Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.
Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.
How To Get An MBA From Eminem
Jan 19, 7:00AM
In 2002 I was driving to a hedge fund manager's house to hopefully raise money from him. I was two hours late. This was pre-GPS and I had no cell phone. I was totally lost. I kept playing over and over again "Lose Yourself" by Eminem. I was afraid this was my one shot and I was blowing it. I was even crying in my car. I was going broke and I felt this was my one chance. What a loser.Investors Drop Big Money On Dropbox So It Can Beat Box
Jan 19, 1:35AM
Dropbox is raising between $250 million to $400 million at a $10 billion valuation according to the Wall Street Journal and Re/Code. Why? Because Dropbox has spent the last year rebuilding its product for businesses, and now it's time to sell it. How? Because a source says Dropbox has been doing well and felt it had the buzz behind it to take advantage of an easy fundraising market.The Tablet Is The New General Purpose Computer
Jan 18, 10:47PM
Apple’s latest iPad spot demonstrates that tablets have general purpose computing strengths that have never been exhibited by laptops. Laptops have had decades in the spotlight as our portable computers of choice and were on their way to eradicating desktop machines before tablets came along. But they’ve never managed to exhibit the flexibility of purpose that tablets can. Apple’s spot presents examples of people using iPads in various real world situations, which is a note they’ve struck before. But this particular spot focuses not just on the things that people are doing with iPads, but specifically things that would be cumbersome, irritating or impossible with a laptop. It’s a brilliant rotation of the argument that tablets can’t be ‘seriously’ used to create. In many ways this is the realization of the dream for the original ‘tablet computers’ of Microsoft — something you can view with more or less irony depending on what chances you give the company of succeeding in a crowded space. It’s not that you can’t use a laptop to do any of these things. I’ve used a laptop as a tethered shooting companion for photography for years now. Seeing instant feedback as I shoot speeds up the process and makes editing faster, it’s great. But I’ve never wanted to use a laptop. They’re bulky, they’re not the right form factor and they’re not optimized for easy one-handed operation (not counting the one you hold them with, thank you). And some of these cases, like diving, present an impossible challenge for laptops. They’re simply not the right tool for a lot of jobs. And I think that more of the jobs laptops aren’t any good at are becoming part of our lives every day. It’s not as if laptops (or desktops) are going to go away over night, but they’re definitely going to fade in importance as new general purpose computers like the tablet and smartphone grow bolder. And they’ll work in concert to allow us to do stuff better — I wrote this piece on a combination of phone, tablet and computer as I’ve been traveling. There will always be things that will be accomplished more efficiently with a dedicated keyboard and a device that allows us to perform several tasks ‘simultaneously’. But neither of those are sacred cows limited to laptops. If you pull the thread a bit technology-wise it’s not hard to see machinesUp Close With Play-i's Bo, The Lovable Xylophone-Playing Robot
Jan 18, 10:16PM
When we last met Play-i's charming robots Bo and Yana they were busy pounding out tunes on a little colorful Xylophone and raising $1.4 million in crowdfunding cash. Now, however, they're very nearly ready to ship and are doing some really impressive things that will help kids learn programming while having fun.The Rise Of The Hedge Fund Startup Investor (Again)
Jan 18, 8:00PM
The first question I thought of when I read that San Francisco hedge fund Coatue Management was the backer behind buzzy messaging app Snapchat's $50 million round of funding was which VC firm lost the deal. My second question was why take money from a hedge fund?Announcing 'Major Changes': The Government Vs. The Private Sector
Jan 18, 7:00PM
The Internet is collectively experiencing disappointment over President Obama’s big National Security Agency reform speech. Instead of announcing a sweeping end to the bulk surveillance of our entire digital lives, the President charged authorities to investigate how incremental privacy protections could be enacted. For our readers who don’t think this meets the dictionary definition of “major,” you probably come from the private sector. When you think about government change, think incremental change, eventual retirement, a committee, and adopting decades-old technology. Governments only on very rare and very scary occasions do anything that is immediately substantial. For instance, upon entering office, when Obama announced he would radically overhaul how we treat enemy combatants in our custody, he promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center in a year. After more than four years, it’s still open and he’s created a special committee to oversee how it can be closed. In TechCrunch’s own corner of the world, technology policy, Obama appointed a brand new senior position, the Chief Technology Officer, and promised a new era of open government and participatory technology. Aneesh Chopra, the first CTO, did not produce a suite of radically cool products (Congress XP or SenateOS). Instead, his landmark initiative was to create a set of legal principles that would finally allow future groups to work with the private sector, independent hackers, and release stores of government data. And, to be sure, by government standards, Chopra was moving at breakneck speed. A few influential products did get developed, such as the White House petition platform, WeThePeople, but it was more an indirect result of Chopra’s overarching reforms and it still took years to come to fruition. So, for those folks in the private sector, here’s a handy guide. Personnel Changes In the private sector, when people need to get fired, the CEO is ousted, there are mass staff layoffs, and a dramatic management restructuring. The beleaguered Blackberry’s restructuring dropped the CEO and laid off a hundreds of employees. At Zappos, the entire company changed overnight, converting to a leaderless form of management known as “holeocracy”. In government, when folks need to go, an embattled director makes plans to retire, there are a few modified hiring standards and most everyone keeps their job. For example, the deputy NSA director is retiring in the Spring, most everyone involved in the Healthcare.gov website debacle still has their job, and the White House has made plans to hire more peopleWhy Silicon Valley Can't Find Europe
Jan 18, 4:00PM
Go to Europe these days – to Berlin, London, Helsinki – drop in in on any of the regional tech confabs and you will quickly see that the European startup scene is in the most bustling, vibrant shape it's ever been. The potential is everywhere, and the energy is undeniable. Then you return Stateside, in my case to Palo Alto, and Europe isn't just irrelevant among the tech industry power-set – it has virtually ceased to exist.Amazon Patents "Anticipatory" Shipping — To Start Sending Stuff Before You've Bought It
Jan 18, 2:41PM
Amazon has filed a patent for a shipping system designed to cut delivery times by predicting what buyers are going to buy before they buy it -- and shipping products in their general direction, or even right to their door, before the sales click even (or ever) falls.The Techno-Militarization Of America
Jan 18, 2:00PM
Remember last year? Edward Snowden! NSA! Shock! Horror! Dismay! Looking back I'm amazed we all seemed so surprised. Over the last decade, pretty much every arm of American authority invoked "homeland security" as an excuse to acquire boatloads of new technology, and used it to help expand their power and authority to unprecedented levels. There is nothing at all exceptional about the NSA's massive overreach. It was only keeping up with the Joneses -- FBI, DEA, Border Patrol, police forces everywhere -- who have all been busy doing exactly the same thing.Nokia Revamps Its Financial Reporting Structure In Advance Of The Microsoft Deal
Jan 18, 12:38AM
Nokia today announced that it will restructure its financial reporting as its deal with Microsoft nears completion. For the fourth quarter of 2013, Nokia will mark its Devices and Services division as a discontinued business. Setting up its financials to reflect the deal’s potential impact is a good way to prepare investors for future change. If you sell off a chunk of your revenue, investors are going to notice when your top line shrinks in the next quarter. Here’s the company on its changes: After receiving shareholder approval of the pending sale of substantially all of its Devices & Services business at our Extraordinary General Meeting in November last year, Nokia is reporting substantially all of its Devices & Services business as discontinued operations in its fourth quarter 2013 and full year 2013 results report. Nokia currently has three continuing businesses: Nokia Solutions & Networks (NSN), HERE and Advanced Technologies. Reflecting this composition, Nokia will publish financial information for all three businesses in next week’s report. Specifically, Nokia will report financial information for a total of four reportable segments – Mobile Broadband and Global Services within NSN, HERE, and Advanced Technologies – and, additionally, separate information for Discontinued Operations. When will the damn deal close? Well, soon. That’s what I keep hearing. If it hasn’t been locked down by the start of the second week of February, I will be surprised. Friend of TechCrunch Brad Sams this morning published a piece on Neowin that indicated it’s “likely” that the Nokia-Microsoft Great Asset Transfer would take place on January 23. Both companies will report their earnings that day (they have announced in lockstep for some time, so don’t read too much into that), making it a pat date for the news. But that only works if the deal is done. And it isn’t. Still though, we’ll get a good look at what Nokia will be after the deal closes when it reports its performance. And that’s exciting.
