Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.
Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.
Wacom Reveals Cintiq Companion Windows 8 And Android Tablets, Intuos Pressure-Sensitive iPad Stylus
Aug 20, 3:00AM
Wacom promised a standalone tablet solution earlier this year, to be revealed this summer, and now they're revealing not one, but two such devices. The new Cintiq Companion and Companion Hybrid bring Wacom's pressure-sensitive graphics power to creative pros in standalone devices. There's more affordable pressure-sensitive fun for iPad users, too, with the Intuos stylus.Tesla Model S Earns Highest Safety Rating Ever From US Agency
Aug 20, 2:42AM
The Tesla Model S earned a 5-star safety rating, both overall and in each individual category, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The company claims that the Model S achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars. The best part of the company's release was this badass factoid: "While the exact number is uncertain due to Model S breaking the testing machine..."Instagram Cracks Down On Connected Apps Using "Insta" And "Gram"
Aug 20, 1:44AM
Instagram has updated its brand guidelines to ban apps that feature either the word ‘Insta’ or ‘Gram’ in their names, and it has begun sending emails to existing apps requesting that they change those components ’within a reasonable period’. The emails specifically call out a few updates to the Instagram Brand Guidelines that restrict the use of things like logos and the full ‘Instagram’ name. Now, they’re even more specific. An email sent to the Luxogram team, for instance, reads as follows (emphasis ours). We appreciate your interest in developing products that help people share with Instagram. While we encourage developers to build great apps with Instagram, we cannot allow other applications to look like they might be official Instagram applications or endorsed or sponsored by us. As we hope you can appreciate, protection of its well-known trademarks is very important to Instagram. For example, it has always been against our guidelines to use a name that sounds or looks like "Instagram" or copies the look and feel of our application. Similarly, as we have clarified in the new guidelines, use of "INSTA" and "GRAM" for an application that works with Instagram is harmful to the Instagram brand. It is important that you develop your own distinctive branding for your applications, and use Instagram's trademarks only as specifically authorized under our policies. The two new points that Instagram indicates that Luxogram is treading on are the fact that it uses ‘gram’ in its name, and that (a highly customized variant of) the camera logo is being used. Instagram notes that a response to the email is expected within 48 hours and that a ‘reasonable period’ will be provided to fix these items. Though the Instagram name itself has always been protected by trademark and by the company’s API guidelines, the terms ‘Insta’ and ‘Gram’ have not. In fact, until the recent changes to the brand policies, use of those terms were actually encouraged by Instagram’s API documentation. You could use ‘Insta’ or ‘Gram’, but not both together in the name of the app. So the new rules exhibit a pulling back of sorts when it comes to the branding and naming of apps that connect to Instagram. While Instagram, and by extension Facebook, cannot stop apps that don’t use its API from using the terms, the continued use of that connection is now dependent upon apps not using either term in theirUK Govt. Destroyed Journalists' Hard Drives In Failed Attempt To Stop NSA Story
Aug 20, 12:19AM
The plot thickens. British authorities reportedly destroyed hard drives in an attempt to stop the Guardian from disseminating stories about classified mass-surveillance projects. Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger details how security experts from British intelligence agency, GCHQ, told him that the Guardian would have to either hand over their information or have their hard drives destroyed.Graft Concepts Wants To Be The Swiss Army Knife Of iPhone Cases
Aug 20, 12:08AM
Card slots. A bottle opener. Pepper spray. Defense against a .50 caliber bullet. Whatever you might need on the go, people are thinking of ways for you to integrate it right into your iPhone case. But Y Combinator startup Graft Concepts is trying to cover all your basic needs with one case, using a simple latched frame and interchangeable backplates. Named Leverage, the case's frame alone is meant to be a bumper for the phone and comes with either a plain backplate for $40 or a card holder (which fits about five cards) for $50. Additional backplates range from $7 to $30 based on design and material.Zillow Prices Follow-On Offering At $82 Per Share To Raise $205M
Aug 19, 11:29PM
Zillow, the real estate listings juggernaut, priced its follow-on offering to its IPO at $82 per share. The company is selling 2.5 million shares, or raising about $205 million. The $82 figure is a bit lower than Friday’s closing price of $91.22, as the company’s shares have slipped by more than 7 percent over the past day. Additionally, existing shareholders are putting 2.52 million shares up for sale. The underwriters of the deal also have the option to buy an extra 750,000 shares from Zillow itself. Citigroup is the leading underwriter, while Goldman Sachs Group & Co, Allen & Company, Canaccord Genuity, Pacific Crest Securities and JMP Securities are also participating. The company, which reported quarterly revenue of $46.9 million, is trying to fend off competitors like Trulia. Zillow itself said it plans to use the additional capital for general corporate purposes, like sales and marketing activities, general and administrative matters and capital expenditures. The company said it also might use the funds for acquisitions. Trulia similarly had a follow-on offering of about $150 million earlier this year. In its last earnings report, Zillow posted a 69 percent year-over-year increase in revenue along with record traffic of 61 million users in July. But the company is still operating at a net loss, with losses per share widening to $0.30. That was still 10 cents better than what analysts had estimated on average. The company also expanded by announcing that it intends to buy New York listings site StreetEasy for $50 million in cash. That potentially brings up to 1.2 million monthly visitors into Zillow’s folds and gives the company a stronghold in New York City, one of the country's most concentrated and biggest real estate markets.At This Rate, Nokia Will Be The Only Windows Phone OEM By The Holidays
