TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 12:23 pm
I rarely like to put my own little fetishistic watch reviews up here unless the watch is something amazingly unique or unless I think you, dear reader, will get a kick out of the quality or styling of a particular piece. That’s why I chose to write up this Benarus Megalodon Diving Watch, a huge mo...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 11:36 am
OpenLabel, a startup that wants to augment everyday products’ barcodes with crowd-sourced information that helps you decide whether to buy, has raised $80,000 in seed funding in a round led by Peter Kirwan, also an investor in IFTTT. Also participating in the round were Tim Drees and Doug Taylor. ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 11:31 am
Inherently, we like doing things in groups, as it makes our experiences more social. It’s not about what we’re doing so much as who we’re doing it with that makes our experiences enjoyable. Group messaging took off two years ago, overrunning SXSW, as a better way to keep groups of people engag...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 11:02 am
Wattpad, a Union Square Ventures-backed platform for sharing stories and interacting with writers, has been growing steadily, and it hit a nice milestone in January — during that month, users spent more than 1 billion minutes on the service. Co-founder and CEO Allen Lau tells me via email that th...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 11:00 am
SneakPeeq, a social shopping startup that debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt last year, has raised a new round totaling $2.67 million from Bain Capital Ventures; Metamorphic Ventures; Keith Rabois, Tim Kendall, Mike Murphy, and Vikas Gupta. As we wrote in our initial review of Sneakpeeq, aims to replica...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 10:18 am
Like most hacks, this discovery of a way to find an Android phone’s Google Wallet PIN requires a lot of initial access but is disturbing nonetheless. Google knows about the hack and is repairing it. Discovered by Joshua Rubin of Zvelo, the hack is one of the most interesting attacks on Google Wall...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 10:17 am
NFC is picking up traction everywhere you look, and the latest news comes out of the UK’s Proxama. According to a release sent out this morning, the company is planning a partnership with ARM to create an NFC system. Employing ARM TrustZone technology in conjunction with the Proxama Mobile Walle...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 10:17 am
With MWC drawing ever closer, new handset leaks are hitting the wires hard and fast. Today alone we’ve seen the Galaxy Mini 2 break cover and new images of the LG Miracle Windows Phone emerge, and now HTC’s latest LTE-friendly Android phone has been caught on film. As PhoneArena notes, this mys...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 10:04 am
In addition to the updated “Explore” feature that rolled out to Foursquare’s Android and iPhone applications this week, the social discovery service also added a special feature to its Android app that sort of flew under the radar: support for NFC. NFC, or near field communication, allows dev...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 9:39 am
Tesla Motors’ family is growing. The company just unveiled its first crossover, the Model X. Like the Roadster and Model S, the Model X is a purely electric vehicle, built on the same platform as the Model S. Tesla says pricing will be similar to that of the Model S, making the base model around $...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 10, 2012, 2:54 am
  PaperKarma is one of those ideas that make you realize that the future is nigh.  The concept behind it? See a piece of junk mail that offends you in your mail box — anything from magazines, catalogs, coupon books, fliers, credit card offers, and the root of all evils, the Yellow Pages — tak...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 11:13 pm
It looks like Amazon Web Services may be launching a new workflow manager called SWF. First spotted by TechCrunch reader Michael Hood, SWF is listed as a service under AWS’ Free Usage Tier. Unfortunately, clicking on SWF takes you to a ’404′ page. Upon further digging, it looks like SWF stand...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 8:58 pm
When you listen, read, or watch through a Facebook Open Graph app, a few of your friends hear about through the news feed, Ticker, or Timeline. Starting this week, Facebook is allowing advertisers to pay for more exposure of listen, read, or watch stories that mention them by turning the stories in...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 8:48 pm
The culture of hacking continues to bloom in New York, evidenced last weekend by Columbia’s DevFest 2012. DevFest is entirely student run, and had workshops and support from local VC firms and startups. The event culminated with presentations of hacks and awards judged by Fred Wilson (USV), Chris ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 8:00 pm
Yozma Venture Capital is selling its stake in startup Conduit for a massive return. The story was reported in the Israeli publication Globes, but I’ve confirmed the details with a source who has knowledge of the deal, and who also identified the buyer (described by Globes only as “a large foreig...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 7:29 pm
The pioneer of vertical media, they call themselves. And Glam Media, the publishing network with more than 220 monthly million uniques, announced today their “logical next play” – a vertical food network called Foodie that will offer a social, interactive network (Portal 2.0?) for food blogger...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 7:21 pm
