Sarah currently works as a writer for TechCrunch, after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to becoming a professional blogger, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.
Following last month’s rollout of free voice calling in its standalone Messenger app, Facebook has today updated its flagship iOS application to offer the same functionality. In the version 5.5 update live now in Apple’s App Store, users in the U.S. and Canada can phone their friends directly from the right-hand sidebar within the application. → Read More
Framebench is a newly launched platform for creative collaboration, specifically aimed at those working in digital agencies and other creative design firms. There are a number of tools already available serving this industry (here’s a big list, for example), but Framebench’s focus on real-time communication, collaboration and sync gives it an edge. → Read More
A blog post from Flickr about new updates to its iOS application went relatively unnoticed yesterday. The post announced a series of incremental improvements to an app which has so far barely managed to catch up to the competition after months of abandonment, but has yet to really impress. The latest build brings a few now-standard features like the ability to save photos to your Camera Roll… → Read More
If you do a search for “AngelList” in the Apple App Store, you’ll only get four results – and one is an app featuring quotes from entrepreneurs. In other words, there’s not a lot of selection despite AngelList’s readily available API. That being said, in the past an app called AngelList Wings has served as a useful resource for browsing, searching and following early-stage startups, founders and… → Read More
It’s rare to come across a service that’s directly tackling a problem affecting a large number of people out in the real world, but AppCertain is doing just that. Designed for parents whose children use an iOS device like the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, this new app monitoring service sends out email alerts informing parents of the apps their kids have just installed, what those apps do, and… → Read More
Blog commenting systems are bizarre, broken and dated. TechCrunch recently switched from Facebook Comments to Livefyre – a change that, for the record, I had no say in. I’m not sure I see value. I don’t agree with some of the sentiment expressed here, which almost makes it sound like this site, and all its authors, missed the trolling days of TechCrunch Past. We don’t. → 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
Wedding Party, the mobile app that allows wedding guests, friends and family to contribute to a shared, digital album of photos and notes which can later be posted directly to the couple’s Facebook timeline, has raised $1 million in seed funding in a round jointly led by NEA and Felicis Ventures. Also participating were a number of angel investors, including early Dropbox investor Pejman… → Read More
Jumio, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed mobile payments and ID-scanning startup, is today releasing a new version of its Netverify product designed specifically for mobile devices, both smartphones and tablets. Netverify Mobile, as it’s called, will allow app publishers to authenticate their customers’ identities via their driver’s license, passport or other ID card. → Read More
TrustEgg, a Y Combinator-backed startup which lets parents set up trusts for their children is actually launching. That’s a milestone in and of itself, because, as a financial services company, it had been facing a lot of regulatory hurdles. The company has also recovered from the loss of its first co-founder, Gabe Krambs, who left CEO Jeff Brice to take a job that paid the bills. It has since… → Read More
Only a month after its expansion into juniors, online and mobile clothing consignment service thredUP is now expanding into women’s apparel. This is the company’s first step out of the kids’ clothes market, representing a shift for the brand which has previously targeted parents — primarily moms. → Read More
Illustrating how very, very hard it is to have a breakout hit in today’s mobile app stores, a report from app store analytics firm Distimo released today finds that only 2 percent of the top 250 publishers in the iPhone App Store are “newcomers,” versus just 3 percent in the Android store, Google Play. → Read More
Gigwalk, the mobile temp agency that allows users to get assigned jobs (or “gigs”) from companies in need of real-world data or market research, is today upgrading its business-facing platform as the service grows to accomodate larger-scale job assignments from customers like Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, TomTom, eBay, and others. It’s also adding another big-name brand to its roster – Reckitt… → Read More
Mobile backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) platform StackMob is expanding upon its earlier launch of a marketplace for third-party services, with the debut of a marketplace targeted towards enterprise customers. Through a series of partnerships, the marketplace allows StackMob to promote its integrations with other software and platforms-as-a-service companies, API infrastructure providers and more… → Read More
Quixey, the app search startup that signed a deal to power app search results on Ask.com this December, is today announcing another high-profile partnership, this time with U.S. mobile carrier Sprint. The operator will use Quixey’s technology in its Sprint Zone and Sprint Digital Lounge, the former its branded app and media store, and the latter a portal for finding similar content via the web… → Read More
