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The Second Season Of "House Of Cards" Is Now On Netflix
Feb 14, 1:49PM
I have a date tonight. And it's with Frank Underwood. The entire second season of the Emmy award winning series is now available for your enjoyment on Netflix.Coding Cupboard Is A New U.K. Crowdsourced Marketplace For Budding Devs To Get Project Work
Feb 14, 1:47PM
Coding Cupboard is a new crowdsourced marketplace aiming to connect up budding coders with businesses needing to find developers to do one-off project work -- launching today in beta in the U.K.Google's Valentine's Day Doodle Features Six Tales Of Real Romance
Feb 14, 12:55PM
Google has a Valentine’s Day doodle for their search homepage, the way they do every year. This one is fairly elaborate, however, and features stories supplied by Ira Glass and NPR’s This American Life (if you’re in the U.S.). Each story is animated using simple illustrations drawn on candy hearts, and each tells a story of love from a different perspective. The video above shows the making of Google’s Valentine’s Day doodle, as described by the Doodler team within the company to TIME’s NewsFeed. You can see that a lot of work goes into the creation of any Google Doodle, but this one is especially elaborate. It’s also interesting to see how the animator has to balance considerations like what’s possible from an engineering perspective with mundane worries like file size. Google is serving up a different doodle for international visitors, which features a mix-your-own box of chocolates that you can then actually send to your sweetie, and the company is also adding animated floating hearts to your Google+ photo uploads depicting hugging and kissing. They manage this using their Auto Awesome photo enhancing feature, and it’s yet another example of just how advanced Google is getting with regards to photo analysis and editing automation. This may not be everyone’s favorite holiday, but Google’s approach to celebrating it is pretty adorable, even if you’re essentially a curmudgeon when it comes to chocolates, flowers and paper hearts.Bicycle Startup Blaze Pulls In Investment From Index Ventures And Sir Richard Branson
Feb 14, 12:51PM
London-based Blaze has officially launched it's innovative front bike light with a laser projection, and starts shipping worldwide at the end of this month. The Laserlight is the first of its kind in the world, and was a finalist at the TechCrunch Hardware Battlefield at CES earlier this year. Blaze has also announced that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding from Index Ventures and the Branson family - as in Sir Richard Branson. Founder Emily Brooke says she is planning to develop Blaze as a full-blown cycling brand, built around what she calls the "urban cycling" market. I must say it's been a fascinating journey watching this genuinely original product come to market.Indian Music Streaming Startup Dhingana Shuts Down
Feb 14, 11:53AM
Dhingana, the Indian music streaming startup battling to stay alive for past few months, has finally shutdown. We have been trying to speak with Dhingana CEO Rohit Bhatia for past few weeks, but he’s been requesting more time for bringing clarity on the startup’s future. Dhingana is among the top-funded music startups in India. It raised $7 million in Series B funding in October last year from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Inventus Capital Partners and Helion Venture Partners. Dhingana’s website is now showing this goodbye message: Goodbye! We hope that you enjoyed listening to Dhingana as much as we enjoyed building it. But alas, all good things must come to an end. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for letting us be a part of your musical moments! - The Dhingana Team As Medianama noted, there are some harsh realities facing the Indian music streaming services. One of the biggest challenges is working with music labels and lack of standardization in signing those agreements. Another issue is music piracy – India’s media and entertainment industry loses about $4 billion every year due to copyright infringement. Dhingana started facing a crisis when its biggest partner — T Series — said it will not renew the agreement. T-Series president Neeraj Kalyan had confirmed to TechCrunch, that the company will not renew the license set to expire for nearly 8,000 songs from Dhingana’s catalogue. Until then, Dhingana’s CEO had said discussions were on for exploring the road ahead, and it all looked like a near-death experience. But it’s all over now for Dhingana. As we had reported in December last year, Gaana.com (backed by Times Internet Ltd) and Saavn (the Spotify for Indian music), continue to survive and even expand their services, thanks to the deep pockets and some innovative business models. Their success also reflects that the digital music scene in India may not be so gloomy after all. Gaana for instance, has around 7.5 million monthly active users. However, the streaming business has to become a paid service sometime soon to ensure independent startups are able to scale and survive. “The streaming business has to slowly move from free economy to paid economy as sustainability of ad-supported revenue model is a big question mark. Free music is a very dangerous thing, and we would not like our next generation grow up believing music is for free,” Neeraj Kalyan, president of T-Series had told me December lastWant A Neat Overview Of What's Going On In Wearables? Point Your Eyes Right Here…
Feb 14, 11:25AM
A wearable tech research and consulting firm has put together a neat overview of the nascent space -- tracking the number of devices already in existence; areas of market focus; and even which parts of the body are being targeted most.Former Groupon Product SVP Jeff Holden Joins Uber As Chief Product Officer
Feb 14, 11:00AM
Well that was fast. Just a few days after it was revealed that Groupon product chief Jeff Holden was leaving the daily deals giant to join a "Bay Area tech company," we now know where he has landed. Uber announced this morning that it has hired Holden as its new Chief Product Officer.Japanese Internet Giant Rakuten Acquires Viber For $900M
Feb 14, 7:29AM
Rakuten, one of Japan's largest Internet companies, has announced that it will acquire Cyprus-based messaging platform and app maker Viber for $900 million. The deal is the latest and largest in an aggressive acquisition spree by Rakuten as it seeks to "become the world's No. 1 Internet services company," it said, and marks its entry into the global messaging market.Xiaomi Sets Singapore Launch Date As It Prepares For Global Expansion
Feb 14, 6:34AM
