History has shown us again and again that great things can be born out of very trying times. It happened in the 19th century, after the Great Fire of Chicago destroyed huge swaths of the city in October 1871 — a hugely destructive event which had the silver lining of prompting a massive new age of innovation and rebuilding in the city. → Read More
Editor’s note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive.
Crowdfunding campaigns employ all kinds of logical and emotional appeals to get you to dig into your wallet. But in just the past few months, there’s been a rush of different products seeking to replace yours. Why Kickstarter — which screens all projects — saw fit to greenlight 10 variations… → Read More
Aereo network streaming TV service recently launched a new Bloomberg TV channel, marking the first content licensing deal inked by the New York-based startup. We sat down with Chet Kanojia, CEO and founder of Aereo to discuss licensing new content, expansion, and the current court case involving Aereo and major network TV broadcasters. → Read More
Editor’s note: John De Goes is co-founder and CEO of Precog, an analytics platform for developers.
These days, you don’t have to look hard to find big data. If you’re like many companies I talk to, you’re sitting atop an ever-growing mountain of data, scratching your head and wondering, “OK, I’ve got big data. Now what do I do?” → Read More
With the Starbucks deal in place, there’s no doubt that Square will continue to eye partnerships with large brick and mortar stores and brands to power mobile payments and loyalty. But there’s a point to be made that the major opportunity may not be with the large brands like Starbucks but with the multitude of small to medium sized chains across the U.S. and beyond. These are regional stores that… → Read More
Stephen Colbert has been promoting his new book recently, and as part of this he stopped by Google’s New York office to sit down with chairman Eric Schmidt and participate in the company’s Authors@Google speaker series. → Read More
Editor’s note: Chris Potter is co-founder of ScreenLight, a cloud video collaboration service for video producers to review and approve video with their teams and clients.
Google recently rolled out a number of enhancements to its Cloud Platform products. With these changes, it’s clear that Google is aiming its sights directly at Amazon Web Services and other IaaS providers, such as Windows… → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — reeled along with the rest of the world from the tragedy in Connecticut. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and victims as well as our country as it grapples with the impact of our addiction to weapons of mass destruction. The contrast between what we fear is an insoluble problem and the stream of… → Read More
As second, third and fourth screens become increasingly popular among sports fans, Twitter has been among those platforms to see a significant increase in sports-related chatter. Social media and Twitter in particular have become popular destinations for fans looking to share their thoughts and engage in conversation during the action.
For the holidays this year, Twitter and ESPN have teamed up… → Read More
So this is awkward. Ownshelf is a new service that lets people store and share ebooks online. Pretty nifty, huh? They reached out to me in part because I’ve released several of my own books for free under a Creative Commons license. (For those of you new to this column, I write fiction when not writing code, and have had a bunch of novels published by HarperCollins, Hachette, etc., over the years… → Read More
Ron Conway, Silicon Valley’s best known angel investor, got quite a gift this evening. Laurene Jobs, the wife of the late Steve Jobs, dropped by the Conway annual holiday party this evening and unveiled what I can only describe as an epic painting of the man. It was hung on the wall, and just about everyone in attendance took a picture. The painting is based on a photo taken of Ron and his… → Read More
Editor’s note: Heather Meeker is a shareholder, and chair of the IP/IT Licensing and Transactions Group in the international law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP.
Startups stand on the shoulders of giants, developing proprietary applications on top of a software landscape that heavily leverages open source components. But as the saying goes, free software is not free, and using open source… → Read More
Sports is in the process of becoming the next big market to be transformed by the digital revolution, as fans are increasingly turning to mobile devices and second, third and fourth screens to consume sports content. In August, Turner bought sports blogging and content platform Bleacher Report for an estimated $200. More recently, Yahoo and NBC forged a digital sports partnership in the hopes of… → Read More
[Note: This is a weekly series. If your company is doing something amazing to help a charitable cause or doing some good in your community, please reach out.] Before we start with this week’s edition of “The Weekly Good”, I want to let everyone know that our thoughts are with those who are affected by the horrific events in Connecticut today. We are all human, and doing damage… → Read More
YouTube first launched its Data API back in 2007, and it has since become the video giant’s most popular API in terms of request volume. Today, YouTube announced that it has officially opened version 3.0 of its API to all developers.
The new APIs bring a number of important changes to bear on its current feature set, including client library support, improved tooling, reference documentation… → Read More
MyFitnessPal, which allows users to track and share their exercise and nutrition, is rolling out an update that should make it easier to find your friends on the service.
Connecting with friends was an important feature on MyFitnessPal before, but until now, you had to know their email address or user name. With this update, you can log in with Facebook and connect with your Facebook friends, or… → Read More
In a show of solidarity with those grieving tonight over a school shooting in Connecticut, Google placed a subtle vigil candle below its search box. Google’s graceful, yet poignant gesture speaks the uniqueness of this particular tragedy. Earlier today, a scores of citizens flooded the White House’s official online petition website, WeThePeople, calling for “immediate” gun control reform, in… → Read More
Rally.org, a social fundraising startup that even partially raised its Series A round through its own platform, is putting together a charity campaign on behalf of San Francisco’s Glide Church that awards time with Silicon Valley super-angels like Ron Conway, Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss.
Glide, a San Francisco institution that’s one of the city’s best-known churches, is launching online… → Read More
Famed inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist Ray Kurzweil announced this afternoon that he has been hired by search engine giant Google as a director of engineering focused on machine learning and language processing. He starts this upcoming Monday, according to a report issued on his website.
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Almost immediately following the tragic school shooting in Connecticut, over 16,000 people have signed an official White House WeThePeople petition to “Immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress.” Signatures seem to be increasing rapidly in speed, in what could be the fastest petition in the site’s history. → Read More
AngelList, a service that matches early stage startups with investors, is raising a big round of financing at a valuation that multiple sources say will top $150 million. Investors may include Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, among others, say our sources. This will be the company’s first outside financing. → Read More
Many, including us, thought that the introduction of Google Maps might lead to a rapid uptake in iOS 6 adoption, the idea being that many were holding out in order to keep Google’s offering as the default on their iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. But Chitika, a mobile ad network that regularly tracks iOS adoption rates based on devices accessing apps using its platform, has found negligible impact… → Read More
Jason Calacanis has announced via blog post that he’s planning to wind down his podcast network ThisWeekIn.com and return the remaining funds to investors.
Two of the shows, This Week In Startups (which Calacanis hosts) and Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, will continue, but the company itself is shutting down. Calacanis wrote that ThisWeekIn wasn’t a failure, just “a moderate success” that “would not… → Read More
Following October’s update of its Android application, Dropbox today released a new version of its iOS app, which focuses on refining the photo-viewing and sharing experience. In today’s update, there’s now a new Photos tab, which offers a way to tap into a scrollable timeline of the photos you’ve uploaded into your Dropbox account. → Read More
Google likes to make sweeping changes in bulk, getting rid of features that it thinks don’t really matter. Why don’t they matter? Its users tell them so by not using them.
In a “Winter Cleaning”, there were some minor cuts, as well as a somewhat major one — the shutdown of Punchd, its loyalty card app and service. Merchants must not have been getting quite the bang for their bucks by… → Read More
Apple’s iPhone 5 is a “hit” according to English-language Chinese newspaper Shanghai Daily, despite the fact that there were not huge lineups or riots in the streets as there were on iPhone 4S launch day. That’s because most of the new phones were sold at China Unicom and China Telecom stores, the newspaper reports, rather than at Apple’s three Shanghai stores. In Shanghai alone, the newspaper… → Read More
If you’ve never heard of Toca Boca, then you must not have kids. The studio behind a series of popular children’s applications for iOS (iPhone and iPad) has just passed 22 million downloads across its portfolio of now 16 applications, and is today expanding to Android, starting with support for the Kindle Fire. More Android releases are planned for early next year, the company says. → Read More
Patrick Husting runs a small development shop, ExtendedResults where he sells a product called PUSHBI, a mobile business intelligence app. While the app was popular on iOS and Android, he found some interesting results when he moved it onto Windows 8 – his sales, once flat on Windows, went up to the tune of 2,500 downloads in the last few weeks. He admits it’s not a huge sample size but it’s some… → Read More
It’s been launch city for a few big companies and new startups this week. Who’s had the very best week, possibly? That would be Aviary, a company that started out with a direct-to-consumer product that allowed people to beautify and share their photos. The company decided to switch gears and provide its tools to other apps and sites. Some people call it a pivot, but that word can be… → Read More
We happen to live in a massive time of transition. The PC market that has dominated computing for the past few decades is decaying while mobile computing is soaring — with the only limit in sight being the total number of people on the planet. As a result, startups have been gradually shifting their focus from web-first to mobile-first. It’s the reason why I stay up late at night writing posts… → Read More
The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards
San Francisco
New York City
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