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs
Jan 17, 11:33PM
What's a little biomimetics between friends? Today's edition of TIDWRTWHUFOO we present a few exciting projects from MIT's Biomimetics Lab where they're copying animal motion in order to create more efficient robotic hunter/killers.FaceSubstitute Is The Coolest (And Creepiest) Thing You'll See This Week
Jan 17, 11:05PM
Ready for your semi-regular reminder that technology is freakin' amazing? FaceSubstitute is a tech demo that lets you use your webcam to try on someone else's face (god, that was a weird sentence to type), and it's just as creepy/awesome as it sounds. Want to be Walter White? Sure! Want to be a terrfying pseudo-Kardashian? Okay! Want to be Bieber for a day? No problem, weirdo!Even BlackBerry Thinks Windows Phone Is Too Small
Jan 17, 10:57PM
News is out today that BlackBerry has no intention of bringing a BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) application to Windows Phone. Comments published in TrustedReviews from the company indicate that it deems Windows Phone too small to warrant the investment. TechCrunch confirmed the statements.Dropbox Closes Roughly $250M Round At $10B Valuation, WSJ Says
Jan 17, 10:05PM
Dropbox has raised a massive $250 million funding round, valuing the company at $10 billion according to the Wall Street Journal. The new funding round is led by a BlackRock fund, according to the WSJ, which cites “two people familiar with the deal” as the source of the report. This is actually the second time that Dropbox has raised $250 million: It did so in 2011 in a round that included Goldman Sachs, Sequoia, Index Ventures and Accel Partners. Back in November, a rumor about an additional $250 million raise put the valuation of the company at a supposed $8 billion, which, based on various revenue estimates, could have been viewed as anywhere from expensive to cheap. When news of the raise was first circulating last year, revenue for the cloud storage company was rumored to be in the “hundreds of millions of dollars” range according to BusinessWeek, which helps justify the company’s huge valuation. Other companies in the same ball park in terms of worth pre-IPO include Twitter, which was valued at $10 billion back in May, 2013; Google, which went public with a $2.7 billion valuation; and Box, which is a direct Dropbox competitor and had a valuation of $2 billion when it raised $100 million late last year. The fact that Dropbox raised at a $10 billion valuation instead of $8 billion could indicate that the round was competitive, with third parties bidding for a chance to scoop up Dropbox shares. And, naturally, at a valuation that rich, Dropbox is placing itself far up the IPO queue. Prior to this raise, Dropbox has collected $257 million in funding. Provided that the WSJ has the new capital story correct, Dropbox will have raised a total of over half a billion dollars. Dropbox’s new capital dwarfs the $100 million that its traditional rival Box recently absorbed, perhaps granting it a competitive edge as both companies look to expand their core business and diversify their product lines. Also included in this round are existing investment partners, the WSJ says, but it’s unclear who exactly was involved at this stage. We’ve reached out to Dropbox to find out more about the reported funding and the backers in the round, and will update if we find out more.A16z Looks To Raise New $1.5B Fund, Primack Says
Jan 17, 9:34PM
Andreessen Horowitz is raising a massive new fund, according to Fortune’s LP whisperer Dan Primack. The expected total for the new fund is $1.5 billion, giving the venture group sufficient capital to pursue deals at every funding point at scale. According to CrunchBase, Andreessen Horowitz previously raised a total of $2.65 billion, meaning that this new fund would be equal to more than half of its prior total. The $1.5 billion new fund is the same size as the group’s’ Fund III that was put together in 2012. It’s no accident that the funds are the same size, says Primack, who reports that the new fund will be “similar in structure” to the past fund. Given that, we can expect the new fund to contain monies for both early stage investment and large deals alike. At the moment Andreessen Horowitz is regarded as some of the smartest money in circulation. The group rose to prominence on the back of its massively lucrative investment in Skype, which was later sold to Microsoft for more than 8 billion dollars. In late 2013, Andreessen Horowitz announced a reticence to invest in companies at the Series A level, implying that its new fund will find a home in companies that are generally of larger scale. Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment. Top Image Credit: FlickrProtect Yourself From The NSA With WireOver's Encrypted File Sharing
