
Jul 22, 5:46PM
Rovio has just released an update to Bad Piggies, the game that turned the tables, this time making the Bad Piggies the protagonists. Players are asked to build vehicles using various tools, boosts, and materials and then traverse the course carrying the bad piggies to their goal. Today, the company released an update that brings 30 new levels, as well as new tools and power-ups. Most notable in the update is the new Super Mechanic power-up, which builds the perfect vehicle for you to complete the course with a three-star score. The update also offers a grappling hook, which lets you fire at surfaces and swing your vehicle to achievement. Along with the new Rise & Swine levels, Rovio has also included super glue, magnets, and “turbo charges” in the arsenal of potential tools. As per usual, these power-ups can be earned or purchased. Bad Piggies is available here.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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