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The Other IPO Roadshow: Design Your Initial Product Offering To Attract Fortune 500 Enterprises
Oct 26, 3:00AM
Unlike consumer products, where early users will join a platform to discover something new, CIO offices in Fortune 500 companies are trained to play it safe. Many companies stick to Oracle, VMWare, EMC and Cisco not because their products are the best in the world, but because no one got fired for selecting one of them.
Jony Ive And Marc Newson Customize An Unreleased Mac Pro For (RED) Auction
Oct 25, 10:49PM
Apple head of Human Interaction Jony Ive and designer Marc Newson have customized a one-off Mac Pro in brilliant crimson for the (RED) charity. Apple is a (PRODUCT)RED partner and often produces editions of its products for the organization, whose proceeds go to fighting to eliminate Aids. The charity recently announced that Apple alone had helped it raise over $65 million. The machine is absolutely beautiful, making me wish that all of Apple’s Mac Pro machines came in colors like this one. The machine is one that Apple has yet to release, announcing only that it would be available in December. The auction has an estimated $40K-$60K price tag attached. Ive and Newson have collaborated on several other one-off items and customizations like a Leica camera, Gold Apple EarPods and a Neal Feay-fabricated desk. The images on the Sotheby’s site appear to be comped together, so it’s likely this isn’t even a final product, but it’s still striking. We’ve reached out to (RED) and Apple to see if they have any more details to share. Jony And Marc’s (RED) Auction has garnered donations from a bunch of other designer types like Deiter Rams, clothiers like Christian Louboutin and artists like George Lucas. For reference, here’s our hands-on video of the “real” Mac Pro from Apple’s event earlier this week.
The NSA's Website (NSA.gov) Is Down
Oct 25, 10:45PM
The National Security Agency’s website has been down for at least 30 minutes. Officials have acknowledged the outage, but won’t say if it was hacked. At least a few Twitter accounts that sound like the elite hacktivist contingent, Anonymous, are taking credit. Official Anonymous channels are just making fun of the outage: To be sure, The NSA’s website has been hacked before. But, we won’t speculate, for fear of perpetuating the kinds of rumors implied by this delightful XKCD comic: While we’re all waiting to figure out what went wrong, feel free to add your own Healthcare.gov jokes in the comments. Update: LOLZ
Pinterest Closes Another Copyright Hole, Inks A Deal With Getty Images, Will Pay A Fee For Metadata
Oct 25, 9:37PM
With a fresh $225 million in its pocket, Pinterest is gearing up to spend a little of it to build out its platform and the data that powers it -- and close up a copyright hole in the process. Pinterest today announced a deal with Getty Images -- the image agency that holds digital rights to some 80 million still images and illustrations and over 50,000 hours of stock film footage. Getty will provide Pinterest with metadata, and in exchange, Pinterest will pay Getty a fee. 
Ask A VC: Google Ventures' Dr. Krishna Yeshwant On The Opportunities For Health-Focused Mobile Apps And More
Oct 25, 9:30PM
In this week's Ask A VC show, we sat down with Google Ventures partner Dr. Krishna Yeshwant in the TechCrunch TV studio.
A Way To Save BlackBerry
Oct 25, 8:59PM
The first smartphone I owned was a Nokia communicator, which I chose because the C++ dev kit gave me the most freedom. When the iPhone appeared I did not switch, because mandatory App Store signing to execute code seemed like a major step in the war on general computation. Eventually I rid myself of Nokia and got an Android acting upon a moral imperative.
Huge Google Shift Points To Faster Search Results
Oct 25, 7:39PM
Researchers at USC have stumbled on a huge change in how Google architects its search services. The result? Reduced lag in serving search queries, especially in more far flung regions (as in, far from Google's own data centres).
Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams' Blogging Platform Medium Opens Signups To All
Oct 25, 7:25PM
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams has a new blogging platform called Medium, which has been a closed-signup affair since its introduction. Today, the platform sent out an email with the news that anyone can now sign in and start writing.
