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.
Ze Frank's Star.me Is Like Being In Kindergarten All Over Again
Feb 05, 6:43AM
Every once in awhile you come across people who are entirely original, and Ze Frank is one of those people. While many people as eccentric as Frank end up with a not so amazing lot in life, Frank, who originally studied Neuroscience at Brown, most recently received $500K from Andreesen Horowitz, Betaworks, Lerer Ventures and Ron Conway to focus on creating novel social games. Now the world gets to see the fruits of his labor. 
Search Underdog Blekko Sees Over 30M Searches In January, More Than 110K Slashtags Created Since Launch
Feb 05, 3:00AM
Nowhere has the need for a more diverse search market been more apparent than this week's revelation that Bing was cribbing Google's notes. While Microsoft VP Harry Shum and Google's Matt Cutts squabbled on a panel together at the Farsight 2011 conference, Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta looked on, more a human symbol of the call for greater market diversity than anything else. Earlier in the week Blekko made the decision that it would block content farms like Demand Media's eHow and AnswerBag and now is announcing another milestone, over 30 million search queries in January and over 110K slashtags created since its launch in November. This breaks down to about 10-15 search queries a second and over 1 million searches a day, which is at levels over its original traffic spike at launch. In contrast, Google was serving over 88 billion searches a month at last count (the 2010 Comscore numbers have yet to come out as far as I can see).
The Verizon Vs. AT&T Ads Prove One Thing: The iPhone Is Helen Of Troy
Feb 05, 2:33AM
The most recent Verizon and AT&T commercials are awesome because everyone loves a good slap fight — especially one that is played out in public (for more evidence, see Google vs. Bing earlier this week). But they're actually even more interesting under the surface. Because it's a fight that has only one real winner. But it's not who you might think. It's neither Verizon nor AT&T. It's Apple. Think about it. Both AT&T and Verizon are spending millions of dollars to bash each other in these high-profile commercials. But the overall impact of these commercials is likely to be that they completely cancel each other out. If AT&T feels Verizon is winning, they'll just order more ads, and vice versa. And so again, the only winner in these ads is the one common element: the iPhone.
Android Honeycomb's Mesmerizing Bootup Screen
Feb 05, 1:36AM
Earlier this week we posted an extensive preview of Android Honeycomb, the tablet version of Google's mobile OS that will start shipping on devices later this month. But we saved one more tasty bit of Honeycomb for the weekend: the OS's bootup screen. It looks like something out of Tron, and it's a nice departure from the boot animation seen on the Nexus One and Nexus S, which features swirling strands of color coming together to form the Nexus 'X' symbol (you can watch it below).
Groupon's "Rejected" Super Bowl Ad Is A (Subtle) Jab At LivingSocial
Feb 04, 11:57PM
The battle of the social media Super Bowl ads continues, with daily deals Groupon just posting on its own blog about how it rejected an ad where someone goes through a "deal a day" addiction, a concept conspicuously similar to what people are reporting competitor LivingSocial has up its sleeve for its 30 second ad before this Sunday's Steelers vs. Packer's game. Internet Retailer describes LivingSocial's ad, "The pre-game spot tells the story of how one man's life changes as a result of his "deal addiction" with LivingSocial. The campaign was created by Martin Agency."The details of what Groupon has up its sleeve for Sunday are still unknown.
They're Commercial Fighting! AT&T Shows How Talk And Surf Is Useful
Feb 04, 11:53PM
Yesterday, Verizon launched a commercial campaign to highlight that they now have the iPhone 4 with one important feature: the ability to make calls. While they never mention their competitor (or humorously, even the iPhone itself), it's clear who this was aimed squarely at: AT&T. But AT&T is not about to take the punches sitting down. Today, they have their own ad. "Answers" shows a man in his office working when he receives a call on his iPhone. It's his wife, wishing him a happy anniversary. Naturally, the man forgot. He quickly heads to Google on his iPhone and starts searching for a restaurant to make a reservation at. This is something that would not be possible with the Verizon version of the device.
Facebook Turns Seven: From Colleges To Cairo, You've Come A Long Way Baby
Feb 04, 10:47PM
From founder Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room at Harvard to movie theaters across the US to the cover of TIME magazine to the fingertips of protestors in Cairo, Facebook has probably had more influence over our day to day lives than any other startup this decade. To celebrate its seven years of incredible growth, the company has put up a custom candle graphic up on its Facebook wall, with the message, "To the 1.5 million of you who share our birthday today - Happy Birthday!" The image has received over 8,000 comments and 48,558 "Likes" thus far. 
Tango Takes Face-To-Face Video Calling Beyond The iPhone With 8 Million Downloads
Feb 04, 10:26PM
One of the best built-in features of the iPhone 4 is FaceTime, the video calling feature that lets you see who you are talking to by using the cameras on both phones. But it only works over WiFi and if both callers own an iPhone 4. Perhaps those limitations are why an app called Tango is the seventh most popular social networking app right now (iTunes link). Tango lets you make video calls not just on iPhones but also on Android phones, and it works over 3G data networks as well. It works on both the iPhone 4 and the 3GS, and even iPod Touches. It's been growing like crazy on both iOS and Android devices, adding one million downloads every two weeks. In the past three months, it's grown from about 1 million downloads to 8 million (see chart. Of those, 7.2 million became registered users, and 42 percent (or about 3 million) have made a video call in the last 30 days.
Help Make This Wild Braille Watch A Reality
Feb 04, 10:02PM
David Chavez has a dream. He wants to build this wild-looking Braille watch that shows the time by moving little rotating dots along the face to spell out the numbers in Braille. Even if you're not visually impaired, you have to appreciate the ingenuity and usability this watch, called the Haptica, has to offer. The project is up on Kickstarter now, so pop over and pre-order if you're so inclined. Considering most watches for the blind haven't changed since the early 1900s - take this Seiko "Braille" watch for example - this is an interesting step forward. 
Buy Your Valentine's Gift Through Causes, And They'll Donate $10 To Charity
Feb 04, 9:08PM
It's only ten days til Valentine's Day (ugh — err, yay!), which means many of you are vaguely aware that you should do something special for your significant other. And this year there's a way to give your sweetheart a nice gift while also giving back to charity. Causes has just launched a special promotion available at Causes.com/valentines. The concept is simple: buy a gift through the site, and you get to donate $10 to a nonprofit, like Campaign for Cancer Prevention or Invisible Children. You can also choose to donate the money to any of the Causes you're part of on the site. Pretty cool. Causes is essentially donating the affiliate fees they'd typically receive from their retail partners. The promotion is using different retailers for twenty countries around the world: in the U.S. it's Proflowers, Spain has Aquraelle and Serenata Flowers, and so on.
Discovering The Distance-to-Discount Ratio
Feb 04, 9:01PM
When it comes to deals, the bigger the discount, the further people will travel. While this may sound obvious, mobile advertising company JiWire has some numbers to back it up. JiWire is releasing a new study today that evaluates consumers; behavior when it comes to location-based deals and discounts. In a survey of more than 3,000 respondents, JiWire's results show that the greater the discount, the further people will travel to redeem a coupon or promotion. For example, for a $100 item, 55 percent of consumers are willing to travel 15 minutes for a 10 percent discount. But 40 percent of respondents will travel an hour for a 50 percent discount, and 28 percent will travel two hours for a 75 percent discount. Essentially, higher discounts motivate consumers to travel farther. But there are limits to how far people will go. Even if you give away a product worth $100 for free, only 31 percent of people would travel more than two hours to get it.
Multinational Startups: The Future Or A Doomed Idea? (TCTV)
Feb 04, 8:36PM
In our second segment with Ankur Jain of the Kairos Society, we talk about the idea of multinational startups. A lot of startups like to say they are "global from day one," but typically that's just marketing. Most of the startups I know who have tried to be truly global from day one-- focusing explicitly on several big markets at once with co-founders spread around the globe-- have said later they didn't recommend it. Many entrepreneurs would argue there is just something about facetime, coding in the same room, and building a project physically together that is core to how a startup works and a culture is built. After all, it's hard to be nimble when you're navigating cultural, language and time-zone chasms. Nevertheless, Jain thinks it's the future. He explains why in the video below. 
Rainbird: The Way Twitter Counts Tweets In Realtime (Which Will Be Open Sourced)
Feb 04, 7:40PM
Yesterday, Twitter analytics lead, Kevin Weil, gave a talk at O'Reilly's Strata 2011, a conference dedicated to big data. The main topic of the talk was Rainbird, Twitter's realtime counting system that's built on top of Cassandra. Notably, it powers a number of things Twitter uses internally, such as Promoted Products analytics, operational monitoring, and even Tweet Button counting. Today, Twitter has posted the entire presentation to SlideShare, which means we can now embed it above. It's fairly technical, but also pretty easy to follow along with. If you're at all interested in how Twitter acquires, stores, and uses the massive amount of data they deal with, you should check it out. It also gives a glimpse into their Promoted Tweet analytics package (which looks quite nice).
How The iPad Time Shifts Online Reading
Feb 04, 7:18PM
One of the reasons bookmarking apps like Read It Later and Instapaper are becoming so popular is because we are inundated with news and interesting links all day long, but have no time to read them. But just as DVRs helps us shift our TV viewing to better fit our own schedules, these apps helps us time shift our online reading. And according to some data put out earlier this month by Read It Later, it looks like the iPad is becoming the time-shifting reading device of choice. Read It Later offers bookmarking apps for computers, mobile phones and iPads. It looked at 100 million articles saved by its users. The chart above shows the amount of saving activity by time of day. It is pretty consistent throughout waking hours, as you's expect from people who are constantly bombarded with new information. It just never stops. Below is a chart showing when iPad users actually end up reading what they saved. As you can see, the time reserved for reading is shifted all the way to the right, with the sweet spot being between 7 PM and 11 PM at night. This suggests that iPad usage is competing with primetime TV for people's attention (or that they watching TV with iPad in hand, or shifting their TV viewing to other times). 
Demotix Makes Hay While The Middle Eastern Revolutions Shine, Thanks To Twitter (TCTV)
Feb 04, 6:25PM
Demotix is a London-based startup which has attracted a new wave of attention since the wave of civil unrest has swept the Middle East, particularly in Egypt. The idea is not new: upload photos and videos to a platform to create an alternative news wire / agency. What is new is that as the mainstream media's coverage of international events has been shrinking - it is no longer cost efficient to have a guy in some far-flung bureau filing the one annual story a year - so has Demotix' coverage expanded with professional and semi-professional contributors. In each case Demotix checks out the credentials of contributors, who can then earn news agency fees from their output. It splits the revenue with photographers 50/50 each time the photo or video is sold (major photo agencies take a much larger cut and only pay photographers once). Photos sourced from Demotix have appeared on the front pages of New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Guardian. In August last year it signed a deal with the Publish2 news exchange giving it access to US distribution. 
HoneyApps Raises $1 Million For Security Management Software
Feb 04, 6:15PM
Chicago-based startup HoneyApps has raised $1 million in funding led by Tugboat Ventures with Hyde Park Angels participating in the round. Co-founded by Orbitz's former Chief Information Security Officer Ed Bellis and Jeff Heuer, HoneyApps offers businesses and government agencies a comprehensive security management software. Called Conduit, the software will consolidate all of a businesses' security vulnerability information, reporting and management into a single place. The startup will then analyze and track a company's vulnerability across applications, networks, servers, and databases. 
TechCrunch Giveaway: A Dell Vostro V130 Laptop #TechCrunch
Feb 04, 6:01PM
There was a certain ad on TechCrunch last week you may have heard about. You may have even noticed it yourself and you may have gotten a little annoyed by it. The interstitial ad was advertising a Dell Vostro V130 laptop. These laptops normally cost around $429, have an award-winning design, and weigh a very light 3.5 pounds. We wanted to say we were sorry to Dell for calling out their ad, so today we are giving one of these laptops away to one lucky reader! 
Online Retail Spending Reaches A Record $43.4B In Q4 2010; Up 11 Percent
Feb 04, 5:04PM
Online spending in the fourth quarter of 2010 reached record levels, according to comScore's latest data on retail e-commerce. After a stronger than expected holiday shopping season, online retail spending in Q4 reached a record $43.4 billion, which is up 11 percent from the same quarter in 2009. Additionally, 84 percent of U.S. Internet users conducted an online transaction in Q4 2010, which is up from 78 percent last year. comScore reports that the growth rate for the quarter represented the fifth consecutive quarter of positive year-over-year growth and second quarter of double-digit growth rates in the past year, thanks to an improved economy. 
NBC Ruins The Fun, Fires Employee Over "What Is Internet" Video
Feb 04, 4:55PM
By now you've probably seen the Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel pondering the wonders of the Internet. It's a bit hokey and of course shows the NBC hosts talking nonsense about something outside of their expertise. Well, NBC clearly didn't find it as cute as everyone else and reportedly fired the employee that uploaded it. Best Buy almost did that once. Remember how that turned out? NBC went and pulled most of the videos from the Internet. The video we embedded is dead. But of course they couldn't get them all. Simply searching Google for Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel pulls dozens of copies. Nothing ever goes away online. NBC should know this by now. It's called the Internet.
New GroundLink App Lets Travelers Book A Green Limo, Shuttle or Car Service
Feb 04, 4:31PM
GroundLink — a New York City transportation technology and travel services business — released a new mobile app this week. The second iPhone app from the company, GroundLink allows users to book a hybrid, electric or otherwise clean-vehicle car, shuttle or limo to get around cities around the world. Users can also opt to book a ride by lowest price, highest service rating or soonest and nearest available driver with the app. The company's chief executive Alex Mashinsky noted: "Over 5,000 of our [transportation] providers offer green vehicles – all forms, including hydrogen fleets in Los Angeles, even. It's not all hybrids and electrics. Some countries have promoted natural gas vehicles..."
Chinese Online Video Company PPLive Raises A Whopping $250 Million
Feb 04, 3:00PM
PPLive, a Chinese online video company, has raised a monster Series D round from SoftBank, securing as much as $250 million. With the investment, SoftBank has taken a 35% stake in PPLive, which offers China's leading online streaming and VOD service PPTV.
Trademark Database Trademarkia Debuts Automatic Activity Notifications
Feb 04, 2:50PM
Search engine Trademarkia, which launched at TechCrunch50 in 2009, is an comprehensive database of over 6.5 million U.S. trademarks filed since 1870, including dead marks. Today, the database is launching a new feature that's sure to be useful for both startups and large companies—automatic trademark activity notifications. Trademarkia scans of all the marks and returns results in a visual grid that's a lot easier to make sense of than the USPTO's trademark database. You can search by company, theme, product category, or even filing attorney. Companies can also file a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office through the site. And Trademarkia.com offers trademarked logo search that allows users to search inside millions logos for specific features or design elements.
TiVo Says It Can Do A Better Job Analyzing The Effectiveness Of TV Commercials
Feb 04, 2:22PM
TiVo this morning launched a free website for anyone interested in commercial ratings (particularly marketers, I guess). The 'Ad Scorecard' is designed to let people analyze how effective a brand's TV commercials are at retaining viewers and how well they are performing relative to competing brands. And by launching, I mean the company pretty much bashed every other audience and effectiveness measurement companies out there, saying they are no longer effective themselves.
Verizon Crows About iPhone 4 "Record Sales," Doesn't Name Numbers
Feb 04, 2:03PM
Verizon Wireless just published a press release claiming "record sales" on yesterday's ViPhone pre-order day, CEO Dan Mead saying that things were "exciting" and that "In just our first two hours, we had already sold more phones than any first day launch in our history." Well, duh! Sadly, Verizon didn't offer any hard numbers on overall sales which suggests that availability will be wildly limited on the first day of general sale. Considering no other phone flew off the shelves like the ViPhone - ever - Verizon should be sending fruit baskets to Steve Jobs right now full of fruit and miniature giraffes. Press release after the jump.
Exclusive: Tremor Media Acquires Mobile Video Ad Platform Transpera
Feb 04, 2:00PM
Tremor Media is making another acquisition today—mobile ad platform Transpera. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Transpera's ad platform enables the distribution and monetization of web videos on mobile phones. With the Attention Network, the company offers publishers a way to monetize off of mobile video ads and gives advertisers a way to market their wares by serving targeted ads in the form of interactive display banners, pre-roll videos, overlay ads, post-roll experiences and mini sites.
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
