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CIA Reportedly Collects Bulk Data On International Money Transfers
Nov 15, 7:58AM
A new report finds that U.S intelligence agencies are collecting more than data on telephone records and Internet behavior. According to the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the CIA "is building a vast database of international money transfers that includes millions of Americans' financial and personal data, officials familiar with the program say."
Open Garden And textPlus Join Typhoon Haiyan Relief Efforts
Nov 15, 6:40AM
Many members of the tech community have lent their skills to help Super Typhoon Haiyan rescue efforts in the Philippines. These include Viber, which rolled out a new feature called Viber Out, and people working with the Geeklist Corps of Developers. Now peer-to-peer mobile broadband network Open Garden and messaging app textPlus are also offering services to help Filipinos recover from the devastating storm, which killed up to 10,000 people.
TrakInvest Is A Fantasy Stock Trading Platform That Can Lead To Real Jobs
Nov 15, 5:58AM
There are several virtual stock exchanges, including ones just for kids, but TrakInvest stands apart by giving its members a chance to turn fantasy trades into real jobs. Founded by a former JP Morgan principal, TrakInvest partners with institutions like Thomson Reuters and Religare to offer sponsored internships to students in emerging Asian markets. The platform launched to the public in late December and is open to people anywhere in the world (TechCrunch readers can sign up through this link), though it currently focuses on reaching aspiring traders in India, Singapore and other Asian countries. Headquartered in Singapore with offices in India, TrakInvest has received early investment from SparkLabs Korea, as well as leading family offices in India and the Middle East. Founder Bobby Bhatia say his site seeks to differentiate from other fantasy trading platforms with a “learn-share-earn” model. TrakInvest’s main goal is to serve as an education and talent identification tool where students can connect with experienced traders from institutions like JP Morgan. Two of the top traders on the platform represent the types of users Bhatia wants to sign up: Roshni Kanchan, a housewife in India with a 12% return and Alex Dicu, a Polish student studying for an MBA in Singapore. “As more people start using it, our belief is that what we will do is change how trading is done in the emerging markets,” says Bhatia. “In emerging markets there has been arbitrage opacity. We are moving to arbitraging intelligence.” Helping Aspiring Traders Launch Their Careers TrakInvest currently has 50 sponsored internships lined up to offer to the top student performers over the next few months. So far, 15 of TrakInvest’s top traders have landed internships in Hong Kong and Singapore at Thomson Reuters, Religare and TrakInvest’s office, and TrakInvest is finalizing details with banks in Singapore and Hong Kong. Interns are picked based on their portfolio performance, research and discussions on the site. A former JP Morgan Partners principal and managing director at AIG, Bhatia began thinking about creating a combination virtual trading community/talent discovery platform after returning to Asia and serving as a mentor to university students. Many had trouble finding the internships they needed to launch a financial career. “When I became independent and set up my own businesses, I started trading equities much more actively. I also saw a number of inefficiencies,” he says. “I built this for my own personal use
Runscope Offers New Service To Test Live API Calls For Improving The Quality Of Mobile Apps
Nov 15, 4:08AM
Runscope, which develops tools that monitor API traffic, has launched a new automated API and backend service testing tool to improve the quality of mobile apps. The new Runscope Radar service, launched at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, is designed to alleviate the concerns that come with changing backend APIs. It allows app maintainers to verify that their backend services are returning the data their apps expect with the intent of reducing the frequency of app crashes. But testing can be a fragile process that if it goes wrong can cause a poor experience for the customer. Runscope Radar is designed to help customers change their apps' backend services without breaking it. The intent is to provide ways to improve the service without disrupting the customer experience. 
Google's Megan Smith Says It's Time To Uncover The "Lost History" Of Female Tech Pioneers
Nov 15, 2:53AM
Google vice president Megan Smith gave a wide-ranging talk this morning at the Women 2.0 conference in Las Vegas in which she discussed "moonshot" ideas and connected them to the work she's doing at Google's "skunkworks" lab Google[x]. She also suggested that we're entering a third wave" of women's rights.
Apple Store Point Of Sale Systems Go Down Again Today, Outage Continues
Nov 15, 12:56AM
Some Apple Stores have had their point-of-sale systems go down repeatedly today, TechCrunch has learned. There was an extensive outage early Thursday morning and there has been an ongoing outage this evening in some stores. Reports from our sources and from Twitter corroborate that there is some sort of issue going on right now. Apple Store employees are selling to customers with pad and pen, and old-fashioned credit card machines. 
Leaks Unbound: NSA Admits Snowden Took Up To 200K Documents
Nov 15, 12:05AM
In a recent speech, only now picking up coverage, the NSA's General Keith Alexander admitted that whistleblower Edward Snowden took up to 200,000 documents. Earlier estimates put the number at around 50,000. In the talk (a copy of his remarks was published by Reuters and released by the NSA), the general went on to state that he wished "there was a way to prevent" further leaks, and that the information was being put out "in a way that does maximum damage to the NSA and [the United States]."
The Omniture Of PR? AirPR's New Analytics Platform Aims To Show CMOs How To Invest In PR
Nov 14, 11:28PM
Startups and PR firms have long had a halting, if not embattled relationship. Spend time talking to entrepreneurs and those working at startups, and it won’t be long before you encounter the nagging mistrust founders have of PR firms and the PR process. That’s why AirPR, the PR marketplace and technology platform, is launching a new analytics platform that aims to restore some of that trust — or at least give companies and their CMOs a greater degree of insight into both the value of PR and how to increase PR performance. But let’s step back for a minute and ask: Why is it that, generally speaking, entrepreneurs mistrust PR and often end up unhappy with the PR process — and performance? Well, on the one hand, that’s because, frankly, public relations and communications aren’t skills entrepreneurs necessarily have in spades or are comfortable with (and vice versa). On the other hand, as Zaarly co-founder Eric Koester wrote in a recent blog post, boiled down, startups are all about math. Simply put the job of a founder, Koester says, is to make a simple math equation work: R > E. “You need to show how you can make the revenue you earn from a customer exceed the expenses you incur to get that customer,” he writes. It’s for this reason, among many others, that most founders not only pay attention to math, they’re datavores. The prevailing psychology, especially in a highly technical world, is that if you can’t measure and quantify the value of some activity or spend for the business, it’s not worth pursuing. So, why is there a sense that entrepreneurs struggle to find good PR firms? Well, startups, and particularly the founders and CTOs of tech-focused companies, aren’t always the most “outward-facing” people to begin with. Couple that with the fact that — and take this from someone in the media — good PR people can be hard to find, and you’re already halfway there. On the other side, entrepreneurs are already data and metrics-focused, so unsurprisingly, they have trouble seeing the value in spending money on a PR firm. Why? Well, if it’s an early-stage startup, capital is tight to begin with, but, really, it’s the fact that the PR process is largely opaque. Traditionally, it’s been difficult, if not impossible, to effectively measure Return On Investment (ROI). In the past, PR firms and startups have
Coin, The Electronic Credit Card, Reaches Its Pre-Order Goal In 40 Minutes
Nov 14, 10:10PM
We are, I believe, in an interstitial zone when it comes to payments. Credit cards are still king - just ask Square - and NFC is just a dream in most countries. That's why Coin is so interesting. It's a credit card-sized device that holds other credit cards, allowing you to swap from card to card and even store gift cards inside its ultra thin innards. 
Parsing Microsoft's Massive 42% Gain In 2013
Nov 14, 9:44PM
Microsoft, a company that has suffered from a flat stock price since I was in middle school, is in the midst of a surprisingly strong year. A quick scan of its long-term stock chart indicates that the company is trading higher right now than at any time since 2000. It's up 41.93 percent this year, having risen to $37.91 in mid-day trading this fine Thursday from $26.71 at the close of December 31, 2012. So what's going on?
The Xbox One Is Enormous In Comparison To The PS4
Nov 14, 8:42PM
Both the Xbox One and Playstation 4 are essentially repackaged PC parts at this point. Unlike the PS3, Sony’s new console uses standard X86 architecture and fairly standard components. This should allow for an easier development path and quicker adoption among studios down the line. That’s why I was so surprised when I saw this image on the German gaming publication PC Games of the two next-gen offerings side-by-side. The Xbox One is so big! Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t believe I’ve seen any shots of them together in one image, as each one has been handling its press events separately, obviously. We have a PS4 in the labs for testing and I was at the Xbox event earlier this year and saw the console in person. It didn’t look all that big, roughly the size of the old Xbox 360′s (before the slimdown) overall. But, when compared to the PS4, the size difference is crazy. But until the Xbox One makes its way into reviewer hands (and is allowed to be shown publicly) we won’t be seeing comparisons. Add to that the fact that the PS4 has a slight edge over the Xbox One in pure processing power and it’s even more puzzling. Developer Patrick McCarron posits it might be the slimmer Blu-Ray drive in the PS4, or perhaps fan size. Primate Labs’ John Poole conjectures that the Xbox One’s system on a chip might actually be much bigger than the PS4′s. One possibility could be more aggressive attention to thermal properties by Microsoft this time around, after overheating and cracking solder caused the ‘red ring of death’ fiasco which cascaded into a major PR issue. Here’s the Xbone next to a slim Xbox 360: And that size differential is even more nuts when you consider that the Xbox One has an external power brick, and the PS4 does not. Its power supply is internal to the device itself, and it plugs directly into the wall. For a look inside the PS4, you can check out Wired’s video of Sony engineering director Yasuhiro Ootori tearing it down here. The site has a bunch more comparison images between the two consoles including controllers and more. Head on over there to check them out.
SecretInk Lets You Send Self-Destructing Messages Over Email Or SMS Right From Your Inbox
Nov 14, 8:18PM
PowerInbox, the email platform company which merged with competitor ActivePath a year ago, is today launching technology called SecretInk that enables "self-destructing" messages that can be sent over email or SMS. The system works online or inside Gmail and other webmail services using the company's PowerInbox add-on. This utility also enables other interactive email content from dozens of social networks, news sites, and more. But SecretInk is one of the first email applications the company has funded itself. 
eBay Debuts New Angie's List Competitor And Local Service Provider Marketplace, eBayHire, In The US
Nov 14, 8:11PM
After a test in the UK, it looks like eBay is launching its new local service provider marketplace eBayHire in the US. 
Keen On… Apple Versus Google: The Dogfight Over A $250 Billion Industry
Nov 14, 8:00PM
The two biggest dogs in Silicon Valley are Google and Apple, and according to the writer Fred Vogelstein, they are waging a war for control of the $250 billion content industry. In his new book Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, Vogelstein argues that this titanic struggle between the Android and iOS operating systems will determine how we get our content in the digital age. Like the Apple versus Microsoft war over the personal computer, Vogelstein believes that this will be a "winner-take-all" fight. "History," he says, "suggests there will be a winner".
Amazon Kinesis, A New AWS Service To Process Real-Time Streams
Nov 14, 7:26PM
Amazon is offering a new service called Kinesis that streams data in real-time with the ability to process thousands of data streams on a per second basis. The service, designed for real-time apps, allows developers to pull any amount of data, from any number of sources, scaling up and down as needed. Kinesis can create any number of streams across multiple availability zones. The streams have no "intrinsic" capacity or rate limits. All incoming data is replicated across availability zones for high availability. Each stream can have multiple writers and multiple readers. The service shards the data into streams with each handling 1000 write transactions and up to 20 read transactions.
Greenhouse Raises $2.7M To Make Recruiting A Science For Hyper-Growth Startups Like Airbnb
Nov 14, 7:20PM
"Recruiting is our top priority," most serious startups say, yet they're terrible at it. Ad-hoc interviews, jumbled notes. But Greenhouse turns the messy hiring process into a well-oiled machine for fast-growing startups like Airbnb, Upworthy, and General Assembly. After nearly two years of quietly perfecting its software, today it raised $2.7 million to disrupt Jobvite and grow bigger itself.
Apple Updates iWork For iCloud Beta With Collaboration, Printing And Folders
Nov 14, 6:57PM
Apple updated its iWork for iCloud services today with several features that it had previously announced were on their way. These center around a bunch of new collaboration tools that aim to make it a good alternative to Google Docs offerings for iCloud users. Numbers, Keynote and Pages in iCloud were all updated and you can see the new stuff now at iCloud.com. The full list of changes differs slightly for each product but is mostly the same. The collaboration features include a list that shows who’s editing the document currently. That list can be used to navigate to the portion of a doc that they’re editing by clicking on their name. You can also see some of the editing capabilities like moving images or reformatting happen live as the collaborators do it. Here’s the full list of changes from Apple: Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for iCloud beta: Collaborator list: View the list of collaborators currently in a document. Collaborator cursor: See cursors and selections for everyone in a document. Jump to collaborator: Instantly jump to a collaborator's cursor by clicking their name in the collaborator list. Collaboration animation: Watch images and shapes animate as your collaborators move them around. Printing: Print your documents directly from the Tools menu. Folders: Organize your documents in folders. Numbers for iCloud beta: Reorder sheets: Change the order of the sheets in your spreadsheet, right in your browser. Links: Create links using the HYPERLINK function. Keynote for iCloud beta: Skip slides: Right-click any slide in the navigator to skip it during playback. Note that if you open a document in the new iWork for iCloud, you may end up seeing a message notifying you that your file will be converted. You’re given the option to copy your document or open and convert the original. If you do so, Apple notes, you may lose some bits that aren’t compatible with the new format. The new format, of course, was part of Apple’s overarching updates to iWork across all of its platforms including OS X and iOS 7. That’s now unified and the new apps, though shy on some features, are now in lock step. Apple recently announced several features that it would be adding back to iWork over the next few months, in response to some vocal criticism.
Knozen, TheLadders' Founder's New Personality-Probing Startup, Closes $2.25M Seed From FirstMark, Lerer, David Tisch & Others
Nov 14, 6:36PM
Knozen is the new startup from Marc Cenedella, serial entrepreneur and founder of the veteran job matching site, TheLadders. Cenedella is not giving too much away about his new project at this early stage -- it was founded "this year", he says, rather non-specifically -- but he's just revealed one key detail to TechCrunch: Knozen closed a $2.25 million seed round last month -- with an impressive roster of investors behind it.
Amazon Launches Its Fastest EC2 Instance Type Yet
Nov 14, 6:33PM
Amazon today announced its fastest EC2 instance type yet. The improved C3 instance type, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels noted in the announcement at the company’s re:Invent developer conference today, represents the highest process performance on EC2 yet. The C3 instances join the new storage- and I/O-optimized I2 instances the company also announced today. These instances, Amazon argues, should be especially interesting to developers with run compute-intensive workloads on EC2, including running Hadoop or doing analytics, 3D rendering, engineering and simulation. The new C3 instances are powered by 2.8 GHz Intel E5-2680 v2 Ivy Bridge processors and the smallest instance (c3.large) comes with 3.75GB of RAM, two virtual cores and seven EC2 compute units (Amazon’s proprietary way of classifying the speed of its instances). At the high end, the c3.8xlarge instance has 32 virtual cores, 60GB of RAM and 108 ECU. The processors, Amazon notes, support Intel’s Advanced Vector Extensions for more efficiently processing vector-oriented data. The high-performance instance types all come with improved network performance and are all based on SSDs. Using these instances, Amazon launched a 26,496 core cluster and evaluated it against the recent Top500 scores for supercomputers. The cluster would have ranked as #56 on the list with a performance of 481.18 teraflops. These new instances are now available in Amazon’s US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Sydney) regions.
Judge Permits Google To Continue To Make Books Relevant Online
Nov 14, 6:32PM
As an author and former academic, I use Google Books almost every day. It’s become the primary reason I even bother exploring non-fiction books online, rather than looking up an article on the same subject. Today, a U.S circuit judge declared that Google provides enormous benefit to society and authors, and denied the Author’s Guild’s copyright suit to block the massive book-scanning project [PDF] “Google Books provides significant public benefits,” wrote Judge Denny Chin, who argued that Google’s strategy of letting users preview select pages preserves copyright, while giving the public the incredibly important asset of searchable books. Google has scanned over 20 million books. For those with current copyright claims, Google randomly obscures the pages from full viewing, but keeps all the words searchable (see image below. “Privacy” is highlighted because I searched for it in this particular book). Google’s mass book scanning project has been a rallying cry for author unions and publishers to attack the search giant’s commercialization of their copyrighted works. But, just like how a news story can quote excerpts of a book and schools can hand out a limited number of pages, Chin ruled that Google’s preview function respected the legal parameters of “fair use”. He also noted that Google doesn’t actually monetize the project. As an author I found the Judge’s analysis spot on. I’ve been researching the history of privacy for the last few months. I discovered a rich corpus of privacy literature in the seemingly irrelevant subject of renaissance architecture, in part because Google searches for “privacy” yielded books I never would have known about. “It has given scholars the ability, for the first time, to conduct full-text searches of tens of millions of books,” explained Chin. Most importantly, I still rent or buy some of the books. Many of the architectural drawings are obscured in Google’s preview, so I’ve ordered them from my local library. Moreover, Google Books has vastly accelerated my research, since I can now search for keywords, rather than having to painstakingly shift for “privacy” and “individualism” in obscure historical literature. Even better, I’ve been able to trace the historical rise of the concept of “privacy” through Google’s n-gram viewer, which shows the number of occurrences of keywords throughout the centuries. “It preserves books, in particular out-of-print and old books that have been forgotten in the bowels of libraries, and it gives them new life,” Chin observed.
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