Aug 19, 11:21PM
The monthly Windows Phone report from the AdDuplex group is out for August, and is essentially a repeat of July's figures: The Lumia 520 is crushing other Windows Phone handsets, and Nokia is quickly becoming the de facto OEM of the platform as HTC slips.This Is How Maker Studios Scales Video Production For The YouTube Generation
Aug 19, 11:00PM
As one of the earliest multichannel networks on YouTube, Maker Studios has built a pretty big business out of putting talent first. Founded four years ago by some of the biggest YouTubers of the time, the company was designed to provide its creators the tools to collaborate with one another and create really compelling videos.BotObjects Vows To Put A 3D Printer In (Almost) Every High School
Aug 19, 10:49PM
BotObjects, an intriguing 3D printing outfit that builds real, full-color additive prints out of multiple colored plastic filaments, has announced that they will offer free printers to select high schools in the United States and the UK.YouTube For Android Gets Major Makeover, Lets You Minimize Videos While Browsing And Searching
Aug 19, 10:49PM
Google today started rolling out a major new version of YouTube for Android. This update is one of the most significant for the service in a long time and introduces a cool in-app multitasking feature that lets you minimize the screen while you browse channels or perform searches. It also features Google's standard "card" interface.Losing Our Childhood To LinkedIn
Aug 19, 10:03PM
What's scarier than a 14-year-old girl choosing her sexiest Facebook profile pic? Maybe a 14-year-old girl inflating her resume on LinkedIn. Childhood used to be a time of self-exploration, but the Internet is pushing kids to define themselves early and put that facade on display. While online tools could give ambitious youth a leg-up for the future, they force that future on some too soon.The Nvidia Shield Seemed Like A Fringe Device, But It's Actually A Mobile Gaming Must-Have
Aug 19, 9:59PM
Nvidia went a little outside of its comfort zone when it built the Shield, a portable gaming device based on essentially stock Android with an integrated hardware controller. I wasn't sure what to make of it when it was announced: Was it a reference device for potential Tegra partners? Simply a showcase for what its mobile graphics processors can offer devs and device-makers? Or a true competitor to the 3DS and PS Vita, a genuine consumer product with true mass-market appeal?Leaked Revenue Figures Illustrate Need For Hundreds Of Patch Layoffs
Aug 19, 9:03PM
Yesterday I ran estimates on Patch's revenue, yielding the point that, given the scope of the proposed cuts to its staff, the hyper-local news service does in fact have a shot at reaching profitability this year. A reader helpfully pointed out a leaked document from Patch, detailing its year-to-date advertising incomes. It's time for a round of "how good were our estimates?" Let's play.Matthew Panzarino Joins TechCrunch As Senior Editor
Aug 19, 8:53PM
Matthew Panzarino has been a professional photographer, hobbyist chef, hardware tinkerer, independent Apple blogger, and most recently the Managing Editor at The Next Web. He has made a name for himself in the tech media world as a writer relentlessly covering Apple and Twitter, in addition to a broad range of startups. Less obviously, he has also impressed us with the scrappy, competitive news operation he helped build at TNW. And so, after a year of trying to hire him — which at one point involved a long drive to his home in Fresno — we’re pleased to welcome Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) to TechCrunch as a senior editor. He’ll continue covering interesting companies, while working behind the scenes to help the rest of the team develop great stories. Like this, this and this.Personal Security Startup MyPermissions Adds Real-Time Protection For Twitter
Aug 19, 8:52PM
MyPermissions, a startup offering a suite of security protection and privacy tools, is today becoming the first service to offer live protection for users' Twitter accounts. What that means is MyPermissions will now be able to alert you in real time as new Twitter applications access your personal information, tweets or direct messages or gain the ability to post tweets in your name.Nextpeer, Which Brings Multiplayer Mode To Mobile Games, Comes To Android
Aug 19, 8:30PM