Bang With Friends Rebrands As 'Down' To Match You With Friends Of Friends By Hotness
Oct 25, 6:35PM
After settling a Zynga trademark infringement suit, Bang With Friends today rebrands as Down and reveals its revamped set of dating apps. Down's update lets you browse friends of friends rather than just friends, say you want to date not just are 'down' [to bang] someone, as well as browse the hottest people in your network. And believe it or not, founder Colin Hodge says he wants Down to empower women.
Healthcare.gov Likely Broken Until Key Thanksgiving Deadline
Oct 25, 6:28PM
Healthcare.gov is going to be broken until the end of November, says Jeff Zients, a consultant brought in to fix the beleaguered federal health insurance e-commerce website. On a press conference call, Zients finally acknowledged wide-spread enrollment problems, estimating that only 3 in 10 users have been able to sign up and complete an application (or a measly 700,000 total). "We're confident by the end of November, HealthCare.gov will be smooth for a vast majority of users," said Zients. That estimate should scare the Obama administration: the end of November is dangerously close to the Thanksgiving deadline some experts say is crucial to snagging young, healthy consumers. “If it's not running by Thanksgiving, that's DEFCON 2,” warned MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber, who worked on both President Obama’s and Gov. Mitt Romney’s health care laws. "It's a real problem because people want to get insurance by January, but it's not a crisis.” Health and Human Services has dispatched an army of field salesman and celebrities to convince young “invincibles” to sign up for health insurance, which is needed to subsidize the costs of their elders. In Massachusetts, which has a similar individual mandate, enrollment numbers increased exponentially towards the end of the deadline. But, Massachusetts had twice as long and didn’t have a funky enrollment deadline, where users had to sign up 3 months after the website launched to pick up insurance when the new plan started (for the Affordable Care Act, consumers must sign up by Dec. 15 to get insurance by Jan. 1). Zients says a government contractor that worked on the malfunctioning backend, QSSI, will be taking over the Center for Medicare and Medicaid as the lead developer. However, continuing the White House’s trend of bizarre and abject secrecy, he would not reveal who is part of the “tech surge” to fix the website. [Image Credit]
Wishbone Lets Kids Apply To Have Their Educations Crowdfunded
Oct 25, 6:11PM
80 kids got to attend academic summer camps and after-school programs this year thanks to Wishbone, and today its education crowdfunding platform starts allowing needy children in the Bay Area or NYC to apply for assistance. The non-profit startup has spent the year building out its fundraising and impact fulfillment components. Now Wishbone is ready to scale and redefine the scholarship space.
At Coworking Space Runway, Allan Young Says He's Trying To 'Kill The Idea Of The Garage Startup'
Oct 25, 6:00PM
San Francisco coworking space Runway isn't quite like other shared offices and incubators. Yes, there are still conference rooms, rows of people bent over their laptops, and so on. But there are fewer desks than usual, and, true to the name, everything's organized around a wide central walkway. There's even an igloo-style private space for calls and meetings, which is a pretty cool place to conduct an interview.
Another Member Of Congress Calls Congressional Oversight Of The NSA An Utter Farce
Oct 25, 5:33PM
Members of Congress calling Congressional oversight of the United States intelligence empire flaccid at best, and utterly incompetent at worst, is becoming a trend. Recently in The Guardian, Rep. Alan Grayson called Congressional oversight of the National Security Agency a “joke.” Calling oversight in Congress nothing more than “overlook,” Rep. Grayson also stated that he has “learned far more about government spying on citizens from the media than [from] official intelligence briefings.” Us too, Congressman. The comments of a lone, controversial representative in the House isn’t usually news, but Rep. Grayson’s comments come as a member of a larger grouping that is worth highlighting. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee sent the president a letter, complaining that briefings provided to Congress were “limited” and did not provide “a fulsome accounting of the totality of surveillance activities conducted by the federal government, and in particular, by the NSA.” He went on to repeat a refrain that by now is quite familiar: As a result [of lukewarm briefings], members of Congress regularly read new revelations on the front pages of various newspapers. Even more troubling, members of Congress are left to wonder why the prior briefings provided by the Executive Branch did not cover the material contained in these articles. Senator Patrick Leahy agrees: We sometimes find we get far more in the newspapers — we get crossword puzzles as well — we get more in the newspapers than in classified briefings. Now, you might say, it can’t be as bad as all that, can it? Well, it’s actually worse. Even when you manage, as a member of Congress, to get the intelligence apparatus into the same room as yourself, you have to essentially beg them for answers. Here’s Rep. Justin Amash on the game he is forced to play with the NSA: So you don’t know what questions to ask because you don’t know what the baseline is. You don’t have any idea what kind of things are going on. So you have to start just spitting off random questions: Does the government have a moon base? Does the government have a talking bear? Does the government have a cyborg army? If you don’t know what kind of things the government might have, you just have to guess and it becomes a totally ridiculous game of 20 questions. With members of both political parties in both chambers of Congress shouting that their own oversight
Lots Of Hollywood Interest In Making Bilton's Twitter Book A Movie
Oct 25, 5:29PM
Interest is swirling at Sony and several other major Hollywood studios around Nick Bilton's book "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal", TechCrunch has learned. While we’ve only heard Sony named, word is several other major studios are nibbling at the worm. At least one of the studios involved wants to explore producing the project as an HBO or Netflix series, rather than a feature film. This could be due to the fact that there are a lot of dramatic arcs to cover in Hatching Twitter, coupled with the relative heat around award-winning series from the online video houses at the moment. Bilton’s book about the drama and intrigue surrounding the founding and growth of Twitter to a public company seems like ideal fodder for a Netflix original. Sony is the parent company of Columbia pictures, which it purchased in 1989. Columbia is the studio behind the Facebook drama-mentary The Social Network. That flick wasn’t exactly an accurate history of the company, but it definitely attracted viewers — and awards attention. There are also a few actors looking to attach their names to the product as well, sources tell us. Alexia thinks Elijah Wood was born to play Jack Dorsey. A recent excerpt/summary of the book in the New York Times paints a picture of uncertain origins, founder bickering and jostling for footing and control. As we said in our commentary, it’s a very human story, and those often make good films. Bilton declined to comment on any of the rumors. The Bilton book goes on sale November 5. Twitter is expected to go public on November 6, to the tune of $11.1 billion. As the author noted, sometimes timing is everything.
Late-2013 15-Inch Retina MacBook Pro Review: Apple's High-Performance Notebook Tops The Field
Oct 25, 4:53PM
Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina Display will soon be just the MacBook Pro, period. But this generation two version of both the 13- and 15-inch super slim notebooks with high-res displays is still something many average users will be weighing as an outlier possibility versus the more mainstream MacBook Air. But thanks to price cuts and smart improvements under the hood, Apple's Retina MacBook has grown up a lot since the 15-inch version made its first appearance back in June 2012.
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs
Oct 25, 4:40PM
Say goodbye to a good night's sleep and say hello to night terrors because we have some very special things to share with you today in our ongoing feature, Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs. This week we have Elmo, a vacuum, and a twerking automaton that will soon replace Miley Cyrus. 
