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Tow Choice Wants To Take The Hassle Out Of Calling For Roadside Assistance
Sep 14, 2:29AM
Once, on a brisk autumn night months and months ago, I went for a run around a park and promptly lost my car keys in the dark. The next hour was spent Googling local tow services and hoping that my phone's battery wouldn't die, and the hour after that was spent sitting at a picnic table under an ancient oak tree trying to keep warm. If only Tow Choice existed back then. I met with co-founders Dave Kozuki and Robert Cheng at Disrupt SF's Startup Alley, where the jovial pair expressed their desire to build an Uber for tow trucks to better serve motorists in need.Harbingers Of Apps To Come, Here Are Four Google Glass For Fashion Hacks We Saw At Disrupt
Sep 14, 12:43AM
With an abnormally high population of Google Glass owners in one convention center and ShopStyle's API open to participants at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, it should come as no surprise that a number of hacks combined the two.Microsoft's Now-Deleted Anti-iPhone Commercial Is The Funniest Thing From Redmond Since Windows RT
Sep 13, 10:10PM
It’s Friday, kids, so calm down and have a laugh. Do this: Stop caring about Apple and Microsoft and Google and the phone in your pocket and the platform of your dreams and all that. Instead, giggle at the following video clip in which Microsoft takes on Apple in a way that I honestly did not see coming. Microsoft knew that the clip would cause controversy, and they yanked it quickly, likely as planned. Whatever. It’s still farking hilarious and worth watching. If you can’t laugh, you can’t take a joke and that means you are three points of calcification from being a statue. Laugh! Enjoy: Go nuts if you want but I’m busy laughing. Have another coffee. Top Image Credit: Sean MacEnteeAsk A VC: Early Twitter Investor And Spark Capital Partner Bijan Sabet On Founder Personality, Investment Syndicates And More
Sep 13, 9:35PM
In this week's episode of Ask A VC, Spark Capital founder and general partner Bijan Sabet joined us in the studio to talk about investment syndicates and much more. Sabet was one of the early backers of Twitter (which just filed its S-1 with the SEC for a public offering yesterday) in 2008 and served on company's board from 2008 to 2011. Sabet also led investments in Tumblr (acquired by Yahoo), Jelly, Stack Exchange, RunKeeper, Foursquare, Boxee (acquired by Samsung), OMGPOP (acquired by Zynga) and thePlatform (acquired by Comcast).Gillmor Gang Live 09.13.13 (TCTV)
Sep 13, 8:17PM
Gillmor Gang - Keith Teare, John Taschek, Dan Farber, Roberts Scoble, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today.Ark Launches Rapportive-Meets-Mailbox Email App In Pivot To Marketing Intelligence
Sep 13, 8:15PM
Need to do some homework on who you're emailing? You could search their name on Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn, but on mobile that's a lot of taps, and it's hard to know if you've got the right John Smith. So Ark has just launched a mobile email client that pulls in all the social profiles of the people you're emailing with so you can quickly do research on business contacts or stalk your friends.Mailbox's Gentry Underwood Would Rather Move Slow And Get It Right
Sep 13, 8:00PM
In an interview backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013, Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood said that the company is actively working on an Android version of the app, and mentioned that ephemerality may be involved in forthcoming "whiz bang" features down the line. Mailbox doesn't have the same "move fast" mentality as some other companies, most notably Facebook. The company was bought by Dropbox in March and only implemented Dropbox integration for attachments in July. Most recently, the company announced cloud search for Gmail which was surely one of the most clamored-for features since Mailbox's launch in February of this year.The Government Wants To Define Who Qualifies As A Journalist
Sep 13, 6:18PM
Journalists and netizens have mixed feelings about a long-sought federal media shield law that is headed to a vote in the Senate. The Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 would protect designated journalists from revealing their sources against a subpoena. Dozens of established media outlets are thrilled about the law, which was derailed in 2009 after WikiLeaks ignited a global debate about a new kind of journalism. But, after 3 years, no member of Congress seems willing to add in protections for leakers like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden. “The world has changed. We're very careful in this bill to distinguish journalists from those who shouldn't be protected, WikiLeaks and all those, and we've ensured that,” Schumer said. “But there are people who write and do real journalism, in different ways than we're used to. They should not be excluded from this bill,” said author Senator Charles Schumer. Schumer, who has been cozying up to the tech elite, fought California Senator Diane Feinstein to expand the working definition of journalist to include bloggers (thanks, Chuck!). Feinstein wanted to law restricted to “real reporters” who earn a salary. The current amended law [PDF] would give protection to bloggers and permit a judge to decide whether any new form of writer qualifies for protection. Paul Boyle, Senior Vice President at the Newspaper Association of America, believes the law would have protected two AP journalists from federal investigators, who were going