In a few weeks, Apple will unveil the next generation iPad, John Packowski of AllThingsD confirms today. If history (and carrier code) is any indication, it should go on sale shortly after that. Maybe even just a few days later. And that’s interesting because it doesn’t give developers a lot of...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 7:13 pm
Ever since Steve Ballmer made that surprise announcement at CES 2011, there has been a lot of speculation about just how Microsoft would be bringing Windows to the ARM architecture. Would it be a whole separate line? Would it be compatible with old applications? Would it be cheaper? Many of these q...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 6:03 pm
Facebook isn’t the only social network getting ready to monetize its mobile app with advertising. During today’s analyst call to discuss its fourth quarter earnings, LinkedIn executives said they will also be introducing advertising to their mobile apps. There weren’t many details offered —...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 5:43 pm
It was just a few days ago that news of a mysterious home-oriented Google device was being prepped for testing in the homes of 252 company employees, but the associated FCC filing left most of the specifics up in the air. Now, if a new report from the Wall Street Journal holds true, Google’s next ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 12:41 pm
The Pirate Bay, in many ways, is disappearing. It is one of the most popular torrent sites on the web and its database of millions of torrent files – essentially pointers to pieces of files hosted elsewhere – has long been the go-to spot for budding pirates around the world. While it still exist...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 12:07 pm
Remember when the iPhone app GLMPS launched last summer, seemingly heralding the start of a new image format that blended static photos and video? No? That’s OK. Today, there’s a new twist on the idea of reinventing the mobile photo, this time by turning static photos into animated ones. With th...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 11:56 am
comScore has released its ‘explicit’ U.S. search data for January of this year and while Google and Microsoft Bring’s search share continues to grow, Yahoo’s share dropped both year over year and month over month. This comes after Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries for the first ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 11:05 am
After hitting 2 million members at the end of last month, design shopping startup Fab.com is today rolling out new iOS applications that offer a number of new features and improvements. In addition to an updated layout, search and navigational elements, one of the apps’ biggest new features is the...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 11:00 am
Here’s a fun example of the original programming that YouTube is supposed to be investing in these days — a relay from Santa Monica to San Diego. With lightsabers. Geek celebrity Chris Hardwick is announcing the event, dubbed Course of the Force, on the YouTube blog. Hardwick hosts the popular ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 10:47 am
Consider today the end of an era for one of the most iconic brands in the imaging industry. While their bankruptcy protection filing from last month signaled the need for some drastic action, it’s still a bit of a shock to see Kodak announce that they are putting all of their digital cameras, camc...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 10:40 am
The “toast” is an age-old, time-honored tradition, where we raise a glass to pay tribute to — and express our goodwill towards — friends, loved ones, and sometimes even our fellow man. They are even known to be meaningfully punctuated with by a good drinking song or two. And now, thanks to B...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 10:24 am
According to a new report from Nielsen, the number of U.S. homes that have broadband Internet, but only free, broadcast TV, is on the rise. Although representing less than 5% of TV households, the number has grown 22.8% over the past year. In addition, the behaviors within these homes are unique. T...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 10:09 am
It would seem that representatives from Change.org and SumOfUs.org have organized a global protest against Apple’s use of Foxconn and other Chinese manufacturing plants to build the iPhone and iPad. This comes on the heels of a New York Times series exposing harsh working conditions in said plan...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 9:58 am
Appcelerator, the company behind the popular Titanium app-building platform, is announcing its third acquisition today. The company is buying Cocoafish, a mobile app infrastructure provider that lets developers add various features to apps including messaging capabilities, push notifications, photo ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 5:21 am
Google has been going to great lengths to keep advertisers who sell counterfeit goods online out of its AdWords program, but as far as Montblanc, the Germany-based maker of ‘writing instruments’, watches, jewelry and whatnot, is concerned, they ought to be doing more. Montblanc-Simplo G...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 2:48 am
It’s been a long and winding road since Tariq Krim created and eventually left Netvibes, but today Netvibes has been acquired by huge French engineering giant Dassault Systèmes for an undisclosed amount. Krim continues to pursue his original dream of organising the social web on Jolicloud.