Jan 17, 8:55PM
Nothing is truly NSA-proof or hacker-proof, but WireOver wants to offer you more security than Dropbox, Google Drive, or Skydrive. The Y Combinator startup just emerged from stealth with a desktop app that lets you send files of any size for free. And for $10 a month, your transfers get end-to-end encryption so only the recipient can open them. WireOver can't even look at what you're sending.VP Of Product Michael Sippey Is Leaving Twitter
Jan 17, 8:14PM
Twitter's Vice President of Product Michael Sippey just announced that he's stepping into an advisory role at the company, then moving on to, well, something else. In a company email that Sippey also posted on his blog, he said he realized that "it was time to move on" after discussions with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and COO Ali Rowghani. Sippey doesn't go into too much detail, but he hints that he wants to be at a smaller company again: "I've spent most of my career working at startups, helping them scale and having a direct hand on the product."Fantastic For iPhone Is A Smart, Social Music Player That Learns What You Like & Suggests Nearby Shows
Jan 17, 8:08PM
Grokr, a company that had previously been working on a sort of "Google Now"-like application for iOS users, is launching its latest creation called Fantastic into public beta today. The new app, a smart music player for iOS devices, lets you not only play your own music, but discover new artists and tracks you may be interested in, as well as new videos, upcoming concerts and more.This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Lockitron, Nintendo, Google's Smart Contacts, And Nest
Jan 17, 8:00PM
It’s been a big week for smart things. Coming off the heels of CES, this week we learned that Lockitron hasn’t been shipping the majority of their smart lock pre-orders, Nintendo hasn’t been selling many Wii Us, that Google has been building smart contact lenses and buying smart thermostat companies, and that our dear Chris Velazco is leaving us. It may not be the happiest Gadgets Podcast you’ve ever heard, but at least it’s honest. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the TC Gadgets Podcast, featuring John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, and Darrell Etherington. Enjoy! We invite you to enjoy our weekly podcasts every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right here. Click here to download an MP3 of this show. You can subscribe to the show via RSS. Subscribe in iTunes Intro Music by Rick Barr.Google Rolls Out In-Ad Surveys To Figure Out Why People Hate Ads
Jan 17, 7:54PM
For about the last year and a half, Google has let you mute display ads they don’t like. Just click the little [x] button and it’s gone and will never be shown to you again. That’s a pretty useful solution for noisy ads you really, really hate, despite the fact that they promise to show you that one weird trick to finally lose all your belly fat. Google’s users have already muted “millions of ads,” the company says, and it’s using this information as a signal to “make ads more relevant and useful.” To get even more data about how users interact with its ads, you will now also be able to give Google a bit more info about why you didn’t like an ad. Over the next few weeks, Google will roll out an in-ad survey that will pop up when you hit the mute button. These surveys, Google says, will help it learn more about user preferences and why they mute ads. Based on Google’s screenshots, it will only give users three choices per survey, but it looks like the process could be spread out over multiple steps. As far as I can see, users don’t have to actually finish these surveys to mute an ad. Most people will think they have to, however, so this will probably give Google quite a bit of new data to fine-tune its ad targeting.
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.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks
