Articles by Techcrunch from December 2011

Okay, last workday of the year. It's nostalgia time. Let's take a quick glance in the rearview mirror at the year in Tech, before we speed forward again in 2012. There were defining moments, epic batt...

It's the last Friday in 2011 and the new year is imminent. So what were the top technological, cultural and economic trends in 2011? What shaped a year that some are saying is one of the most signific...

"If at first you don't succeed, try try again." It looks like LG and Intel have taken that old adage to heart, if a new report is to be believed. The Korea Times reports that LG will debut an Intel-po...

The Gillmor Gang Mike Arrington, John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor are recording live at 9am PT....

File synchronization and sharing platform Insync has been around for over a year now, and today, the eponymous startup has rolled out a totally revamped version of its "Dropbox for Google users". Insy...

If you had to describe your company's mission in a single sentence, what would your pitch read or sound like? One good way to summarize what you do and boil it down to one clear sentence, in my opinio...

In November, Mobile ad network Millennial Media reported that Amazons new tablet devices Kindle Fire, was seeing ad impressions grow at an average daily rate of 19% since its launch to the public in t...

Thirty-six hours ago, the recently founded software development firm Wappwolf launched Dropbox Automator, which is sort of like an IFTTT for Dropbox. IFTTT, for those of you not up to speed on the lat...

iOS devices are generally very accessible for most people. But for felines? Apparently so according to the video recently tweeted by Halfbrick, the developer of Fruit Ninja. It's clear within seconds ...

Photo organization service (andTechCrunch Disrupt finalist)Everpixhas just launched into public beta, bringing with it a number of changes to its backend infrastructure, web interface and its desktop ...

Casio Japan is planning [JP] to roll out the G-SHOCK GB-6900 on March 16 next year, a wristwatch that connects to certain smartphones via Bluetooth LE (LE=low-energy, a standard that's baked into Blue...

It's the end of the year and that means Zaraguza Digital has cooked something special for all tech bloggers struggling to find something to post on a very slow news day, and for their bored audiences....

Point Nine Capital has made a seed investment into Cibando, an Italian startup which operates a popular iPhone application that makes it easy to find the best restaurants in Rome, Milan, Florence and ...

Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: The Most Important Gadgets Of 2012 Video: Electric Car From Japan Reaches Over 300KM Travel Range Rumor: Apple Will Debut Two iPads Next Month, Retina...

Today in employee loyalty and the slow winter tech news cycle, someone is selling an Apple "Five Year Employee Award," on eBay, for $2K if you want to buy it now. While the immediate impulse of you cy...

It seems that Verizon (or Motorola) got the message: The Droid Xyboards are too damn expensive when tied to a 2-year commitment. Until today, Verizon was selling the 10.1 Xoom 2 for $529 and required ...

Google is experimenting with its Google Adwords offerings, attempting to go beyond regular text ads with Google Email Subscription Ads, allowing companies to buy ads that automatically fill in a "Subs...

There are iPhone cases and then there are...more iPhone cases. There are probably close to a gazillion different iPhone cases available now. But none are as elaborate as the Gizmon iCA -- at least non...

Early this year, Amazon made a bold move: it took advantage of the open nature of Android to launch an Android Appstore one that serves as a direct rival to Google's official Android Market, which co...

After a disastrous Q3 2011, Netflix stands to replace some of the 800,000 subscribers it lost. It's savior? The Facebook news feed. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a revised bi...

Callin' Oates. Heard of it? If not, you've gotta get yourself some more meme-hungry friends. Built (partly as a gag) to satisfy a Twilio employee's new-hire requirements, it's an on-demand Hall & ...

The test group for Facebook Messenger for Windows just got a whole lot bigger. Israeli blogTechIThas leaked a Facebook CDNdownload linkfor the desktop chat client Facebook began testing with a small n...

The test group for Facebook Messenger for Windows just got a whole lot bigger. Israeli blogTechIThas leaked a Facebook CDNdownload linkfor the desktop chat client Facebook began testing with a small n...

The test group for Facebook Messenger for Windows just got a whole lot bigger. Israeli blogTechIThas leaked a Facebook CDNdownload linkfor the desktop chat client Facebook began testing with a small n...

comScore has just released its latest numbers regarding the mobile landscape, finding that Samsung is still the top OEM with a 25.6 percent marketshare, up just .3 percentage points from the three mon...

Most third party web measurement firms have provided a regular drumbeat of good growth news for Facebook over the years, as the company has gained tens of millions of users in the US and around the wo...

Our favorite PR pinata GoDaddy just emailed a number of press, with a new statement from new CEO Warren Adelman. From the email ...The statement is from our newly appointed CEO, who makes it clear, w...

I loved talking to the skankiest prostitutes at three in the morning with a camera crew around me, fires burning in the street, sad, abused people clinging to scraps of life for their pleasures, baile...

Members of the Occupy movement are building a "Facebook for protesters" called The Global Square, Wired reported yesterday. Less than a traditional social network, it's an international collaboration ...

Say what you will about YouTube's affinity for cats or their audience's collective inability to write insightful comments, but there's one thing that YouTube really just doesn't get enough credit for:...

There are a lot of naysayers out there when it comes to the Windows Phone platform, but as Robin pointed out a couple of days ago many haven't really given the OS a fighting chance. Some of it has to ...

Gazelle Lab, the brand-new Tampa Bay-basedTechStars Networkmember which just held its first Demo Day in November, is expanding its operations. The accelerator has just announced the opening of second ...

While 2011 is almost over, the year has only really just begun in terms of determining its historical significance. 2011 wasn't, of course, just another year. Like 1989, 1968, 1917 and 1848, 2011 was ...

Yesterday Droid-Life obtained a leaked internal document from Verizon that had a surprisingly annoying little tidbit within: "Beginning 1/15/12, there is a $2 'convenience fee' for making a credit or ...

According to the end-of-season benchmarks from Compuware's web performance division, Apple.com was among the top three best-performing retail websites during the 2011 holiday season. Meanwhile, Amazon...

Rather than looking back (which I'm sure we will), I thought it would be nice to look forward to 2012 and beyond and note some of the gadgets that will change the world in the next few years. I've inc...

According to new data from Benedict Evans for Enders Analysis, the number of monthly active users of Facebook's mobile apps recently passed the 300 million mark. This is primarily due to heavy use of ...

According to new data from Benedict Evans for Enders Analysis, the number of monthly active users of Facebook's mobile apps recently passed the 300 million mark. This is primarily due to heavy use of ...

If you even so much as whisper your Klout score within specific circles, youre likely to be met with a piercing stinkeye. Based in San Francisco with a small pot of funding, theres something about Klo...

The Gillmor Gang Estaban Kolsky, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor are recording live at 8am PT....

When we first heard about Samsung's 5.3-inch Galaxy Note, we didn't really know what to do with it. Is it a phone? Is it a tablet? Oh, look! A stylus! It was weird. But apparently people like weird, a...

Today, Cool Planet BioFuels, Inc. announced that BP Technology Ventures has made an investment in the companys C round led by Shea Ventures. Current Cool Planet investors,General Electric, Google Vent...

Mobile analytics firm Mobilewalla has ranked the top apps across all four mobile platforms for 2011, using its own ranking system known at the "Mobilewalla Score." Instead of looking at raw user ratin...

Amazon has just released new data regarding its Kindle sales for the holiday season. According to the e-commerce giant, Amazon customers purchased millions of Kindle Fires and millions of Kindle e-rea...

The Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays. In the past months we've heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a ...

The Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays. In the past months we've heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a ...

The Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays. In the past months we've heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a ...

We spent two posts on SIM-LEI, an electric car developed by a a spin-off startup at Keio University in Tokyo in collaboration with a total of 34 domestic and foreign companies, in the past months. And...

We're all familiar with the pain of having to share photos with people. I'm not talking about the staff party album on Facebook, I'm talking about moments that matter - the family holidays, the weddin...

Just.me, a stealth startup incubated by Palo Alto, California-based Archimedes Labs has raised $2.7 million in Series A funding according to an SEC filing. The company earlier secured $600,000 in seed...

It seems that 55-Inch OLED TV wasn't enough for LG: the Korean company today announced it's ready to showcase another monster TV at the CES 2012 in Las Vegas (which kicks off on January 10). This mode...

Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: CrunchDeals: Get Yourself A Thing-O-Matic For $999 Japan Gets Wi-Fi Dispensing Vending Machines LG Prada 3.0 Makes Official Debut In K...

There are no shortages of predictions articles, here I look at a dozen things that wont happen in the world of online video in 2012, even though they should.1) We Will Have Standards and Definitions (...

The Gillmor Gang goes enterprise in a conversation with Paul Greenberg, the eminence grise of the CRM, now Social CRM world. Gangsters John Taschek and Steve Gillmor decrypt Paul's latest report from ...

"Google+ is about sharing the right updates with the right people - making sharing online just like sharing in real life. Just like in real life, sometimes you just want to hang out with friends....

Blip Networks, which operates Blip.tv, is raising more money. According to an SEC filing, the New York City company sold $6 million worth of stock beginning on December 22, 2011 in an offering that co...

Local interactive advertising firm WebVisible has shut its doors. According to a note sent from the company's CEO to employees, WebVisible ran out of cash, and Silicon Valley Bank is shutting the comp...

Facebook has AppData, Twitter has Twitaholic, and now Google+ has its own independent brand page rankings site: ZoomSphere. It shows which brands have the most followers, activity, +1s, shar...

In many ways, 2011 was the year of the pivot. One startup that successfully switched gears was Fab, which started the year as a gay social network and ended it a design-oriented e-commerce site. Found...

Makerbot's Thing-O-Matic is pretty pricey - $1,299 for the kit and $2,500 for the assembled kit - but (and this is my professional opinion) it is amazing and everyone in the world should own one. That...

Other than Salesforce, no cloud SaaS provider handles more transactions than Taleo. The stats the company revealed to me about its 2011 are staggering. The Taleo talent and recruitment solution helped...

As far as web sites go, there's only one site I look at more than Google Reader. You're on it right now. There's nothing technically "wrong" with Google Reader, but when you look at it every five minu...

Groupon has continued its (talent) acquisition spree with the recent purchase of a hot Silicon Valley startup before they even launched - and with extremely little fanfare.We've learned that Campfire ...

Oh, how I love Reddit AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) posts. In almost all cases, the inherent down-to-earth nature of a community-driven interview leads the most interesting of people to open up in genuine, ho...

A leaked Windows Phone roadmap made the rounds earlier today, and if its contents hold true, then Microsoft will be going big on hardware when it comes time for Windows Phone Apollo to take the stage....

Quick, how many pairs of chromosomes do you have?If your mind just drew a blank or an image of Ethan Hawke fiddling around with tweezers in GATTACA then you probably aren't alone.The answer, of cours...

If you're a New York Times subscriber -- or even if you're not -- you may have received that following email this morning, implying that you have cancelled your subscription. Many many people did, it'...

If you're a New York Times subscriber -- or even if you're not -- you may have received that following email this morning, implying that you have cancelled your subscription. Many many people did, it'...

If you're a New York Times subscriber -- or even if you're not -- you may have received that following email this morning, implying that you have cancelled your subscription. Many many people did, it'...

It seems like December just can't end soon enough for the folks at Verizon -- we're getting reports that Verizon's data network is once again on the fritz.Like both other times this month, not everyon...

M-Edge, a small Maryland-based company responsible for many popular Kindle cases, last week filed suit against Amazon. According to the Wall Street Journal, M-Edge claims that Amazon has repeatedly tr...

And that, friends, is what we call seizing the moment. (Meme-ment?)...

We all know that not much happens in the week between Christmas and the New Year. But less well know is how little has happened culturallyin the last twenty years. Indeed, so little has happened in th...

For a young startup, sometimes you want any funding you can get. For an incubator program, sometimes any startup is what you're looking for. Finding each other won't necessarily make either one succes...

One of my favorite services to pop in the second half of 2011 is If This, Then That, or if youre really dorky, IFTTT. Among a small group of faithful nerds on Twitter, IFTTT is a simple yet powerful s...

Which countries really, really love Facebook? If you guessed the U.S., you would be somewhat right - this country ranks #7 on Pingdom's new list of countries comparing the percentage of Facebook users...

If you didn't get everything you wanted this holiday and still have a few thousand left over, why not blow it on a box that you put next to your stereo that literally does nothing for the circuitry in...

While bookstores are reporting increased sales this month, I foresee a time when "Staff Picks" at the local booke shoppe will soon be replaced by recommendation engines that tell you what ebook to pic...

This is smart: a new alarm clock application for the iPhone and Android wakes you earlier if it snowed last night. Called simply, "Winter Wake-Up," the app lets you configure its settings to wake you ...

[tc_ustream_iframe id="142336"]The Gillmor Gang Paul Greenberg, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor are recording live at 8am PT....

comScore just released new numbers on U.S. online holiday spending for the season-to-date, and found that consumers continued to shop online in record numbers. For the first 56 days of the November-De...

Tech-savvy fashionistas finally have a reason to rejoice with the official release of LG's Prada 3.0 handset. Namely, it's the first time a in a long while that the company's fashion phones aren't com...

Marketing technology company Fiksu tracked the impact of the iPhone 4S on iPhone app downloads and found that download volume of the top 200 free apps increased 15% from October's previous record high...

Last Friday, troubled Internet giant Yahoo filed a new trademark application with the USPTO. I can't find any record of an existing Yahoo product or service by the name, so I figured I should just thr...

In the small but budding legal medical marijuana industry, WeedMaps has the munchies for acquisitions (sorry, I couldn't resist). Fresh off its $4.2 million Marijuana.com bong hit in November, WeedMap...

In what looks like a firesale, Call Genie has acquired US-based mobile analytics and advertising network company VoodooVox, which has raised a ton of venture capital from investors like Apax Partners,...

It's no secret that Japan is the country of vending machines (they even have models like this one now), but this is new: Tokyo-based beverage company Asahi Soft Drinks took the wraps off a vending mac...

In several of mypast pieces, I have written about the importance of a disruptive model of care and payment called Direct Primary Care (DPC) such asThe Most Important Organization In Silicon Valley Tha...

Mu Sigma, a provider of analytics and data-driven decision support services for enterprise customers, has raised $108 million in funding in a round led by growth equity firm General Atlantic.The finan...

According to some press reports today the British Prime Minister, David Cameron is to get "his own personalised iPad app" to stay on top of Government business.Cameron is known to use an iPad to read...

Nintendo is really lucky to own the Super Mario brand: after the bumpy, Mario-less launch of the 3DS in Japan back in February, big N is seeing record sales for its portable console. As predicted, sal...

Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Giving Windows Phone A Chance Fire Emblem: Nintendo Announces First 3DS Game With Paid Download Content Airtight Is Airplay For Your Google TV Li Ka...

Google SVP Andy Rubin took to Twitter again today, not to delete one of his tweets but to publish a brand new one, saying Android saw 3.7 million activations in two days (Christmas day and the day bef...

According to customer experience analytics company ForeSee, e-commerce giant Amazon once again topped consumer satisfaction in online retail after taking the top spot in 2010. However, Netflix, which ...

That's a good thing because Google+ missed the starting gun. And its "invite only" launch strategy saw all its disconnect users flailing independently. But in the long run that might not matter m...

Google+ now has more than 62 million users, according to Paul Allen, Ancestry.com founder and unofficial traffic analyst for Google's social network. That's not 62 million active users, though --...

If you got a digital camera for the holidays, or already own one, take a moment and write down the serial number. That wayGadgetTrak's new CameraTrace service can help you recover it if it's ever stol...

Here in the States we've been chatting it up with Siri on the iPhone 4S for months, but the folks over in mainland China — the biggest mobile market in the world, mind you — have yet to he...

Bored? Yeah, me too. Which is why I just killed nearly 30 minutes doing mindless web surfing on Facebook, Reddit and Amazon. But it looks like YouTube would like a little of my holiday downtime clicks...

When GoDaddy publicly recanted their support of SOPA last week, many were quick to point out that such an act didn't really mean much. As far as the Judiciary Committee overseeing SOPA was concerned, ...

Group task manager startup Asana launched its first native mobile app last week. It's mostly a straight port of its existing mobile web app, so the main benefit at present is that switching back and f...

Banjo, the creepy/awesome cyber-stalking app (I mean social discovery service) that shows you who's nearby based on their Facebook and Foursquare check-ins, geotagged tweets, TwitPic and Instagram upl...

It was a very Android and iOS Christmas. Mobile apps research form Flurry released estimates on how many Android and iOS devices were activated on Christmas day, as well as how many apps were download...

With Microsoft and Nokia making a pronounced push to expand Windows Phone's reach, they need the support of their app developers to give the platform some staying power. Fortunately, it looks like Win...

If you take a look at Techmeme right now, you'll notice that the top conversation in the tech blogosphere is about Windows Phone, and more specifically why it has failed to catch on compared to Androi...

Today, Italy's antitrust body has fined Apple, Inc. $1.2 million (900,000 euros) for pushing customers to buy its AppleCare Protection Plan withoutadequately disclosing the support that already comes ...

They have been fighting against the concept of making customers pay for extra game content for years, but as previously reported, Nintendo has now changed its strategy. According to a report by Japane...

What do you do when your viral growth starts to taper off? Advertise! That strategy has seemingly been working well for the Google Chrome web browser (now with a quarter of worldwide browser market sh...

Proof of concept though this is, Airtight purports to be the first app that will enable Apple's Airplay on the Google TV. Priced at a mere 99 cents, the app allows you to stream non-DRMed movies to yo...

With all this talk of 360-degree customer service and Zappos ninjas who help babies out of burning buildings while taking orders for clogs, it's nice to remember that for every heartwarming tale of cu...

Twenty years ago, Zhongguancun was but farming fields and small houses, far from the city center of Beijing. The 'cun' at the end of Zhongguancun literally means 'village'. As with much else in China,...

Google was hit with yet another patent lawsuit last week, but this one at least makes for some very, very interesting reading. A company called buySAFE, which offers a safe-shopping service to online ...

Well-know iOS hackerchpwn(aka Grant Paul) along withRyan Petrichhavereleaseda new tool for installing Siri on jailbroken phones. The Siri port, called "Spire," works on any phone that can run iOS 5. H...

Big news from Asia's mobile market today: Japan's biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo (55 million customers, over US$50 billion in sales per year) is teaming up with five other tech powerhouses to devel...

Acer is not done with tablets. New models will be released in 2012. The company is apparently going to continue making Android tabs despite a slow start and reports stating the contrary. Acer's founde...

Music lovers, take note. After Pandora earlier this month announced that they would be launching a series of free, live concerts for some of their listeners, the personalized radio service this mornin...

It looks like consumers in the U.S. were shopping online alongside opening presents this year. According to IBM's Coremetrics retail data, online sales on Christmas Day grew by 16.4 percent from last ...

Horizons Ventures, the Hong Kong-based firm that manages the private, early-stage investments in the technology sector for billionaire entrepreneur, philanthropist, business magnate and Facebook and S...

Here are some of the past week’s posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Twas The Night Before Christmas (Revisited) Nest Thermostat Teardown Reveals Beautiful Innards, Powerful ARM CPU, Zigbee Radio To Pr...

What do Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Dropbox and Skype have in common? Except for being ridiculously successful, they all enjoyed a strong viral effect that helped accelerate their growth.How did they...

VC (TechCrunch contributor)Mark Suster published an article on his personal blog about one of his portfolio companies, Maker Studios. Other players in that space include The Collective and Fullscreen....

Like most people, I love dogs. But also like most people I am completely irresponsible -- Like, I can't even keep my iPhone charged let alone take care of another creature (Yeah I know, I'd be a great...

This is the first Christmas where I didn't get a single gift. Because I had to take care of a bunch of logistics issues, I decided not to celebrate "the holidays" this year, and you know what? It was ...

Over the years, software development has ping-ponged between server-centric and client-centric designs. Today, with dominant mobile platforms like iOS and Android, apps have entered a hybrid client-se...

You wanted an Android tablet for Christmas... and you got one! Alas, it's a Kindle Fire. Whoops! While the Fire is technically well within the realm of "Android tablet" (and a mighty fine tablet, for ...

Once upon a time, the iPhone was a simple thing. You flipped it on, slid the unlock switch, and what you saw was what you got.Since then, things have gotten a bit more... layered. That's not to say th...

You know who got a lump of coal in their PR stocking this year? Domain registrar GoDaddy. Its most recent stumble? The company's presence on a SOPA supporter list sparked an impromptu user exodus last...

As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow 15 percent to $37.6 billion this season while retail sales in p...

Apps have taken over the world. If you doubt that just take a look at this app map by Horace Dediu at Asymco which shows the 123 countries in the world where iPhones are available. Of course, anywhere...

The topic around the olives and cheese plate last week at an extended family Christmas gathering was, interestingly enough, Microsoft distancing itself from CES. My family, not ordinarily given to tec...

In 2011, the long-promised ubiquity of videoon-demand anytime, anywherestarted to become a reality, driven by mobile (smart phones, tablets). While this may seem obvious, remember, it was not so long ...

Textaholics, this one's for you. Swype — the Android-flavored keyboard that lets you type (or swype, rather) faster than you ever thought possible — has a present for you this holiday seas...

Netflix and Hulu are the two leading video streaming services on the Web when it comes to mainstream TV shows and movies. More people watch Netflix online than Hulu, and have since about 18 months ago...

Most of the big name Android smartphone vendors have already laid out their Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade plans, but LG has been notably absent from the list of companies offering an update schedule. Wel...

Cooklet, a Poland-based cooking site founded by Grzegorz Trubiowicz, features a lot of what you'd expect - lots of recipes, a few pictures of happy-looking skinny people who you know don't eat much fo...

Radionomy, which enables people to create and listen to radio stations online, is preparing the launch of a new service dubbed Streamonomy, which will essentially open up its platform to external radi...

While gift cards are certainly a useful and practical gift, the act of giving a gift certificate to a store can be construed as impersonal. One startup is trying to change this. Tango Card, which offe...

On December 5th, 2011 TechCrunch Europe came to Moscow again. Co-organized by TechCrunch Europe, Digital October and Kite Ventures, the second TechCrunch Moscow showcased several early stage startups ...

We've been waiting for large-sized OLED TVs at least since Sony rolled out the cool (but too small) XEL-1 in 2007. Various bigger OLEDs and "breakthroughs" have made the news in the years after that, ...

Although GoDaddy's new CEO, Warren Adelman, no longer supports SOPA (after supporting it), a mass movement (of critics is gathering pace....

S-LCD Co., the joint venture for making LCDs for TVs between Sony and Samsung, will soon be history. The Japanese company today announced it will exit the 50-50 venture by selling its share to the Kor...

When I visited Google.com this morning, I was as excited as the kids sprinting from bed to tree. But all I found was a lump of sonic coal. Oh joy, after months of Christmas music, I get to hear a crum...

Tell someone they're special, remind them you care, share a memory, say "I love you" -- it's easier than ever. Thanks to mobile devices and social networks, love is becoming more scalable. Tweet or st...

Not everyone is cut out to work for a startup. It involves a lot of hustling, a lot of nail-biting, pizza-eating, sleeping at your desk, tears, failure, confusion, and on and on. And wearing your star...

Emoticons no longer have to be anonymous smiley faces representing simple emotions. Facebook Chat now lets you use the profile picture of any user, official Page, or event on the service as an emotico...

If youre asking which startup to build, not whether to build, you probably have several half-baked ideas and dont know which one to devote yourself to. Or you have no idea at all....

Fitness watches are one thing, but how about a fitness watch that lets you play a few levels of Angry Birds in between wind sprints? Motorola's MotoACTV debuted alongside the Droid RAZR not too long a...

Brit Morin is the Founder and CEO of Brit, a new company focused on providing people with innovative ideas, software, and products for creative living.Subscription services have been around for more t...

The video above came to me in a message from an entrepreneur, "FRC does an awesome holiday video -- and this is what Scale Venture sends out ..."I thought perhaps he/she was being unfair, and then cli...

The past few days, there's been a lot of talk about web browsers. The report that Google will be paying Mozilla close to one billion dollars over the next three years to ensure that their search engin...

Android apps come in all shapes and sizes - literally. Unlike iOS applications, which are basically created for two form factors, Android apps need to be developed with dozens (if not hundreds) of dev...

The new year is right around the corner, and many of us are in dire need of some organization. Luckily for all you fandroids out there, DropBox 2.0 has finally made its way onto the Android Market. Th...

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the houseNot an ultrabook was whirring, not a touchpad nor mouse.The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,With hopes they were stuffed with T...

If you could have one superpower, what would it be? Mind control would be my answer (I hope to be an evil genius when I grow up). But it seems the most popular answer to that question is the ability t...

I was in a meeting with Uri Geller. You know who he is. Hes the psychic that bends spoons. Hes been doing it since he was a kid. Marvel Comics even did an issue once where Uri Geller was helping out D...

The Gillmor Gang Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor took a WiFi stroll through the forest that is Hollywood's attempt to lock down our TVs. It's really too late, what with S...

First, if you want to get right down to it, here are the codes you type into Facebook chat to get various faces:Poker face [[129627277060203]]Forever Alone [[227644903931785]]OK guy [[100002752520227]...

The social enterprise has been growing as more and more companies look to incorporate Facebook-like communications among workers. Jive (which just debuted on the Nasdaq), Yammer, and Salesforce are al...

Entrepreneurs are always in sell mode, but that doesnt mean they need to be BS-artists. Most entrepreneurs arent born liars, but were brought up in a system that rewards bad behavior and taking the ea...

A couple weeks ago, MG wrote: Android development itself remains a huge pain in the ass. I hear this again, and again, and again. Which took me a bit aback: I've been writing both iOS and Android apps...

2011 saw the rise and fall of Siri. What was initially hailed as something just short of the savior of mankind turned out to be a limited voice control system. Apple insists Siri is still a beta produ...

TechCrunch Disrupt winner Shaker is already getting ready for New Year's Eve. The Facebook app creates 3D virtual rooms where you can party with your friends and meet new people. The startup is partne...

Where do you publish first if you have more Facebook subscribers than Twitter followers? That's a question more and more journalists are going to be asking themselves, Just 3.5 months after the launch...

Where do you publish first if you have more Facebook subscribers than Twitter followers? That's a question more and more journalists are going to be asking themselves. Just 3.5 months after the launch...

I know there are lots of people out there who have passionate feelings about Ron Paul. He's a principled and independent fighter for old-time American values, or a conspiracy theorist loon, or someone...

Mobile analytics firm Flurry is closing out the year with a look into the forthcoming shift in mobile installed bases expected in 2012. Using data from the firm's dataset of over 140,000 apps running ...

The Gillmor Gang Mike Arrington, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor are recording live at 1pm PT....

In a brief interview with TechCrunch, GoDaddy's new CEO, Warren Adelman, did a little damage control relating to the company's highly public reversal of its position on SOPA. GoDaddy had previously is...

The Internet is up in arms about the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and for good reason. It could potentially block and censor sites for alleged copyright infringement without full due proces...

When you've got a campus with 70,000 students and staff on it, all requiring some form of integrated cloud service, be it for email, scheduling, documents, or what have you, the decision-making proces...

Looking for a quick last-minute gift? Not feeling up to fighting the holiday traffic, crowds and checkout lines? Just too lazy busy to shop? Then you may want to consider giving the gift of an iOS app...

In a press release and tweet, GoDaddy has just announced that they will no longer stand in support of SOPA. Find the full release after the jump.Story developing.....

I swear, it never ends -- not long after a U.S. court passed down a judgment that saw RIM change the name of their new operating system, the company has once again gotten themselves into a tiff over t...

Users of LogMeIn's Ignition are in for a pleasant surprise this holiday season. The once paid — and quite expensive — app is now migrating to a freemium model. That said, users who paid fo...

You spoke and we listened. The holidays are upon us and yesterday we asked all of you what you would want as a gift out of six different options. Those options were: iPad 2, Canon S100, Kindle Fire, G...

HackFwd, the pan-European accelerator created by Lars Hinrichs, the founder of LinkedIn competitor XING, recently held its open PitchInBerlin session, where startups are invited to enter the programme...

Pop quiz, phone fans: what device will you soon be able to buy in the U.K. that costs nearly twice as much as a Galaxy Nexus and looks three (maybe four!) times stranger? Well, if you've read the head...

Pop quiz, phone fans: what device will you soon be able to buy in the U.K. that costs nearly twice as much as a Galaxy Nexus and looks three (maybe four!) times stranger? Well, if you've read the head...

"I wouldn't touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole." There's a bit of inherent risk when shopping online. You're handing over your credit card to a retailer that promises to ship you someth...

Sorry Galaxy S owners -- even though your device has a near-identical spec sheet to the ICS-friendly Nexus S, Samsung has announced on their corporate blog that the company's first Galaxy device won't...

NXP Software, developer of the CineXPlayer mobile application, is launching a new iOS app for recording and converting video into 3D. The app, VideoCam3D,lets you record in both blue/red and split scr...

Sigh. Here we go again. A patent troll called Mount Hamilton Partners has filed two separate patent infringement lawsuits against daily deals juggernaut Groupon and Google, which also operates a digit...

In-Flight Wi-Fi provider Gogo has just filed for an IPO, and will raise as much as $100 million in a public offering.Gogo, which has raised over $500 million in funding, provides in-flight connectivit...

Remember when researchers said a security vulnerability could allow hackers to remotely take over Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers and even cause them to burst into flames? Fun times, for sure.Of cou...

Well, it's that time of year again when families come together to stare moodily at each other over lunch and, in theory at least, we're supposed to be thinking about others less fortunate than ourselv...

Kiip is not an ad network. It's a mobile games reward network. Today it launches Swarm, a feature with a very unique value proposition: Let brands sponsor in-app tournaments where users win big prizes...

India is getting a second government-sponsored tablet. The first model (the so-called Aakash) sold out in just a few days after it was launched online last week, but maker DataWind has already followe...

A new, relatively stealth startup called Rock City Apps is gearing up for the launch of a mobile application called UpTo, and has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Detroit Venture Part...

It seems Sharp saw good sales when the company launched the so-called AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH on the Japanese market, the world's first clamshell Android phone. Today, Sharp's AQUOS PHONE IS14SH ...

Since the list of 120 or so SOPA supporting companieshit the Internet yesterday, the lines have been drawn; People are publicly promising to pull thousands of domains from domain registrar Godaddy aft...

Since the list of 120 or so SOPA supporting companieshit the Internet yesterday, the lines have been drawn; People are publicly promising to pull thousands of domains from domain registrar Godaddy aft...

In the West, the battle for the social graph is over for now. Facebook is the undisputed champion. All my Western friends use Facebook, and many are addicted."If Facebook is the world's social graph, ...

One upon a time, Facebook game companies like Zynga fattened up their user counts thanks to viral distribution to non-gamers through the news feed. Facebook later curtailed this channel, forcing devel...

Smoking hot startupCodecademy, a service which teaches you how to program online has launched itsLabs feature today, as a sign of things to come.Codecademy founder Zach Sims tells me thatCodecademy, a...

Smoking hot startupCodecademy, a service which teaches you how to program online has launched itsLabs feature today, as a sign of things to come.Codecademy founder Zach Sims tells me thatCodecademy, a...

You want the best price on things you buy second hand, but finding out how much you should pay is a hassle. Removing this friction from a lucrative part of the purchase funnel is the goal of Priceonom...

Does anyone out there actually own Sony Ericsson's handset-formerly-known-as-Playstation-phone, the Xperia Play? I've never seen one in the wild. Not once.If any Play owners are out there reading: A) ...

And the anti-SOPA rallying of the tech world's best continues. Just minutes after Ycombinator's Paul Graham disclosed that SOPA-friendly companies would be blacklisted from the YC Demo Day, Cheezburge...

Intuit has just released some good news for "Quicken for Mac" users. The accounting software company says they will have a solution that makes Quicken 2007 for Mac "Lion-compatible" by early spring 20...

There are lots of third-party guesstimates floating around about Google+ traffic. Are users losing interest like search trends seem to show? Has the service grown to 150 million active users like...

We're creatures of habit. We go where we've already gone. That's why Facebook's new Suggested Events feature I just discovered is so powerful -- it knows where we've been thanks to our checkins. Repla...

At this point quite a few internet companies have protested H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) increative ways. Held by many to be the worst thing to ever happen to the Internet if it passes...

I'll admit to lobbing a few mortars at RIM (alright, maybe more than a few), but it looks like things may be even worse than expected. BGR reported earlier today that RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis lied ab...

After notching a spot on the NASDAQ,TripAdvisor's Stephen Kaufer carved out a few minutesforFounder Stories,with host, Chris Dixon. In episode II of this interview, the two discuss their mutual disdai...

If you are a big TinTin fan, you probably know that Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of TinTin opens today in theaters. But if you are a really big fan, there is also a companion coffee table book ca...

A new startup is launching out of incubator YouWeb today that aims to make watching movie trailers more social. MoviePal, an iOS app, allows you to watch movie trailers and share them with friends.The...

The biggest hindrance to consumer adoption of 3D technology thus far has been a lack of content, and price, of course. While I can't vouch for their price tags quite yet, it would seem that Stream TV ...

Luis von Ahn has a pretty impressive track record when it comes to Google acquiring his companies. Not many entrepreneurs can count two exits to the search giant. Google acquired von Ahn's ESP Game, w...

Perhaps best known for the Air Display iOS app, Avatron is at it again with new app called iOS dictation app called (what else?) Air Dictate. But of course, Avatron wouldn't just cook up a straightfor...

Pinterest's growth over the past six months has been nothing short of astounding. We've noted this before, but some new data today from Hitwise confirms the trend. Last week, Pinterest attracted 11 mi...

Today, SetJam, a company that describes itself as "building the future of TV," has announced it has been acquired by Motorola Mobility. The company's products currently include a customizable TV and m...

RightNow Technologies this morning announced that, at its special stockholders meeting, nearly everyone voted in favor of the previously proposed merger with Oracle, who agreed to buy the cloud-based ...

Verizon will be rolling out a new Media Server product for its FiOS customers late next year, which will be a single hardware device that will eventually eliminate the need for a set-top box altogethe...

Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based incubator best known for German-language clones of US startups like Zappos and Groupon, now has big ambitions in the online furniture space according to information p...

Interview Street has been busy building out new ways for developers to prove their skills to potential employers, and now it's introducing a 48-hour contest to help them show off their skills. Think o...

This winter is looking to be a mild one (it's something like 60 degrees here in New Jersey), but no worries: YouTube is bringing the snow to you, even if Mother Nature won't. All of YouTube's videos a...

Skitch, the popular photo editing Mac app acquired by Evernote in August, is now available on the iPad. The release follows the launch of the Skitch for Android app earlier this year, and is the first...

Android just keeps ramping up higher and higher. Andy Rubin tweeted yesterday that there are now more than 700,000 Android phones activated every single day, which is up from 500,000 activations per d...

SpotMe, a handy little tool for sharing expenses in groups, is nowa top 10 mobile app in the finance category and a featured app in Apple's App Store Rewind 2011. Zornitza Stefanova, the CEO of SpotMe...

The Nest Thermostat is a gorgeous piece of eco-friendly electronics. But like your mom always said, it's what's inside that counts. Well then, she'll be pleasantly pleased to find out that the inside ...

Amazon is making it easier for its users to discover recommended content today with the launch of a new 'best of' digital store, where consumers can find recommendations from Amazons team of editors o...

Ready for some more SNES-flavored nostalgia on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Capcom has recently released Mega Man X for iOS, which should brighten the day of just about anyone who spent ehir formative y...

Experian Hitwise, which has analyzed the top 1,000 search terms for 2011, is reporting that Facebook was the top-searched term overall in the U.S. for the third year in a row. Facebook accounted for 3...

Online retail giant Amazon this morning announced that it will open four new distribution centers, two in Virginia and two in Tennessee, and that it will invest a total of $270 million to get the new ...

Amazon has stopped pretending that a group of e-reading apps it allowed onto its Android Appstore weren't available on the Kindle Fire. For whatever reason, the company was effectively hiding e-readin...

Cloudability, a platform to manage and monitor all of your cloud costs in one place, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, led by Trinity Ventures and Walden VC.Cloudability, which launched in earl...

Japan, one of the most advanced mobile nations in the world, doesn't want to be a "cell phone Galapagos" anymore, at least when it comes to payments over NFC. Paying with cell phones is already ubiqui...

Akamai has indeed acquired Cotendo, one of its largest competitors, in a deal valuing the CDN and site acceleration services company at approximately $268 million.The confirmation comes nearly a month...

It's a common platitude in the gaming industry: it's the killer titles that make or break a video game system. One case in point is Nintendo whose 3DS sales in Japan, one of the biggest video game mar...

A little over a year after its subsidiary PayPal bought a minority stake in German software company BilLSAFE, eBay this morning announced that it has acquired the provider of purchase-on-invoice techn...

Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Intel Shows Off Smartphone Reference Design, Claims Performance Gains Over ARM Microsoft Bows Out Of CES 2013, Cites Marketing Transitions To Prevent ...

Both Netflix's brand and shares have been battered this year after price hikes last summer and the botched attempt to spin off the DVD rental business. Netflix was roundly criticized for its miscommun...

From tech titans like Zynga, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple, to startups just launching, the battle lines of 2012 will be drawn across the landscape of HTML5. Below are 14 bold predictions for ...

Earlier today, TripAdvisor added its name to the list of companies publicly trading on the NASDAQ. After doing so, TripAdvisor's co-founder Stephen Kaufer stopped by TechCrunch for a Founder Stories i...

An inordinate amount of business deals with telling stories about the future. The reason Yahoo's market cap is down to $19.83 billion from a high of $55 billion is because shareholders don't believe t...

You've got a few hours left before all of the free "Get it before Christmas!" shipping deals come to a close, and you've still got people left gift-less. What ever will you do?Give'm the gift that jus...

There's been a recent interesting trend in the tablet market: devices 8 inches and smaller that are as powerful as their bigger cousins but considerably more portable and convenient. In this episode o...

Earlier today, TripAdvisor added its name to the list of companies publicly trading on the NASDAQ. After doing so, TripAdvisor's co-founder Stephen Kaufer stopped by TechCrunch for a Founder Stories i...

Playdom's Gardens of Time took the #1 spot of Facebook's Most Popular Games of 2011 list. But wait, Zynga's CityVille was ranked #3 despite peaking at over 100 million monthly active users and 21 mill...

Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open.Every chance they get, someone from Google brings this up as a huge advantage of Android over rivals like iOS. Never mind the fact that a good perc...

Call me naive, but I just assumed that when Asus showed off a device called the Transformer Prime, they had some sort of deal to license or at least provide some kind of royalty to the Transformers fr...

Just last week, Google was promoting the fact that "Google+" was the No. 2 fastest-growing search term of the year in its annual Zeitgest list. And it did have an amazing pop when it hit "10 mill...

Flickr has just pushed out an update to its iPhone app, easing the batch upload process and making some UI tweaks. It will surely be welcomed by the many Flickr users who use iPhones, but Flickr's con...

If you were one of the lucky few that managed to snag a TouchPad during HP's (maybe) final fire sale of TouchPad inventory two weeks ago, you might be receiving a little present soon via PayPal.It see...

In 2012, Facebook will be making 45 privacy-related changes to comply with the recommendations of an audit by Ireland's Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) released today. Below I've comp...

We've been waiting for Intel's promised smartphone effort for a long, long time now. The few desultory pushes by the likes of Acer and niche OEMs has done little to dent the dominance of rival ARM, wh...

Smart HDTVs will be a big trend at CES 2012. Nearly every major brand will release major updates to existing lines along with completely new products. However, Samsung has long sold a successful line ...

The future of technology software is contingent upon the capabilities of the hardware that it powers. That's why Jawbone, a company that makes pretty and pretty useful hardware like the Jawbone UP, th...

In Scott Harrison's final Founder Stories interview with host, Chris Dixon, Harrison offers some suggestions to other founders anddiscusses how people can donate to Charity: Water.Offering advice to o...

You already know that social networking sites have been getting huge around the world, but an annual report out today from comScore shows what exactly is going at a wonderful new level of detail, with...

If you haven't taken the time to play with Swype (the trace-to-type mobile keyboard alternative), you're missing out and I'm not just saying that because it launched at one of our conferences. As evi...

Today, a new startup accelerator for women, theWomen Innovate Mobile (WIM) Accelerator, is opening its doors for applications. The program will start off small, offering two to five companies seed fun...

After a 3 month audit by the Office of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), Facebook has issued a statement that "a DPC report demonstrates how Facebook adheres to European data protection pr...

Are you a big fan of Life Of Pi? Well don't go and get the Story Of O just because they sound similar. Instead, put your query to BookLamp, a free service/project aimed at creating a database of "like...

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman, said today that an unknown party had purchased Vatican.xxx. This mystery person has not stepped forward, and the site itself is a placeholder stating...

RNKD, the customer rewards app and brainchild of Zappo's founder Nick Swinmurn, is today arriving on Android. With the new mobile application, users can snap photos of the clothes and accessories they...

As we heard in August, SimpleGeo founder Matt Galligan left the company to pursue other interests. SimpleGeo was thenbought by UrbanAirship in November, and fellow co-founder Joe Stump left the newly ...

The photo-sharing market is saturated, and, by and large, we don't need more players. The players that are there, if they're not leading, are trying to differentiate themselves from the rest in a host...

If you're a BlackBerry user and you've been waiting for a music service that's just a bit more compelling than BBM Music, then you may be in luck -- emphasis on the "may." Spotify for BlackBerry was o...

I know that all of you have been waiting on pins and needles... refreshing the TechCrunch web page multiple times each day to see when the next batch of Crunchies tickets will be on sale. Well, today ...

Open Home Pro has been quietly building a business that uses the iPad to solve a serious problem for a real-world industry. "My girlfriend would come back upset after showing people houses," founder A...

Is foursquare becoming a noun? Judging from the cover of Carmine Gallo's new book, The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers To Check In Wherever They Are, it is certainly on th...

Disrupt 2010 winner Qwiki has had quite an interesting year -- after they launched in January 2011, they pulled in $9 million in funding and lost co-founder/Google alum Louis Monier. Now they're hopin...

Evernote's new browser extension calledClearlyhas arrived on Firefox. The add-on, which offers a better reading experience on the web by removingads, links, navigational elements and other clutter fro...

This year will be Microsoft's last year at CES where the company usually runs the keynote and takes up a huge portion of the show floor. "In looking at all the ways that Microsoft is now reaching its ...

Omada Health, a graduate of Rock Health's first batch of startups, is announcing today that it has raised $800K in seed funding from a number of angel and venture investors, including Esther Dyson, NE...

While memorials of all kinds and sizes have been presented since his death, the world's first statue of the late Steve Jobs has today been unveiled in Budapest, Hungary. It's made completely of bronze...

Toronto-based deal provider Dealfind is on the move, having recently gone mobile, and, as of today, is launching something called "Everyday Deals." The feature is somewhat similar to GrouponNow in tha...

Sincerely, the company behind photo-printing iOS app Postagram, is launching a new app today that's designed to capture all the nostalgia that you and your family feel about those disposable camera ph...

Cyber-Ark Software, which provides identity management solutions to financial institutions and other enterprise customers worldwide, has raised a healthy $40 million in venture capital funding in a ro...

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is delayed in Congress, but it is definitely not dead. The media company lobbyists and their Congressmen (hello, Lamar Smith!) are simply regrouping. Some of the more...

StartupBus, the hackathon/road trip combo started byElias Bizannesnearly three years ago, is doubling the number of events it runs in 2012. There will be a maximum of twelve buses that run in the new ...

In April, Expedia announced its intentions to spin off trip reviews site TripAdvisor as a public company. And this morning, TripAdvisor debuted on the NASDAQ under the symbol 'TRIP' trading at. The co...

In case you are heading to the movie theatre this holiday season, you might want to pay for your ticket via Fandango. Using the Fandango mobile app, you can now purchase movie tickets using your PayPa...

Amazon has updated the Kindle app for iPhone and iPad, adding some basic improvements to the standard assortment of reader functions. These include the addition of "print replica" textbooks so student...

A group of researchers at the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology in Tokyo has developed a car seat [JP, PDF] that can identify drivers when sitting down. The trick is that the system measures...

Streamglider is launching its iPad app today, hoping to disrupt the tablet news consumption and social reader space. Despite competition from Flipboard, Pulse, and many others, Streamglider believes t...

Though they had until April of next year to figure out a fix for their patent-infringing UI feature, HTC CEO Peter Chou has reaffirmed to the media that the company has already has a solution ready to...

Internet holding company FriendFinder Networks, which operates a number of adult, social networking, dating and e-commerce websites, has quietly established a game development subsidiary back in 2010....

San Francisco-based Fingerprint Digital, a startup building educational apps for kids, is blowing up. The company released its first apps into iTunes on December 1st, and already, it has seen over 270...

SurDoc is doing what Adobe has sort of done with its PDF file format, which is make it as easy as possible to share formatted documents across computers and mobile devices without losing the formattin...

Just two weeks after Verizon's 4G data network most recently went on the fritz, it looks like customers are once again being forced to live their lives without data. Verizon users across the country w...

Online audience measurement and Web analytics companies Nielsen and comScore have settled their patent disputes, according to a joint statement released this morning.Nielsen filed suit against its riv...

Spreecast is a social video platform that lets people broadcast together, has raised $4 million in seed funding from Frank Biondi, former CEO of Viacom; Gordon Crawford, media and technology investor ...

The Robocalypse is near: Osaka-based Hajime Research Institute is working on a humanoid that will stand 13 feet (4m) tall, which is much taller than most other existing robots of its kind (the latest ...

The Health 2.0 space is getting super-exciting -- between services like Practice Fusion, CakeHealth, Virgin Health and hardware plays like the Fitbit and UP, it finally seems like technology has caugh...

LeGuide.com Group, a pan-European publisher of online shopping guides, comparison websites and the like, has acquired online shopping portal Ciao from Microsoft.Financial terms of the deal were not di...

Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories: Meet Swivl, The Motion Tracking iPhone Dock That Always Keeps You On Camera Kickstarter: spnKiX Are Motorized Shoes Yes, Motorized Shoes Hands-On W...

Once upon a time, we bought our concert tickets from a good old-fashioned cashier at the local box office. As time went on, we took some of the work out of the hands of the cashier and started buying ...

Facebook's Frictionless Sharing integration has been a huge win for Yahoo! News US. After just 2 months, 1 million articles are being shared to Facebook daily leading to 500,000 daily referrals. To bu...

Great news, Kindle Fire owners. Amazon just announced the long overdue Kindle Fire update that's said to resolve many of the issues with the budget tablet. Most of the common complaints are addressed:...

Most entrepreneurs found companies to solve a problem. Adam Archer founded GamesThatGive to save the world. Archer left Apple in 2008 to backpack across the world, and along the way he was inspired to...

Here's a bit of science that's contrary to what a heavy utilizer of social networks might expect. Researchers at Harvard tracked the Facebook activity of hundreds of college students for four years, a...

GoChime, a graduate of the 2011 TechStars Seattle program, is today announcing that it has raised $630,000 from a host of entrepreneurs and angel investors that include Geoff Entress, Walter Winshall,...

First, the bad news for Buffer. The startup of European expats in San Francisco is being kicked out of the country due to our stupid, self-destructive immigration laws. They're temporarily relocating ...

Tablet use has skyrocketed over the past year, so it makes sense that advertisers are flocking to these devices and platforms to reach consumers. Google tells us that in November 2011, AdMob saw 8 bil...

To say that RIM has had it rough these past few months is a understatement, but according to a new report from Reuters, it may not have had to go through these trials alone. In a surprising twist, Ama...

The browser wars continue to simmer, and Firefox, once the tech world's champion against the insipid tyranny of Internet Explorer 6, has been losing ground to Chrome. In fact, just a few weeks ago, on...

We first covered FixYa, the Q&A site for products, back in 2007, after the startup demoed at the TechCrunch40 DemoPit. Over the course of the next year, FixYa went on to raise $8 million in two ro...

Some projects you want to succeed just because they're something the world should have. Even if they'd be expensive, dangerous, and probably not as cool as you want them to be. Case in point: spnKiX, ...

You probably know that not all LCDs are created equal: at a given size, you can have different resolutions, lighting methods, and display-driving technologies. Apple has led the way in this regard, ge...

Tutorspree, a startup that's looking to pull the time-honored practice of tutoring into the 21st century, has landed a $1 million funding round from some top investors, including Sequoia Capital. The ...

Still anxiously sitting by your Nexus S, awaiting that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update that started rolling out a few days ago? You might want to take a break. Go outside, go dancing, maybe go...

When I first saw the 4moms Origami stroller, I knew it would be a hit. It's a robotic stroller that unfolds like the Autobots getting ready to roll out and has one of the nicest interfaces I've ever s...

CrowdStar, a social gaming company that got its start on Facebook, has been steadily pushing into mobile over the last year, with improving results. Today, its trying to drive that point home by annou...

We've been hearing that PayPal is going to be rolling out an in-store payments experience at a national retailer in the U.S. soon. It looks like the payments giant is testing another in-store payments...

Apple has been duking it out with Android manufacturers for the past couple years, and very few are safe. Samsung has already suffered some big losses with the banning of its Galaxy Tab in Germany and...

Startup founders are the new reality TV stars. No, really! Today, the producer of the TechStars TV show on Bloomberg TV, Cameron Casey, is announcing his plans to film a second startup-focused reality...

Starting in January 2012, Facebook will gradually begin showing Sponsored Stories social ads in the main news feed of the web version of the site, an representative of the company tells us. Facebook h...

It's not every American who can wow Paris. But earlier this month at Le Web, the author and communications expert, Carmine Gallo, impressed a Gallic audience with a brilliant speech about the innovati...

About a month after its iOS debut, the self-described "Twitter for audio" app Spreaker is now publicly launching Android. The app, which lets users broadcast live over the Internet, is a DIY broadcast...

Disney's alligator-centric Where's My Water game made a bit of a splash when it launched in Apple's App Store this past September, and not for the reasons you may be thinking of. Sure, it turned out t...

When design marketplace Brandstack was shuttered last month (with the founder blaming credit card fraud), we figured that was the end of the story. Little did I know things were about to go all M. Nig...

Kayak is announcing a major update to its iPad app today. The travel search giant has made its iPhone and iPad apps universal, adding a bunch of new features to the tablet version of the app.The free ...

Okay Kopelman, you win. ...

Okay (First Round Managing Partner Josh)Kopelman, you win.Every year VC firm First Round Capital gets creative with its holiday video. Its previous video holiday greetings have been riffs on Les Misra...

Myriad Group is probably best known for creating a solution that brings Android apps to some decidedly non-Android devices, and it looks like the Zurich-based company has set their sights on app-ifyin...

CES 2012 is going to be a crapshoot of predictable products. How do we know? Meetings, lots and lots of pre-show meetings. Like previous shows, Apple will not be present in person but still has a majo...

Hopefully you weren't looking forward to Casio's CES 2012 press conference. It's not going happen. The Japanese manufacturer just sent us a note indicating that while they will still be at the show, "...

As the founder of Charity: Water, Scott Harrison has overseen substantial growth since launching his non-profit five years ago. He tells Founder Stories host, Chris Dixonthat since 2006Charity: Water ...

Remember Brightkite? Launched with the help of TechStars back in August 2007, the location-based 'check-in' service once rivaled the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, but never really got the traction ...

Most people don't realize you can trademark sounds. Intel's chimes, Yahoo's yodel, and Taco Bell's bell toll are all locked down, but only about 700 sound trademarks exist. That means the signature so...

Mobile gaming community MocoSpace is releasing the results of a new study focused on virtual goods consumption and engagement by age. The report found younger gamers (25-35) spend the most time playin...

Gaming hardware company Razer has been on our radar for quite a long time: they've made high-end gaming peripherals like mice and keyboards for years, and have recently expanded into more esoteric dev...

Intuit has made an interesting move today with its mobile credit card reader GoPayment reader. Intuit is allowing merchants to keep and receive funds on a prepaid credit card as opposed to depositing ...

Intuit has made an interesting move today with its mobile credit card reader GoPayment reader. Intuit is allowing merchants to keep and receive funds on a prepaid credit card as opposed to depositing ...

In case you haven't noticed, it's a new, new Twitter world out there and we're just living in it. The new Twitter interface is very, for lack of a better word, "appy" and although the desktop apps are...

Last minute Christmas shoppers, take notice. Amazon has your back. The online retailer announced free expedited shipping on many items. Stop procrastinating and get your Christmas shopping done. Or wa...

Is healthcare the industry that represents the next big opportunity for startups? Many are starting to believe it is, especially considering the fact that U.S. healthcare is currently a $2 trillion bu...

It seemed last week like Apple was eyeing up flash memory technology company Anobit for a potential purchase, and now word from Israeli news outlet Calcalist is that the multi-million dollar deal has ...

In what Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan calls a 'good outcome' on Twitter, the voice-to-text technology company has just been acquired by speech recognition king Nuance. Notably, Nuance has repeatedly sued Vl...

We saw an early version of Swivl a month or so ago and the $159 device is now ready to ship. It's basically a camera dock with a twist. Instead of holding your camera still, the Swivl will follow you ...

Lenovo is reportedly working on a quad-core LePad (ThinkPad in other markets) tablet. This comes from a Digitimes report that credits upstream supply chain partners as the source. The news, if it's tr...

Silicon Valley-based database infrastructure software maker ScaleArc has secured $5.33 million in its second round of institutional funding, which was led by Trinity Ventures, with earlier backer Nexu...

Allmyapps has grown a lot since we last covered them. They had 100,000 users back in April, but recently hit 2.5 million. But with the news that Miscrosoft will develop its own Windows Apps store, the...

StartApp,a newly launched monetization and distribution platform for Android applications, has now been installed in over 450 mobile applications, the company is announcing today.You may remember Star...

eRecyclingCorps, whose mission is to alleviate the pain of wireless e-waste, has landed $35 million in financing in a round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.Co-founded by David Edmondson, t...

Leiyoo, a Chinese developer of HTML5 mobile and browser-based games, has raised an undisclosed amount of capital in a Series A funding round led by VC firm WI Harper Group and joined by the recently e...

There can be no doubt that Japan is the country of vending machines, and this newest model is perhaps the most advanced yet. Developed by Japan-based tech companies Sanden and Okaya (and Intel), this ...

Google is ending 2011 with an investment that brings its total of renewable energy investments to an impressive $915 million. The online search and advertising juggernaut this morning announced that i...

Atomico, the venture capital firm founded by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrm and Janus Friis, has invested 350,000 euros in Denmark-based Ge.tt, which offers an eponymous Web-based file sharing service...

Eeve is an iPhone app [iTunes link] that allows people to create location-based photo albums that sort of clump together to document events. There are hits and misses in this space. Gowalla tried to g...

There are now over a million mobile applications available across the top seven major app stores, according to mobile analytics firm Distimo in its year-end report for 2011. And, not surprisingly, the...

Sony has managed to sell a total of 321,407 PlayStation Vitas on December 17 (the day it was launched in Japan) and 18, Japanese video game magazine Famitsu is reporting [JP] today. This pretty solid ...

Amazon has acquired a minority stake in Ciceksepeti, which operates an online flower and gifts store in Turkey.Founded by CEO Emre Aydin in 2006, the company delivers flowers, jewelry, plush toys and ...

Mobile ad network Millennial Media is releasing its monthly data for November. While Millennial, which is the largest independent mobile ad network, has focused on tracking iOS, Android, RIM, Windows ...

Investor and serial entrepreneur Chris Dixon has written a notable (and mercifullyshort !) blog post about how social utilities like Google and Facebook have essentially become the reputation engines ...

Starting in early 2012, when Netflix is set to make its debut in the UK and Ireland, registered members will be able to instantly stream available content on their television sets, tablets, game conso...

Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Video: Omni-Directional Spider Robot Asterisk Video: The Interactive Angry Birds Christmas Lights Display Review: Orb Audio Booster With Super Eight...

Cut The Rope is popular. Anyone who's ever spent 30 seconds looking at the App Store's Top 10 list could tell you that. But just how popular is it? How many people do you think are actually playing wi...

Cornell University has won the bid to build the big new technology campus on Roosevelt Island that New York City has been looking to create. The plan is to foster a strong technology ecosystem by brin...

The world of patent litigation seems less and less connected to the real world as the rate of change and development outpaces the rate at which companies can patent new technologies, or even, as BT sh...

Few people are satisfied with the current American healthcare system. It gets more expensive while innovations that actually improve the patient experience are rare. While there may be innovative new ...

With the AT&T-T-Mobile merger officially dead, Sprint is taking a moment to reflect on their own wisdom in opposing it from the beginning.A press release lauds the retraction of the bid as "the ri...

6 months after its public launch, the RockMelt social web browser now has 1.4 million registered users and several hundred thousand weekly active users, CEO Eric Vishria told me this morning. With Int...

The Stanford Law Review has posted a concise and informed takedown of SOPA and PROTECT-IP, the bills currently creeping their way towards votes in their respective legislative bodies. They make many o...

We heard earlier today that AT&T and T-Mobile could find buyers for assets that could help move the merger process along, but now the Wall Street Journal reports that the deal is officially dead....

New York City refers to its tech scene as "Silicon Alley," but now it's getting a giant new Cornell tech campus... on an island, between Manhattan and Queens. I'm going to leave the naming issue for t...

India and U.S.-based mygola is announcing today that it has received $1 million in seed funding from Dave McClure of 500 Startups, Blumberg Capital, and several other angel investors. With social trav...

Remember Word Lens? That crazy, awesome mobile application that translated words inside of images, like road signs, posters, menus, and the like, from Spanish to English (and vice versa)? Well, now th...

Remember Word Lens? That crazy, awesome mobile application that translated words inside of images, like road signs, posters, menus, and the like, from Spanish to English (and vice versa)? Well, now th...

While we couldn't possibly cover every app that does the whole free-for-a-day thing, this one is particularly good. Jetpack Joyride, the stupidly addictive side-scrolling action game from Halfbrick (t...

Quora is taking a step beyond Q&A this morning with its latest product launch, boards. Users can now set up their own personal-themed bookmarking boards, sort of like a Pinterest for text-based in...

What if you could subscribe to your favorite bloggers, writers, and designers, and they would send you a heartfelt gift every three months? You probably wouldn't enjoy my packages, because I would jus...

Nokia played Grinch this year by barring a small, Lapland-based maker of iOS games from a Santa Claus Foundation delegation at Wanda Plaza in Beijing, China. The delegation, consisting of a number of ...

Google+ has found its place in the social network ecosystem: Twitter is the interest network, Facebook is the social network, Path is the micronetwork, and now Google+ is the macronetwork. W...

Quora is taking a step beyond Q&A this morning with its latest product launch, boards. Users can now set up their own personal-themed bookmarking boards, sort of like a Pinterest for text-based in...

The blogosphere and tech press is all atwitter about the news that Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal invested $300 million in Twitter. While the identity of the Saudi prince as an investor was not offic...

Most online music services have a common problem: it takes too much time and effort to get started and engage with other people. Users usually need to create playlists after registration, look for exi...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will announce today that Cornell University has been selected to build a new tech campus on Roosevelt Island, the two organizations say. It's not that surprising,...

The first time I was chased around a room by a glowing, buzzing ball I was in college and I had just come home from a rave. The last time was when I opened the Sphero and set it loose on my rug.The Sp...

According to new research from mobileanalytics service Mobilewalla, Sunday is the best day to release a mobile app, but Wednesday is the most popular day among developers. The company studied the apps...

Just a few days after the Galaxy Nexus landed in the United States, it appears that Google's next foray into the consumer electronics space may be a little bigger. According to Italian newspaper Corri...

We're still working to confirm this, but it looks like someone has finagled their way into Lady Gaga's insanely popular Twitter account. That, or the pop icon really did just offer free iPad 2s to all...

We're still working to confirm this, but it looks like someone has finagled their way into Lady Gaga's insanely popular Twitter account. That, or the pop icon really did just offer free iPad 2s to all...

Love or hate him, there is no denying that Steve Jobs was a control freak. As Walter Isaacson's magisterial biography of Jobs notes, Steve's control freakery was so intense that he couldn't stand shar...

Why are tech IPOs such a big disappointment this year? The latest IPO, Zynga, is trading down from its Friday debut (currently around $9 versus its first IPO trade at $11). It's not just Zynga or the ...

Last week we broke the exclusive story that Rocket Internet, the incubator in Berlin best known as the epicenter of Germany's clone/copycat startup culture had hit the rocks. It recently lost at least...

VMware, whose core products specialize in virtualizing Windows and Linux workloads, is making some interesting maneuvers in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) space with their Cloud Foundry offering.Clo...

TC50 DemoPitcompany from the long-ago times of 2009,AskYourTargetMarket, is now making its market research tool available for free. With the service's most recent update, companies, startups and indiv...

It's clear that the BlackBerry PlayBook is a tough sell (unless you don't have to pay for them), but that hasn't stopped RIM and their retail partners from going nuts with PlayBook promotions. To wit:...

You better overnight Santa an addendum to your Christmas list. You're going to want to acquire as many hard drives as possible before 2012 rolls around. Both Seagate and Western Digital are slashing h...

Orb Audio is roundly seen as being a company that produces decent to excellent mini speakers at a price that is, at the very least, acceptable to a wide strata of the speaker-buying public. We reviewe...

Eventasaurus, a startup still in private beta, has raised an undisclosed angel round to create a dashboard for event managers. You know all those separate events you have to create on Eventbrite, Meet...

Fledgling content farm Skyword has raised $6 million from broadcasting and publishing company Cox Media Group.Skyword markets a "digital content platform" that provides brands and media companies with...

Zynga, which debuted the largest technology IPO since Google on Friday, saw shares drop in early morning trading on the second day listed on the Nasdaq. On Friday, Zynga closed 10 percent below its op...

Wow! They must be breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas and walking under ladders over at RIM because this is starting to get unbelievable. A big rig, carrying around $1.7 million worth of BlackBerry Pl...

BrandMyMail is launching a new web-based platform for customizing your email messages using social media. The service is designed mainly for businesses, but can be used by anyone who wants to spice up...

Amazon recently built a price-check app that has left many brick-and-mortar retailers frustrated. The idea isn't revolutionary at all — many companies use price-checking as a way to beat the com...

Twistory, which lets people save their tweet backlog to their favorite calendaring application, has finally come through with full support for popular Web-based calendaring service Google Calendar.You...

Eat your heart out, Clark Griswold. This fully interactive Christmas lights display should erase any doubt that Angry Birds is an ubiqous fixture in pop culture. Rovio's game was everywhere this year ...

'Tis the season of giving, and who better to get in the holiday spirit than employers (hint, hint!)? Google is certainly in a generous mood, as they've begun hooking up employees with a special editio...

Digital marketing company Vistaprint is acquiring Webs, a popular DIY website creation service, for $117.5 million in cash and stock ($100 million in cash and $17.5 million in stock).Webs, which has r...

Google has just announced a number of new features and improvements for Google+, its social network, which will be rolling out over the next couple of days. The most interesting change is new co...

BestVendor, which aims to create an online resource where business professionals can exchange recommendations for work-related software and services, has raised $3 million in Series A funding.The fina...

Mobile development platform company Appconomy has raised $10 million in Series A equity and debt funding to accelerate its operations in China. The round was led by Shanghai-based Qiming Ventures.Othe...

It's not the first spider-like robot out there, but it's almost certainly the most advance one: a team of researchers at Osaka University in Japan has developed Asterisk [JP], a six-legged insect robo...

Here are some stories from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets: This Magnetic Art Project: How Does It Work? 2011 Gift Guide: Best Stuff For Luddites Nintendo Japan Announces Title List For Their Game...

In what is bound to be a controversial move, a member of the Saudi royal family has invested $300 million in Twitter. This morning, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, founder and CEO of K...

Editors note: Guest contributor Lee Jacobsis the founder of language learning startup Colingo.While I may have pulled several all nighters, and slept under a few desks in my day, I am still pretty sof...

fPrivacy is a Chrome plugin that lets you granularly opt out of stalker-esqueFacebook app permissions like "Post to my wall" or "Access profile info" whenever the app authorization dialog appears. Woo...

Parenthood is the closest thing I've found to entrepreneurship. Looks cool from the outside but can be really messy inside. Everyone has advice, you work like a dog, the highs are amazing and lows hor...

There are over 500,000 applications for the iPhone and iPad, 300,000+ on Android and thousands more on other platforms. The average user has 65 apps installed on their phone(source:Flurry). Many ...

Zurich-based Maurice de Mauriac timepieces are now available with an optional upgraded movement purchased by high-end watch movement maker Concepto. The cool new chronograph movements are mostly black...

If there's one thing the world needs it's a service that lets you build a shirt using 3D rendering technology. Sure we could use cars that run on water and world peace, but let's get the little things...

As we get closer to the Christmas holidays, online retail spending continues to soar, says data and web analytics company comScore. A total of $6.3 billion was spent online in the past week, bringing ...

Scott Harrison is the founder of Charity: Water an organization he founded after waking up to the realization he was living a "dark, kind of decadent selfish existence" as a nightclub promoter whose l...

I have no dog in the hunt for whether social will prevail or email will survive. Radio still survives in the Age of Video, and Web will not be crushed by App. But once we get absorbed person by person...

Facebook has just pushed out version 4.1 of its popular iPhone app. The update includes the ability to view the new profile Timeline, as well as Subscribers, Subscriptions, and add people to friend li...

In our previous post, we listed the top 20 iPhone and iPad apps of the year. But games are in a class by themselves, often pushing the limits of the hardware, software, and graphics capabilities of Ap...

New York City is possibly the most dangerous place to take your new iPhone or iPad. Grand larcenies have increased this year in the Big Apple, which NYPD spokesman Paul Browne attributes to criminal's...

The Internet will save higher education, but it may kill your alma materPeter Thiel believes smart people dont need college, and hes right: There have always been autodidacts who can learn without ass...

While I find that I like my ferrite-based Kickstarter art projects to be a bit more automatic, the Ferrite Interactive Liquid Sculpture is still pretty cool. It's a tube containing a Ferrofluid - a su...

Computer technology has penetrated the classroom for thirty years with little impact. After hundreds of disruptive education startups, the best innovation in education is still the chalkboard. This is...

The Street by 50 headphones get the job done when it comes to sound quality and volume, but there are a few quirks that didn't sit well with me. When all is said and done, a decision to buy these head...

Silicon Valley is famously, and rightly, proud of its place as the spiritual home for startups. And it has an inspiring and awesome track record thats tough to beat.However, as the recent Le Web confe...

Its telling that Apple chose an app that debuted more than 14 months ago, Instagram, as its iPhone App of the Year for 2011. This should not imply that there was a shortage of quality and groundbreaki...

For the first time, the Facebook for Android mobile app has eclipsed the daily active user count of Facebook for iPhone. The Android app launched in September 2009 more than a year after its iPhone si...

Because the name "Verizon DROID RAZR by Motorola" seemingly isn't long enough, it looks like Verizon's already planning another RAZR with even more words in the name. I kid, of course (does the name e...

Zynga is still in its quiet period for another 24 days after going public yesterday, so chief operating officer John Schappert wouldnt answer my more specific questions about the companys future plans...

You know how the Internet works, right? Of course you do: you're a TechCrunch reader, a power user. You know what that "HTTP" means in your address bar (if you're not using Chrome.) You know that behi...

The Gillmor Gang Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor celebrate the freeing of Heather Harde, the health of realtime, the obsolescence of Office, and the gamification of deep ...

Facebook shareholders suck. I know this because this past week I tried to help someone sell about 30 million shares of Facebook for $31 a share. These are weird transactions because never before in hi...

Google is full of fun easter eggs hidden within search queries. Remember the barrel roll? Here's one more that's been discovered, just in time for the holiday season.Type 'let it snow' in search, and ...

While some M&A deals turn out to be great successes, its no surprise that a lot of mergers and acquisitions fail. The obvious factors explaining the failures include culture clashes or founders le...

While the 7-inch Toshiba Thrive is much more comfortable in the hand than its 10-inch counterpart, many of the best features in big brother never migrated over to the 7-incher. That said, this still m...

Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: 2011 Gift Guide: Best Stuff For Luddites Review: Krups EA82 Automatic Espresso Maker Makes You Love To Love It Samsung Releases Extended Battery Bundl...

Last we covered Kicksend in November, the Y Combinator-incubated web file-sharing tool for the non-technical crowd, had just raised $1.8 million in funding from True Ventures, with participation from ...

Dave Morin and Path's secondary standalone app With "is winding down", according to a tweet, email, and blog post from Path. "Now tweet who you're with directly from Path", the email explains. The enc...

At an investor conference yesterday, health insurance and tech giant Aetna revealed that it acquired Healthagen, the developer of mobile app iTriage, though it did not disclose the price. Aetna's Chai...

There is something about waking up day after day to write about people who take risks; You end up rooting for some of them. This is the case with photo-sharing underdogPath. Almost every investor I've...

As Dave Chase wrote earlier this year, the healthtech space is heating up, and a lot of serial entrepreneurs with consumer web experience are turning their focus to fixing some of the big problems inh...

The extremely unpopular SOPA bill was supposed to be the last order of business today as the House Judiciary Committee prepared to break for the holidays, but a parade of objections and amendments (ov...

In October of 2001, Rockstar Games dropped a bomb on the gaming world. That bomb was called Grand Theft Auto III. In just one release, Rockstar shifted their flagship 2D series into a 3D world, introd...

It's hard being a social network not called Facebook, but myYearbook isn't one of those erstwhile rivals being sold off for assets. Instead, it's been seeing strong mobile growth and revenue growth ov...

Another crop of Apple rumors has grown up under our feet, and it seems a little reaping is in order. Two rumors are making the rounds, both of which warrant a little consideration but should, as usual...

This week the lads and I talk about the iPad Mini, our huge booth at CES, and my new favorite coffeemaker. We also discuss how much it's going to cost us to interview 50 Cent at CES this year, which i...

While I wouldn't expect it to fly with its current name for very long, check out this project that came out of NYT's recent Open Hack Day.Called OkCandidate, it's OkCupid... for voters. Instead of fin...

Nexus S owners rejoice! While your Galaxy Nexus-toting friends have been rubbing a bit of Ice Cream Sandwich in your face, the year-old Nexus S will soon get its own taste of Android 4.0. According to...

Just a day after Minnesota Senator Al Franken published reports on how carriers and device vendors use Carrier IQ, Sprint seems to be taking steps to distance themselves the mobile monitoring company....

The Gillmor Gang Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor are recording live today at 1pm PT....

The Samsung Galaxy S II is a very special phone. Even though it's been on the market for quite some time now, it's still one of the more beastly competitors on Android-flavored shelves. Of course, it'...

"I'm a nerd, and I'm here today to stand up for the rights of other nerds." Right now, TechCrunch is in a charity Turntable.fm DJ battle vs. Maxim magazine. Help me win it for the nerds, and the kids....

Heather Harde, the business brains behind TechCrunch, will be stepping down at the end of the year as general manager of AOLs technology properties (including TechCrunch, Engadget, Joystiq, and TUAW)....

We are gearing up for 2012 and getting ready to bring you some major events you will want to put on your calendars. Our dates are already locked in for the Crunchies, Disrupt NYC and SF, and our annua...

At the heart of the enigma of Steve Jobs lies a riddle about authority. On the one hand, Jobs was an intrinsically anti-authoritarian figure whose like was a litany of rebellions against every kind of...

Yesterday, Salesforce announced the acquisition of social performance platform Rypple, and revealed that it will be entering the human capital management (a.k.a. employee and talent management softwar...

AMEE, backed by O'Reilly and Union Square Ventures among others, set out in 2008 to map, measure and track all the carbon and energy data on Earth. That's a big job. It's since won contracts with the ...

The 5th Annual Crunchies Awards are right after the holidays and we already have sold out our first batch of tickets. I told you they went fast. We are planning on releasing our next set of tickets so...

Senator Al Franken pressed certain members of the wireless industry over two weeks ago for answers about their use of Carrier IQ, the controversial monitoring software that sparked fears that our pers...

I was about to add this coffee maker (excuse me: espresso maker) to the Luddite gift guide but instead I felt it deserved special mention. As a fan of pod-based coffee-makers, I love almost everything...

Not everyone needs a Google Nexus. Some of you - and your friends - are happy to exist in a plane without technology, a world dedicated to quiet reflection and acoustic jamming. Here are some of our p...

Can't get enough Google Doodles? Apparently, there's a big demand for the iconic redesigns of the Google logo which celebrate holidays, historic events and famous people, places and things. Today, Goo...

Today, another TechStars Network accelerator comes online. Greenville, South Carolina's "The Next Big Thing," as it's called, has been running in stealth mode since its founding in February 2011. But ...

Doing some online shopping but don't want the package shipped to your house? Maybe you won't be home, or worry about packages left on your doorstep. Or maybe the package is a gift for someone in your ...

Zynga has finally hit the public markets today, marking the largest technology IPO since Google. Yesterday, the social gaming giant priced its IPO at $10 a share, which was on the higher end of the $8...

Collaborative gifting startup Giftiki is its first mobile presence with a new iPhone App. Giftiki lets users send small amounts of money as gifts, allowing recipients join a pool in order to give thei...

Another day, another Tokyoflash watch. This one, the On Air, has an LCD screen with backlight and you tell time by reading the numerical minutes read-out as it rotates around in place of the hour hand...

News curation startup Scoop.it has arrived on the iPhone today, allowing you to create your own digital magazine while on the go. The app, which works alongside the Scoop.it web service, essentially l...

Set the rear-facing Apple logo aglow with this simple mod. Per the video demo below, it only takes 5 minutes to install and seems relatively simple. Just pop off the back cover of the iPhone, remove 5...

If you are a "female" you apparently choose clothing in the form of "outfits," a sort of ritualized selection process that allows you to look "good" in a different set of clothes each day. While I sub...

If you are a "female" you apparently choose clothing in the form of "outfits," a sort of ritualized selection process that allows you to look "good" in a different set of clothes each day. While I sub...

Listen up, Android developers: if you're spinning your wheels on a particular project, or are just looking for some new best practices, Google's Android team may have exactly what you need. The team h...

For a long time now, Spotify has had its own Radio experience, but, to be honest, it hasn't been very good. Then, last week, the Swedish-turned-America music service announced that it was redesigning ...

The Galaxy Nexus is a beautiful phone, no doubt about it. That gorgeous 4.65-inch Super AMOLED Plus display paired with LTE support and a fresh build of ICS thrown in there for good measure is about a...

Get ready to set your house on fire! The Sims are back and are awaiting their invisible leader -- you. Players have full control over a number of Sim characters just like The Sims of old. As the omnip...

Exclusive - Fab.com, the ridiculously fast growing e-commerce startup, is launching a new social shopping feature today that lets members view and interact with any activity on the design flash sales ...

I don't know much about A. Sachs, save for this one, memorable quotation attributed to the man: "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives".Indeed, the percentage of peop...

Starting next Tuesday, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lightstorm Entertainment will be selling a special edition of blockbuster movie AVATAR with nifty behind-the-scenes content exclusiv...

Here are some of yesterday’s posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Autom The Diet Robot Now Shipping In Time Nog Season Hands-On With WowWees AppGear AR Gaming Toys Google Granted Patent For Driverless C...

Digital media is just more compelling when it is updated on a regular basis. That is what keeps people coming back. It's as true for blogs as it is for apps. Fotopedia has built a nice little franchi...

Some call them wackaloons, others visionaries, however any way you slice them the Founders Fund -- consisting of Partners Peter Thiel,Luke Nosek,Brian Singerman,Derik Pridmore,Lauren Gross,Bruce Gibne...

A study by investment analysis startup SigFig suggests that iPhone-owning investors are 20% more likely than the average investor to also own Apple stock while investors with Androids are 25% less lik...

Really? The whole thing? You probably didn't, but you should because there are things you posted long ago that you might not want people to see. I sincerely worry that all over the world, this is happ...

I don't know about you, but when I hear about another photo sharing app or website, my eyes roll back into my head, and I reflexively go into "screen saver mode". There are just way too many options. ...

Erick and I are both parents so we know from tablets. The $99 LeapPad from Leapfrog is cool, to be sure, and fun if junior's aunt or uncle is picking it up, but we both found it lacking, especially wh...

Once upon a time netbooks ruled the land. But with the rise of tablets and miniaturization of traditional x86 CPUs, the mini notebooks are quietly dying. The latest victim is the Dell Mini. Liliputing...

Earlier today, we posted on some data from Pando Networks that shows that free-to-play online games, often overlooked in the hype around social and casual games, are growing just as fast and as furiou...

Well now, this call turned out to be much more interesting than I expected. First, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie has just announced that he and partner Mike Lazaridis will be cutting their annual salaries ...

There's one big new feature in today's global rollout of Facebook Timeline. Facebook has enhanced the Timeline Map with a wizard that lets you rapidly tag yourexistingphotos with locations. You can al...

RIM has just released their Q3 earnings, and the figures are about as rough as we expected: the Waterloo-based company pulled in $5.2 billion during the past quarter -- a considerable bump over their ...

Zynga priced its IPO at $10 a share, according to Bloomberg and CNBC (bankers love to leak). The IPO, which is set for tomorrow, will be in the upper end of the $8.50 to $10 price range the company in...

It's Google Zeitgeist day the annual event where Google rounds up the year's top search queries and trends to present a data-centric recap of the last twelve months (minus, ahem, any adult searches).M...

The Galaxy Nexus has been on sale here in the U.S. for mere hours, and it's already getting its first refresh. But reports are bound to come in over the next week or so, but it looks as though Google ...

Salesforce.com has just announced the acquisition of social performance platform Rypple. Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close early next year, were not disclosed. Rypple, which has ...

If you're familiar with Usenet, you'll be well aware that the newsreading platform is, well, not longer about newsreading. In fact, most Usenet providers are, by necessity, experienced data storage pr...

If you're familiar with Usenet, you'll be well aware that the newsreading platform is, well, not longer about newsreading. In fact, most Usenet providers are, by necessity, experienced data storage pr...

The Sony Tablet S is actually a pretty hot 9.4-inch slate, and doesn't look like every other Android tablet out there (thank goodness). On the performance side, however, I found myself frustrated on m...

What's a museum to do when they want to offer a richer art experience for guests but no one wants to use an audioguide? Why, give Nintendo a ring of course. Nintendo will be providing 5,000 3DSs to th...

Postmates is sort of like a modern version of the taxi dispatching software that Twitter creator Jack Dorsey had worked on as a kid. Except it's available for businesses and consumers today in San Fra...

The age of driverless cars may still be years in the future, but to those playing a long game, that just means that work now will pay off even more later. Google is getting into the business of tracki...

Having launched two companies that have gone in dramatically different directions; one's secured $7-million in funding (Turntable.fm) and another ceases to exist (Stickybits), Turntable.fm'sBilly Chas...

Mobile games network PapayaMobile is launching a new accelerator for mobile, social game developers called "The Games Academy," which will kick off in Q1 2012. Like most accelerators, Papaya will be p...

At the beginning of his rich and very fair biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson notes that Steve himself "found the endeavor of assessing historic influence fascinating." So when Isaacson came int...

It's been a pretty good ride so far for digital couponing startup SavingStar. The company launched its beta last August behind $2.3 million in financing from Flybridge Capital Partners, First Round Ca...

Facebook this morning rolled out Timeline to the entire world, and now you can access some of its features from Facebook for Android 1.8.1 and the HTML5 mobile site m.facebook.com. The mobile version ...

Mobile shopping service Shopmium has raised $2.1 million from Accel Partners and ISAI. Launched in September 2011, France-based Shopmium enables large consumer brands to engage directly with users thr...

I don't often cover announcements that such-and-such application is in the works for iOS, as it tends to be better for everyone if we just wait and cover the actual launch. There's some confusion surr...

You have a long flight coming up. You don't want to get stuck sitting next to (fill in the blank here). What if you could use your social networks to select your seatmate, based on your friends or c...

The Congressional Judiciary committee is debating a bill today called the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) which nobody in the Internet industry wants to see passed. Not surprisingly, the bill was writt...

The three Samwer brothers (Oliver, Marc and Alexander) founders of the Rocket Internet incubator in Berlin, are the most successful Internet entrepreneurs in Germany and possibly Europe. After launchi...

The Kindle Fire is a hit and Amazon just released an impressive number to back up the widely accepted sentiment. Amazon is currently selling Kindles at a rate of one million per week as demand increas...

Microsoft is officially launching So.cl, the social networking service it teased back in July. And it turns out, it's not meant to be Microsoft's version of Facebook, but a social networking service f...

Wyse Technology is launching a new app for Android users today called Wyse PocketCloud Explore, which will allow you to search for files you have stored on any phone, tablet, PC or Mac. The app works ...

Cloud storage platform Box.net is ramping up security today, announcing a new set of tools and access controls for the enterprise. In addition, Box is also announcing a product integration with Intel ...

Well, it looks like hardcore gamers would like to have a word with you, social and casual gamers. Yes, the stories in the media of late have been all about Rovio's Angry Birds skyrocketing past half a...

If you're the type of person who looks at a Galaxy Nexus and wonders why it couldn't be even bigger, then Samsung just might have a treat meant for you. According to PocketNow, Samsung will be bringin...

Today, online and mobile payments platformDwollais launching what may be one of its biggest features yet: instant access to cash. Via the new opt-in setting called "Dwolla Instant," users will be able...

On the surface, the announcement sounds boring: Microsoft said this morning that it will begin automatically upgrading Windows customers to the latest version of Internet Explorer starting next year. ...

My girlfriend: We're late. We need to get a cab to the [Thanksgiving] dinner.Me: I just talked to the cab company and they're going to take forever. I'm trying Uber.Her: There's no Uber in DC.Me [chec...

Enterprise cloud app management company Okta, which allows companies to have control of their users, applications, and data both in the cloud and behind the firewall, is debuting a new self service si...

SocialFolders is publicly launching its application which allows you to manage, sync and file any of your social content on the web. Basically the startup acts as a central repository and directory fo...

Wrapp and a host of others are betting on group gifting as a new way for users to collaborate over giving gift cards to friends. Giftmeo is throwing its hat into the group-gifting platform ring, debut...

StackMob, a backend service provider for mobile, is today publicly launching its mobile app platform, after having been in private beta for a good part of the year. The company, often described as a "...

Nielsen is reporting today that teens have more than tripled mobile data consumption and also continue to hold top spot as the most engaged mobile messaging segment.The report states that In the third...

Sony can't get much right these days. They've dissolved their partnership with Ericsson so they have no dog in the mobile fight and their Blu-Ray/3D TV push is, at best, an afterthought with consumers...

On his second startup out of his incubatorFounder's Den, and perhaps proof that the Founder's Den model works, serial entrepreneur Jason Johnson is today launching the first app out of his new utility...

WowWee, not content with creating singing Elvis heads, is branching out into AppGear Appcessories - apps that require AR-based accessories, allowing you to interact with real environments using an iPh...

Web-based productivity suite Zoho is revamping its CRM offering today. Zoho CRM is one of the company's most popular application with 25,000 customers. The most distinct differences between the new ve...

San Francisco-basedLiftopia, an online retailer of lift tickets and mountain resortactivities, is launching its iPhone app today. The app's title is quite the mouthful: "Liftopia Ski Reports, Snow Con...

Remember when Greenpeace totally didn't like Facebook and its use of 'dirty energy' in its datacenters? Well, they're best buddies now. Greenpeace and Facebook this morning announced that they're team...

Acer is in a bit of trouble. The company saw two consecutive quarters of net losses. Sales in the third quarter were up slightly from earlier in the year but still trailed year-over-year numbers by 30...

VerticalResponse, which provides self-service digital marketing solutions, has acquired Roost, a privately held social media marketing technology company based in San Francisco. Financial terms of the...

When Verizon officially revealed the Galaxy Nexus last night, some of you were surprised to see it sport such a high price tag. Thanks new Verizon's apparent change in pricing policy, all of their new...

Well, this is convenient. Google published its 2011 Zeitgeist list of the fastest-growing search terms of the year. The No. 2 term on the list, right behind No. 1 "Rebecca Black," is its own product, ...

I've been following Autom for years now, first interfacing with this happy little robot in China and then watching her grow into a young, intelligent diet robot. What does she do? She's designed to he...

On the heels of purchasing merchandising software DemandTec for $440 million, Big Blue is continuing the shopping spree to advance its smarter commerce strategy. IBM has just announced the acquisition...

Japan's biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo has introduced LG's awesome Optimus Android phone in Japan yesterday. It's compatible to Docomo's 4G service Xi and follows the launch of the handset in Korea...

You've seen too many recipe websites. It's okay - so have I. But Punchfork is doing things a little differently by leveraging hardcore algorithms to curate the best recipes found on the Web based on s...

If stealing cars, running people over, and being an all-around gangster is your idea of fun, I come bearing good tidings of great joy this holiday season. Grand Theft Auto III: 10th Anniversary Editio...

Well, it's been an interesting last few weeks (and last few years, for that matter) for Israeli-headquartered video-conferencing specialist, RadVision. Acquisition rumors are currently swirling around...

You've been anxiously waiting for it, and now it has finally arrived. Facebook Timeline, which MG likened to 'the story of your life on a single page' when it was first announced back in September at ...

We'll we've run a lot of TechCrunch meetups all over Europe since 2007, getting to most of the major European cities. But there's one place we haven't got a chance to hit and that's the tiger economie...

Back in May, my6sense raised another $1.1 million to continue pushing its digital intuition technology to market. Today, the company is releasing a brand new product called 'Smart Magazine' which can ...

It's the motion in the ocean that counts, right? Wrong. Well, at least that's how it looks when it comes to mobile advertising. (Look out, inneractive infographic below!) If you take Google at its wor...

Not many startups can lay claim to being part of two recognizable accelerators at the same time, but 72Lux would be one of those exceptions. The New York City-based luxury eCommerce startup was select...

Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Nintendo Japan Announces Title List For Their Game Boy Advance 3DS Ambassador Program A Look At The Radical HP Rebranding That Never Was Pogoplug La...

Dismissing rumors that he might be making a comeback at Microsoft, founder Bill Gates went down under to rule out the possibility of ever returning to the software behemoth full-time.Instead, he says,...

Cloud-based presentation software Prezi has raised $14 million in Series B financing led by Accel Partners with Sunstone Capital participating in the round. Accel's Andrew Braccia will be joining Prez...

Just when I was beginning to think that MadPad would be the only brand new product we saw come out of mobile musical masterminds Smule in 2011, they've just squeaked one out in the final round. Not th...

As you may have heard, Google is getting into the holiday giving spirit these days, as it late last night announced that it has dished out an additional $40 million in philanthropic grants, targeted a...

The last few times I've brought my camera out into the wilderness, I've had a few fears regarding its safety. Sure, a foam case will prevent the lens from getting scratched and so on, but what it is m...

We've been having our fun with the things Google has been saying lately, but it's worth looking at how people with money on the table are feeling about the company. Which is, pretty good compared to m...

The guy who helped bring you Crate, a dead simple file-sharing service, are now testing something called Gumroad, a way to ask folks to pay for downloads. The site is very basic - you enter a URL, a p...

Considering Android is getting on in age, it's surprising it hasn't been featured on more "miscellaneous" devices. Phones and tablets, sure, but we haven't seen many, say, DVD players or PMPs using th...

Last week, Microsoft overhauled the Xbox 360. The update brought dozens of new features, but there was one I was particularly excited about: when paired with a Kinect, the new interface was said to pa...

It's been a while since we've written about DIY online shop, Zazzle. But the company has grown to be one of the largest customization companies out there, with 20 million unique visitors a month. And ...

After landing a similar deal with Best Buy, social mobile app directory Appolicious has announced another partnershipwith Samsung. Currently, a Samsung-branded social mobile app directory is preloaded...

You may have read the recent Forbes editorial by Gene Marks, entitled "If I Were A Poor Black Kid", which entered instant infamy as a textbook example of a failure to comprehend privilege, or at least...

Buying a car doesn't have to be such a nightmare, after all.That's the promise of CarWoo, a startup that looks to take the stressful negotiation tactics and pushy salespeople out of the equation, allo...

Many websites include Facebook integrations in hopes of offering a personalization that can increase conversions, page views, and social sharing. However, just 2.8% of ecommerce site visitors end up w...

Many websites include Facebook integrations in hopes of offering quick sharing or personalization that can increase referral traffic, conversions, and page views. 56% of users who view a Facebook auth...

Well it's about time -- after months of breathless waiting, it appears that Verizon's LTE-capable Galaxy Nexus will launch tomorrow. The word comes courtesy of 9to5Google, who appears to have unearthe...

A slice of good news for gamers: Today, TeamSpeak, a company which makes voice communications systems to let gamers chat while playing games, has partnered with Overwolf to begin offering gamers some ...

I finally caught up with Say Media CEO Matt Sanchez today, after his acquisition of tech blog ReadWriteWeb. He wouldn't confirm the $5 million price (he didn't deny it either), but he let slip somethi...

Clara Shih, the twenty-nine year old founder of Hearsay Social, a SaaS dashboard for national businesses and their local branches to manage Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter pages, has been...

We've all been there. After years of faithful service and happy memories, the trusty old (insert gadget here) is tuckered out and needs replacing. Some of us recycle our old gadgetry (and bravo/a to y...

At the few times when I find myself on the bike or elliptical at the gym, I'm always frustrated by the lack of anything interesting to keep my eyes on. The TVs are showing something boring, the magazi...

A friend just sent me this with the disclaimer "THIS IS NUTSO." And indeed it is -- A coffee faucet (!!!) created by Dutch manufacturer Scanomat, that allows you to brew coffee via iPhone app. I don't...

I've spoken at length about the folks at Outfit7 and how they want their flock of talking animals (and fairies, and bacteria, and robots) to attain an Angry Birds level of ubiquity. While they haven't...

You're hungry. You're feeling social. But you're also feeling laaaaazy, and planning a big group meal can be so much work that you end up hating everyone at the table by the end of it.GrubWithUs, a st...

You have to hand it to Google. They know that I prefer Apple products and have been generally critical of many Google moves in the past couple of years. And yet, they're unafraid to give me their newe...

Only one week after Flipboard's highly anticipated launch on the iPhone (and iPod Touch), the company is announcing it has added 1 million users to its service and has tripled its engagement. Accordin...

Aren't Christmas eCards lame? It's not just me, right? The annual holiday greeting efforts from those in my family who think they have figured out the digital world by renouncing handwritten letters a...

Facebook has released a list of the most popular US political news stories among its users over the past year. It's a pretty depressing read if you're idealistic like me, and wish that more people wou...

Question: How do you acquire your biggest rival if you don't have the cash? Answer: Partner with a private equity firm. SurveyMonkey has done just that,buying MarketTools'productsZoomerang, ZoomPanel,...

Personal finance service (and TechCrunch Disrupt alum) Credit Sesame is launching its first mobile application today which gives users instant access to their current financial standing and their cred...

Android tablet owners have been rocking the new Netflix app design for nearly a month now, and with today's update, iPad users can finally join in on the fun. The 2.0 update squeezes more movies onto ...

Tech blog ReadWriteWeb was acquired today by SAY Media, as was previously reported. I've found out a few more details. The price SAY paid out was under $5 million, after the assumption of ReadWriteWeb...

It's always heartening to see an experiment in disintermediated content succeed and it could have happened to a better guy. Louis CK began selling his one-hour comedy special on his own website for $5...

It seems as though Verizon and Google have really screwed the pooch when it comes to the Galaxy Nexus launch. As of this very moment, we're on our eighth rumored release date: tomorrow, December 15. T...

Who, exactly, was Steve Jobs? Walter Isaacson'sSteve Jobs has sparked an intriguing debate about the identity of the real Jobs. According to The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, Isaacson's biography pro...

When Google+ first launched this past summer, one of its biggest differentiating features was a free video chat service called Hangouts. At first glance, it looks like something that's been done ...

RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads, has acquired Focal Labs, the developer of the photo sharing and geo location apps Clixtr and PicBounce, accord...

Pogoplug is launching the fourth generation of its flagship product today, the Pogoplug Series 4. As with all Pogoplug hardware, the new device lets you attach your hard drives and plugs into your rou...

Say a prayer for Android. Nokia's new Lumia 710 Windows Phone, a $49 smartphone aimed at the feature-phone set, is about to change the way carriers sell - and customers see - cellphones. Forget LTE, d...

Nokia will be officially pulling back the curtains later on tonight, but the cat's out of the bag: the company's first U.S. Windows Phone is the Lumia 710, which will debut on T-Mobile with a $50 pric...

Google Map Maker, the still somewhat undiscovered gem of Google Maps which allows users to create and edit maps, is getting its new Google makeover today. Following the redesigns of other top Google p...

Customer support startup Zendesk is debuting Zendesk for Facebook, which allows customer service teams to engage with Facebook users from within the startup's popular help-desk platform. Launched in 2...

If you're anything like me and you've fallen in love with Ice Cream Sandwich's looks, then seeing what Samsung has done to it may be a bit of a heartbreaker. SamMobile managed to get their hands on wh...

Social networking service Tagged, Inc. announced it has acquired the social game network hi5today, doubling Tagged's monthly active users to 20 million. The combination will also increase the total nu...

HP is currently a company without a strong identity. This comes after a decade of products and CEOs that each fumbled in one way or another. The company needs to make a sharp statement and emerge from...

Talent drain? That's what they're saying. The explosion of early stage startups has made it harder for companies to find the best engineers and designers because everyone's trying to do their own star...

Anthony Ha, who previously worked for tech blog Venturebeat, reports on Adweek that SAY Media has acquired tech blog ReadWriteWeb. He also says Dan Frommer, former editor at tech blog Silicon Alley In...

Microsoft doesn't seem to have much in the way of cross-platform animosity any more. Case in point, the company's SkyDrive team recently launched both a Windows Phone and iOS version of their SkyDrive...

Ex-Googler and previously head of AOL Media and Studios - and I guess you could say the former boss of my boss's boss - David Eun has been appointed Executive Vice President at consumer electronics gi...

Another startup accelerator is debuting in LA todayAmplify. With the backing of some well-known Hollywood and Silicon Valley names, the Venice Beach-based incubator is launching a $4.5 million incubat...

Roku is back with yet another update for the company's tiny media streamers. This update adds a bunch of welcomed features to the Roku 2 and Roku LT including games and system enhancements.Roku introd...

A new Chicago-based startup is emerging today as a contender in the local business customer loyalty and rewards space. Belly (formally Bellyflop) is hoping to replace those old punchcards you receive ...

iSwifter, an iPad app that allows developers to stream flash games to the tablet device, is debuting Rover, an iPad browser that gives educators and students access to Flash-based educational content ...

While consumer electronics (CE) merchandise returns are often an overlooked scenario for consumers they are undoubtedly top of mind for manufacturers and retailers because of their billion dollar pric...

LinkedIn has put out its annual list of top buzzwords (over)used on members' professional profiles. The top word people in the U.S. use to describe themselves on LinkedIn? "Creative." That word did n...

Car sharing network operator Zipcar this morning announced the exercise of its option to purchase a majority ownership interest in Barcelona-based Catalunya Carsharing, better known as Avancar, after ...

Today, content discovery platform Outbrainisannouncing it has secured $35 million in Series D funding in a round led by Index Ventures. Existing investors Carmel Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partne...

Ecwid, a Russian startup that enables people to set up an online store on their website or on a social network in mere minutes, has raised its first round of institutional funding, securing $1.5 milli...

Database virtualization startup Xeround has raised $9.3 million in Series C funding Benchmark Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership. This brings the startup's total ...

It's now video game history: after the 3DS didn't sell as well as expected, Nintendo decided to go for a sudden, massive price drop for its portable console worldwide. In Japan, for example, the price...

PowerCloud Systems, a spin-out of Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) that offers a 'networking-as-a-service' platform for OEMs and service providers, has raised $6 million in Series B funding in a round...

Code for America, a non-profit which tries to bring the people and the power of the internet into government, has received a $1.5 million grant from Google.Code for America launched this year to help ...

Exclusive - KidZui, maker of family-friendly Internet products like a safe browser and a video destination for kids, has scored another $2.4 million in funding from existing investors, led by Mission ...

The 3DS sure had a bumpy start, but it seems Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata's hunch that sales will pick up (we reported last week) is right. According to Japans biggest video game magazine Famitsu, the 3...

Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Nintendo Reveals The 2012s 3DS Release Schedule, Look For Kid Icarus, Tekken and MGS 3D This Winter American Airlines First To Be Granted FAA Approval...

Without Google, no one ever graduated college. At least that's the message of "College Tips By Google". It's a new site where Google shamelessly suggests its products as the answer to all the problems...

Glassdoor, a jobs and career community where employees can anonymously rate companies and CEOs, has just released its fourth annual Employees Choice Awards, listing the top 50 Best Places to Work, bas...

Ebay for real world labor TaskRabbit, has seen lightning fast growth in the past couple of months, and has taken advantage of that growth by raising another $17.8 million in Series B funding. Particip...

Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is releasing its 2012 Mobile Malware Predictions, based on data collected from its Mobile Threat Network, a cloud...

Unless you live in Japan, chances are you've never heard of Pixiv. Even if you do live in Japan, unless you are young and really into drawing manga characters, chances are you've still never heard of ...

Later this month Yahoo plans to release new features for its iPad based app,Livestand, which was launched in November and Yahoo describes as a "digital newsstand" where users can "create a personalize...

Launching today on the App Store is a new application called Summly that, in short, attempts to summarize the Web. The app was formerly known as Trimit (which we covered back in July), before Founder ...

Yes, when you think of an "app store", you probably picture iTunes, the Android Marketplace, or even the Chrome Web App Store or GetJar. That's because apps live in our browsers and on our mobile devi...

You probably know Meebo as a service that lets you easily chat with friends across different IM services, but the company is now rolling out a reimagined version designed around sharing. Think competi...

In July, Google announced that it would be sending its Street View cars through the areas of Japan stricken by the March earthquake and tsunami. Today the work of stitching and annotating is finished ...

Move over Beyonce (sigh, I can't believe I'm writing this), a new tweets per second record has been set. According to a statement by Twitter,the Japanese television screening of Hayao Miyazakis Castle...

For the first time, Facebook may start showing ads in its mobile apps and HTML5 site, sources close to the company's ads team tell me. They would come in the form of mobile news feed Sponsored Stories...

In digging around trying to investigate rumors that KPCB VC John Doerr lost his "board observer"statusat Twitter two weeks ago, I came across the information that almost all investors including Doerr ...

It's a tender situation, being a startup, isn't it? Here you have what you think is a great product, maybe it's even a little disruptive, but you're not naive enough to think that you're the only one ...

Alright, fanboys: get your flamethrowers ready. HTML5 framework development house Sencha has just put a wide array of performance tools to use to answer one of life's geekiest questions: Who's got the...

Alright, fanboys: get your flamethrowers ready. HTML5 framework development house Sencha has just put a wide array of performance tools to use to answer one of life's geekiest questions: Who's got the...

Microsoft has ported Kinectimals, the Xbox 360 game that involves the care and feeding of dangerous animals in the wild, to the iPhone, suggesting that (at least in the short term) even Microsoft sees...

The "Other OS" controversy is one of those things that, while in a way trivial, is really a proxy battle over a much larger problem. Briefly stated, Sony upset some users by removing the ability to in...

Do you hate your Facebook friends? Do you want to blow them all up in fiery blasts of laser light? Sure, we all do.FaceInvaders allows you to shoot down your social graph. The game is a simple Space I...

Having conquered the terrestrial realm, today's big money is looking to the skies for new regions to subjugate. And what was a lark ten years ago now appears to be a common hobby among a certain ambit...

With its initial public offering coming up later this week, Zynga is making a few notable traffic gains on Facebook and mobile. Older games like FarmVille are growing, not just new ones like CastleVil...

Republic Wireless, the potentially disruptive mobile phone carrier that uses special hybrid Wifi/cellular phones, has another plan to help spur interest and drastically reduce your phone costs. We've ...

Yikes, talk about unfortunate timing. With HP having just recently announced that webOS is going open source, the last thing they need is for their (small, but surprisingly capable) developer communit...

If the National Transportation Safety Board has their way, talking on the phone while driving would be a thing of the past. The regulatory body recommended today that use of any handheld device while ...

Overall, the new Twitter brand Pages are pretty underwhelming. But one great feature they offer is pinned posts -- the ability to semi-permanently feature an expanded rich media tweet at the top of th...

Despite its struggles of late, Netflix is still one of the most popular sources when it comes to online streaming of movies and TV shows. (Although things may change if it's acquired by Verizon.) For ...

If you're flying American on Friday, there's a chance your pilot will be using an iPad instead of the traditional paper flight charts. The airline has reportedly become the first major one to get FAA ...

Yes, that title is laughably buzzwordy.You may not have used App.net yourself, but you've almost certainly come across one of their sites: the startup makes it easy for mobile developers to build attr...

A new startup accelerator called the India Internet Group (IIG) is debuting today as fund to invest in India-focused, early stage internet and mobile startups. The size of IIG is $2.5 million and with...

A new startup accelerator called the India Internet Group (IIG) is debuting today as fund to invest in India-focused, early stage internet and mobile startups. The size of IIG is $2.5 million and with...

I may not mention it often, but I'm kind of obsessed with 2D twitch platformer Super Meat Boy. I've burned barrels of midnight oil battling my way through its nigh-impossible later levels, played unti...

With all this Protect IP/SOPA madness in the works, it's worth taking a good hard look inward. What have you downloaded? And how much? And worse, what has your little brother downloaded? One site aims...

Mobile payments startup Square has just passed a major milestoneover 1 million merchants are now using Square to accept credit cards.This is up from 800,000 merchants using Square a few months ago. Sq...

Scrappy job candidate scoring database Identified will stop at nothing to become a contender in the professional network space. This morning it delivered a flaming uppercut to reigning champion Linke...

The holidays are drawing ever closer, and with the holidays usually come embarrassing family moments. The folks at Skype, perhaps sensing the potential for capturing some comedic gold around ye old Ch...

Google is acquiring theSilicon Valley-based startupClever Sense, both companies are announcing today. Clever Sense, as you may recall, is the maker of the mobile application "Alfred," which delivers p...

ezRez, a software company that develops white-label travel commerce and loyalty redemption platform and a loyalty payments engine for digital wallets, has acquired social loyalty rewards startup Topgu...

It's time! The first batch of tickets for the 5th Annual Crunchies Awards are available now. 200 tickets have been released for the annual event honoring the best achievements in tech brought to you b...

Back in August, social game developer Kixeye raised $18 million in series C financing, and added Zynga Andrew Trader to its Board of Directors. And today the self-proclaimed "largest maker of online s...

Party Earth, a media company that provides reviews, up-to-date calendars and user-generated photos of social venues (i.e. bars, nightclubs, beaches, casinos and whatnot) in a variety of cities through...

Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently boasted at Le Web that "Android is ahead of the iPhone." And that may be true in terms of how many mobile devices with the Android operating system are being acti...

We've all see video glasses before - those clunky, Geordi La Forge-looking things that promise to display a 10 foot screen in front of your face. The drawbacks, generally, are size and transparency. L...

Y Combinator-incubated MixRank has raised $1.5 million from 500 Startups, Mark Cuban, IAB founder Rich LeFurgy, MediaTrust chairman Peter Bordes, Leadclick founder Robert Afshar, Adify co-founder Larr...

YouSendIt, a cloud collaboration company that got its start long before "cloud" was cool, is today launching new mobile applications for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices, plus new Mac (beta) and P...

Mindjet, a developer of mind mapping, work management and collaboration software, has launched a free Android app. What isn't mentioned in the blog post announcing the new app, is that it wasn't actua...

Inepisode IofChris Dixon'sFounder Storiesinterview withTurntable.fm's,Billy Chasen, Chasen said most of his investors backed Turntable's transition fromStickybitsto Turntable, with the exception being...

Social enterprise giant Jive Software started trading this morning on the Nasdaq under the symbol JIVE. The company priced its IPO last night at $12 per share, giving the company a $600 million. -plus...

Topsy Labs is releasing a social, realtime search engine for mobile devices today, enabling users to discover relevant chatter about any topic based on data from Twitter and Google+.The search en...

You remember Jotly, right? The hilarious and absurd spoof of our mobile/local/social app obsession? To refresh your memory, Jotly's humor was so on target, people wondered if creator Alex Cornell (fou...

Angel investing has been on the rise over the past few years (see Crunchbase chart below), and this year is no exception. A quirk in the tax laws is helping. Any "qualified small business stock" purch...

For all the work that GOGII has put into their free textPlus messaging app, they have spent much of the last two or so years letting users do essentially one thing: communicate via text. As of today, ...

While most of the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system is playing catch up to Android and iOS, the Messaging Hub truly shines as a stand-out feature. It allows you to thread Facebook messages, IMs and t...

Does the world need another social news site? That's the big question about today's launch of Comunitee, a new beta destination for tracking the news you want to follow, commenting and sharing stories...

Verizon really can't catch a break in this ActiveVideo case. After a jury determined that they had infringed upon a handful of ActiveVideo's patents, Verizon fought to have the court stay their monthl...

As more and more consumers are flocking online to shop for gifts this holiday season, Amazon has announced that it is extending the order deadline for its free shipping through the last weekend before...

Internet radio service Pandora has posted its November listening stats in the top ten radio markets in the U.S. The company says that it has seen Average Quarter Hour (AQH) gains in each of the top te...

Family safety startup Life360, which makes a freemium mobile security app by the same name, is today announcing it has secured $3.5 million in Series A funding. The round included investment fromFonti...

The 3DS is finally get a shot of games. Nintendo's next-gen 3D gaming handheld has so far not seen the sort of success as its predecessors. It's not a mystery why, though. There aren't many games wort...

Back in July, TechCrunch Disrupt winner, Soluto, raised $10.2 million in a series B financing led by Index Ventures. The new round of investment brought the Israeli startup's total funding to $18 mill...

Up until now, Twitvid has been the largest repository of videos on Twitter other than YouTube. It's essentially been the TwitPic of video, and it's done a good job with 40 million video views per mont...

Luluvise is a social and communications platform aimed at young women and their best friends where they can hand pick their best pals and network privately. Online pyjama party? I've no idea, I'm a gu...

Local mobile advertising network xAD has raised $9 million in new funding led by Emergence Capital Partners, with participation from SoftBank Capital, Palisades Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. xAD, ...

Getaround, the peer-to-peer car sharing company that won this year's TechCrunch Disrupt NYC startup competition, this morning announced that it is poised to make its debut in the greater Portland metr...

Atlanta-based startup Kabbage, which provides working capital to online merchants, has closed $12 million in debt financing from Western Technology Investment. In August, Kabbage raised $17 million fr...

Sometimes, reporting startup news can make a person feel old. Case in point: Woozworld, the virtual world maker for tweens, is launching a social networking service called WoozIn, which I'm saying wit...

Seatwave is a long-time secondary marketing startup in the UK which competes with Viagogo. However, it appears to be tacking towards trying to out-innovate the competition by today releasing an iOS SD...

Japan seems to really like Windows 7-powered tablets: this time, it's Toshiba, which has announced [JP] the so-called WT301/D for the local market. Just like so many Windows tablets, this model is spe...

Honda caused quite a splash a while back with the introduction of the U3-X, a personal mobility robot that's basically a motorized unicycle (and that our own John Biggs was "impressed" with after taki...

Looks like Nokia executives are increasingly picking up on a specific kind of skill honed by Microsoft execs over the past few years: saying something stupid about their competitors that is undoubtedl...

Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: The Nao Next Gen Bot Will Be Your Friend When No One Else Will Small Cell Maker ip.access Raises $15M From Intel, Qualcomm And Others Review: Fujifi...

Apple is reportedly going to use part of its enormous pile of cash to buy an Israeli fabless semiconductor company that specializes in flash storage solutions. Calcalist reports - in Hebrew - that the...

You know what I'm into? Quora's efforts at gamification. Because listen, Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever could have chosen to devote their youth to anything on earth and they have chosen to build ad...

What the headline says, basically, according to two sources. That and multiple sources are telling me that a majority of Gowalla investors were cool with the deal being entirely in Facebook shares, be...

You may not have heard of it, but San Diego has its very own tech incubator, called EvoNexus, a product of the non-profit industry association, CommNexus, which provides startups with access to capita...

People are leaving Twitterexecutives, engineersthis happens at large companies with more than 700 employees. We notice, as does every other tech blog. Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider put forth a ...

Back in September, WellnessFX launched a platform that is designed to help people take charge of their health. And today, the startup is adding to its own financial health, announcing that it has rais...

Whether you believe in psychic consultation or not, the industry pulls in $2 billion a year and is primed for disruption. Pay-per-minute phone calling still dominates the market despite being around f...

PR guru Kiersten Hollars is moving from AOL VP to Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, we've confirmed with Andreessen. From her former boss Brad Garlinghouse; "Kiersten is a rock star... ran all of PR and...

Fast Society today announced it will shut down its group messaging app and instead devote resources to its new app Cameo that will launch next month. Group messaging seemed like such a big opportunity...

Social enterprise giant Jive has just priced its IPO, which is set to debut on the public markets tomorrow morning. Jive priced at $12 per share this evening, above the expected range. The company ori...

Short version: A stylish and fun alternative to the likes of the Canon G12 and Nikon P7000. It's not the quickest on the draw, and the build quality is obviously a step down from its elder brother, th...

Zynga is about to go public at a valuation that could make it worth around $9 billion, so the press is busy looking back at how the social gaming leader came to be this successful. There's lots of dis...

After 14 million downloads of WordPress 3.2, WordPress 3.3 is being released to the wild today. Codenamed Sonny in honor of the jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, WordPress 3.3 is available for download or...

The Gillmor Gang Robert Scoble, Laura Fitton, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor questioned the sanity of several industry players in a lively @scobleizer-shortened appearance. Robert had ...

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I spent the tail end of my high school career goofing off and trying desperately to appear cooler than I actually was. Fortunately for our future, people like Luis C...

It's been nearly two decades since the launch of the Internet's first search engines, and search engine placement is still king. Own the relevant terms for your industry, and you'll pretty much drown ...

It's been nearly two decades since the launch of the Internet's first search engines, and search engine placement is still king. Own the relevant terms for your industry, and you'll pretty much drown ...

Congress is moving ahead with trying to pass SOPA --the so-called "Stop Online Piracy Act" that includes all sorts of draconian measures that would stifle free expression as we know it. Here's a simpl...

Archimedes Labs, a new incubator and investment vehicle focused on mobile, is launching today. The incubator is co-founded by Keith Teare, a serial entrepreneur and a co-founder of TechCrunch. Teare p...

It's been nearly two decades since the launch of the Internet's first search engines, and search engine placement is still king. Own the relevant terms for your industry, and you'll pretty much drown ...

The Crunchies are just around the corner (January 31, to be exact). Nominations for Silicon Valley's annual technology awards co-hosted by GigaOm, VentureBeat and TechCrunch end tomorrow at midnight P...

Just 3 months after its public launch following 2 years of private beta, content discovery engine Thoora today announced that it will shut down. Thoora’s website, Android tablet app, WordPress p...

A large survey of consumers and manufacturers from around the world has found a number of interesting statistics, though some are interesting not in and of themselves, but in what they imply about tho...

Being a man in the modern world is no easy task. Should I friend her on Facebook? When is it alright to ignore a text message? Men's advice site Brotips can help, andMark Cuban wants to make sure you'...

It's not every day that you have two - count 'em - two Motorola Honeycomb tablets drop on your lap but today's one of those days. I've just powered up the Xyboard 8.2 and 10.1 and am running them thro...

It looks like AT&T and T-Mobile aren't the only ones preparing for all contingencies: Dish Network CEO Joseph Clayton said in an interview with Bloomberg that if the pending merger were to fail, h...

Iomega's Mac Companion hard drive is a 2TB ($349, 3TB model is $449) desktop drive with a few features that make it interesting to the average Mac (or PC) owner. While it doesn't have the bells, whist...

And the curve balls keep coming. AT&T has just released the following statement with regards to its once-planned merger with T-Mobile: AT&T and Deutsche Telekom advised Judge Huvelle this morn...

And the curve balls keep coming. On Friday the Department of Justice announced its intentions to postpone its antitrust suit with AT&T and T-Mobile, as the deal they were investigating had been su...

The web passed print a long time ago in terms of time spent by consumers, but 2011 will be teh first year that mobile passes print, according to new estimates by market research firm eMarketer. Time s...

Continuing today's theme of awesome Android apps (how did that happen?), Skitch also has something to announce: it has reachced 3 million downloads of Skitch for Android. Given its Android launch occu...

Verizon is awash in solid tablet options right now, but their current LTE-capable lineup may leave you wanting for something a little less unwieldy. If the thought of manhandling a 10-inch tablet is t...

It's hard to take on the entrenched incumbent Mint when it comes to delivering personalized financial management tools (just ask Wesabe), but Adaptu thinks it has found a niche where it can compete. W...

Whoa. I thought Pleo was hot but this thing is out of this world. It's basically a little walking robot that can see, hear, and recognize you from a distance. Originally designed to help teach autisti...

This is a big week for Zynga, as the gaming giant readies for its debut on the public markets at the end of the week. The company's offering is expected to price this week and will raise around $1 bil...

Like Zynga, Playdom and Playfish did in the early days of the Facebook platform,Storm8beat most other game developers to smartphones back in 2009. It's been nailing the big, lucrative market for simpl...

Ah, the allure of the Big City. PlaceIQ, a hyper-local ad targeting startup from Boulder, Colorado is moving to New York City, flush with $4.2 million in series A funding. New investors include U.S. ...

A number of prominent folks have been ripping into the Kindle Fire lately, claiming that it is slow, exhibits poor UX choices, and that consumers are returning them en masse. Heck, even the affable Ma...

Fileboard is launching today as a service which allows people to manage their attachments and files on the iPad. The startup says that today's professionals have hundreds of files scattered over dozen...

Lightbox, the beautifully designed social photo app for Android backed by $1.2 million in seed funding from Index, Accel, SV Angel, 500 Startups, and others, is today launching a revamped web interfac...

Size matters, folks. Especially in the minds of our beloved electronics makers. Even with the 3.7-inch LePhone and the 7-inch A1 tablet on the market, Lenovo still made plans to fill the 5-inch space....

There are not many breakout mobile apps that are Android-first, but if the last 30 days are any indication, social to-do app Any.DO has a shot at getting there. The app's been downloaded 500,000 times...

Move over, Tina Fey -- Amazon has just released the list of their ten best-selling books of the year, and Walter Isaacson's thoughtful biography of Steve Jobs has come out on top.The biography's appea...

Urbanspoon, the mobile restaurant recommendations and reservations application, is today adding a new feature called "Dineline," which allows users to check-in to restaurants in order to track their d...

So you missed out on getting the new iPhone 4S when it came out. Worse, all your friends got the new Apple flagship and make fun of your 3GS at every possible opportunity. Plus, all the holiday shoppi...

Barnes & Noble isn't done with its original tablet. The Nook Color is over a year old and it just got its largest update to date that brings Netflix, Flixster, and access to Nook Comics and PagePe...

Intel has just announced that its fourth quarter results are expected to fall below the companys previous outlook because of hard disk drive supply shortages. Intel now expects fourth quarter revenue ...

Folks in the Great White North have reason to be excited today, especially if they're a customer of the Rogers network. Canada's largest wireless carrier has today announced the expansion of its new L...

If you are a small or local business, managing your listings on the dozens of local listings sites on the Web is next to impossible. Yext, which started out as a pay-per-call advertising startup, shif...

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the life and career of inventor Robert Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. Noyce, who died in 1990, is credited with the invention of the integrate...

Apple this morning announced that there are now over half a million applications available in the mobile applications-specific App Store, and that over 100 million of apps have been downloaded from th...

At the Tokyo Motor Show 2011, Mitsubishi took the wraps off EMIRAI, a near-future concept that will become reality in about 10 years (if the company is to be believed). The core element is a large-siz...

Chicago-based personal styling and retail platform for men Trunk Club has brought on former Greylock EIR and eBay VP Rob Chesney as COO.In his role as an Executive-in-Residence, Chesney advised Greylo...

SOASTA, a company that provides a cloud-based testing platform for applications, has raised $12 million in funding led by The Entrepreneurs' Fund, with participation from prior investors Canaan Partne...

Cambridge, UK-based ip.access, which offers femtocell and picocell solutions to mobile operators worldwide, has raised $15 million in new funding from some of its previous investors. The financing rou...

Can ccLoop Rid Us Of Our Collective Email Woes? - I asked in a headline when the startup made its formal debut at TechCrunch Disrupt earlier this year. The answer, sadly, is a resounding no.Founded by...

These days, it seems that everyone wants to be an app developer. Thankfully, technology has lowered the barriers to entry, and young and somewhat old are teaching themselves the basics of coding and a...

I took part in the Infinity Ventures Summit Fall 2011 (IVS) in Kyoto/Japan last week, a two-day web industry event organized twice a year by Japanese VC firm Infinity Venture Partners. Like at every I...

Ever want to punch a blog post in the face? Well, thats how I feel every time I see a headline that attempts to crystallize some universal truth about iffy "in tech" topics like women in tech, African...

Here are some highlights from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets: TechCrunch Gift Guide 2011: Best Toys 2011 Gift Guide: 6 Hot PC Accessories To Keep You And Yours Warm This Holiday New Apple Patent ...

ADTRAN this morning announced that it is to acquire Nokia Siemens Networks' fixed line Broadband Access business, all associated services and network management solutions, intellectual properties, tec...

Another year, another attack on the Internet. Lately, though, its not a loose collective of individual hackers sitting in dark rooms trying to wreak havoc. This time, stronger forces and vested intere...

And like that they're gone. $99 TouchPads hit ebay right on schedule and were gone within minutes. But that's to be expected, really. It's not often that a solid piece of hardware like the TouchPad is...

Last week at Le Web, Alexia interviewed Sean Parker and Shervin Pishevar onstage in what turned out to be one of the most-buzzed about sessions. Here is the full video for your weekend watching pleasu...

Navarrow Wright, the co-founder of Global Grind and current CTO of InteractIve One, which operates BlackPlanet.com and other sites, came into the TCTV studio to have "the race conversation" with me. "...

comScore just released its U.S. online holiday spending numbers for the season to-date, and as predicted, consumers continued to spend online in record amounts. For the first 39 days of the November t...

[Here's a look at how startups backed by Y Combinator or TechStars compare in terms of funding, based on the data available in CrunchBase. It's written by Edmar Ferreira, a data scientist and founder ...

When we first invited Billy Chasen to join us onFounder Storieshe was working hard to make his startup, Stickybitsa success. Turns out it never took off. But like many founders, Chasen bounced back an...

A surprising piece of news was buried in an article this week. Friday, The Mercury News reported the three top executives at Google, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, are offering to pay $33 ...

We need to get more guys who are running tech startups instead decide to be stay-at-home dads.What do you think of that? Stupid, right? Thats what it sounds like when anyone suggests that we need to g...

Couponing has been around forever, but the popularity of digital offers, daily deals, and group buying is fairly new. We've gone through the honeymoon period, watched the meteoric rise of Groupon, its...

This summer, Tandem Entrepreneurs raised a $40 million fund to continue investing in its incubator and capital fund, both focused exclusively on startups building solutions for the mobile space. One o...

Following Radiohead into the wild world of micropayments, comedian Louis CK is offering his latest concert film, Live At The Beacon Theatre, as a DRM-free download or stream for $5. Once payment is te...

Permanent residence in the USA is a valuable asset that is enjoyed by most of you reading this article. Many potential immigrants from around the world want to acquire that asset and become valuable m...

While Microsoft has been the most successful platform company in history, it periodically has flirted with vertical market-specific businesses with only mixed success. In virtually all cases, it ends ...

Social TV these days usually means a companion app on your iPad that lets you Tweet along with your friends and fellow fans while you are watching TV. These apps work best for live events (the one rem...

OK, now I'm worried. Here's why:Lo these many years ago, in the long-gone spring of 1996, I set out to San Francisco to make my software fortune, armed with a freshly minted degree from Canada's fines...

There are only a couple days left to nominate your favorites for this year's 2011 Crunchies Awards. Already, we've received over 150,000 nominations from the tech community, with hundreds more trickli...

Today, December 10th, Amazon is offering a very special deal you're going to love and your local brick-and-mortar retailer is going to hate. Use its PriceCheck mobile app and get 5% off your purchase,...

I got to sit down and interview Dana White ahead of UFC 140. The event takes place on December 10thin Toronto, Canada and like every UFC event, heavily hyped via social media. Over the past 3 years,Da...

This week HP webOS open-sourcing, RIM's problems in Jakarta, and giving away a few Speck iPhone cases. Join us, won't you, in the TC Gadgets Webcast?...

Mom commerce site ecomom has raised $4 million in a Series A financing round lead by Cue Ball Capital. The round was followed on by investors Dave McClure, Tony Hsieh, Chamath Palihapitiya,Rohan Oza, ...

Erick isn't much of a gamer, which is why he's particularly suited at assessing the new Xbox 360 UI, dubbed Metro by those in the know. Aside from the obvious changes in design, the UI actually makes ...

On Friday, a little-known Swedish ecommerce payments company called Klarna raised a massive $155 million round from DST and General Atlantic. Its previous round was a scant $9 million in May, 2010 whe...

Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: Tablet Zero TechCrunch Gift Guide 2011: Best Toys Hands-On With The Meizu MX Meet ePawn Arena: The Screen That Wants To Make Gaming Personal Again KOB...

Over the last two years, Apple has been engaged in vicious legal battles over smartphone patents, many of which are aimed at squelching (or squeezing money out of)manufacturersof devices running Andro...

GAIN Fitness, a startup that creates personalized workouts based on certified trainers expertise, announced today that it has raised $650K in seed funding from InterWest Partners, Slide COO and angel ...

Long ago, signing up for Facebook required a university email address and many users shared openly with everyone in their school's network. In an effort to revive the feeling of safe sharing within an...

Ice Cream Sandwich tablets are already coming out of the woodwork, and it looks like at least a few of them will be ready for CES 2012. The folks over at Coby Electronics have just revealed five, coun...

The global slapfight between Apple and Samsung shows no sign of abating - a victory here, an injunction there, a ruling here, a reversal there - like Aesop's goats, neither will give way and chances a...

Apple finally opened up its biggest store yet in Grand Central Terminal today. Since I was passing through, I decided to take a quick walkthrough with my iPhone. The results are the two videos and oth...

Tagged's mission is to help strangers meet each other online, so it has to offer friend suggestions of people you'll like and who'll like you back. That's why it acquired Topicmarks, a natural languag...

When AT&T decided to regroup and withdraw their T-Mobile merger application a few weeks back, I'm not sure they expected it to backfire the way it just has. According to the Wall Street Journal, t...

Indonesia's telecoms regulatory agency, the BTRI, has told the Jakarta Post that they may have to shut down RIM's BlackBerry Messenger and Internet services after the company declined to establish BBM...

The Galaxy Nexus, while something we've been super excited about, is turning out to be a real pain. Why? Because we can't seem to figure out when the bleep this thing is supposed to launch. We heard i...

The Galaxy Nexus, while something we've been super excited about, is turning out to be a real pain. Why? Because we can't seem to figure out when the bleep this thing is supposed to launch. We heard i...

As the new founder in residence at SV Angel, Paul McKellar is part of the next layer of web and mobile entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. People who have come here and been through a couple startups ove...

It's no secret that Japanese mobile social gaming company GREE is aggressively pursuing the U.S. markets, especially with the $104 million acquisition of mobile gaming platform OpenFeint earlier this ...

Adzerk, the ad-serving technology startup which raised $650K in seed funding this July, is launching its next phase, called adOS. The new platform is intended as an evolution of its current product, a...

Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman finally announced the fate of operating system WebOS this morning, after the company previously announced that it was ceasing the development of all smartphones and tab...

Did you know that you were a genius? Yes, we are all geniuses, every one of us - at least according to Gina Rudan, the author of Practical Genius: The Real Smarts You Need to Get Your Talents and Pas...

HP just took to the wire and announced to the tech world that webOS will live on as an open source project. Shortly thereafter, Meg Whitman informed HP employees about the decision. The internal email...

YouTube has just acquired RightsFlow, a startup that manages music licensing and payment services. Launched in 2007, RightsFlow helps online music services, record companies, distributors and artists ...

"Consider that many Facebook engineers spend their days developing PHP code in an endless edit-reload-debug cycle.The difference between 8-second and 5-second reloads due to switching from HipHop inte...

Well, there we have it. After weeks of deliberation, HP CEO Meg Whitman has just announced to all of the company's employees that HP will make webOS open source. Before I go any further, I'd like to t...

As we reported in early November, entrepreneur and founder of the Virgin Group Sir Richard Branson made a personal investment in disruptive mobile payments startup Square. The exact amount of Branson'...

VC Marc Andreessen has taken to his personal blog to quell the rumors that he's in the running for the position of chairman of the board at Yahoo. The rumors have been widely reported by a number of n...

The new Path app has been out on the iPhone for about a week, and it's been getting good reviews among the early-adopter set. In this episode of Fly or Die, John Biggs and I go through the pros and c...

batch, the app that allows you to finally do something productive with all those pics lying around on your phone, has just added it's very first update to the App Store.What's new? The addition of a f...

Sure, I've been terrified by the HTC Rhyme commercial, absolutely baffled by a 30-second Motorola Droid Bionic ad featuring two seconds of the Droid Bionic, and I've been amused by Sprint's Evo 3D spo...

The Meizu MX is an odd duck. A Chinese-only smartphone that may (or may not) be reaching our shores, it's hard not treating it like an oddity washed up on the beach rather than a shipping device. It i...

Playd is a new mobile application that lets you check in to games the way Foursquare users check in to venues. Actually, the app is more akin to something likeMiso, GetGlue orIntoNow-apps which extend...

If you're an Aunt, Uncle, Grandfather, Grandmother, Godmother, Godfather, Foster Parent, or just plain old mommy or daddy, you might have some kids on your holiday shopping list. These are some intere...

At the risk of sounding a little old-fashioned, ePawn CEO Christophe Duteil thinks that there's something missing with the way people play games these days. Modern gaming lacks "conviviality" -- the s...

Editors note:James Altucheris an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book isI Was Blind But Now ...

Pluto Games, a mobile 'edutainment' platform for kids, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from incubator YouWeb and angel investors including co-founder and chairman of Silver Lake Dave Roux; Brett W...

Yesterday something strange happened. YouMail, a visual voicemail app with millions of downloads, was pulled from the Android Market. Confused, YouMail reached out to Google about what the dealio was,...

App discovery company AppsFire is debuting a new iOS application today called Logostream, which offers a curated view of the iTunes application store. The app provides users with an easy way to find n...

Apple has lost a preliminary injunction filed by Motorola Mobility over a wireless-related patent. That's not something we're hearing a lot of these days, but it seems to be the case over in Germany, ...

Apple has lost a preliminary injunction filed by Motorola Mobility over a wireless-related patent. That's not something we're hearing a lot of these days, but it seems to be the case over in Germany, ...

With all the hype around the Kindle Fire it's easy to forget about the Nook Tablet. The other budget Android tablet is zipping along nicely according to industry watchdog Digitimes. The outlet, citing...

Amid talks of a Groupon acquisition, the smart local recommendations app Alfred has arrived on Android. Alfred serves up personalized suggestions for nearby restaurants, coffee shops, bars and nightcl...

Every time Sean Parker goes onstage, someone asks him the inevitable question, "Where is the social web going." Today at Le Web, where he was interviewed alongside VC Shervin Pishevar by TechCrunch's ...

Amazon Prime Video just got a shot of show tunes in the arm as the retailer just announced an extended licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. Exact terms of the deal i...

Japan-based Kowa Tmsuk may just be ten months old and just have five employees (it's a joint venture between two larger companies), but it seems the company is set to build cool things. Their electric...

Serial Internet entrepreneur and angel investor Fabrice Grinda took the stage at Le Web this morning to share his thoughts on investing in Russia, Brazil and other emerging markets and general lessons...

Nokia this morning announced that it has started shipping its stylish, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango-powered smartphone Lumia 710 to customers in Taiwan (where it is sold alongside the Lumia 800).Over the n...

Lattice Semiconductor this morning announced that it is to acquire SiliconBlue Technologies, which develops mobile device solutions for the consumer handheld market. Lattice Semi will pay approximatel...

Blue Coat, which specializes in Web security and WAN optimization solutions, has agreed to be acquired by an investor group led by San Francisco-based PE firm Thoma Bravo in a transaction valued at ro...

Two acquisitions today that were for the most part executed so Silicon Valley companies could buy their way into the UK (and Ireland) market.Freshly funded location-based mobile gaming company Red Rob...

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has just announced its beefed up Radio feature onstage at LeWeb, innocuously intro-ing it as a radio app that the Spotify New York team built on top of the platform. Ek however d...

The morning after the launch of new new Twitter, Twitter's head of platform Ryan Sarver took the stage here at Le Web and spoke about the future of the Twitter platform, among other things. With 100 m...

It took them quite a while, but as reported, Panasonic is finally ready to re-enter the global market for cell phones. After 2005, Big P has been selling handsets almost exclusively in Japan. The comp...

Here are some recent stories from TechCrunch Gadgets: DODOcase For The Kindle Fire Is Ready To Disguise Amazons Tab As A Hardbound Book A New Tokyoflash Pocket Watch For The Tubercular Steampunk Dandy...

European e-commerce payments provider Klarna just raised a huge, pre-IPO round of $155 million. The round was led by General Atlantic and DST Global, and included Sequoia Capital, which led its last $...

Do you lose things? Despite being meticulous about personal hygiene and a snappy dresser, I tend to misplace things. I blame it on bad parenting, of course. But, we all lose our personal items -- and ...

Since launching early last year, young social travel site Gogobot has been off to a pretty good start, or at least it has, shall we say, been hitting all the stops. As Jason pointed out recently, it w...

Comparison shopping site NexTag has made its fifth acquisition in 15 months, buying event ticket search engine FanSnap. Unfortunately, FanSnap employees and any other common stockholders won't get any...

Groupon is in late-stage negotiations to acquire Silicon Valley-based startup Clever Sense, we're hearing from a source. Clever Sense is the company behind Alfred, a popular 'butler' app for your phon...

"Six months from now you'll say the opposite. Because ultimately applications vendors are driven by volume. And the volume is favored by the open approach that Google is taking."That was Google Chairm...

These new e-reader-tablet hybrids are shaping up to be the hottest gifts of this year. Amazon's Kindle Fire is flying off both virtual and real-world shelves and Barnes & Noble has offered up a wo...

Ness Computing has just launched a new version of its restaurant search engine app that takes its existing recommendations technology and adds in new sharing services. Yes, there are plenty of restaur...

Google has just launched its much-rumored Flipboard competitor, Google Currents. The service is available for both iOS and Android including support for phones and tablets and you can download it rig...

Driverless cars have been a popular and fertile topic for research and discussion for years. From the first high-profile Grand Challenge to the more recent work by Google, there has always been activi...

I've recently fallen into the habit of pulling and tugging at ATM slots before I slide my card through because I fear that someone nefarious has stuck one of these 3D-printed card skimmers over the op...

Facebook wasn't kidding when it announced yesterday that an embeddable button allowing people to subscribe to someone's public updates was on the way. Today it officially released the Subscribe button...

T-Mobile is unveiling a promotion with mobile payments company Square this week. Basically, T-Mobile is offering its business users an upgrade plan where they can get a 4G Pro smartphone, and an unlim...

For a company that generally sticks to fancy-pants Bluetooth headsets and speakers, Jawbone has done a surprisingly good job of making their UP fitness-wristband-thing into a rather trendy item. Alas,...

While Twitter is already a leading platform for information distribution, a few aspects of its redesign today show how it's strengthening itself in this area. It's improving inline media viewing and t...

Twitter unveiled a major redesign today which will be rolling out slowly. We've covered some of the main aspects already such as the new timeline and discover features, as well as how Twitter is tryin...

Twitter unveiled a major redesign today which will be rolling out slowly. We've covered some of the main aspects already such as the new timeline and discover features, as well as how Twitter is tryin...

Facebook has confirmed with me that it has undergone a corporate reorganization. "We can confirm that in order to streamline the product development process, we have reorganized our technical teams in...

Heyo! CES is right around the corner and we need some interns to work with us in Las Vegas after the holiday. If you like gadgets, think you can write/edit video, and are free January 10-13 and live i...

As location gradually becomes more important to the on-the-go consumer, what with daily deals, check-in coupons, and local promotions, so that consumer's fine location becomes more important to mercha...

Zerply co-founder Christofer Karltorp believes theres a creative class (think designers, writers, photographers) that doesn't think LinkedIn adequately meets their needs. They want to display their pr...

Startup Opinionaided, which offers a mobile Q&A app around sharing people's opinions, is rebranding as Thumb. Opinionaided's users are able input a question, determine a category (i.e. relationshi...

"We're trying to connect what's happening offline and across the web with Twitter," product manager Sara Mauskopf tells me today during the redesign launch event at Twitter's new headquarters. A key p...

Been avoiding Google+? Too bad! Google announced today that Google+ is being deeply integrated into both Gmail and Google Contacts. Through a widget on the side of your Gmail screen, you'll ...

Customers who used the self-checkout lanes at Lucky Supermarkets have been hacked. The grocer, which operates stores in California, says some of their credit card machines have been altered with snif...

Whoa. I'm going to tip toe through this story a bit carefully, as it'd be easy to come off as if we're rallying the pitchforks. We've reached out to T-Mobile for their side of the story, but haven't h...

Google's been celebrating their recent Android Market milestone with a string of discounted (and awesome) apps, but really -- what's a celebration without an infographic? Thankfully, Google has come t...

I realize that patent speak is super verbose for a reason, as those applying want every little nook and cranny of their technology/invention protected. But... well, just look at this: "A three-dimensi...

We've been wondering exactly what Google Schemer is for some time now. Google has just officially launched Schemer, a new activity recommendations portal that allows people to 'discover new things to ...

Apple released its iTunes Rewind 2011and App Store Rewind 2011 today, the company's annual lists detailing of the top selling apps, music, TV shows, movies and podcasts for the year. This year, the b...

If you're in a Boingo-equipped airport this holiday, be sure to whip out your Nintendo 3DS for some hot head-to-head gaming. The Wi-Fi provider will be free to 3DS users on December 8 and allow them t...

Twitter is starting to push out a significant redesign of its service that makes the interface simpler for all users across all of its platforms. The goal is to resolve complexity around concepts like...

Back in March, SCVNGR launched a product to complement its mobile scavenger hunt called LevelUp that essentially took on Groupon and the daily deals industry with a mobile product that focused squarel...

At the Twitter news event today, the company revealed a number of compelling stats about its service, namely that its Apple iOS integration has boosted monthly signups by 25 percent globally. Apple an...

Very interesting, Bango. Sometimes the biggest deals are the ones where everyone is keeping mum. That seems to be the case with this little blip of news coming out of the mobile phone payments company...

Planning a trip around the world in 80 days? Spending some time with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? You're going to need this $149 Tokyoflash, touchscreen pocket watch that, is as far as I can...

Yes, it's at the new building on Market Street. Hilarious pun. The press conference hasn't started so right now it's just a bunch of Twitter employees running around chatting with press but not tellin...

As open nominations for the 5th annual Crunchies awards enters its final week (nominate here until Dec 13), it's time to figure out which are the best startups and products of 2011. The Crunchies, whi...

No, Google is not launching super-creepy facial recognition, so put those pitchforks down. But it is introducing a new feature to Google+'s photo app, which now makes it a bit easier to quickly t...

Writing a business plan is no easy task -- it can be painstaking. If you've ever written one, you're probably familiar with the many websites that offer those static business plan and projections temp...

Google has updated its Google Image Search experience with a redesign targeted towards users of tablet devices, including the Apple iPad. Now, when you're browsing through image results on your tablet...

You know what? 2011 has been a long year. With only a few more weeks to go until we ring in 2012, why not treat yourself to something nice completely ridiculous to finish out the year in style? Accord...

Klip, a mobile app that allows users to capture, share, discover and view mobile videos, is releasing a new version of its iOS app with new suggested recommendations, SMS functionality and more.Klip, ...

The U.S. mobile market is already saturated with smartphones, with players like Apple, HTC, and Samsung locked in a never-ending struggle for market share. It's a game that's dominated by big-name pla...

Leica has just announced the V-Lux 3 superzoom camera, 12.1-megapixel CMOS camera with 4.5-108mm F2.8-5.2 lens with 1080p60 video capture. Not surprisingly, this thing is actually a rebadged Panasonic...

The Kindle Fire is a hit. Amazon shipped millions of the budget tabs over the last few weeks and will surely ship million more. But all those Fires shouldn't go unprotected. Enter the DODOcase for Kin...

So you've just landed in Pittsburgh and you don't know anyone. If you're like me, you hit the local Eat'n'Park and stare at people from your booth, crying while eating fries. With Tripl, however, I ca...

IBM has made a major purchase today in the commerce and retail worldDemandTec, a retail marketing and merchandising software company. IBM is acquiring DemandTec (which listed on the Nasdaq) in an all ...

Amazon this morning announced that it has set up a $6 million annual fund dedicated to independent authors and publishers. Dubbed KDP Select, the fund aims to let indie authors and publishers "make mo...

I'd never heard of FreedomPop until earlier this morning, when the company announced a partnership with U.S. wireless broadband network operator LightSquared. FreedomPop, according to the press releas...

Social mapping and navigation company Waze is partnering with 12 local broadcast stations including KGO-TV San Francisco, KABC Los Angeles, WFAA Dallas, and WPVI-TV Philadelphia, to bring its citizen...

Chartboost, the newly launched (already profitable) direct deals marketplace for mobile game developers is today announcing its expansion to Android. The companyprovides free ad-serving technology for...

Cloudera, the startup that commercially distributes and services Apache Hadoop based data management software and services, is releasing a new version of its enterprise product complete with with Clou...

Silicon Valley company Bill.com, which offers Web-based bill payment, invoicing and cash management solutions for businesses, this morning announced that it has raised $15.5 million in Series D fundin...

As Nokia struggles to establish itself as a worthy competitor to Apple and the Android bulldozer in the smartphone segment, the company is looking to sell off its wholly-owned luxury phone brand Vertu...

Plum District, a daily deals site for moms, is announcing today it has closed $20 million in Series C financing led by General Catalyst Partners, bringing its total funding amount to $30 million.The c...

Edmodo, an online social learning and communications network for teachers and students in K through 12 schools, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Greylock Partners and Benchmark Capita...

Online work platform oDesk is announcing that Thomas Layton is joining the company as Executive Chairman. In this role, Layton will work alongside current CEO Gary Swart in an active operating role. o...

Marissa Mayer, perhaps the most famous Googler after Larry and Sergey, took the stage for the fourth time today at LeWeb to talk about well, Google. Starting off the conversation, Crunchfund Partner M...

The future for Internet services pioneer Yahoo remains uncertain, to put it mildly. Currently a beleaguered takeover target sans visionary CEO (although one could argue recently fired Carl Bartz never...

Cloud emailing service provider Mailjet has raised 180,000 euros from Brussels-based eFounders, an earlier backer.Obviously, that's not an enormous fundraising round, but Mailjet is an interesting com...

Evernote CEO Phil Libin is on a tear; After making Inc Magazine's"Company of the year"issue,partnering with French telecom company Orangeand launching two apps, Hello and Food, he took the stage at Le...

The winner of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing 2011, group buying platform OrderWithMe, today announced it has raised a US$3 million A round. The fresh money comes from Japan- and...

Do you remember that 55-inch monster of a naked-eye 3D TV Toshiba unveiled back in October? The company now announced [JP] a date (December 10) and confirmed the final price (US$11,700) for the device...

Here are some recent stories from TechCrunch Gadgets: Video: Bridgestone Showcases Airless Tire 2011 Gift Guide: 6 Hot PC Accessories To Keep You And Yours Warm This Holiday The Behringer iNuke: The 8...

Google chairman Eric Schmidt spoke yesterday at Le Web in Paris, and now the entire interview is on YouTube (thank you, Loic!). Schmidt talks about politics, and Google's rapid acquisition pace (one a...

Innovation and design consultancy SYPartners is debuting its virtual on-th-go life coach, Unstuck this evening. Unstuck, which is an iPad app, allows you to get on-demand coaching whenever you need it...

Just as consumers are adopting smartphones (to the tune of 84 million in the U.S.) and tablets at a breakneck pace, an increasing number of clinicians, healthcare administrators and staff are using mo...

Yesterday, it was reported that Verizon was planning a Netflix competitor and in talks with various content producers to provide the streams and downloads. TechCrunch has obtained additional informati...

I have one major gripe with Facebook's Subscribe feature: I have to publish to all my friends to reach my Subscribers. In September, Facebook launched Subscribe, its Twitter-esque option that lets peo...

The claims are magnificent: "The latest, top-tier, high-performance games...on over 500 million mobile devices." The results are slightly less than spectacular, but still impressive enough to complete...

Last night, Flipboard released its long-awaited iPhone app. The app is a companion to its popular iPad reader which renders feeds and realtime streams into a magazine-like experience. The iPhone app i...

Apple has just reduced the price of the lowest tier of refurbished MacBook Air to $699 — I've just seen it pop up on a couple news sites. One would think that the option of getting for such a lo...

In most consumer cameras, an SD card is used for image storage. But it wasn't so long ago that CompactFlash (CF) cards were the standard for anything better than a point-and-shoot. Many cameras still ...

One of the true giants in the tech industry is Intel. Despite the ascendance of their rival, ARM, in the mobile sector, Intel is unmatched in processor and molecular-level computing R&D. They are ...

Just in time to throw a wrench into people's wireless shopping plans, Verizon has announced that their much-vaunted 4G LTE network is experiencing a few hiccups. And by hiccups, I mean that their 4G n...

Netflix recently built an app for Facebook that would let its users see what movies or shows their friends are watching, then click to watch them without having to leave Facebook. But when the two com...

Design focused flash sales site Fab.com has raised $40 million in series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz with existing investors Menlo Ventures, First Round Capital, Baroda Ventures, SoftTech VC,...

The business of selling virtual goods in games has been around for a decade, but it only came into its own in 2007 when developers started building social games on Facebook's developer platform. Since...

In a sign that it may be pushing off an IPO after Groupon's lackluster performance, rival LivingSocial has raised $176 million in a new round of funding, according to a new SEC filing. Reports of the ...

In a sign that it may be pushing off an IPO after Groupon's lackluster performance, rival LivingSocial has raised $176 million in a new round of funding, according to a new SEC filing. Reports of the ...

Back in October after many months of speculation and rumors Facebook launched its long-anticipated iPad application. The app was notable for two reasons: first, it was the first time the social networ...

Yahoo has just announced that it has been awarded a $610 million default judgment against spammers responsible for a fake Yahoo lottery email scheme. The order was handed down by a federal district co...

Facebook publicly discontinued its conversion tracking program for advertisers in September 2010. However, we've just discovered and confirmed with Facebook that it has been privately offering a speci...

This morning I was feeling particularly dreary. The weather is gloomy today in the Big Apple, grey and rainy, and it's chillier than it was yesterday. I found a little comfort in the fact that the hol...

Whoa. Here's something I didn't think I'd be saying this morning: Microsoft is killin' it this week. In the past 48 hours, they've launched a massively overhauled interface for the Xbox 360, released ...

There's seemingly no end to the clever things that people can do with a little know-how and a Kinect camera, and now it seems like the machine learning enthusiasts at ChaLearn want to use the Xbox acc...

Among the forward-thinking digital projects of the computing silver age was the Domesday Project, which aimed to preserve mid-eighties life in the UK by means of digitizing slide photos and text descr...

Being as huge as they are, Facebook is in a sticky spot with regards to changes. If they push out even a minor change too abruptly, the uproar is deafening; a thousand (mostly futile) "One Million Str...

There's been a lot of buzz about social travel sites over the last year, and we seem to hear from a new one every day. Yes, social has either transformed or is in the process of transforming nearly ev...

Get your clicking fingers ready! These boys are going to go fast. Starting Sunday, December 11th at 6:00 p.m. Central time, 16GB and 32GB Touchpads will be available on HP's ebay store. A $79 accessor...

Get your clicking fingers ready! These boys are going to go fast. Starting Sunday, December 11th at 6:00 p.m. Central time, 16GB and 32GB Touchpads will be available on HP's ebay store. A $79 accessor...

Microsoft's wonderfully shiny new Xbox 360 dashboard is now available to most, and, while it's a bit of a letdown in some ways (more on that later, probably), it has plenty of very, very cool new feat...

The era of Ice Cream Sandwich is upon us, and while some of us are waiting diligently for our Galaxy Nexuses to to arrive, others are left pondering a more different question: when will my device get ...

Twitter developers have long been pining for access to historical Tweets. Right now, the best they can get is 7 days worth based on keyword search. DataSift, one of Twitter's data partners which curre...

There will be one billion HTML5-capable phones sold in 2013, according to new research from Strategy Analytics. The number represents a (huge, huge) increase from the 336 million units sold in 2011. A...

We've been tracking Socialcam's foray into mobile video sharing since the app launched in March, so we have some context for the announcement today that it's passed 3 million downloads. Basically, the...

You may be familiar with Flud as the news reader app that's trying to build an appealing alternative to Flipboard and Pulse. Flud launched iOS platform back in 2010 with a heavy focus on design -- and...

You may be familiar with Flud as the news reader app that's trying to build an appealing alternative to Flipboard and Pulse. Flud launched iOS platform back at the end of 2010 with a heavy focus on de...

Families and businesses can share a bucket of minutes, so why can't they share a bucket of data? Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam appeared at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference today, and rev...

Interviewed on stage at Le Web by our very own Alexia Tsotsis, Kevin Systrom, CEO Instagram, said the photo app is hitting a new watermark in adoption "every day". Now on 14 million users , the app is...

Attention, hipsters: you can now take your poetry slams mobile. (Do hipsters still like poetry slams? I don't know). Anyway, there's a new iPhone app called Opuss, which describes itself as an "Instag...

At Le Web Foursquare Co-Founder and CEO Dennis Crowley expanded on the future direction for the company and product, signalling how check-in data is becoming less important than the recommendations it...

GiftRocket, a graduate of this year's Y Combinator spring class, launched behind a great idea. The startup wanted to marry gift carding with location-based services, so that friends could send gift ca...

Most of us eat, sleep and drink at our desk. It's our live and we can do with it whatever we please. If your loved one spends more time at a desk in front of a computer than anywhere else, the followi...

While I'm fairly certain that this is a publicity stunt tied into the upcoming CES season, BEHRINGER (their caps, not mine) has announced the iNuke, an 8x4 foot, 700 pound iPhone/iPad dock. It costs $...

Martini Media, an online ad network targeting affluent consumers, has raised $13 million in venture capital led by Granite Ventures, with participation from Reed Elsevier Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank...

Sometimes having better data isn't enough, even in search. You have to present it in an intuitive way that is easy to grasp. Kevin O'Connor, the founder of FindtTheBest (and before that, DoubelClick)...

Facebook subscriptions are about to blow up! At Le Web, Joanna Shields, VP and Managing Director for Facebook Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), announced that the company is planning to roll out ...

Nintendo caused a huge splash in the video gaming world earlier this year, when it announced a drastic price cut for the 3DS (which was meant to be an answer to disappointing sales). But it looks like...

While Siri is no doubt one of the coolest features I've ever seen on a phone, we're all still dealing with some form of disenchantment. Siri blows your mind that first day, and then it feels like you ...

The hottest deal in Israel is turning out to be a company whose name I first heard only a few of months ago. I can't go to any industry networking event these days without being asked what I know abou...

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt just took the stage at the Le Web conference to chat about Android, the search giant's expansion and more. When he was asked about why the search engine hadnt acquired any...

Cloud application services provider Iron.io has just closed a $1.4 million round of seed funding, led by Baseline Ventures, the same investors who led the seed rounds for Instagram, TaskRabbit, Heroku...

Just days after RIM unveiled the BBX platform at BlackBerry DevCon, they were served legal papers from a New Mexico-based software development company named Basis over the BBX name. News on that front...

TouchType, the London-based company behind the popular SwiftKey Android applications, has raise $2.4 million (1.5 million) in Series A funding in a round led by Octopus Investments.SwiftKey is a keybo...

What's your next Android phone? The HTC Moment Neo? Samsung Wildfire Slide Prime V S? Samsung Dream Slide G2 E 4G? All these - and more - can be yours if you use the Android Phone Name Generator from ...

comScore, a web and mobile data measurement company, is teaming up with Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands. The strategic partnership basic...

Despite the search engine's aggressive growth and "manifest destiny"-type approach to its expansion, "Think of us a teenager," Google Chairman Eric Schmidt replied, to an interesting question from aud...

Now this makes a lot of sense. Groupon this morning announced its latest product, dubbed Groupon Scheduler, an online appointment service that makes it easier for both end users and merchants to go fr...

Editor's Note: This week we're running a three part series by Steven Isaac, a programmer with an amazing resume including stints at Sun, Microsoft, and even a hardware start-up that brought the first ...

Surprise! The big Xbox 360 update started hitting consoles late last night and brought along with it a new Netflix app. This overhauled user experience incorporates the new Kinect voice and gesture co...

Riding high from a series of mid- to high-level successes in its 2010 and 2011 camera line, Olympus execs could be excused for feeling good. However, as 2011 winds down, Olympus is not in the news for...

Today at the Le Web conference in Paris, Evernote is debuting two new applications for iPhone and iPod touch devices. The first one is called Food, and is designed to help people easily save and 'reli...

DreamBox Learning, an adaptive e-learning platform for students, has raised $11 million in new funding led by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (who is investing through the Charter School Growth Fund), and K...

Cloud communications pioneer Twilio is dominating the USwith APIs that let developers add SMS, voice, and VoIP functionality to apps. Now it plans to roll out services to 20 more European countries us...

Deezer, which in a press release quite literally claims to have "invented music streaming" four years ago (who knew!), is planning to roll out its music streaming services all across the globe in the ...

Your website isn't going anywhere until you get the cloning stamp of approval. We've seen it happen time and time again, but I continue to be struck by how utterly unoriginal cloners are when it comes...

It's not the first of its kind (Michelin already showed a prototype), but it looks like the airless tire Bridgestone has developed is the most advanced we've seen so far. The Japanese company's main g...

Just 18 months into operations, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick just announced that the car service company has closed $32 million in funding lead by Shervin Pishevar's Menlo Ventures, Jeff Bezos and Goldman...

Le Web kicked off today in Paris, though the show was opened not with a discussion about a tech issue or company of the day, but with a demonstration by fashion scion Karl Lagerfeld on how he uses the...

Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: CMU Researchers One-Up Google Image Search And Photosynth With Visual Similarity Engine Verizon Planning Netflix Competitor For 2012 D...

Facebook tonight released a wealth of data about 2011's most shared content, both globally and for specific countries. Across the world, Osama Bin Laden's death was the most popular status update topi...

Tonight Microsoft revealed that the public release of its Windows 8 Beta will be taking place sometime in late February of 2012. Along with Windows 8 Beta, Microsoft will also be launching its "Window...

Salut a tous!Launching today at the LeWeb 2011 conference in Paris is the long-awaited SoundTracking Android app. What makes this app super special is that goes above and beyond the SoundTracking iPho...

On Wednesday, startup incubatorDreamIt Venturesis graduating fourteen new companies from its Philly 2011 class. It's the fourth program from DreamIt in Philadelphia, and the fifth graduating class for...

The Logitech forums are alive with music, or rather screenshots, or rather, if I'm honest, one screenshot. Yes, one user has reported that the 3.1 software has appeared on his Revue box. Users of Sony...

It's been 2.5 months since Facebook unveiled the Timeline profile redesign at f8 and said the rollout would begin shortly. However, possibly due to product tweaks and a lawsuit from Timelines.com, unt...

Facebookhas announced that it will begin rollout of Timeline, starting with New Zealand. If successful there it will release the profile redesign elsewhere. The country was likely picked because it sp...

I wouldn't be shocked to hear that you had perhaps forgotten about the Archos G9 tablets. They haven't seen much coverage of late, though we did get our hands on one back in October. In our review we ...

Hey PayPal, do you realize people no longer trust you? By heartlessly freezing the accounts of legitimate causes, you've shaken our confidence. By releasing the funds only in response to public pressu...

Cable TV and internet giant Verizon is planning a streaming media service similar to Netflix, according to a Reuters report. The service is in the planning stages and people close to the matter, but a...

It may still be a feature phone world, and mobile payments are a work in progress, but the big movers in the space are happy to be the guinea pigs, knowing it will pay off down the line. Starbucks has...

Going to a fancy State Gala? Married to a Rovio executive? Angry Birds dresses are SO IN this season.If you've ever met Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka, you've probably learned two things: 1) Peter is goo...

Another example of creative use of Augmented Reality rears its head in the form of an online scavenger hunt with a chance to win an iPad 2.The team at Metaio who created the Junaio Augmented Reality b...

Which event caused a greater spike in tweets this year, the Japanese earthquake, Steve Jobs' death, or Beyonce's pregnancy announcement at the MTV Music Awards? Yup, it was Beyonce. Twitter just relea...

Yesterday news broke that Verizon would be blocking Google's flagship Galaxy Nexus phone from including Google Wallet, the NFC-based system that will let you tap your phone against special sensors to ...

I sat down with Sundance DiGiovanni, CEO of Major League Gaming, who had some alarming and interesting statistics to share. First, the championships saw viewerships of over 3.6 million while fans watc...

To search these days is really an incredibly service-intensive process. Whereas before, to search something meant you had to through its drawers or folders by hand and inspect things by eye, now it me...

Listen, I've yet to play with the new Xoom 2 models -- or, as the new devices are called at Verizon, the XYBoards. I'm sure both the 8.9 and 10.1 models are fine tablets. They probably power through t...

Bootstrapped Polish startup UXPin is about to revolutionize the user experience design process. Typically, building a project requires a steady hand, paper and pencil prototyping, and then a redundant...

Lots of US cities claim they're the best place to do a startup. So where are entrepreneurs actually starting companies these days? TechCrunch reader Yuval Baror took a look at CrunchBase to try to ans...

MoPub, a mobile advertising startup founded by ex-AdMob and Google employees, is launching support for in-game ads and is also announcing a deal to power advertising in DeNa-owned ngmoco's Mobage gami...

Mobile dining apps for foodies on the go, LocalEats and BiteHunter, are today announcing a new content-sharing partnership. Starting now, LocalEats' users looking for a dining deal will see informatio...

You've wreaked havoc on Liberty City before but have you ever done it on your phone? Just imagine it! You can hijack a (virtual) taxi... while in an (actual) taxi! It's all of that good ol' early 200...

I've been getting a complimentary digital subscription to The New York Times since it launched its new paywall in March, but I just got an email from the company telling me that it's time to start pay...

Google Lead Product Manager Dylan Casey, the guy most famously in charge of the recently launched Google+ Google Bar, is leaving Google to join social app Path, the company tells me. Casey, who h...

Sometimes you want to go out, but aren't sure what's going on in your city that would interest you. SeatGeek, the ticket search engine for live events, is launching an event discovery engine today cal...

Not long after wrapping up their string of Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, Amazon has pulled back the curtain on yet another way they'll be snagging purchases away from physical retail outlets. Start...

It looks like Google+ is adding a feature that will allow users to "check-in" via the Google+ mobile application in order to receive a time-sensitive deal or discount. This feature is mentio...

You know that whole "one man's trash is another man's treasure" thing? Well, that's the concept behind clothing swaps, a type of gathering that's recently become popular, where people (mainly women) g...

In the strange, small world of watchmaking, there's lots of money to be made on items that we would call, at best, totemic. To make those items, you still need small mechanical parts. That's where Niv...

Android Market, the official, Google-sanctioned app marketplace for Android, is announcing a major milestone today: 10 billion total downloads.More important, the rate of growth is surging. Google say...

This week we're running a three part series by Steven Isaac, a programmer with an amazing resume including stints at Sun, Microsoft, and even a hardware start-up that brought the first (non-portable) ...

Imagine how differently Carrier IQs fortunes would be if instead of engaging lawyers and flaks to address alleged privacy breaches they engaged the actual discoverer of those breaches, security resear...

In the few months I lived across the pond (where prepaid phone plans are more popular than contracts, go figure), I learned something important about adding credit to your plan, or "topping up" as the...

Verizon's been teasing us with them for weeks now, but today the company has finally made things official: Motorola's LTE-capable DROID XYBOARD tablets will be hitting Verizon stores this month.For th...

Overstock.com is looking to expand its brand into the realm of ebooks. But the online retailer is doing it a tad differently. Instead of signing partnerships with publishers, building a vertical retai...

Audiosocket, the Music-as-a-Service platform provider, is today launching its own Music-as-a-Service Storefront. (Yep, inacronymlingo, that's a "MaaS.") The companyalready powers the backend of the Vi...

Today Red Hat announces the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, the latest iteration of their flagship Linux distribution. I don't usually cover every point release of every Linux distributi...

Dropost.it is a clever little service that allows you to drop gifts for friends which are geo-tagged to specific locations. These gifts, which you can think of as virtual gift cards purchased via the ...

Even though HTC has just come off of a record-breaking third quarter, it seems like some of the company's mobile momentum is evaporating. The Taiwanese company recently cut their Q4 sales forecasts by...

E-commerce company Cooking.com has landed $13.5 million in growth capital financing in a combined debt and equity round led by private investment firm BIA Digital Partners, with San Francisco-based VC...

Here's a funny story: Urban Airship, a backend service provider for mobile developers, recently discovered that its push notifications offering works on Amazon's new Kindle Fire...by accident. Althoug...

While not everyone would agree, I'm firmly of the belief that news (and most everything) sounds much better delivered in a British accent. The BBC's new global iPlayer app, which has launched in more ...

It's no secret that Peter Thiel thinks that the next big bubble facing our economy is not inflating the housing or tech markets, but that of higher education. The former PayPal CEO and early backer of...

Amazon took full control of Europe's largest movie and TV subscription service earlier this year and now, starting tomorrow, LOVEFiLM will hit LIVE-enabled Xbox 360 systems. This brings thousands of s...

MyHealthTeams, which develops social and local networks for communities of people living with or caring for those living with chronic health conditions, is launching MyAutismTeam, an online community ...

GlassHouse Technologies, a provider of cloud, virtualization, data center infrastructure and security consulting and managed services, this morning announced that it will not proceed with its planned...

ZINK (short for 'zero ink') this morning announced that it has scored $35 million in Series B funding in a round led by Genii Capital. The company also announced the hiring of former board members Mar...

It's the holiday season, when a webmaster's mind turns to thoughts of love and charity. Take Regretsy, for example. The site collected a bit of money and began buying and sending gifts to the kids in ...

Zynga and Vostu has settled their copyright lawsuits, according to a representative for Vostu. Vostu has paid Zynga an undisclosed sum as part of the settlement and made changes to its games. Here is ...

Back in May, BlueStacks, the startup that has developed software to let Android users run their apps on all Windows PC, tablets, and laptops, raised a $7.6 million series A, pre-launch. In October, th...

MarkaVIP, an ecommerce company that operates an eponymous private sales club in the Middle East, has landed $5 million in Series A funding led by Lumia Capital with participation from NYC-based Invus ...

HealthTap, an interactive medical community, has raised $11.5 million in Series A Funding led by Mayfield Fund, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Eric Schmidts Innovation Endeavors. This brings HealthTap's t...

Last month, Alexia posted a short manifesto ("Stop Making Apps"), which basically expresses a serious case of app fatigue. It's something most of us can relate to, at least passingly, in spite of know...

The European Commission this morning announced that it has opened formal antitrust proceedings to investigate whether a number of international ebook publishers have engaged in anti-competitive practi...

The European Commission this morning announced that it has opened formal antitrust proceedings to investigate whether a number of international ebook publishers have engaged in anti-competitive practi...

Hewlett-Packard has acquired a German company called HIFLEX, based in Aachen, which develops software that helps companies in the print and media industries automate their business and technical proce...

Back in 2007, there were a host of companies (at various stages of development) attempting to capitalize on the growing social revolution by making it easy for people to launch their own social networ...

Here are some recent posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: This Red MacBook Is Real, But Its Not What You Think The TouchFire Chronicles: How Two Guys Raised $100K To Make A Magical Keyboard DIY Printable Stra...

Japanese mobile social gaming giant and Openfeint owner GREE has outlined today its previously announced plan to launch a mobile social gaming network for the global market next year. Details are (rel...

We've talked about OpenDNS quite a bit over the years, noting that these guys know what geeks like: free, fast DNS lookups that smooth out the Internet's rough edges and shave seconds off of many web ...

PayPal restored sexy social network Zivity's account tonight after a weeklong battle over whether the website violates its policy. Zivity bills itself as "Hotness. In Person" where "76,102 people jus...

Last week, Erick wrote about the dramatic increase in startups and early-stage businesses we've been seeing over the last few years, likening the phenomenon to the Cambrian Explosion. In these fertile...

Apple has 1 Infinity Loop, Genentech has 1 DNA Way, and now Facebook has its own vanity headquarters address: 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, 94025. Seen here on a brand new business card of a Facebook empl...

When I first wrote about the dancing quadcopters last week, I noted there was no video. Well, now there's video....

Netbooks are still big business for Asustek. So much so that the hotness from 2009 outsold Asus tablets in 2011. Per numbers released at the company's global sales meeting (and relayed by Digitimes), ...

While this can't be the first time LEGO and indie hit Minecraft have been mentioned in the same breath, I think it's the first time they've really been mixed to this degree. Mojang, the developer of t...

Here's an odd little quirk of the modern age you're not likely to see again soon. South of Holborn in London (many nice bookstores in the area), there's a tube station that has been out of use for dec...

Brick and mortar store owners can now get access to the same kind of analytics available to website admins. Shopper Tracker is a new product from Argentinian developer Agile Route built off of Microso...

Today Sprint CFO Joseph Euteneuer said that the company plans on launching 15 LTE-capable devices next year, though they may be coming a little later than expected — the latter half of 2012, to ...

Badoo, the online network for meeting new people recently reached 130 million active users and now brings in $100 million a year. Based out of London's Silicon Roundabout, Badoo would be the 4th bigge...

More and more of us are getting comfortable sharing our real-world identities online, but the tools for helping us maintain our online privacy and security are still catching up to our behavior. Witne...

We like the Leaf. It's not a good choice for everyone, but it's a great second car or city car, set back the most perhaps by the trouble one has to take in charging it. At home you are advised to spri...

You could be forgiven for overlooking the Ainovo Novo7, a 7-inch Chinese Android tablet, as likely just another me-too device to be sold in electronics districts next to fake iPhones and bulk cables. ...

Today, the new multi-player gaming service Nextpeer is exiting its private beta period and is now available for all iOS developers to try. With the company's software development kit (SDK), game devel...

Every once in a while, a pitch hits our collective TechCrunch inbox that is equally ridiculous and intriguing. In a situation like that — one full of hilarity and intrigue — how can we not...

Gowalla, the geo-social app, will soon be no more. The founders will be joining Facebook and shutting down the product a couple months after trying to reposition the app as a social travel guide. It w...

Mobile shopping is undoubtedly on the rise, and today comScore is releasing new data reinforcing this continuing trend. According to the data research and analysis firm, 38 percent of smartphone owner...

Nearly everyone and their mother has pointed out that Verizon's LTE-friendly Galaxy Nexus should be launching any day now, but here's a new set of photos for those of you looking for something a littl...

First you get the money. Then you get the power. Then you get the plush toys.Finding some degree of success in the App Store is a challenge in itself but maintaining that success long enough that you...

Spling, a new graduate from this year's DreamIt Ventures Philly program, has just closed $400,000 in Series A funding in a round led by Deep Fork Capital and several other angel investors. The startup...

Another day, another government trying to figure out how to censor the internet. This time it's India, where acting communications minister Kapil Sibal is meeting with officials from Google, Yahoo, Mi...

Can we save the physical book? Some say that a bookless world may be inevitable. Others are more sanguine, seeing the Apple retail model potentially revolutionizing the traditional old bookstore. And ...

DARPA's Shredder Challenge, a contest to reconstruct documents from a slurry of shredded paper, has been solved, suggesting that my grandmother may be barking up the wrong tree when she shreds the Cam...

As we reported earlier this year, NileGuide, a one-stop travel planning site that allows you to create customized trip itineraries, bought local recommendations platform 10Best.com. Today, NileGuide h...

This week we're running a three part series by Steven Isaac, a programmer with an amazing resume including stints at Sun, Microsoft, and even a hardware start-up that brought the first (non-portable) ...

While we weren't "In Da Club", the Candy Shop, or the Disco Inferno, 50 Cent himself made some time this morning to meet us in downtown Manhattan and show off his brand new line of headphones. If you ...

Following reports that the company as a whole had been acquired, Gowalla today announced that its founders and several team members have joined Facebook and will move to it's Palo Alto headquarters. T...

Sony and Ericsson have made no secret of their impending split-up, but at the time of the announcement, the two didn't have much to say about when the companies would officially go their separate ways...

Gizchina has the scoop on a fake MacBook clad in red alloy, a look that I wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers but, obviously, is marred by not being a real MacBook....

iPhone jailbreakers should probably stay away from the latest Siri port, dubbed H1Siri, which brings Apple's digital assistant to the iPhone 4. The new hack comes from a group of Chinese hackers calli...

Cloud storage platform Box.net is announcing a major partnership with HP today to bring the startup's offerings to select HP desktops.Box, which has 8 million users and stores over 300 million documen...

Customer service at companies like AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America and others can be an incredibly frustrating experience. And I'm willing to guess that most of you have had a poor experience with ...

Virtualization data management software maker Actifio has raised $33.5 million in a Series C financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with previous backers North Bridge Venture Partners, Greylock P...

[youtube=https://youtu.be/iJR82Kc9X0E&w=640&h=385]The BBC did an hour-long special on Facebook, including interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, as well as cameos by Ron Conway, ...

The BBC did an hour-long special on Facebook, including interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, as well as cameos by Ron Conway, David Kirkpatrick, and others. The entire video is now on ...

These USB rocket launchers are nothing new, but this model now supports direct control via an iPhone or iPad, allowing you to remotely aim and rain down hellfire upon unsuspecting office mates from ou...

Pretender to the Instagram throne, EyeEm, a camera and photo discovery app startup, has launched a big update across its Android and iOS apps and the supporting web platform. It's now even even more a...

Nearly one year ago at CES 2011, Dell introduced the Streak 7 Android tablet. The 7-inch tab was an oversized brother to the older Streak 5 tabletphone. Much like the Streak 5, the Streak 7 featured a...

Theo Jansen is an artist who makes wild animated, wind-powered robots that seem to have a life of their own. Once you set them up on a beach and let them go, they undulate, slide, and coil across the ...

New data from Compuware finds conclusive proof of the popularity of iPads as a shopping device. The firm took a look at the website traffic for 70 U.S. retailers' delivered to an iPhone or iPad over t...

It's that time of year again, when everyone puts out their year in review lists. Twitter does this on a rolling basis with multiple lists on its Year in Review page, which includes notable people who ...

Siemens this morning announced that it will acquire all of the stock of eMeter in an effort to enhance its smart grid offering. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, is expected to be completed...

Intuit is the latest company to enable e-commerce on Facebook, announcing today that businesses using the company's Websites software can create a store on the social network.Intuit SimpleStore for Fa...

Enflick, the developer who created free text messaging app TextNow and IM application PingChat, have released a new app, called 'Touch,' which aims to make messaging your closest friends and family ea...

This week at the Le Web conference in Paris, Foodie.fm will be formally launching its personalized social shopping platform for groceries. The Finnish startup basically aims to better inform shoppers ...

mFoundry, a company that powers mobile banking solutions for more than 500 banks and credit unions nationwide, is announcing a new round of funding, to the tun of $18 million, from MasterCard (which l...

Supplemental learning resources stand to play a significant role in the changing educational landscape. The fact of the matter is that, while we might be in a higher education bubble, colleges and uni...

GlobalSCAPE, which specializes in information exchange solutions for enterprise customers, this morning announced that it has acquired TappIn, maker of an eponymous cloud-based file access and sharing...

Uber, the private car share service that allows you to summon town cars via an iPhone, has opened up shop in Paris in time for international Internet conference LeWeb. Adding context to the jumpy vide...

uTest, which provides software developers with a variety of testing services for their Web, desktop and mobile applications, has raised $17 million in Series D funding in a round led by QuestMark Part...

No doubt, Japan is on its way to becoming Android country. The newest alternative for the 100+ million mobile subscribers in the country is Fujitsu-Toshiba's ARROWS ES IS12F, which was announced ...

Antti Vilpponen, co-founder and CEO of ArcticStartup, a competitor to TechCrunch Europe when it comes to coverage of - surprise - tech startups from the Arctic region, wrote a post yesterday about the...

For all the coverage of smartphone proliferation, Android, search, G+, and so on, we haven't heard as much about Google's fledgling web apps market. We're quietly sneaking up on the first birthda...

They aren't as hip as those curly cables we've shown you a few days ago, but Roboden [JP], the world's first elastic electrical cable, is way more useful. Its maker, major Japanese chemical company As...

Here are some of the past week’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Gibson Buys Stanton DJ Equipment, Proving Korn Was On To Something Curly Cables, Where Have You Been All My Life? Quadcopter Art P...

Mobile social gaming is big in Japan. Very big. Mobile gaming publisher Gumi, which has been growing very rapidly lately, raised $26 million last week in a series F round from Jafco, Shinsei Bank, an...

The upcoming Metro update to Microsoft's Xbox, shipping tonight and arriving on your console some time this week, pushes Microsoft's gaming product away from the traditional run-and-gun of gaming cons...

The upcoming Metro update to Microsoft's Xbox, shipping tonight and arriving on your console some time this week, pushes Microsoft's gaming product away from the traditional run-and-gun of gaming cons...

Before me sit two phones. On the left is the iPhone 4S, which I bought (and signed my soul over to Verizon for) in October. On the right sits a loaner GSM version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, sporting...

The Federal Trade Commission intervened this week to stop Facebook from doing things like making private user information public... back in 2009.Besides being years too late to impact key product deci...

You're going to be tempted, but don't do it. Don't add all your friends on Path. Don't come anywhere near the 150-friend limit. And make the tough decision to reject the friend requests of people you ...

Consumers continue to set records with online shopping sales this holiday season. After spending a whopping (and record) $1.25 billion on Cyber Monday, online shoppers continued spending online, with ...

I find myself looking at the Nitro HD with mixed feelings. In some ways, it's exactly what I've been asking for from LG, and in others it simply brings about disappointment. The software, in particul...

Overcoming stiff competition from MIT and Waterloo, Princeton won this year's Facebook College Hackathon finals. Over the past few months, Facebook conducted run-off competitions at fourteen colleges ...

Watching videos on YouTube or browsing through photos on Facebook is inherently a social action that you may do with friends while in front of a computer or TV. Startup LiveLead, which is in private ...

As a voracious consumer of Web content since the early days (and an active blogger myself since 2004), I've found one of the most important aspects is the interactive component. When readers of conten...

A massive number of species appeared and began evolving some 580 million years ago, forming the basis of modern life. Now we're in the middle of another "Cambrian Explosion," Erick Schonfeld explains ...

On the border, the hazy chirping of birds of a lazy Sunday morning, I lay here trying not to wake up too fast. And in that delicious world of memories old and newly created, I was back in Cambridge in...

Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint, has a new project that he is spending half his time on (he continues to spend the other half as VP of Product Innovation at Intuit, which acquired Mint two years ago...

At a recent Startup School, Mark Zuckerberg made some very poignant comments aboutSilicon Valleys lack of long-term focus. While the quick turnover of capital, people and innovation makes the Valley a...

For those of us who studied (or suffered through) chemistry at some point in life, images from the chem lab inspire nostalgia (or dread). White lab coats. Protective goggles and gloves. Glass beakers ...

The venture capital industry is going through a ton of disruptions lately. One of the better explanations I've heard recently of what is going on comes from Duncan Davidson, a managing partner at Bull...

When I was in Japan earlier this week, I ran into Tonchidot CEO Takahito Iguchi at the TechCrunch Tokyo conference and dragged him back to my makeshift studio for an impromptu interview about the stat...

Very very quietly (there is almost no Googlefootprint), investment bank and securities firm Goldman Sachs held its "Private Internet Company Conference" this week in Las Vegas. During the two-day conf...

It's been only a month since SimpleGeo co-founder Joe Stumpleft his last company, following its acquisition by Urban Airship, but he's already launching a new product (and company) today called Sprint...

It's been only a month since SimpleGeo co-founder Joe Stumpleft his last company, following its acquisition by Urban Airship, but he's already launching a new product (and company) today called Sprint...

We're seeing people move away from finance and law and towards a culture of building things. It's great to see more people seek careers in technology. The problem, I find, is that so many people appro...

In what is perhaps the most boring piece of tech news to come out of this week, German software giant SAP has today announced that it will buy the US-based SuccessFactors, a company that "helps organi...

Your phone is probably spying on you. Facebook, despite its grudging concessions, still wants you to make your life as public as possible. "Eye in the sky" drones are already watching over borders; ne...

The Gillmor Gang Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor gears up for a rough and tumble Social Shakedown. Facebook, Path (?), Gmail filters, News.me, Media Redef...

The world wide web prospered and is what it is today because its inventor Tim Berners-Lee didn't give into temptation and greed and chose not to patent his invention. But 20 years later, its evident t...

For the 2011 holiday season aBlogtoRead.com is giving away a total of ten watches. Winners will be chosen randomly and selected to win one of the available timepieces. Up for grabs are some desirable ...

Through the years I missed investing in Google. I missed investing in Foursquare. I missed, I lost, I suffered, I cried. I could've started other businesses instead of the ones I did. I could've accep...

German researchers are testing a unique form of public transportation that borrows the best from busses, electric cars, trains and trams without contributing emissions. The vehicle, named AutoTram, is...

Correct me if I'm wrong here but you weren't always immediately prompted and guided through to finding your Gmail contacts on Twitterupon login, just like you weren't always able to sync your tweets t...

Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Video: Anti-Sleep Apnea Robot Pillow Gibson Buys Stanton DJ Equipment, Proving Korn Was On To Something 2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Sports Watches To H...

You couldn't swing a cat this week without hitting a story about Carrier IQ, which (if you have somehow avoided this information) is a bit of software installed on millions of phones that has access t...

We first covered AboutOne as part of a round-up of some of the more interesting startups to present their wares onstage at DEMO Spring 2011. The startup is building eManagement system that makes it ea...

In an effort to get customers buying pre-paid deals more regularly, LivingSocial has launched a new subscription service called "LivingSocial Plus". For $20 a month, members get $25 in "Deal Bucks" cr...

Back when we first wrote about Vayable (the site that lets just about anyone offer to host paid tours/activities for travelers) Alexia said it was "like an Airbnb for Travel Experiences."Airbnb would ...

Facebook has acquired location-based startup Gowalla, according to a report this evening by Laurie Segall on CNN Money. The terms of the deal haven't been reported, and Gowalla declined to comment. Fa...

Facebook has acquired location-based startup Gowalla, according to a report this evening by Laurie Segall on CNN Money. The terms of the deal haven't been reported, and Gowalla declined to comment. Fa...

The recent floods in Thailand have wreaked devastation on the factories in the area; some were under a dozen feet or more of water, and all manner of companies were affected by the damage. Nikon and S...

Science Exchange, a Y Combinator-backed company that's helping to streamline the way scientific research is conducted, has raised $1.5 million from an elite group of investors. The round was led by An...

RIM has announced that it will be taking over half a billion dollars in charges related to two major failures this fiscal year. First is the immense overproduction of the Playbook tablet, the writedow...

RIM has announced that it will be taking over half a billion dollars in charges related to two major failures this fiscal year. First is the immense overproduction of the Playbook tablet, the writedow...

The Kindle Fire looks like a bona fide hit right out of the gate. New estimates from IHS iSuppli have Amazon shipping 3.9 million Kindle Fires this quarter, which would make it the No. 2 tablet after ...

The floor of Silicon Valley is littered with the carcasses of failed search startups. Without billions of dollars in resources like Microsoft or a tight vertical focus like travel site Kayak to help a...

Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is on stage right now, talking about innovative mobile design at the Warm Gun conference in San Francisco.If anybody has some thing to say about mobile design it's th...

Realtime data startup Metamarkets is announcing the launch of its analytics offering for mobile platforms and publishers. Metamarkets provides price data and predictive analytics to publishers and web...

The healthcare industry is in the middle of a number of crises, not the least of which is the modernization of its internal infrastructure. Having worked in the industry myself, I can attest that the ...

Toronto-based deal provider Dealfind, which recently became one of the first half-dozen or so partners to be featured within Google Offers, is now available as its own standalone mobile application. T...

Intuilabs is showing off their proof-of-concept HTML5-based multi-touch smartboard in an effort to prove a) that HTML5 is pretty rocking and b) that someday we may all have smart tabletops in our home...

The Gillmor Gang Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, John Borthwick, and Steve Gillmor are recording live today at 1pm PT....

Electronic Arts has bought social game developer KlickNation, and is turning it into a studio within BioWare, its role-playing developer division. The move is a relatively inexpensive way for EA to bu...

It's not rare for me to post videos on Fridays, but I generally preface them with some big explanation as to why I've posted it on TechCrunch. This week's explanation is simple: because it's friggin' ...

A San Francisco-based team has just won the DARPA Shredder Challenge. DARPA, the government agency whose work led to the creation of the Internet, challenged the public to reconstruct five shredded d...

Microsoft has had their hands full with their daily deals program in recent weeks: they just finished overhauling the brand, and now that it's all done, some of their under-exposed initiatives can enj...

Aces Hangoutis a new, in development product from the team atHettema&Bergsten, which you may remember as the makers of the Twitter trend tracker, StrawberryJ.am. The online application brings a un...

I've always enjoyed using the Fanhattan app. It's smart, available on both iPhone and iPad, and just makes getting to what I want to watch easier. Period. But there was one small gripe I had. In fact,...

One of the fastest growing companies in Japan right now is GREE, a publicly-traded mobile social gaming network with 900 employees and on track to generate $1.7 billion in annual revenues. I interview...

Facebook is holding a special event this afternoon at its office in New York City. The event is a little strange, in that Facebook only sent invites out this morning which may be because it will feat...

Just hear those sleigh bellsringing and jing ting tingaling tooCome on its lovely weather foran iPhone purchase for you!Christmas is sneaking up this year and you better be prepared. The iPhone 4S is ...

Lord knows cellphone cross-border roaming is a nightmare, especially when Americans visit Europe only to find their data bill has exploded. Add iPads and smartphone and you have a recipe for a financi...

Much has been said about the real impact of the Internet on the music industry. But sometimes it's useful to talk to musicians - real start-up musicians - about both the opportunities and challenges ...

FutureMusic is reporting that guitar maker Gibson is in talks to buy Stanton, one of the major manufacturers of DJ equipment. FutureMusic posits that Gibson is picking up the company in order to buy a...

As we crawl out of the first decade of the 21st century, it seems that big changes in publishing are afoot. Ten years ago the most ereader I did was loading "In The Beginning There Was The Command Lin...

ArtSpotter's new iPhone app has just gone live in the App store and if you like art you should check it out. It's an interactive art map that lets you discover art around you and add to the map. This ...

For the last few months there's been a a lot of chatter about a big play coming to aim at the world of collaboration and documents. What on earth could someone do that is new in this space, I hear you...

Acer is back with another Android tab. The Iconia Tab A200 is now shipping, loaded with Honeycomb but Ice Cream Sandwich is reportedly in the works. But hopefully Acer fanboys weren't waiting for a Tr...

The Justice Dept. finally gave the greenlight today to Google's proposed $400 million acquisition of AdMeld. The deal was announced in June, and the review took almost six months. The government will ...

comScore just released its monthly U.S. mobile data report, which took a look at trends and activity during the three month average period ending October 2011. While Google Android continued to gain g...

Promoboxx, a TechStars Boston 2011 company focused on brand-to-retailer marketing, has just closed its seed round of $565,000. The funding comes fromindividual angels Dave Balter, Peter Bordes, Adam B...

To say that Carrier IQ has been going through a lot is a bit of an understatement, and it looks like things are only getting worse. PaidContent reports that two class action lawsuits -- one from Misso...

Looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer this holiday season? Square has launched a new campaign to encourage existing users to give their favorite entrepreneur or small business owner a mobile paym...

Looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer this holiday season? Square has launched a new campaign to encourage existing users to give their favorite entrepreneur or small business owner a mobile paym...

There are two main complaints that always crop up whenever you mention Pandora: its music catalog is too small and it's not available outside the U.S. That's room enough for another startup to move in...

There are two main complaints that always crop up whenever you mention Pandora: its music catalog is too small and it's not available outside the U.S. That's room enough for another startup to move in...

With Zynga launching its IPOroad showtoday, all eyes are on the social gaming goliath Mark Pincus built on the Web. But the future of social gaming, as with so many things these days, is mobile, where...

Textonly is, on its surface, a gussied up RSS reader. However, unlike similar "read later" and newsfeed services, this app allows you to read sites in their text-only form, reducing the time it takes ...

That tablets are beginning to supplant the bog-standard PCs in some people's lives shouldn't come as a surprise, but what about outside of the home? Tablets are in some ways better suited to certain ...

It's Cyber Monday all month long, at least according to Amazon, which announced its new holiday deals vertical this morning at www.amazon.com/flurrydeals. The site currently features decently discount...

It's Cyber Monday all month long, at least according to Amazon, which announced its new holiday deals vertical this morning, residing at www.amazon.com/flurrydeals. The site currently features decentl...

Kids send the strangest things over 3G networks! In this new commercial for Windows Phone 7, poor old pops is doing the shopping while consulting a list that has been helpfully shared via One Note. Su...

If you're planning a marathon next year or just full of delicious stuffing and turkey, you may want to look into getting a sports watch. These wrist computers offer GPS, heart-rate, and pace measureme...

In traditional form, Zynga's founder and CEO Mark Pincus had donned a suit for his roadshow presentation to investors. As we reported this morning, Zynga has set the price range of its IPO at $8.50 an...

Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo has announced [JP] it will start offering the Medias PP N-01D on December 9, the latest Android phone in NEC's Medias smartphone series. And if NEC ever gets its act...

Social gaming giant Zynga has just filed its updated S-1 with pricing information ahead of its roadshow. The price range, according to the filing, will be between $8.50 and $10 per share. Offering 100...

JolieBox, which is essentially a Birchbox clone in France, has acquired another British competitor, Boudoir Priv. The news comes a few weeks after JolieBox raised 1 million euros from Alven Capital an...

Sleep apnea can be a big problem for people affected by the disorder, but there is help from Japan on the way. A team of researchers at Waseda University in Tokyo have developed a robot pillow that mo...

Here are some recent Gadgets stories: 2011 Holiday Gift Guide: iPhone Accessories For Every Type Curly Cables, Where Have You Been All My Life? 5.47mm: Sharps Super-Thin CMOS Camera Module Paves Way F...

TechCrunch Japan organized TechCrunch Tokyo 2011 [JP] on Tuesday, a one-day event that attracted a total of 600 people (and will hopefully be organized next year again, possibly as TechCrunch Disrupt ...

In the same space as BeCouply and Tokii, social "network" for couples theicebreak is now available on the iPhone -- for those that want to stay hyper-connected their SOs via mobile.Upon opening theice...

Those looking for love won't find it in the App Store. Apple has removed Match.com's iOS app because it allowed the lonely to pay for Match subscriptions with a credit card through an external link ra...

The social remote control app Dijit has certainly been getting around lately: it started off on iPhones, made the leap onto Android devices not long ago, and now the company has announced that an iPad...

Start to finish party planning site and digital greeting card company Punchbowl has announced a technology-licensing agreement with magazine Real Simple to allow the publication's readers to create an...

With online retail shopping growing every year, it's no surprise that practically everyone wants in. Web-based companies are falling over themselves providing recommendation engines, web storefronts, ...

Early in November, AT&T exec Larry Solomon mentioned that their 4G/LTE network would be extending its reach to New York City sometime "soon."Turns out, "soon" means "sometime around December 1st" ...

Tonight at LG's media event in New York City, we were lucky enough to get some quality time with the LG Nitro HD. The third in AT&T's line of LTE-capable phones, the Nitro HD was announced earlier...

Facebook's mobile apps and websites don't support access to Page tab applications, which let brands host signup forms, coupons, sweepstakes, games and more. Considering roughly 40% of Facebook's users...

Apple has sold over 17 million iPhones in this past quarter alone, so chances are that someone you'll have to buy a holiday present for will already have one. Instead of the usual "cheesy card and swe...

The CEO of a large European-based tech firm hates email and wants his 74,000 employees in 42 countries to stop using it. Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos, wants his "zero email" policy to be in place with...

YouTube is launching what the company calls the biggest redesign in its history today, including sweeping changes to its homepage and channel pages. The goal is better personalized video discovery and...

The tech world is up in arms this week about Carrier IQ, the mobile data logging software that comes pre-installed (and rather well hidden) on an increasingly huge number of handsets. It's still entir...

Online and mobile payment service Dwolla has announced that all transactions under $10 will have no fee from now on. This is of course great news for small businesses and merchants whose average trans...

Color is almost ready for round two.The company which famously raised $41 million and launched last spring only to watch its initial product bomb (which in turn spurred plenty of Schadenfreude) has ...

"We're a developer and a publisher trying to make triple A games that fit the digital lifestyle, are instantly accessible from anywhere, free to try, don't require a PhD to control, and that you can p...

Clearwire's WiMax network. Without it, Clearwire would have had to choose between paying up on a $237 million interest payment or continuing to build out its LTE network — a necessity in terms o...

In October, AllThingsD reported that Twitter VP of engineering Mike Abbott was leaving the company to be an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark Capital (Benchmark and Twitter both confirmed the mov...

Hangouts could be the new way to conference call. Google employeeJarkko Oikarinen has just announced that free voice calls to people in the US and Canada can now be made from within Hangouts with extr...

Finally? Yes, that's what the users of the Toronto-based photography community 500px will be saying today, as the service publicly launches its long-awaited Lightroom publisher plugin. Although often ...

Google Ventures-backed LawPivot , a Quora for legal advice," is announcing a $1 million round of additional seed funding from Vaizra Investments, Venture51, Quotidian Ventures and angel investors. Pre...

By now, you've probably heard all about Carrier IQ, the mobile logging software that an intrepid researcher named Trevor Eckhart found lurking on a number smartphones from multiple manufacturers and c...

Earlier this month, the Q&A-cum-social-networking service Formspring launched its first ever user Directory, with the intent on better highlighting the most popular users within a given category l...

So remember that staff report the FCC released a few days ago? It was basically a novella-length rant on how horrible the AT&T/T-Mobile merger would be, and how many of AT&T's arguments were f...

Forget that specs do not matter for a minute. The first bit of competitive benchmarks of the Nvidia Tegra 3 are just now hitting thanks to the Asus Transformer Prime. Nvidia's quad-core mobile platfor...

The social app for TV content Miso has just raised $4 million in new funding from Khosla Ventures, with existing investors Google Ventures and Hearst Interactive Media participating in the round. This...

Social gaming company CrowdStar is bringing its social mobile title Top Girl to Android phones with the launch of a native app. Top Girl will be sold exclusively through the Amazon App Store for two w...

Smule, makers of such fine musically-tuned iOS apps as Ocarina, Magic Piano, and I Am T-Pain, have just announced their intentions to acquire Khush, the equally music-minded company behind LaDiDa (you...

White phones can be hit or miss. The white BlackBerry Pearl, for example, is an ugly phone. Period. But some white phones can be sexy little beasts, as is the new snow-white Samsung Galaxy S II Skyroc...

Kik, the cross-platform messaging app that works on iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, is today publiclylaunching on Symbian after a month of private beta testing.The new Kik Messenger for Sy...

You may have heard of Wealthfront (formerly kaChing), a startup that has been disrupting the investing and personal finance space. As we've written in the past, Wealthfront made it possible for averag...

Some of my favorite "inventions" are the simple ones. The ideas that are so obvious that we overlook them entirely. This new Kickstarter project, the Curly Cable, falls squarely into that category. Ho...

Smartphones are soon to become thinner: Sharp has developed a 1/3.2-inch CMOS camera module that's just 5.47mm high, making it the thinnest module out there. The so-called RJ63YC100 features 12.1MP re...

The L.A.-based startup nProgress is launching a new social discovery app ntro this morning, backed by over $1.7 million in funding fromJarl Mohn, Gordon Crawford, Kevin Wall, Activation Media Partners...

When I earned my PADI open water diver certification, I had every intention of making scuba diving a regular hobby. Then I got a baby and everything changed. I haven't been able to dive since, but I s...

Sociocast, which provides 'Big Data' analysis and human behavior prediction software to marketing and advertising decision makers within companies, this morning announced that it has closed a $1.5 mil...

Nik Cubrilovic and his buddy Brian Kennish have created something I'll probably use every day. It's called Frictionless and it takes the middle-man out of news reading on Facebook. It's not quite read...

We're getting closer and closer to the Robocalypse: Osaka-based industrial equipment maker Muscle Corporation and a few other Japanese companies have developed a humanoid that can climb up (and down) ...

Ultrabook book prices are dropping. A report surfaced a few days back sourcing supply chain partners that stated ultrabooks should decline in price by 5-10% early next year. Now, Acer's president is o...

Barnes & Noble this morning reported sales and earnings for its second quarter ended October 29, 2011, and they're a mixed bag. Total sales decreased slightly, from $1.9 billion to $1.89 billion, ...

Bsecure, a provider of online family protection software, has been acquired by Internet and mobile security giant AVG Technologies. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. ...

Phonedeck appeared last year at Le Web. At the time it seemed very much like a beta project to manage calls from a computer. But we've long had the position that real social graph is in your phone - t...

Busy schedules; mouths to feed; Angry Birds to play; another post by Rip Empson to read: There are thousands of distractions that get in the way of our regular exercise regimens, getting in shape, and...

With this morning's addition of 16,000 Italian-language ebooks, and 22,000 Spanish-language books, Amazon has updated the total number of digital books it claims to offer through its Kindle Store. The...

Amazon this morning announced the fresh availability of an Italian-language Kindle, and the opening of an Italian Kindle Store, offering customers over 16,000 Italian-language Kindle books. The same t...

According to Web analytics company StatCounter, Google Chrome has surpassed Mozilla Firefox to become the second most used Web browser in the world after Internet Explorer.I'm always a bit wary about ...

Zentyal, the Zaragoza, Spain-based maker of the Zentyal Linux small business server, has raised $1 million in Series A funding from freshly financed and Europe-focused venture capital firm Open Ocean ...

Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: The Narwhal Bacons On Your Phone: BaconReader Is A Reddit Reader For Android Welcome To The Future: Every Instrument In This Song Is F...

There are plenty of companies out there that help you monitor social media activity. Awe.sm has been going deeper into what's really going on, providing a service that lets developers track all the cr...

Kekanto, an Yelp-like local guide and site in Brazil, has raised a undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Accel Partners with Kaszek Ventures participating. This actually marks Accels fifth inv...

If you've already seen this, watch it again. Here's veteran comedian Robin Williams on the Ellen Show talking about "the new future" and bringing up the technology du jour, Siri. I mean just the fact ...

Funzio has managed to make hit versions of its first game, Crime City, for both Facebook and iOS devices. That's a rare feat for any company, especially such a small one. Now it's trying again with a ...

If you are lucky enough to own one of the Jawbone UP bracelets that doesn't have issues, then you're probably pretty psyched at the potential the simple and streamlinedlife-tracking device holds. You ...

Folks who use iOS devices can enjoy the fine, fresh flavor of Reddit any time day or night with the official Reddit app. But what about Android users? What are they, chopped bacon?BaconReader is a new...

After announcing a new partnership with Intel, MasterCard is revealing a new collaboration to help spread the use of its NFC technology through its PayPass program. The credit card giant is making a s...

Some think Mark Cuban is a genius, some think he's lucky. Either way, the guy has a knack for seeing value where others may not, for locating long-term investments, and for ending up on the right side...

Retailing giant Walmart is launching its first-ever social gifting platform tonight, dubbed "Shopycat." The service, previously in beta, is initially available as a Facebook application where it will ...

Right now the only way to officially taste Ice Cream Sandwich on a device is on the Galaxy Nexus. Google stated that it would eventually hit tablets. Well, the wait is over. Somewhere in the bowels of...

Social game developer Zynga will start talking to potential public investors this Monday ahead of a mid-December IPO, according to reports earlier this week. The question is: how much will it be selli...

LeWeb'11 is right around the corner. For those who do not know what LeWeb is -- it is Europe's number one tech event. This year they already have some amazing speakers lined up. Some of those include ...

It's no secret that eBay is pushing mobile in a big way. Especially during this holiday shopping season, the e-commerce giant is seeing record mobile engagement. And today, eBay is announcing that mor...

A superficial comparison of privacy policies around the web by privacy service company TRUSTe has produced a few interesting statistics. Of course the most interesting bits are usually buried deep in ...

Academia.edu, a social network for researchers, is having a good year. In 2011 it's tripled its total registered userbase to 800,000, and today it's announcing some major news that ensures the site wi...

Gamers of the 8- and 16-bit generation will fondly remember GamePro, one of the leading publications covering and reviewing the growing games market during the console salad days of the 90s. But like ...

YouTube has upgraded its viewer demographics and video tracking tools and changed the name from Insight to Analytics. The changes should be rolling out to "everyone with a modern browser" today, thoug...

There's a pissing contest going on. Google+ launched saying it has no character limit, though my tests show it stops publishing at 100,000. Surely unrelated, Facebook upped its limit from 500 to ...

Falling Leaves. Black Friday. And Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. These are the cornerstones of the month of November. Releasing new phones, however, is not. Unfortunately, this means that our Android...

Google may have run out of love for the Nexus One as far as Ice Cream Sandwich is concerned, but that doesn't mean the legions of loyal Android developers have. An intrepid dev named TexasIce on the X...

Data caps on your broadband, while in principle sound troublesome, are at least understandable. Bandwidth is a limited resource and we all have to share it, and presumably if we all were maxing our co...

Familiar, the artist formerly known as Picadee, launches in beta today. Familiar has an incredibly simple yet compelling value proposition, namely that billions of screens worth of untapped real estat...

Amazon is debuting another holiday shopping app, but this offering is geared towards kids. Amazon Santa is a free app for Kindle Fire and the iPad that allows children and their parents to create holi...

App developers don't exactly have a plethora of monetization options, which is why, alongside in-app purchases, they're becoming increasingly reliant on mobile advertising. For this reason, they want ...

This week we bring you the Fujifilm X10, the Galaxy Tab 8.9, and my new standing desk. The standing desk, incidentally, is my second desk, which puts me firmly in the 1% camp when it comes to home wor...

One of the companies at Disrupt SF 2011 that escaped the horror of presenting on stage was Network Optix, whose impressive video handling technology was a little too practical for presentation. They'v...

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried my hand at making music with various iPad apps. I'd also be lying if I said any of that music sounded even halfway decent. Imagine someone getting into a fist-fig...

Asana wants its task-list tool to feel so simple that you only encounter complexity when it's useful. In other words, the opposite of how most enterprise software feels. And it has just added a little...

All the world's music and no way to figure out what to listen to next. This was the problem with Spotify until today. Its flimsy What's New and Top Lists discovery channels showed you what's popular, ...

With today's launch of Startup Texas, Texas becomes the latest U.S. state to join the growing list of regions in the Startup America initiative. The Startup America national campaign, chaired by Steve...

Nick Carr insists that the Internet is wrecking our brains. But not everyone shares Carr's techno-cultural pessimism. One of the most articulate champions of the Internet's impact on our mental cognit...

Sony is making a big push in retail these days, as COO Phil Molyneux outlined this morning at a press conference in New York City. As he explained Sony's retail plans to us, in that lovely British acc...

Recurly, a startup that makes it easy for other companies to manage their subscription billing, has released a payment gateway designed specifically to handle the unique requirements of recurring bill...

91-year-old Ray Bradbury has finally agreed to make his books, most notably Fahrenheit 451, available in digital format after Simon & Schuster released his body of work back into his name. Bradbu...

Our favorite manhacks, the Quadcopters, are currently building a 1,500 piece styrofoam sculture in the FRAC Centre in Orleans. The robots follow a pre-set plan but can sense each other in space and as...

Everyone's favorite check-in service Foursquare is rolling out a major redesign of its developer site today, with a focus on making it easier for new developers to find their way around. The website n...

WiMax network operator Clearwire may not be long for this world if they don't make the the right decision about a looming debt payment. Bloomberg reports that the company owes $237 million in the form...

In his final Founder Stories interview with host Chris Dixon, Mayor Bloomberg begins by offering advice to those wrestling with a career decision - becoming an entrepreneuror joining a bigger company....

Less than a month after securing $500K from Founders Fund, health prediction service 100Plus has brought its funding up to $1.25 million. The new $750K in funding comes from Reid Hoffman and John Lill...

Youve got to hand it to Salesforce: The big battleship of Cloud CRM is remarkably adept at turning its boat around to make war against the startups aiming torpedoes at its hull.First, it was Yammer.Fl...

CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-SalesForce for private investing, has adding a number of new features and upgrades today including sign-in integrations with Facebook, Twitter and more.As we've written i...

Slowly but surely, the world is turning 3D. The Acer HR274H is a 27-inch 1080p 3D display with a trick up its sleeve. Using an internal, chip-based system, the monitor can convert most 2D content into...

Hot music startup Spotify is holding a special event in New York City this morning, where it's going to unveil what it's calling a "New Direction" for the service. Spotifyhasn't given any details on w...

Hatch Labs, a technology sandbox and joint venture between IAC and Xtreme Labs devoted to incubating mobile startups and innovations, is announcing the launch of six new mobile apps in 2012. As we re...

W3i, a monetization and distribution network for mobile app developers, is announcing the launch of a new $10 million "AppX Game Developer Marketing Fund" at this week's AppNation conference in San Fr...

Social enterprise giant Jive has just set the terms of its IPO in a new filing. Jive, which aims to raise a little over $100 million in a public offering, has set the range between $8 and $10 per shar...

Proximiantjust launched a new service that provides digital receipts to customers of brick-and-mortar merchants. Like Square, the service involves the use of a low-cost hardware dongle that's given aw...

Index Ventures is commonly regarded as once of the three "Big Cat" VCs stalking tech companies, in a pan-European sense out of London, alongside Accel Partners and Balderton Capital among others. I sa...

Microsoft just posted some impressive sales stats: this week they sold 980,000 Xbox 360 consoles and 750,000 Kinect sensors, both "standalone and bundled." The sales week is probably due in part to th...

Automated Insights, the venture-backed digital media company formerly known as StatSheet, automatically transforms data into content - think interactive applications and things like data-driven news a...

The Internet Advertising Bureau just released its third quarter numbers, with internet advertising revenues in the U.S. hitting $7.88 billion for the third quarter of 2011, up 22 percent from Q3 2010....

This Kickstarter project has been kicking around the Internet a bit but it's pretty cool. This is a handsome dock for your 11- or 13-inch air and includes 4 USB ports, an ethernet port, a DisplayPort,...

"Yes. I think it's possible if you integrate tablets," said HP's CEO, Meg Whitman in response to a question from French newspaper Le Figaro [translated] concerning Apple's possible takeover as the wor...

Startups pivot; it's part of the process. But how many startups pivot multiple times and still manage to raise significant cash from reputable investors? Sure, maybe it's a sign of a bubble, a sign th...

According to eGaming Review (note: the story is theirs exclusively but sits behind a paywall), Facebook is engaged in exploratory talks with a number of UK operators to open its platform to real-money...

We've gotten a few discrete glances as what could be RIM's first next-generation BlackBerry in the past, and now we may have a name to go with it. Originally code-named "London," BlackBerryOS reports ...

An update to the Sonos firmware and controller now allows Android users to manage their devices on a Honeycomb tablet in a native slate format, eschewing the original portrait-only Android phone app. ...

Thankfully, the Web and digital technology are now playing an increasingly important role in the development of healthcare services (and the industry as a whole), so perhaps it shouldn't come as a sur...

RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads, is taking on the likes of ShareThis, AddThis and other social sharing platforms today with the launch of Po.st...

Adobe this morning announced its acquisition of Efficient Frontier, a digital marketing company, without disclosing the financial terms of the deal. Adobe says the acquisition of the company will enab...

Radian6, which was acquired by Salesforce for $326 million earlier this year, has offered some of the world's largest brands a web-based social media monitoring platform. Brands like Dell, GE, Southwe...

In the mobile startup tradition of quick product iteration, Path Two has hit the app store this evening -- expanding beyond photosharing to people, place, music, chat and sleep mode sharing. Path foun...

In the wake of withdrawing its application to acquire T-Mobile, AT&T has hit yet another obstacle otherwise known as the FCC. See, before AT&T pulled its application, the FCC had big plans to ...

What's former Facebook CTO Chris Kelly doing post-Democratic Attorney General run? Why backing a feature length film shot on a smartphone of course! The film, called Olive, went up on Kickstarter toda...

There's a lot of skepticism about the the success potential of UltraViolet, a new cloud based digital distribution format designed to make digital rights management work across devices. That's because...

The first ultrabooks are just now hitting the market but despite Intel's stated wishes, prices are generally north of $1000. But that might change early next year, per Digitimes who cites several supp...

Founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, Atari played a central role in the early history of video games, going on to create what are still some of the most recognizable arcade games on the p...

Facebook and the FTCmade peace this morning, after the government agency complained that the social network violated user privacy. The two reached a settlement which will fundamentally change the way ...

Yes, we've heard it before: cell phones, they say, give us cancer. But this time, the message is from a noted medical researcher and this time it's a message that is supported by a number of governmen...

There were a lot of sales going on this past Cyber Monday, as many sites across the web slashed prices in a celebration of consumerism.But few sites had the star power that BeachMint did. Yesterday, t...

Over the last six months, Google has been doing a full house clean -- or maybe it's been shedding an old skin. On the one hand, that's meant sunsetting products that just aren't cutting it anymore, li...

An original Polaroid SX70 camera would be a dream for many an analog photography lover. But not only are they difficult to find in good condidion, they're also maddeningly expensive when they show up....

Facebook launched a new set of social channels for apps to reach mobile users last month, including notifications, search, news feed stories and bookmarks in its mobile web and iPhone apps. We haven't...

If apps likeInstagramhave proven one thing, it's that photos and mobile phones are an extremely popular (and powerful) combination. And photos on the web are obviouslyimmenselypopular as well.A year a...

The much-maligned SOPA bill is facing a lot of heat as much of the tech industry sets its weight against it. But while the legislation is being discussed, its extreme solutions to criminal online site...

The latest healthtech research shows that the forecast is looking good for mobile health solutions, especially for those companies buying into mobile apps. ABI Research recently released a report whic...

Be careful, the Kindle Fire is hot. Burning up you might say. Get it? Because it's the Fire? Never mind...Amazon's first foray into the tablet world seems to be a runaway success. The Fire has occupie...

Be careful, the Kindle Fire is hot. Burning up you might say. Get it? Because it's the Fire? Never mind...Amazon's first foray into the tablet world seems to be a runaway success. The Fire has occupie...

You may be aware of the growing controversy surrounding Carrier IQ, a piece of software found pre-installed on Sprint phones that, according to developers who have investigated, is capable of detectin...

In episode II of Mayor Bloomberg's interview with Founder Stories host Chris Dixon, the two start off by discussing Mayor Bloomberg's desire to strengthen the economic foundation of New York City by a...

Short VersionThe Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a nearly perfect size and weight and, thanks to a few user experience updates, is an excellent vehicle for Android Honeycomb 3.1. In many cases the dreaded Android l...

I've spent what seems like months obsessing over every little bit of Galaxy Nexus minutiae that's crossed the wire, and what better to celebrate its (hopefully) impending launch than to watch one get ...

Articles about natural disasters and parenting advice from CNN, Yahoo! News, the New York Times, and Huffington Post topped Facebook's new list of the most shared articles of 2011. Facebook measured w...

Jilion, the makers of the cloud-based HTML5 video player SublimeVideo, are today making the product more accessible through the introduction of a freemium offering. When the service launched earlier t...

Over the last year, Foursquare has been actively buddying up with the daily deal players. Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City, AT&T Interactive, BuyWithMe and Zozi all provide their daily deals to Fo...

Top social game developer Zynga has been widely expected to go public anytime... for months. But now we have a date range -- mid-December, according to DealBook, following up on an earlier report toda...

Our collective trajectory these days seems to be a migration from print to digital. Books, calendars, to-do lists, and newspapers are all victims of the digital revolution, at least in paper form. But...

The iPad hasn't been much of a revenue stream for Microsoft, which has been focusing on developing its own competing tablet ecosystem. But as a software company, it can't ignore the scores of millions...

The $199 Kindle Fire just took one step closer to instant fame. XDA-Dev member, JackpotClavin, managed to flash CM7 onto the Fire using ClockworkMod. The result is a Fire running a custom build of And...

While the features that Windows Phone 7 can call "exclusive" are few and far between, there's at least one aspect of it that is absolutely, undeniably original: the user interface.Called "Metro", the ...

In a blog post regarding today's FTC settlement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also announced that the company has officially split the Chief Privacy Officer role into two parts, to be filled by existi...