after them for exposing a thwarted terrorist plot. Still, there’s no love for Assange, Snowden, or any of the future data leakers that may contribute valuable information to our democracy. “Once we reach the point at which we even allow Congress to set parameters for who should, and who should not be considered a journalist, we’ve gone too far,” wrote Techdirt’s Mike Masnick. “Because we know that setting that precedent will lead to further encroachments down the road. If congress defined the act of journalism, rather than the person, we wouldn’t have to worry about ad-hoc judicial determinations of who qualifies for First Amendment protection. But, that would require the government’s willingness to extend the First Amendment to WikiLeaks. They are evidently not prepared to do that. The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 13-5 and is on the way to a full vote in the Senate.With Automatic Photo Import, Days Gets One Step Closer To Having Users Share Everything
Sep 13, 2:54PM
Days by Wander launched back in May with a very difficult mission: to change the way you think about photo-sharing. While some think that pictures of your feet or coffee are too mundane for photo-sharing to Instagram or Facebook, Days asked you to share as many photos as possible, mundane or otherwise. To help usher in this type of behavior, Days didn't allow photo imports, as they wanted users to share pictures the same way they take them, which is a lot. Today, however, the app is updating with a new feature: photo imports.Woot's Founding Team Returns As Mediocre Laboratories To Experiment With E-Commerce
Sep 13, 2:02PM
A little more than a year after Woot founder Matt Rutledge left the revolutionary daily deals company he sold to Amazon, he's bringing the team back together to hack e-commerce once again. The new company, called "a mediocre corporation," is being designed to build up and test out new ways of selling products to customers online.Intel Has Acquired Natural Language Processing Startup Indisys, Price "North" Of $26M, To Build Its AI Muscle
Sep 13, 1:52PM
Intel has made another international acquisition in its push into artificial intelligence technology: it has bought Indisys, a Spanish startup focused on naturual language recognition. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it is reportedly "north" of €20 million ($26 million). It comes just two months after news broke that Intel acquired Omek, an Israeli maker of gesture-based interfaces, reportedly for about $40 million.Seenth.is App Helps Music Fans Wrangle Their Favorite Artists' Multiple Social Media Feeds
Sep 13, 12:33PM
Seenth.is lets music fans hone their obsession by making it easy for them to track the most interesting social media updates from their favorite performers. The iOS app (an Android version will be released by the end of this year) aggregates and filters content from sources including Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and SoundCloud accounts of musicians and fans and presents items based on relevancy rather than chronological order, so you can see which items are likely to go viral before they do.Chris Kemp Steps Down As CEO Of Nebula, The OpenStack Startup
Sep 13, 11:00AM
Chris Kemp, a former NASA CTO is stepping down as CEO of Nebula, the company he founded to provide hardware and software systems for building OpenStack cloud services. Kemp will become the company’s chief strategy officer and continue to serve as a member of the Nebula board of directors. Gordon Stitt will replace Kemp as CEO starting September 23. Stitt is a veteran technology executive. He co-founded of Extreme Networks, now a publicly traded company. Kemp is one of the more well-recognized executives in the cloud world. He is one of the co-founders of OpenStack, the open cloud initiative. He founded Nebula with much fanfare at OSCON in 2011. At the time he talked about how his company will revolutionize computing for decades to come. Two years later, the company launched Nebula One, the company's "Cloud Controller," a hardware appliance that turns server racks into a scalable on-premise system that combines compute, storage and networking into one machine. Nebula is growing, Kemp says. But with that in consideration, questions inevitably surface why the company needs a change in leadership. Kemp said simply that Stitt has the experience for the job. Kemp’s switch is illustrative of a transition at Nebula. But the change in roles is not so unusual. Founding CEOs often become strategists for the companies they start, leaving the job as CEO to someone with more experience. Cloudscaling and Piston Cloud have both had changed in leadership with the CEOs both remaining as founding executives of the team. Both companies are also startups in the OpenStack ecosystem. Neither of these companies are showing tremendous growth and the same seems evident with Nebula. The question, overall, has to be about OpenStack and its own ability to scale. If it can become a universal cloud infrastructure than Nebula, Piston and Cloudscaling has an opportunity to grow considerably. If it does not then a company like Nebula will need to adapt to the demands of the market.iPad App mem:o Is A Simple Data Visualization Tool For Design Lovers
Sep 13, 5:15AM
Technology makes it easy to turn the minutiae of our daily lives into useful data sets, but sometimes it feels bleak seeing every experience or memory broken down into pie charts and bar graphs. mem:o is a unique visualization tool that takes life-logging beyond spreadsheets by transforming data into striking images influenced by Dutch graphic design. The iPad app is free for download and includes two boards, with the option of adding more boards via an in-app purchase.Facebook Sunsets Credits, Transitions To Local Currencies To Boost International Payments
Sep 13, 2:37AM
Facebook launched its virtual currency Credits in June 2011 to simplify payments. In reality, Credits were a nightmare for international payments due to fluctuating exchange rates. But last night, the sun set on Credits and Facebook completed its transition to local currency payments. It will help developers make more money, smooth payments, and solidify Facebook as an international app platform.Import.io Turns Web Pages Into Spreadsheets For Getting Out The Data That Matters Most
Sep 13, 1:32AM
Import.io participated in the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt to show off its service, which makes data from a website more accessible by turning pages into spreadsheets for pulling relevant information. Chief Data Officer Andrew Fogg explained that web pages are designed for humans to read. But machines need other ways to understand information. Using Import.io, the data can be queried either manually or through an API.Outgoing Turner CEO Phil Kent Sees Big Opportunities For The Company's Media Camp Incubator
Sep 13, 1:24AM
Before the five startups taking part in this year's San Francisco MediaCamp took the stage at Demo Day, the gathered investors, journalists, and tech/media industry folk were addressed by Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent, who predicted big things for the startup accelerator. Apparently this was the first time Kent has attended a demo day — which isn't as bad as it sounds, since this is only the second one in San Francisco, and only the third MediaCamp demo day overall. Kent said he's "very proud" of the accelerator — the monetary investment from Turner is relatively small, but he pointed to the "time and talent of our executives" who are made available."Free Massive Online Education Provider, Coursera, Begins To Find A Path To Profits
Sep 13, 12:50AM
Online education providers may very well disrupt the higher-education establishment, but first, these for-profit companies need to find a way to finance the mammoth technical infrastructure needed to support millions of students. It's a challenge that all mission-based businesses wrestle with, and why many have wondered whether Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) providers will ever become big business -- or be around in five years -- let alone "transform higher education," as they've so often promised.Twitter's New "Verified" Filter Lets Celebs Hob-Nob In Peace
Sep 12, 11:34PM
Life is hard for famous people. You’re trying to @ reply with your celebrity friends on Twitter, but the conversation gets drowned out by rabid fans and spammers mentioning you. So Twitter’s begun rolling out to people with verified profiles two new filters for the Connect tab. Filtered, which attempts to cut down spam, and Verified, which only shows interactions with other verified profiles. Twitter noted the rollout earlier today and you can see them below in this screenshot, though. Keeping celebrities active and happy on Twitter is a big business for the company, which just filed its S-1 to go public today. Celebrities and their tweets are a big draw for users, who visit Twitter to absorb the latest updates from the actors, athletes, musicians, and other famous folk they love. Twitter capitalizes on that engagement with ad views, so the more celebs enjoy Twitter, the more money it makes. [Image Credit: Jimmy Kimmel]Microsoft Adds IMAP Support To Outlook.com To Entice Mac Users, Developers
Sep 12, 11:33PM
Today Microsoft announced that it has added IMAP support to its Outlook.com webmail product. Outlook.com has over 400 million active users according to Microsoft, making it not only one of the most popular webmail services around. Why IMAP? Demand, likely, and the fact that Microsoft wants developers to take a keener interest in its little email program. In a blog post announcing the move, Microsoft noted that “some devices and apps that haven’t made the upgrade to [Exchange Active Sync]” and that “IMAP is widely supported on feature phones and other email clients such as those on a Mac.” So, it built it in. Outlook.com is a viable Gmail alternative, though one that I fault for lacking a single feature (Priority Inbox, which I cannot live without), but it’s still worth noting that Microsoft managed to build a product that people tend to honestly dig. That’s in contrast to the Hotmail dog days. Outlook.com also supports OAuth, which allows for simple integration into other apps. It isn’t clear how many applications and things of that sort are currently integrated with Outlook.com, though the potential could be sizable given its massive user base. Outlook.com did fine on its own — 1 million users in its first day of life, and so forth — but it was when Microsoft folded the entire Hotmail user base into its roles that it became titanic in size. Finally, a note on something social. I first heard that IMAP support was coming to Outlook.com the same way as a great number of other folks today, on Reddit. The Outlook.com team held another Reddit question session today (an “AMA” in nerd parlance) that was, in fact, great. Answering questions honestly is always refreshing. If you want a look at how to Reddit properly, this is it. Top Image Credit: Bogdan SudituIf 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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