Vengo, the maker of mini vending machines for bars, restaurants and offices, has raised $1 million in seed funding from a number of New York-area investors and others, including David Tisch (BoxGroup), Brad Feld, The Richport Group (chaired by Marc Anthony), Joanne Wilson, Gary Vaynerchuk, the NYU Innovation Fund, FunBars, RSL Ventures (Ronald Lauder), Mark Wachen, and others. → Read More
Findables, a specialty case maker for smartphones and tablets, has just scored some significant distribution deals for its QR-coded, “connected” cases. Previously, the company was selling online and in 550 “The Source” locations in Canada, but will now be on the shelves in all 1,100 Office Depot stores in the U.S. next month, as well as made available on BestBuy.com, Amazon, and Gamestop.com. → Read More
Debt-management focused Student Loan Hero is ramping up the competition in the “Mint for Student Loans” space, with now 2,000 people on board, $63 million in debt under management, a platform built on proprietary technology (not Yodlee, like some of its nearest competitors), and a little bit of seed funding from Expansion VC. → Read More
In November, mobile app services company Flurry announced that China was on track to top the U.S. and Android install base at some point in the first quarter of 2013. Today, Flurry says that has happened. China has passed the U.S. to become the world’s top country for active Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, a year after the country became the fastest-growing smart device market in the… → Read More
Moment.me, a startup that debuted its automatic, social albums application for iPhone this past fall, has made its way to Android. The app allows users to combine not only photos, but also video, as well as updates from social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram and Google+, into one album. These albums are also augmented with content shared by friends and others who posted… → Read More
Did you happen to get an email from LinkedIn recently, which congratulated you on having one of the most popular profiles on the site? Then, good news – you’re special. Just like millions of others. The campaign, which ran this month in celebration of LinkedIn’s 200-million-users milestone, involved these ego-boosting emails sent to the network’s “top” users, which urged them to share the good… → Read More
Google Plus experienced an outage this morning, and almost no one noticed. Gizmodo poked fun. Engadget wrote a few sentences. Someone posted it to Hacker News. Where it gained zero comments. Google+, reportedly the fastest-growing social network in history (or fastest-growing “thingy” ever), and reportedly the second-biggest social network worldwide, experiences an outage, and nothing hits … → Read More
After this morning’s news that the transition from Windows Live Messenger to Skype will be delayed, word comes that Skype will now begin testing a video messaging feature. Essentially like a video voicemail option, this will allow users to record messages for contacts who aren’t online, which can be played back when they return to Skype. → Read More
Just a few days after adding a new set of features to Dropbox for Teams, the cloud storage company rolled out a new version of its iOS application which introduces a few useful additions as well. For starters, it has added an improved PDF viewer, which lets you navigate to any page in the document by tapping on the thumbnail. It’s rather awesome, in fact. The update also introduces push… → Read More
I’ve been receiving ominous warnings in my Gmail inbox for months now: “You are almost out of space for your Gmail account. Once you run out of space, you will not be able to send or receive any emails until you delete some items.” Well, that’s one way to get out of inbox overload! Unfortunately, it’s also not a real option. Email is mission-critical.
Just buy more storage!, people recommended. → Read More
Fandrop, a new content sharing site started by a group of growth hackers, is debuting today to help you find out what’s trending across the web. The site surfaces things like tweets and Facebook posts, YouTube videos, images from sites like imgur, articles, web pages, and more. In some ways, it’s similar to other social networks and social sharing sites, in that you can friend and follow other… → Read More
Bump, the flagship contacts, photos and file sharing application from the company by the same name, is today getting an upgrade on both iOS and Android in order to support file-sharing to and from your computer. The ability to “bump” your phone with your computer was first introduced in May 2012, but at the time it only supported photos. With the new release, users will be able to share any file… → Read More
Series A crunch? Who cares with seed rounds like this? Today, Y Combinator-backed Virool, a self-service social video advertising platform, is announcing its monster “seed” round of $6.62 million. And Virool even got to pick from their choice of investors, institutional and otherwise, according to co-founder and CEO Alex Debelov. → Read More
If you kind of liked the idea behind viral sensation Bang With Friends, the controversial Facebook app that lets you privately nominate friends you want to hook up with, but balked at the idea of using an app that’s all about the sex, then you might find newly launched Trintme to have some appeal. The name, a combo of “true intentions,” is not as clever, sadly – seriously, people, stop making up… → Read More
Over a decade after porting its QuickBooks desktop software to the web, Intuit is finally addressing the needs of its small business owner user base with the launch of a version of the QuickBooks application for iPad. The app has been designed from the ground-up to take advantage of the tablet’s screen size and feature set. But more notably, it’s helping to refocus the QuickBooks platform from… → Read More
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