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Runtastic Releases Scary, Exciting "Story Running" To Encourage Your Ploddings
Nov 01, 2:28AM
Runtastic, an Austrian running startup with an aim of hitting the Polars and Nikes of the world where it counts, has released something it’s calling “Story Running,” essentially an app that tracks your run and replays an audio story that becomes more exciting as you approach the high points of an interval run. There have been a few of these already, most notably Zombies Run! and, unless you’re ensconced in a long audiobook, they do add a bit of aural pleasure to the long slog of keeping you out of an early grave. There are a number of genres, including “Fantasy,” “Adventure” and “Travel.” Runtastic also announced the Libra scale, a BMI, bone mass, muscle mass, and BMR/AMR calculating scale that connects to an iOS device to track your weight and important statistics. It costs 129 euro and will be available in November.
Circle Raises $9M Series A From Accel And General Catalyst To Make Bitcoins Mainstream
Nov 01, 2:17AM
Circle Internet Financial has launched with $9M of Series A funding to increase mainstream adoption of digital currencies like Bitcoin by providing a payment platform for consumers and merchants. Investors include Jim Breyer, Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners. 
Nomorerack Raises $40M In Series B Financing To Build Depth Across Its Biggest Categories
Nov 01, 1:27AM
Less than one year after completing a $12 million Series A round, the multi-category retailer Nomorerack has raised $40 million in Series B financing led by Oak Investment Partners and HTV Industries. Although the company launched as a flash sales site in 2010, Nomorerack has since transitioned to position itself as an online retailer that offers deep discounts across the board in numerous categories.
Ecomm Newcomer Greats Is Building A Brand On Sweet, Affordable Sneakers
Nov 01, 1:07AM
Someone should probably go make a Wikipedia page for the "Warby Parker model," since it has rapidly become the go-to business strategy for online retail startups. 
Being A CIO At Tesla Motors, A Startup That Builds Cars And Its Own IT
Nov 01, 12:58AM
Most all of Tesla's IT is homegrown, said CIO Jay Vijayan, appearing onstage at the Constellation Research Connected Enterprise event today. The reason: the traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems did not cut it, and the company has a vertically integrated operation that required a custom environment.
Calls To Limit Speech In The Snowden Era Underscore The Importance Of A Free Press
Nov 01, 12:18AM
The Snowden revelations have reignited a discussion about privacy -- especially privacy in the digital age. That discussion will eventually, we can hope, not only reform how the government views the privacy of its citizens, but also how those citizens interact with private entities that might store massive amounts of their personal information. It's stunning to consider how much better informed we are as a global citizenry thanks to Snowden's efforts and the journalists that have worked closely with him. They have carefully brought to light documents and information regarding the spying efforts of the United States government, and to a lesser degree, the British government on a scale that was previously unimaginable.
Is Comcast Buying The Seattle Mayoral Election To Dodge Homegrown Competition? Not Really
Oct 31, 11:38PM
The mayor of Seattle has alleged that Comcast donated significant sums to his rival ahead of the November 5 election. The money could have been donated, perhaps, in hopes of scuttling the planned public-private broadband initiative in the city that could introduce new inexpensive, and fast competitive service. In response to a question during a Reddit AMA asking what would happen to the effort -- which will likely be executed with a private firm by the name of Gigabit Squared -- Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn said, "I don't know, but I do know Comcast gave [rival candidate] Murray a big pile of money."