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 9, 2012, 2:06 am
Netvibes has just been acquired by European product design company Dassault Systèmes (sure this isn’t the type of thing I usually write, but I like the founder Tariq Krim so bear with me here … ). French startup Netvibes is a sentiment analytics dashboard that allows Fortune 500 ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 11:07 pm
The following is a guest post from Hipster CEO Doug Ludlow, following yesterday and today’s revelations that select apps were uploading users’ entire address books to their databases. We blew it, we’re sorry, and we’re going to make it right. It’s Hipster’s goal to provide a fun and be...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 10:23 pm
Let’s try to parse this. Pirate Bay (.se) user allisfine just recently uploaded a torrent to the site that is a collection of all the magnet identifiers for the entire site (actually, only about a quarter of the site, but all the publicly visible ones). That is to say, it is a list of the unique ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 10:01 pm
Got FOMO? (That’s “fear of missing out” for those of you who don’t do slang.) There will soon be an app for that, or so says the $3.4 million in angel funding the stealthy D.C.-area startup called timeRAZOR has raised. In its pre-launch state, the curious company is already lining up brand p...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 9:33 pm
When it comes to a marketplace for fine art, a space which seems to intrinsically resist digital services, technology really hasn’t had quite the same disruptive influence it has in so many others. Startups like Zazzle and Art.com have taken steps to make art commercial and broadly accessible, wit...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 8:59 pm
Some people always see the good in people and some people always see the bad … Gawker just published a post with what at first seems to be some pretty damning evidence against Path founder Dave Morin, publishing an email where he assured writer Ryan Tate that Path wasn’t storing user data. Whil...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 8:17 pm
Japanese mobile gaming giant DeNA bought mobile app developer Ngmoco last year for $400 million. Since then, the company has acquired a range of other outfits and worked to tie the San Francisco startup in with everything else it does. In general, things seem to be improving. The conglomerate just ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 7:51 pm
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Lytro (other than nearly grabbing a Crunchie (I voted for them)), the camera where you shoot now and focus later. And the latest news comes not from the company itself, but from the FCC, which just today published the internal photos from its in...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 6:39 pm
Editor’s note: Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of newly funded just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. Just.me is a stealth company in the mobile space and as such Keith’s opinions on this issue are likely to reflect his product focus. A...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 6:38 pm
In a few months time, here’s what the world will be fighting to get its hands on, or get rid of depending on your confidence in Facebook’s business plan. The image of a Facebook stock certificate was included in the amended S-1 Facebook filed today with the SEC. It’s sure to become coveted by�...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 6:13 pm
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason just finished his first post-IPO earnings calls with Wall Street analysts. (We covered it live and looked at the numbers). “We believe we are on the cusp of a sea change” in behavior, he noted. “We’re about to see what technology can do for local commerce.” Listen...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 6:04 pm
Facebook is huge on mobile — as an application developer. But questions have circled for years around how it can be a real mobile platform on top of operating systems controlled by Apple and Google. But we got a little more data on what it’s already accomplishing on the platform front, today at ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 5:43 pm
Gumroad, the buzzy one-man startup launched by Pinterest and Turntable app designer (and 19-year-old college dropout) Sahil Lavingia, officially launches today with over $1.1 million in seed funding from investors Accel Partners, Chris Sacca, Max Levchin, SV Angel, Josh Kopelman, Seth Goldstein, Nav...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 8, 2012, 12:10 am
LA-based, Science-backed startup Eventup launched this morning, providing people who want to rent or rent out spaces for events like parties and conferences with an easy-to-use platform from which to do so. In the same space as Venuetastic, but with a wider array of venue options that go beyond bar...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 7, 2012, 11:38 pm
You have to love the accelerated development cycle that spins so fast in the tech industry’s echo chamber. Just as most Americans are starting to get comfortable with this whole “social revolution,” the tech industry has already exhausted every inch of “Social” (and social networking) to t...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 7, 2012, 10:54 pm
So yes, LinkedIn has bought contact management startup Rapportive, according to multiple sources we’ve contacted, as was first reported by Liz Gannes at AllThingsD. The startup — which aggregates and displays the social networking accounts of the people you contact through Gmail — was backed ...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 7, 2012, 10:16 pm
People really like Instagram. Founder Kevin Systrom recently appeared in a Best Buy Super Bowl ad paying tribute to mobile innovators, a testament to how far its come with a team of six. (Over 15 million users-far.) While Instagram is awesome (just ask Alexia) and offers a great tool for simple, hip...
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TC Demo posted an article on TechCrunch - Feb 7, 2012, 9:00 pm
Olympus is building on its significant micro four-thirds IP (i.e. mirrorless cameras with the M4/3 sensor size) with a premium offering with a stylized, retro look. The OM-D EM-5, digital successor to the long-running OM series of film cameras, has a look straight out of the 70s but specs that shoul...
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