Over the past few years, Vevo has been working hard to simplify the process by which users search for and discover new music videos on its site. With that in mind, the company released a small update to its homepage today, aimed at making it easier for users to check out new music videos and to search for those they know and love. → Read More
Ask Facebook Graph Search for “books liked by founders” and you won’t see The Da Vinci Code or The Bible first, though they’re amongst the most Liked books. Instead you’ll see books disproportionately Liked by founders compared to the general population thanks to “Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency”. Surfacing The Tipping Point, and Design For Hackers shows how smart Graph Search is. → Read More
HP just released its Q1 2013 earnings report and for once, the company beat analyst expectations: revenue was once again down 6% to $28.4 billion, but still higher than most analysts expected. The company reported an income of $1.2 billion and EPS of $0.82. Last quarter, HP still reported earnings of $30 billion and a net loss of $6.9 billion after its $8.8 billion write-down due to alleged… → Read More
When talking about Apple’s rise from near-bankruptcy to become the most valuable company in the world, people often credit the amazing string of products from the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad. And rightfully so. But just as important was another piece of the puzzle that ensured said products would find mainstream appeal and acted as an accelerant for Apple’s success: the Apple… → Read More
Google hasn’t always been known for making breathtaking hardware, but today’s announcement of the Chromebook Pixel — arguably one of the best-looking laptops ever made, if nothing else — means that may no longer be the case.
Still, you can’t be blamed for being wary of shelling out a decent chunk of money on Google’s first foray into laptops, let alone a Chromebook of all things, so here’s a… → Read More
Although I, like many of you, suffered through Sony’s interminable and boring press conference last night, I came away less concerned about the PlayStation’s future as a platform. What I saw, in short, was a company that has finally embraced the network to a degree that forces its competitors to play catch-up and, barring a horrible blunder on Sony’s part, could guarantee some modicum of success… → Read More
“In the Studio” rolls on this week by hosting an ex-management consultant who grew tired of that career path, wrote a book about how to prepare for and perform well during case-style interviews, self-published the work and started to make money from those sales proceeds, and eventually ended up in YC to help build out his new content-publishing business, Hyperink. → Read More
Google unveiled is fabled Pixel Chromebook today, and the thing does indeed have what looks to be a gorgeous, high-resolution display. It also has a touchscreen, as rumored, and the list gets more confusing from there. 32GB (or 64GB) of onboard storage? ChromeOS? A 3:2 screen ratio? A $1299 starting price tag? Huh? → Read More
Retargeting company AdRoll has released some data today intended to suggest that advertisers shouldn’t rush too quickly to embrace Facebook Exchange (the ad retargeting service that the social network launched last year) — at least not at the expense of other forms of retargeting.
That’s probably what you’d expect to hear from a company with a profitable business in web retargeting (where ads… → Read More
In Silicon Valley and other tech entrepreneurship hubs, you don’t meet many startup founders who are excitedly building products aimed at the government sector.
But in an on-stage discussion Wednesday night at San Francisco’s Founders Den coworking space, tech entrepreneur, investor, and author Tim O’Reilly and California’s Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom both agreed that there absolutely… → Read More
Do you cash out or stick to your guns? Twitter co-founder Ev Williams says you should only sell your company if the offer captures the upside, there’s an imminent threat or you personally want to. “Any of them will suffice,” but Twitter didn’t have any, says Williams. → Read More
After a few weeks of rumors, Google just announced the latest device in its Chromebook lineup: the Chromebook Pixel. Unlike previous Chromebook versions, the Pixel is aimed at power users who fully live in the cloud. The device features an impressive array of hardware specs. It has a 12.85 inch high-density 2560×1700 screen (that’s 4.3 million pixels) with a 3:2 aspect ratio, an Intel… → Read More
These days it seems like everyone and their cousin is trying to craft the next smash hit game, but simply bringing a concept to fruition isn’t enough. It’s got to be engaging and well-designed, and that’s exactly what Game Analytics wants to help developers out with.
The Copenhagen-based startup has announced today that it has opened its (what else?) game-centric data analytics platform to… → Read More
More details have emerged about LivingSocial’s new $110 million funding round announced yesterday. In response to a blog post characterizing the raise as an emergency round of debt financing, LivingSocial CEO Tom O’Shaugnessy issued a new memo to employees clearing up some misconceptions about the raise. The key takeaway? Yes, it was a down round, it was not an “emergency debt infusion.” → Read More
With each fleeting moment, we inch closer to Disrupt NY. Today we’re excited to announce that Kevin Ryan will take Disrupt’s stage in late April, joining our ever-growing list of speakers, which so far includes Ben and Ken Lerer, David Lee, and Ron Conway among others.