Nextpeer, an Israeli startup that’s looking to make every mobile game multiplayer-enabled, is landing on Android after racking up about 10 million monthly actives in its network on iOS. The company’s SDK basically offers a deeper version what earlier mobile-social gaming platforms tried to do by letting players compete directly against friends or random players in both asynchronous and synchronous tournaments. “When people think about playing together in mobile games, we want the first thing that goes through their head to be Nextpeer,” said Shai Magizmof, the company’s CEO and co-founder. Their pitch is that multiplayer mode boosts player retention, as people can compete against real friends for the highest score. Earlier mobile-social gaming networks like OpenFeint focused on leaderboards and a news feed of player activity, which is less engaging than an actual live tournament. The startup says that the SDK integration takes a few hours of work and it manages push notifications, Facebook challenges, analytics and cross-promotions. The company started off slowly with barely just a handful of titles until a game earlier this year called “A Bike Race of Ninja Temple” took off. Then they started racking up titles quickly, reaching about 2,000 games in the network on iOS alone. That brought them to 15 million unique players and 10 million monthly actives in the network. Now they’re coming to Android with about 100 titles in the waiting, and are planning to support Unity and build an enterprise-level SDK to allow bigger studios to customize their integrations. The company has raised about $2 million from private investors and has about 15 employees. Many, many other gaming platforms like OpenFeint, DeNA’s Mobage and Papaya Mobile have tried to accumulate a network of users through giving third-party developers social features. But the monetization part of the model hasn’t always worked given that Apple and Google already provide decent payment mechanisms for markets in developer countries and have their own competing products like Game Center. Nextpeer, which was originally going to rely on a virtual currency-centric model for monetization, has since switched toward doing cross-promotions and advertising. It’s not unlike what San Francisco-based Chartboost does across its network of 16,000 games.Late To The Game, Is VMware Turning Against OpenStack Or Embracing It?
Aug 19, 7:56PM
For the past few days I've been thinking about the remarks VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger made in a Network World interview last week.GoDaddy Acquires Local Business Data Provider Locu
Aug 19, 7:07PM
GoDaddy is acquiring San Francisco-based local business data provider Locu, the companies are announcing today. The startup, founded at MIT in 2011, is currently being used by over 30,000 businesses, largely restaurants, as well as spas, salons, and other local businesses like accountants, law services, photographers, home remodeling companies, and more. Locu helps the businesses get their unstructured data into more structured formats, so they can then promote and share it with other services via Locu’s platform, including Yelp, YP.com, Foursquare, TripAdvisor and Facebook. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Locu and GoDaddy had been working together since May, when GoDaddy first integrated Locu’s Website Builder, which allowed businesses an easier way to create, manage and update their menu and services from either web or mobile. “Locu epitomizes what GoDaddy is all about – both companies are hell-bent on helping the 'little guy' thrive on the Internet," said GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving in a statement. "Locu is comprised of amazing technologists who have taken the very complex problem of helping small businesses 'get found' wherever consumers are looking and are solving it through elegant, technology-based services.” The startup’s goal, explained co-founder Rene Reinsberg last year, was to take the “messy, distributed data sets” that can’t be easily understood through more automated means, like web crawlers for example, and add structure to that data through a combination of both machine learning and crowdworkers. Locu employs a team of workers who are trained in how to use its special markup language to tweak, correct and adjust the data after the machine-learning side of the system picks it up from around the web. Initially, Locu targeted the restaurant vertical, specifically restaurant menu data. It later began expanding into other local business verticals to collect their data, including price lists and specials, and began partnering with third parties to make better use of that data online. Once data was in Locu, merchants could claim their profiles then post changes, updates and deals, which would then be synced around the web to other services, like Yelp, OpenTable, TripAdvisor and elsewhere. Businesses could also add their Locu data to their own websites via WordPress or with just a few lines of code. Just this month, the company announced it was opening up its publisher platform, making its data available to all third-party sites, without the need for them to access its API. Though LocuBeating Up, Dunking, And Dropping The Olympus TG-2 Tough Camera
Aug 19, 7:03PM
While we normally focus on flagship hardware on TC these days, I thought this new Olympus tough camera - an upgrade to the TG-1 released last year - was interesting enough to feature. Why? Because it's not every day you can hand a camera to a team of toddlers and get it back in one, working piece.Microsoft Launches Skype For Outlook.com In The US, UK, Germany, France, Brazil And Canada
Aug 19, 7:01PM
Today Microsoft announced that Skype integration inside its Outlook.com email service is now live and out of preview in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Brazil and Canada. The combination of Skype and Outlook.com brings together two of Microsoft's most popular services, and provides the email service with a material competitive edge in its war with Google's Gmail. Outlook.com has enjoyed a quickly growing user base that expanded organically, and also via a massive infusion of Hotmail users, who Microsoft shunted over as it shuttered the older service in favor of the new.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.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks
