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New Report Shows That Most Of China's Gamers Are Still Playing On PCs, Not Mobile
Dec 30, 4:54AM
A new report from China's GPC (link via Google Translate), an industry group for game publishers, shows that China's video game industry is now worth 83.17 billion RMB (or $13 billion), a 40% increase over the past 12 months (h/t Games In Asia). While the growth may not be surprising, the fact that most of that revenue came from PC-based games may be, especially considering the amount of attention that has been focused on the rise of mobile in China.Fly Or Die: Microsoft Xbox One
Dec 30, 3:00AM
As console makers all present their refreshed products this year, Microsoft has led the pack with the ever-impressive Xbox One, complete with cable TV control, bumped up graphics, and an all-new Kinect. But is upgrading worth it?Mophie's Powerstation XL Packs In The Power For Extended Time Away >From Outlets
Dec 30, 1:45AM
Our devices have a never-ending hunger for power – it’s their single greatest failing, in a time when they can do incredible things but still only last around a day of solid use in the best-case scenario. But Mophie has made a name for itself providing extra juice for your devices, and now they’ve got a new Powerstation XL model that packs a crazy 12,000 mAh, which can charge some smartphones up to eight times over. Pros: Battery lasts and lasts Intelligent amperage for less power wastage Two ports for charging Cons: Price A bit on the bulky side Mophie’s Powerstation XL isn’t reinventing the wheel, it’s just making the wheel a lot bigger. Even design-wise, it resembles previous Mophie power pack devices, with a rubberized black top and bottom ‘sandwiching’ a silver wraparound rim. A button on the side will light up an LED indicator to tell you how much juice is remaining (to the nearest quarter), and two USB 2.0 ports on the top can charge up to two devices simultaneously, while a micro USB input is used to fill it back up once it’s empty. The sandwich look is simple, good and a nice fit with Apple products, with which I’m generally using the Mophie Powerstation XL. Plus, the whole thing feels terrifically well-built, and you can imagine that if you pop the lid, it’ll be tightly packed edge to edge with battery cell units. Mophie’s backup batteries feel like they can survive a fall, which is more than you can say for a lot of the lower-priced models it competes with. And the Mophie Powerstation XL also works as advertised. I used the partial charge it came with to fully reenergize a Nexus 5, HTC One and Nvidia Shield before it exhausted itself, and subsequent charges have managed to serve up multiple charges to my iPhone 5 while also topping up an iPad Air on the run. Plus, in terms of charge retention, you can easily have the XL in a bag for days without it losing a single dot of its energy meter to dissipation. Mophie does good retention, and good overall life of the bank itself, which is why they can get away with asking for $130 for a backup battery and someone like IOgear charges a lot less. The XL is brand new, so I haven’t had the opportunity to test its longevityNew Leaks Detail How The NSA's 'TAO' And 'ANT' Units Spy On Devices, Global Networks
Dec 29, 10:35PM
New leaks emerged today in Germany's Der Spiegel newspaper about the scope of electronic surveillance conducted by the United States' National Security Agency. In short, it looks like the agency has even more access to personal data than we already thought.Reason #152 Virtual Reality Is Awesome: Personal Movie Theaters Without The Awful Other People
Dec 29, 10:19PM
I love going to the movie theater. Seriously, I love it. I just hate all the other people that go. The talkers. The texters. It's just not worth it anymore. But this… this gives me hope. Hope for a next-best-thing. And man does it make me want an HD Oculus Rift like right now.Marco Polo Is A Simple App For Sharing Your Location With Selected Friends
Dec 29, 10:00PM
A smartphone app called Marco Polo aims to make it easier for users to find and meet up with their friends. The basic mechanic of the app is pretty straightforward, and is indeed reminiscent of the children's game Marco Polo. Instead of text messaging back-and-forth with your friends to find out where they are, you hit the "Marco" button to share a pin showing your location. Then the app shows you a list of your friends, and you choose who to share it with. (You can also add an image or a message to the pin.)SD Cards Aren't As Secure As We Think
Dec 29, 9:09PM
The hardware hacker Bunnie Huang gave a talk at the Chaos Compute Club Congress where he offered some good news and some bad news. The good news? SD cards contain powerful, handy micro controllers that are useful to hackers and hobbyists. The bad news? SD cards are woefully insecure.Facebook's Cutesy Annual Report To Partners Reveals First Country-By-Country Mobile Stats
Dec 29, 8:35PM
TechCrunch has obtained never before published metrics showing Facebook's international growth. Facebook sent some partners a playfully illustrated eMagazine called The Annual, but I've acquired a copy from a source and the stats inside are serious business. The report divulges user counts for some key international markets like Germany, which now has 25 million users, and 18 million mobile users.What Makes Girls Fall In Love With Computers And Code?
Dec 29, 7:03PM
The perennial discussion about women in technology is in high gear once again, this time after remarks made by Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham about the relative dearth of female tech founders and the perks of starting to code at a young age in an interview with The Information were picked up by Valleywag."Steve Jobs" Biographer Puts Draft Of New Book Online To Crowdsource Ideas
Dec 29, 7:00PM
One of the most successful authors in the world, Walter Isaacson, is seeking the wisdom of the crowds for his new book about the technology industry's major inventors. In an interview with TechCrunch, he explains why he decided to open up his writing process to the world.How Snapchat Became The Breakout Consumer Product Of 2013
Dec 29, 6:00PM
Last year, as 2012 ended, I scanned the early-stage startup landscape and tried to identify one company that was a breakout for the year -- I ultimately selected Stripe, and explained why, here. I liked the thought-exercise so much I decided to do it again this year, and it didn't take much deliberation to choose Snapchat -- in my personal opinion, the clear breakout consumer product of 2013. The framework is provided courtesy of Fred Wilson, a high-level litmus test that, when applied, starts to make the improbable seem obvious in hindsight:
CrunchWeek 2013 In Review: Bitcoin's Big Rise, Edward Snowden And The NSA
Dec 29, 5:00PM
It's the end of the year, which is always a time for reflection -- auld lang syne and all that jazz. So for the next couple of weeks, CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to dish about the hottest tech stories of the past seven days, is actually going to be more like a CrunchYear. We'll be talking about the biggest stories that really defined the state of the tech world in 2013.What Games Are: Games And Money Are Still Weird
Dec 29, 4:00PM
Suppose you have a passion-project game. You want to develop it for iOS, to be "console quality". You want it to be cool. Given how everything has liberalized in the gaming market over the last few years, you would think that it would be much easier to get a project off the ground than it used to be. You'd be wrong. Games and investment are still weird.RSA's Deal With The NSA Reflects A General Mistrust
Dec 29, 5:00AM
Here's how it works when a big company believes that its power is in its girth: They enter this bizarre world that leads them to believe that what comes from their PR organs is enough to float their troubles away. It's all about denial and avoiding any potential shareholder backlash. And so we come to the sad state of affairs at RSA, the security division of EMC, one of the big-bellied enterprise kings that apparently made a deal with the National Security Agency (NSA).Uber, LeCab And Others Now Have To Wait 15 Minutes Before Picking You Up In France
Dec 28, 10:38PM
At first, it was just an idea, but this bill is now very real — urban transportation services like Uber and LeCab will now have to wait 15 minutes in France before letting a customer in the car. Back in October, the French government mentioned this piece of legislation as these new services would hurt traditional cab drivers. But nothing was set in stone until the AFP spotted the new bill today — and this news comes as a surprise. In France, you have to pay a hefty price to get your taxi license. As a payback, the taxi industry is very regulated in this country, and drivers can expect to get a healthy influx of clients. Yet, when the young and fearless startups appeared, many taxi drivers protested against LeCab, Chauffeur-privé, SnapCar, Allocab, Voitures Jaunes and Uber. While the French law calls these companies “VTC” services (car services), taxi drivers think that they are direct competitors — and smartphones certainly make Uber and others act like taxi services. That’s why the government sided with taxi drivers and talked about creating the 15-minute rule. Shortly after that, Allocab, Chauffeur-privé, LeCab and SnapCar put together an online petition against the project. Then, nothing happened. It was like the government had forgotten about this idea. In November, French heavyweight LeCab raised $6.8 million (€5 million) in Series B funding. At the time, I wrote that it was “a good time for it to raise” with the impending changes. Last week, the Competition Authority (Autorité de la concurrence) even wrote that the 15-minute delay was a bad idea. “This competitive imbalance is not necessary to protect the taxi monopoly on this market. Moreover, it potentially contradicts the objective to improve free traffic flow,” the report says. But all of this was for nothing as the new 15-minute rule will be enforced on January 1st 2014. Without any warning, the new bill was published today. Chauffeur-privé CEO Yan Hascoet already reacted to news agency AFP, saying that the French startups will comply with the law but will immediately contest the government’s decision — according to him, the startups have a good chance of winning. On average, it takes 7 minutes for a so-called black car to come and pick you up in France. What will happen? Will the driver wait in the car on the side of the road? Drivers could spend hours waitingGoogle's Chromebooks Have Hit Their Stride
Dec 28, 9:00PM
It looks like Microsoft was right to worry about Google’s Chromebook project. According to the latest numbers from NPD, Chromebooks accounted for 21 percent of all laptop sales and almost 10 percent of all computer sales to businesses in 2013. That’s up from virtually nothing in the year before. Given that Apple is irrelevant in commercial channel sales (it commanded a whopping 1.8 percent of sales), Chromebook’s increased share is coming at the cost of Windows. A few years ago, Chromebooks were a bit of a laughing stock. They were underperforming single-purpose laptops that weren’t even good at the only thing they could do (that is, surf the web). Nobody really warmed up to them, despite their low price. Early sales were more than disappointing, and even Google’s few hardware partners looked like they were only doing this as a way to court Google’s favor. The whole project seemed doomed from the start. But somehow, Google stuck to its guns and over the last two years, Chromebooks somehow went from being irrelevant to actually making a sizable dent in the laptop market. And not just in the business market. Amazon this week reported that two out of its three best-selling laptops during the holiday season were Chromebooks. Two years ago, it seemed Chromebooks were only doing somewhat well in schools. Those were, after all, also the only numbers Google ever shared. Over the last year, however, something changed. Google created a more diverse ecosystem of hardware partners that now includes virtually all major laptop manufacturers, including the likes of Lenovo (though only for education), HP, Toshiba and Acer. With the $1,300 Pixel, Google even designed its own high-end Chromebook. My feeling is that Google gave away more free Pixels to developers at its I/O conference this year than it actually sold (that high purchase price is hard to justify for anybody who doesn’t regularly fly on a private jet, despite the Pixel being a great piece of hardware). What the Pixel did, though, was to show that Google was fully backing this project, which surely helped the ecosystem and potential business customers to warm up the idea, too. Over the last year, ChromeOS also went from a one-trick pony to something that’s more like a “real” operating system (in the sense that it looks and feels more like a regular PC and less than a laptop that can only run aThe Bathys Atomic Watch Is Heading Towards A Crowdfunded Future
Dec 28, 8:38PM
Bathys, a boutique watchmaker based on Kauai, Hawaii and run by one determined man, first announced their wild Cesium 133 atomic watch in October. Now, a few months later, the company is nearly ready to hit the shoals of crowdfunding.Gillmor Gang: Almost Full
Dec 28, 6:00PM
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Happy New Year!I Can't Believe I'm Saying This, But T-Mobile Is Awesome
Dec 28, 2:00PM
I've spent the last week back in my wintry homeland in Canada, and here the scales have fallen from my eyes, and I have seen the light, and I have a message for all of you who live in America, a message of the utmost importance, inscribed in fire on the sacred stone of the Internet. And that message is: holy crap T-Mobile is awesome. If you travel internationally at all, you should switch to T-Mobile now. Yes, I know I sound like a paid shill. I feel awkward and embarrassed about that. I think my record speaks for itself, though: when it comes to tech companies, usually I'm a crotchety, negative guy. But this is different. This is terrific.Startup Hackathon In Kiev Today Hopes To Build Tools For Euromaidan Protest
Dec 28, 10:54AM
Earlier this year I attended Startup AddVenture 2013 in Kiev. Normally tech startup conferences consist of speeches, pitches, panels and networking events. This time, however, there was an added element - major social upheaval just around the corner.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.
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