Twitter's IPO Roadshow Video Unites Dorsey, Stone And Williams, Emphasizes News And Media Uses
Oct 25, 4:33PM
Twitter has posted media related to its upcoming IPO Roadshow, scheduled to begin next week. The video accompanying the posting unites Twitter co-founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, who all pitch the company to investors together. Seeing all of the founders together pitching the company wouldn’t be such a strange thing with any other firm. But there have been some recent revelations care of the NYT’s Nick Bilton’s new book about Twitter. Tension between Williams and Dorsey has been central to the accounts we’ve seen so far. Dicing apart the video a bit we see the evolution of Twitter laid out in succinct bursts. A simple timeline, which begins with Jack’s famous “Setting up my Twittr” tweet, stretches out. And then there is the canonical Twitter experience, which they describe as a “simple” concept. The video then quickly turns to Twitter’s first major utility application: breaking news. Important events that were either broken or discussed heavily on Twitter flash on the screen. CEO Dick Costolo also makes an appearance, emphasizing that with Twitter, you’re in the middle of a conversation rather than a passive observer to a “broadcast” platform. Which, in the end, is the ideal but not always the reality for Twitter which has had some difficulty getting a large portion of its users to actually contribute to those conversations. After that, there is a bunch of media and a heavy emphasis of Twitter cards, including those showing off Twitter’s Vine video platform. Notably, after all of its forays into media and entertainment, Twitter has just turned its focus back towards fostering the news capabilities of the platform. Just yesterday it hired a Head of News in NBC’s Vivian Schiller, who will work on building tools for newshounds and journalists to use on Twitter. She is also in charge of making sure that people making news view Twitter as a true broadcast platform. The roadshow video putting such an emphasis on news is no accident. As we mentioned when we talked about its new breaking news notification experiment @eventparrot, Twitter is wise to build up the platform as a place to find out things first. Mirroring media found elsewhere on the web or on TV is fine and dandy, but news comes to Twitter first in many instances, and it’s important to foster that, as Twitter struggles to grow its user base at a rapid clip. Costolo stresses
Foundry Group Raises Fourth $225M Fund To Make Late-Stage Growth Investments In The Firm's Portfolio Companies
Oct 25, 4:19PM
Foundry Group has raised a fourth fund, called Foundry Group Select. This new fund is $225 million (the same size as Foundry's previous funds), but has a much different focus. This fund is purely for late-stage growth rounds in Foundry's existing portfolio companies. The firm says it will invest up to $25 million into companies that Foundry has backed through its previous funds. As managing director Brad Feld writes, Foundry has been limited in the amount it can invest in later stage rounds due to the firm's early-stage strategy. 
Join Us For TechCrunch Bangalore
Oct 25, 2:16PM
India’s startup ecosystem is showing some promise. In the first half of 2013, for example, investors dropped $400 million into 141 deals, and startup Red Bus had a sweet $150 million exit. In other words, the time is right for our first ever event in India: TechCrunch Bangalore, which we are hosting with PlatformPlay in India’s tech hub on November 14-15. TechCrunch Bangalore will focus on how to build companies in India that will go global — the question is how and when India’s startups will crack the code. The event will feature a hackathon, startup pitch presentations and startup exhibits. On the second day there will be speakers, panelists and TechCrunch editors (including me!) on stage. In the hackathon, over 400 hackers were shortlisted from over 750 entries. Picked from across the country, these hackers will work in groups to create their hacks in just 24 hours. The following day, each team will get 60 seconds to speed-pitch their creation to a panel of expert judges and audience members. The pitch presentations will showcase 50 startups selected from over 400 entries, each launching their products before a live and online audience. The judging panel for the event will include VCs, investors, seasoned entrepreneurs and tech and product experts. The main conference keynotes will feature speakers from across the globe, including Turochas “T” Fuad, CEO and co-founder of Travelmob, and Keith Nilsson, partner at TPG Growth. In addition, Troy Malone of Evernote and Anthony Hearne of Outbrain will join us for panels in Bangalore. The winning teams will be awarded tickets to the TechCrunch New Delhi event, planned for August 2014, and a chance to attend TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014. TechCrunch and PlatformPlay will host two additional India events together next year in Pune and New Delhi. The exhibits in Startup Zone are a great place for attendees — especially investors, media and potential partners — to look over some great new entrants to the startup scene. You can find more details on the event here.
Here Comes The FUD: UK Police Claim To Find 3D-Printed Gun Parts In Raid On Home
Oct 25, 1:50PM
It begins. The Greater Manchester Police in the UK raided the home of a criminal suspect where they found a 3D printer and 3D printed parts. With great pride and fanfare the police reported: 
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