We just wrote about the rise in company builders, in which seasoned and successful entrepreneurs create studios to innovate… → Read More
We have two guests joining us in the TechCrunch TV studio in the coming week for our Ask A VC series, where you put VCs in the hot seat. First up we have Menlo Ventures Managing Director Shawn Carolan. Later in the week, we’ll be joined by Kleiner Perkins’ partner Matt Murphy. → Read More
Euclid, the analytics solution for brick-and-mortar retailers which first emerged from stealth back in late 2011, is today announcing $17.3 million in Series B funding, in a round led by Benchmark Capital. Also participating were previous investors NEA and Harrison Metal, as well as Novel TMT Ventures. In addition, the funding sees Benchmark’s Bruce Dunlevie, joining the company’s board. → Read More
Twitter announced via its blog today that it has begun using DMARC, a security protocol designed to cut down the number of fake emails that users receive from companies pretending to be Twitter itself. The move should help cut down on phishing scams, where third parties try to get users to give up their login details via false requests for password verification or other personal info. → Read More
We’ve been waiting since Doo closed its significant first funding round of $6.8 million at the end of 2011 for it big play to attack the world of collaboration and documents to appear. Big plays like this can take time, but after quite a long two year beta (oh yes) with Mac and Windows apps, today it launched its onslaught onto the world of paper. Specifically the paper you have to deal with all… → Read More
One of the startup ideas that I’ve been hearing about for years is the social photo album — a service that doesn’t just let you share photos with your friends, but also create albums with them. Adam Ludwin and Devon Gundry have seen a lot of those startups, too, but they’re trying to crack the problem with their new startup Albumatic.
Ludwin (a principal at RRE Ventures, where he led the seed… → Read More
Airbnb has seen amazing growth over the last year, doubling the number of listings and nights booked on the platform in 2012, and the company sees even more opportunity on the horizon. But surprisingly enough, the company only has 50 engineers right now. To help scale that team, Airbnb has hired former Facebooker Mike Curtis as its new VP of engineering. → Read More
CloudOn, the popular free mobile productivity app that gives its users access to Microsoft Office on their smartphones and tablets, was only available on iOS and for Android tablets like the Nexus 7 until now. Starting today, however, Android smartphone users, too, will be able to use the company’s service to create, review, edit and share their Office documents from devices like the Galaxy Nexus… → Read More
As 3D printing and modeling moves into the mainstream, it’s interesting to see the rise of small players in the market and the capital raised. Take, for example, CGTrader. Originally designed as a marketplace for 3D designers and artists, it’s just raised nearly 200,000 Euro from Practica Capital, a fund in Lithuania. Founded by Marius Kalytis, the company is based in Vilnius. → Read More
Execution Labs, a Montreal-based gaming incubator, is teaming up with mobile game advertising and monetization startup Chartboost to create a new matchmaking program that will help indie game developers promote each others’ work. It would allow smaller developers to tap into cross-promotion, a strategy that has helped bigger game developers hold on to their millions of players as they get… → Read More
ManageEngine has launched the ServiceDesk Plus iPhone app that incorporates voice-recognition technology for IT professionals so they can make commands, dictate notes and do any number of other tasks that come with managing a help desk. → Read More
Watchup, a startup hoping to reinvent the news-watching experience on the iPad, has released an update that should make it even more convenient for users.
When I spoke to co-founder Adriano Farano back in December, he talked about how people used to gather around the TV for the nightly newscast — something that’s been lost in the current fragmented environment. Watchup tries to recapture some… → Read More
Playhaven, a startup that had to do three major pivots before finding traction in helping other mobile gaming studios monetize their existing players, just scored another major hire. They just poached Rovio’s senior vice president of brand marketing Ville Heijari, who joined the Finnish game developer when it had just 15 employees. He grew Rovio’s marketing team as the entire company… → Read More
Shortly after market opening, Tesla shares (NASDAQ:TSLA) dropped 9.68 percent to 34.81 in the wake of yesterday’s earnings. The company disappointed investors as it reported a quarterly loss of $89.9 million, or 79 cents a share, compared with a loss of $81.5 million last year, or 78 cents a share. → Read More
Canon announced the launch of its MREAL system for “mixed reality” today, which includes a head-mounted display that allows wearers to combine virtual objects with the real world in 3D, which essentially sounds like a product designer’s dream. On the consumer side, augmented reality hasn’t done a great job of proving itself generally useful at this point, but in an industrial design setting, the… → Read More
New York City