Hands On With The Nexus 5 And Android 4.4 KitKat
Oct 31, 11:24PM
The Nexus 5 is here! The Nexus 5 is here! After months of hype and more questionably "accidental" leaks than any device in recent memory, Google announced their new flagship Android handset this morning. I've only had the device in my hands for a few hours, so it'll be a few days before I'm ready to give my final yay or nay on this thing. With that said, I recognize that I'm amongst a very lucky few to have access to this thing before they start leaving the warehouse en masse later this week, so I figured I'd share some early impressions. Thoughts so far: It's quite nice looking, though not in a particularly unique way. Look at it from more than a few feet away, and most folks probably wouldn't have any idea what phone they were looking at. It's a big glass screen with a matte black back; I'm… not sure how you could get any more standard. The soft touch backside gets fingerprint-tastic, and fast. I had to wipe it almost constantly for our hands on photos. For reference, I'm using the black device and don't have particularly oily hands. As you'd expect of a device with a nearly 5-inch (4.95 inches, to be specific) screen, it's big. Real big. Any bigger, in fact, and I'd say it's too big. And yet, Google and LG managed to keep it just within the realm of sanity. It's not a strictly two-hand device, but unless you've got hulk hands, expect to need a second hand more often than not. With Android 4.4, Google Search is now automatically integrated into every single page of your homescreen launcher, and can be triggered by voice through an "Okay, Google" hot keyword. Search is always just there. It’s quite nice. Google Now is now always the left-most screen on your homescreen, which is a smart move on Google's part. Google Now is incredibly neat (if slightly terrifying) — but, previously stuffed behind a swipe from the very bottom of the screen, it was far too easy to forget it was there. You can still reach it with a swipe up from the bottom, need be. It's smooth. Really smooth. Every transition, every fade in – it's like butter. If it stays this smooth after a few weeks of use, it's by far the smoothest Android experience I've had; alas, that rarely seems to
Apple, Microsoft-Backed Rockstar Consortium Sues Google, Samsung Over 7 Nortel Patents
Oct 31, 11:22PM
The Rockstar consortium is an organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, BlackBerry, Ericsson and Sony. It purchased patents off of the defunct telecommunications company Nortel in 2011, in a bidding war with Google. Now, the consortium has filed suit against Google, ASUSTek, HTC, Huawei, LG, Pantech and ZTE over those patents. The suit was filed in a U.S. District Court of Eastern Texas today. “Google placed an initial bid of $900,000,000 for the patents-in-suit and the rest of the Nortel portfolio. Google subsequently increased its bid multiple times, ultimately bidding as high as $4.4 billion,” the filing states. “That price was insufficient to win the auction, as a group led by the current shareholders of Rockstar purchased the portfolio for $4.5 billion. Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe the patents-in-suit.” Google famously bid some not-so-random numbers before the end, including ‘pi’. The suit also involves a licensee of the ‘Associative Search Engine’ 6,098,065 patent, NetStar, Inc. The other patents are US 7,236,969, 7,469,245, 7,672,970, 7,895,178, 7,895,183 and 7,933,883. They’re mostly fairly dry stuff related to database searches, relevance in advertising presentation and data sorting, but exactly the kind of stuff that makes Google’s special sauce work. We can’t speak to the strength of the patents, but they certainly appear to be relevant. Google lost out in a heated bidding war against Rockstar and went on to acquire Motorola, a move that many attributed to a patent grab, but that was also about hardware in a lot of ways. Notably, HTC has a cross-licensing agreement with Apple on some patents, but apparently not these. News of the suit was first reported by Reuters today.
Twitter's IPO 'Oversubscribed' Despite Accelerating Losses And Growth Concerns
Oct 31, 10:55PM
Today, Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier and Serena Saitto report that Twitter’s highly anticipated initial public offering is oversubscribed, indicating booming interest for its shares as the firm looks to become a public company. Notably, Twitter had priced the shares well below expectations, all but guaranteeing an oversubscribed IPO. The report says that the IPO had enough interest to be oversubscribed before bank involvement. When Twitter filed its documents to go public, it was criticized by some for its extensive, and widening losses. And currently, all signs are pointing to Twitter’s revenue in calendar 2013 has expanded quickly as well. The company will raise around $1 billion in the IPO, valuing the firm at around $11 billion. Twitter plans to offer 70 million shares at $17-$20 per share. Early indications are that Twitter would price on November 6th and begin trading the day after. At this point, Twitter now has options available to it including floating more shares or hitting above the higher end of the range when it prices next week. Losses aside, Twitter will be the hottest IPO of the year. Strap in.
SoundTracking Launches Updated App With New 'Discover' Section For Trending Music
Oct 31, 9:27PM
Music-focused social network SoundTracking released a new version of its smartphone app today, one that co-founder and CEO Steve Jang said will make the app useful beyond "hardcore music lovers." We're also hearing that SoundTracking has reached an agreement with Sprint, with SoundTracking being preloaded or featured on certain Sprint Android phones starting next spring. However, Jang declined to comment on any potential partnership, so hopefully we'll know more about that soon.
Ask A VC: AngelPad's Thomas Korte On NYC Expansion, The Incubator's New $7M Funding Round And More
Oct 31, 8:48PM
In this week's special episode of Ask A VC from Disrupt Europe in Berlin, Germany, AngelPad founder and former Googler Thomas Korte talked to TechCrunch about his incubator's strategy, expansion and more.
Google Adds Support For Native MySQL Connections
Oct 31, 7:50PM
Google Cloud SQL now supports native MySQL connections, a move that is intended to make it easier to integrate third-party applications. With the support, native MySQL apps can be plugged into Cloud SQL, allowing the customer to leave system administration and management for Google.
Oracle, Red Hat, And Google Employees Pitch In To Fix Beleaguered Healthcare.gov, Reports Indicate
Oct 31, 6:42PM
Workers from tech giants Google, Red Hat, and Oracle and other companies have reportedly joined with the government to help fix the notoriously broken Healthcare.gov website that is a key portion of the Affordable Care Act. According to a tweet from CNBC, “experts” from the firms have been dispatched. It is not clear yet in what quantity or what their role will be. The government needs the help, and it is good to see the technology community step up. After all, this is our domain. In a piece by Alex Wayne on BusinessWeek, Google is parting with Michael Dickerson, a “site reliability engineer.” Also according to Wayne, Greg Gershman of mobile company Mobomo is said to be taking part as well. When the Affordable Care Act went live recently, its website, which was supposed to provide a central exchange, failed: It lagged, dropped users, and fed wrong information to insurance companies. It was a tectonically embarrassing moment for the government and the president. Later, a “tech surge” was called for. It appears that this is part of that effort. The government has promised that the website will be functional by the end of November. That gives the Silicon Valley cavalry just a single month to get the beast back in the pen. Also unclear at the moment is why these three firms have stepped up and not others. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and Twitter are other firms that could spare an engineer or two. Private tech employees helping the public government untangle a website built in part by Canadian contractors? The leaks from this saga are going to be amazing. This is a developing story, and this post will be updated as new information becomes available. Top Image Credit: Flickr
Keen On… Social Media: The First 2,000 Years
Oct 31, 6:15PM
How old is social media? Maybe we can date it from the birth of Facebook in February 2004. Or perhaps we can go back to 2002, to when Friendster was founded. Or even way, way, way back to digital antiquity - back to 1997, when Reid Hoffman founded the first social media website, SocialNet. No, social media is actually older, 2,000 years older, than Facebook, Friendster or SocialNet.
Google's Search Results Can Deep-Link To Your Android Apps
Oct 31, 6:04PM
It should be clear by now that there's much more at play in Android 4.4 KitKat that some early reports alluded to, and one of the most interesting (to me, anyway) tidbits managed to escape the early leak treatment. Tucked away toward the tail-end of Google's Nexus 5/KitKat presentation was a mention of a feature called App Indexing that should get companies (and the Android app developers that work for them) a little worked up. That's because Google has worked up a way to deep-link to the contents of an app from within a user's Google search results with a feature it calls App Indexing.
Android 4.4 KitKat Targets Google's Next Billion Users, Adds Pervasive Search & Improves Google Now
Oct 31, 6:00PM
Today Google announced details of its long-awaited Android 4.4 KitKat operating system for the first time, going beyond just the candy bar branding. KitKat is designed around three major tentpoles, Google told TechCrunch, including reaching the next billion (it previously announced 1 billion activations) Android users, putting so-called Google "smarts" across the entire mobile experience, and building for what comes next in mobile devices. 
Google's Nexus 5 Is Now Real And Ships Today At $349 For 16GB, $399 For 32GB
Oct 31, 6:00PM
At long last, Google has officially announced what has been perhaps their worst kept secret in a while: the Nexus 5. The Nexus 5 had seen more than its fair share of early outs, with everything from fleeting, "accidental" appearances in the hands of Google employees in quickly-deleted promo videos to full-blown product pages going up on the Google Play store ahead of time. The Nexus 5 will be the first device to ship with Android 4.4 (codenamed "KitKat" through a suprising collaboration with Nestlé and Hershey), which they first announced back in early September. Other devices, like the Nexus 4, 7, and 10, will be getting 4.4 in “the coming weeks”. The new Nexus comes with two color variants: one black, one white. The 16GB LTE model will cost you $349, while the 32GB LTE model will set you back $399. Both devices are unlocked, and will go up for sale later today. While Google's Nexus line mainly exists to provide people a direct route to an unlocked, higher-end device, the Nexus 5 will have a few features that'll be exclusive at first. It'll be the first device with Google's "HDR+" mode, their company's new in-house approach to HDR, which takes multiple shots in rapid succession and combines the best parts of each into one photo. It'll also be the first with Google's new homescreen launcher, which brings Google Search to every page of your homescreen and allows you to trigger a search at any time by saying "Ok, Google". Here's what we know so far about the innards: Display: 4.95" 1920×1080 HD Display (445 ppi) CPU: 2.26 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Front Camera: 1.3MP Rear Camera: 8.0MP with Optical Image Stabilization (read: a gyroscope built into the lens that tries to counteract any shaking) Storage: 16 GB or 32 GB internal storage GPU: Adreno 330 running at 450 Mhz RAM: 2GB WiFi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Battery: 2300mAh (w/ an estimated talk time of around 17 hours, or 8.5 hours of WiFi usage) We're just about to run off and spend some time with the device, so check back in just a bit for our hands-on pics and early impressions!
Amazon Launches AWS SDK For JavaScript In The Browser
Oct 31, 5:26PM
Amazon today launched the developer preview of its AWS SDK for JavaScript. With this, developers can now easily build dynamic JavaScript applications that can access AWS services from the browser without the need to write any server-side code and to configure an application server for hosting. Amazon previously launched an SDK for Node.js apps, so this isn’t Amazon’s first foray into supporting JavaScript. Indeed, it turns out that this new SDK uses the same programming model in the browser and in server-side Node.js code. With this new SDK, developers can make direct calls to Amazon’s S3 storage services, Amazon SQS for reading from and writing to message queues, SNS for generating and processing mobile notifications and to Amazon’s DynamoDB NoSQL database. Access to Amazon’s more traditional database services is not currently an option. This means developers can now build JavaScript apps that can create and popular S3 buckets, for example, and query DynamoDB tables without the need to access these services through any server-side code. To access these features, developers need to add a tag that integrate’s Amazon’s JavaScript library into their code. The SDK supports Amazon’s web identity federation feature (you wouldn’t want to add your AWS credentials in your HTML and JavaScript, after all). By doing this, you can also use a public identity provider like Facebook, Google or – of course – Amazon itself. As with all things Amazon, the setup isn’t completely trivial, but the company has created a number of tutorials that will get you started.
Hailo Ups Its Minimum Fare In London To £10, Triggers Licensing Complaints
Oct 31, 5:18PM
Another chapter in the ongoing saga between city cab regulations and on-demand taxi apps: cab app Hailo, which in London relies on a portion of the city's black cabs to power its taxi-hailing-on-demand service, has raised its minimum pricing in the city. Hailo operates in a range of cities globally, including New York, Toronto and Chicago, tailoring its pricing to each market. 
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