Xiaomi just announced that it will launch in Singapore on Feb. 21. This is a significant move because it marks the company's first expansion beyond China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan six months after naming Google's former Android vice president Hugo Barra as the head of Xiaomi Global in a surprise announcement.Secret Launches Bug Bounty Program For Hackers Who Find Vulnerabilities In Its App
Feb 14, 1:42AM
Secret, which has fast become everyone's favorite way to share "anonymish" thoughts with friends and strangers alike, has launched a new program that is designed to find -- and squash -- bugs in its mobile app before being exposed to the general public.Aerohive Networks Files For $75 Million IPO
Feb 14, 1:21AM
Aerohive, a company that sells Wi-Fi products to enterprise customers, filed today to go public. The company's proposed $75 million public offering is not unexpected. It spoke directly about a future flotation when it raised its Series E round of capital ($22.5 million) in 2012.Twitter's Dick Costolo On What It Takes To Be A Good CEO
Feb 14, 1:11AM
2013 was a very good year for Twitter, so it's only fitting that Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo took home the award for CEO of the year at the 7th annual Crunchies Awards held this week in San Francisco. Backstage at the show, TechCrunch co-editor Matthew Panzarino pulled Costolo aside for a quick interview to talk about Twitter's success over the past year and what it means to be a good CEO. When Panzarino asked Costolo to share his "playbook" for leading Twitter, he had a really thoughtful response.TC Cribs: Zoosk, Where A Tunnel Of Love Leads To Coders, Cupcakes, And Puppies
Feb 14, 12:46AM
It's just about Valentine's Day, which means love is in the air, even here among the workaholics in the tech industry. So for this episode of Cribs we headed over to the San Francisco headquarters of Zoosk, the startup that started out as a dating-focused Facebook app and has grown into a full on matchmaking service.Yahoo Acquires Technical Recruiting Startup Distill
Feb 13, 11:43PM
Yahoo just acquired a San Francisco-based startup called Distill, which was working on a way to make technical recruiting easier by pairing video interviews and programming challenges. They had raised $1.3 million in funding from investors including Felicis Ventures, China’s Innovation Works and DN Capital. The startup’s two founders, Deng-Kai Chen and Ken MacInnis, came from Tapjoy, StumbleUpon and Google. They created Distill because they had built up engineering teams before and were familiar with the frustrations that come with managing and scheduling technical interviews. Distill’s product paired the basic features of a video chat service like Skype, and put them alongside a text editor and file upload space so that an interviewer could walk a candidate through a collaborative coding session. We hear they’ll be working on mobile ads products for Yahoo. Here’s the memo the company just posted to its website: We are excited to share the news that the Distill team is off to start a new adventure! We are joining Yahoo. Prior to creating Distill, we were part of the original team behind the creation of Tapjoy, a mobile performance-based advertising platform that drove deep engagement and monetization opportunities for mobile app publishers. We’ll be drawing upon our expertise from the Tapjoy days to help build out Yahoo’s mobile advertising solutions. As of today, we have stopped development of Distill Schedule and Distill Interview. You will still be able to schedule interviews through the end of February, and the Distill platform will remain available through March 30, 2014. If you have any questions, concerns, or data requests, please contact us at support@distill.cc, or reach out to your account manager directly. We want to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to everyone at the awesome companies we have been working with, as well as the candidates who have met their future employers through Distill. It’s been a fun ride for us, and we couldn’t have gotten this far without your help. Thank you!!Betaworks Takes Another $10M In Funding Led By Japanese Incubator Digital Garage
Feb 13, 11:14PM
NYC's betaworks has taken $10 million in additional investment from Japanese digital media incubator and Twitter investor Digital Garage, which is tagged on to the $20 million round the company received in December.TechCrunch Giveaway: A Bouquet Of Flowers
Feb 13, 10:04PM
What is everyone doing tomorrow? You do know that tomorrow is one of the most romantic days of the year, right? Do you have plans? Dinner? A trip? Is dessert made? Well, thanks to BloomNation, you don’t have to add flowers to your checklist! BloomNation has agreed to give a romantic bouquet of flowers to five lucky people. They will have the flowers hand crafted by one of their local artisan florists and hand delivered to your valentine. That means you have more time to do things for the night — maybe clean the house or scatter those rose petals on the ground. Whatever you’re into. Sadly, this giveaway is for the U.S. only. It starts now and ends tonight at 9pm EST. All you have to do to enter is comment below about what love means to you. We will go through the comments and pick five winners tonight, so be on the lookout if you enter.
Silk Road 2 Hacked, Over 4,000 Bitcoin Allegedly Stolen
Feb 13, 9:58PM
Silk Road 2 moderator Defcon reported in a forum post that hackers have used a transaction malleability exploit to hack the marketplace. The hackers stole over Apartment Listing Startup RentHop Opens Up Nationwide
Feb 13, 9:38PM
RentHop, which launched in 2009 and has spent the last several years refining its marketplace for apartment rentals, is now moving beyond just that market and has opened up nationwide. In doing so, it will (hopefully) make apartment hunting more bearable to people outside of New York City.Kinvey Launches Dedicated Backend As A Service Platform For Enterprise Developers
Feb 13, 9:24PM
Kinvey, the enterprise-centric backend as a service (BaaS) platform for mobile apps, is launching a new feature today that will allow its customers to run their apps in a dedicated private cloud or on-premise instead of on Kinvey's regular multi-tenant platform.Citia Raises $600K To Power "Card-Based" Websites And Content
Feb 13, 8:18PM
The Internet is "melting," according to Linda Holliday, founder and CEO of startup Citia. "I've been watching this movement from solids and pages to liquids and flows," she told me. "Everything's becoming atomic." Holliday argued that when you look at sites like Pinterest, you can see how the web is shifting towards a more "card-based" structure. And Citia, which is announcing that it has raised $600,000 in additional funding, aims to help marketers and content creators take advantage of that shift.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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